Legislating Uncertainty: Election Policies and the Amplification of Misinformation

Can state election policies affect the spread of misinformation? This paper studies the role played by ballot processing policies, which determine when ballots can be examined and organized, in the online spread of political misinformation. We present evidence from the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle linking the spread of misinformation in the aftermath of the election to the uncertainty created by these restrictions. Specifically, using a novel dataset of 317 misinformation stories constructed using over 4,700,000 posts collected in real-time throughout the 2020 electoral period, we examine whether restrictions on the ability of election officials to process ballots corresponded with increases in the prevalence of misinformation on X/Twitter. We find that, relative to states with restrictions, states that allowed ballots to be processed in advance of the election were subjected to fewer misinformation stories. The results suggest that policymakers interested in limiting the amount of misinformation targeting their state institutions should remove barriers to pre-election ballot processing.