Election deniers inflate Ohio polling glitch into another 'fraud' conspiracy thanks to reporter's tweet

A temporary malfunction at a single Ohio polling location triggered a round of right-wing conspiracy theories from the usual suspects Tuesday.

WEWS-TV reporter Mike Holden tweeted Tuesday morning that all ballot scanners were not functioning properly at a polling location in Cuyahoga Falls, to the frustration of both voters and workers, and voters were offered the choice of leaving their ballots in a special bag to be scanned later or have their ballots voided so they could return when the machines were fixed.

However, according to an analysis by American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Kevin R. Kosar, the report left out some important contextual details that allowed the temporary outage to inflate into a conspiracy theory that blared across right-wing social media accounts and conservative media.

"What was lacking were any contextual facts, like this was: -- 1 polling location (out of 34) in 1 city; -- in 1 county of 88 counties. -- That maybe 20 voters here had seen their ballots delayed," Kosar tweeted. "That the town isn't a MAGA town. That the county's elections are overseen by a Republican. That Ohio's elections are directed by a Republican who campaigned for Issue 1, which would amend the state Constitution and make it tougher for an abortion referendum to pass this autumn."

Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate, likely Republican Senate candidate and possible Donald Trump running mate, retweeted Holden's video to her 1.4 million followers and rolled the context-free report into her conspiracy theories about elections in her state.

"Looks like they took a page out of the Maricopa County 'selections' playbook," Lake tweeted. "Today is Election Day in Ohio and the machines don’t work. The swampy never-Trumper Ohio Secretary of State was too busy running for another office to do his job making sure Election Day runs smoothly. Reminds me of the jackasses who run Maricopa County elections when they sabotaged Election Day to stop the will of We the People. Wake up America."

Secretary of state Frank LaRose, a Republican, reversed his refusal to endorse presidential candidates due to his position overseeing Ohio's election by publicly declaring support for Trump's 2024 campaign, which he announced a week after entering the U.S. Senate race to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

"[Lake] also made it sound as if the machine issue was widespread [and] OAN repeated her Maricopa County line and added that 'Something fishy was going on in Cuyahoga Falls,'" Kosar wrote. "[Anti-Muslim activist] Brigitte Gabriel told her 909,000 followers, 'WOW. Ballot scanners in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio have not been working for their special election today.'"

Holden's tweet rocketed around other MAGA accounts, but few of them noted when he later reported the issue had been corrected. Some conservative accounts framed the overwhelming defeat of the GOP-backed Issue 1 as another instance of voter fraud, and Kosar said the episode represents a teachable moment for journalists.

"The job of a reporter is to report for the sake of helping the public understand what is going on," Kosar tweeted. "Failing to report all the facts led to a lot of misunderstanding and enflamed simmering suspicions amongst a portion of the public. Not good. I hope this reporter learned the right lesson, and I hope other reporters also will learn that the job they hold is a public trust. Voters need journalists; but we depend on you to give us the full story."