The Sift: False election narratives

An educator's guide
to news literacy

Nov. 2, 2026

In this issue

False election narratives | RumorGuard slides

Daily Do Now slides

A week’s worth of do-nows, just for you.

Top picks

Here are the latest news literacy topics and tips on how to integrate them into your classroom.

Election disinformation is spreading online.

1. False election narratives pervasive in midterms

Election disinformation isn’t always meant to convince people of a specific falsehood. It is also created to undermine trust in the electoral process itself.

• State-focused falsehoods: Election disinformation often targets specific states. Nearly 60% of the more than 1,600 posts analyzed in a new Disinfo Defense League report made state-level claims about election policies, procedures, deadlines and other localized topics.
• Top narratives: The most common election denial topics involved noncitizens voting, federal intervention, voter IDs, “proof” of fraud from past elections, mail-in ballots, voter rolls, voting technology, election interference and ballot dumping. 
• White supremacy: Some of the election fraud claims echo longstanding white supremacist narratives and tropes.

💬 Discuss:

• Why might bad actors focus on spreading localized false election claims — especially in contested states like Pennsylvania and Michigan — rather than national ones?
• What’s the difference between true concerns about election security and baseless conspiratorial beliefs about election fraud?

➡️Note: Scroll down to RumorGuard Rundown for teaching slides debunking an election rumor.

⭐ NLP Resource:

• Poster: “Five types of misinformation”

🔗 Related:

• “A field guide to the conspiracy theories you’ll likely see on Election Day” (CNN)
• “How Teachers Are Turning the Midterms Into a Nonpartisan Civics Lesson” (EdSurge)
• “2026 Elections False Claims Tracker” (NewsGuard)

2. Without ‘fear or favor’

The essence of journalism is open-minded inquiry and meticulous verification of the facts — both of which require a dedication to independence, as this piece from The New York Times’ Learning Network explains.

• Working against cognitive biases: The tendency to make assumptions, to act on hunches and to develop theories that explain events is fundamental to who we are as human beings. So is the inclination to be influenced by powerful people and groups, or to be guided by our personal interests. That’s why the standards and guidelines that reporters and editors are expected to follow place the pursuit of truth above everything else.
• Do’s and don’ts: For journalists, pursuing independence in journalism means avoiding conflicts of interest, such as engaging in advocacy, accepting favors or gifts and covering friends or family members. It also means not letting fear of criticism or retribution stop reporters from fully pursuing a story, keeping business interests out of editorial decisions, and always staying curious, skeptical and honest. It can even mean covering news that involves problems in one’s own newsroom.

Note: Despite newsrooms’ rigorous guidelines to ensure the greatest degree of independence, only 37% of Americans said in a recent survey that they think “most journalists try to report the news as accurately as possible” — and 45% said most journalists are not independent, but rather “try to manipulate the news for political or commercial purposes.”

💡 Idea: Share the “Quality journalism” slide in Week 9 in the Daily Do Now resource to have students further reflect on the role of independence in journalism.

💬 Discuss:

• If perfect independence is impossible for any human to achieve, should journalists still strive for it?
• Reflect on a time when you tried your best to remain independent — for example, tried to set your emotions and biases aside to make a hard decision. What did you learn from that?

⭐ NLP Resource:

• Interactive lesson: “Practicing Quality Journalism”

3. Tracking down a false statistic

Did you know that 75% of human emotions are generated by smell, according to … who, again? No one, apparently.

• False statistic: Elizabeth Bromstein, a journalist who creates perfumes, saw this statistic in books, articles and even academic papers, so she dug around for its original research. She never found a study to support it. A neuroscientist she interviewed found the statistic questionable and explained how emotions come from all senses.
• Repetition becomes conventional wisdom: There’s a psychological phenomenon called the illusory truth effect, in which claims we’re repeatedly exposed to start to feel true — even when there is no evidence to support them. Many popular but false claims take on the appearance of conventional wisdom: things we think we know.

💬 Discuss:

• How do different groups of people — including politicians, activists, advertisers and bad actors online — capitalize on the illusory truth effect?
• We’re all vulnerable to believing things we hear over and over again. So how can people protect themselves from believing repeated false claims?
• How might AI chatbots help combat the problem of false claims being accepted as true? How might they make it worse?

⭐ NLP Resources:

• Activity: “Fact-check it!” 
• Lesson plan: “Fact-Checker”
• Interactive lesson: “Making Sense of Data”

🔗 Related:

• “An alleged national pollster says it faked its data as a ‘social experiment.’ Here's what to know” (PBS News)
• “A Florida local newspaper ran an op-ed. It was an Iranian AI fake.” (The Washington Post)

These interactive slide decks help students think carefully and critically about viral claims in the digital age.

False claims about rigged voting machines spread ahead of elections

❌ NO: This video does not show an electronic voting machine intentionally switching a person’s ballot choice as part of a voter fraud scheme to rig the 2026 midterm elections.

✅ YES: The video depicts an electronic voting machine that erroneously tallied a vote in Mississippi’s 2019 Republican gubernatorial primary race.

✅ YES: The machine was an older model removed from service after poll workers discovered it had a miscalibrated touchscreen, and the vote was corrected.

✅ YES: Misleading claims about voting machines switching votes have been circulating since at least 2008.

⭐ NewsLit takeaway:

False claims attempting to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections are common online. In fact, many of the rumors debunked during previous election cycles are simply being rehashed and reshared. Check out these Google Slides for more tips on spotting these dangerous and anti-democratic falsehoods.

Video of Tesla Roadster jumping off Golden Gate Bridge is AI

❌ NO: This is not a genuine video of a Tesla Roadster 2 flying off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.

✅ YES: This video is AI-generated.

✅ YES: This video went viral shortly after Tesla’s Oct. 15 public demonstration of what it calls the world’s first flying car, equipped with built-in thrusters that allow it to perform aerial maneuvers, such as leaping over a semitruck.

⭐ NewsLit takeaway:

When a topic gets a lot of attention on social media, misleading, false or entirely fabricated claims about it spread online as well. Check out these Google Slides for more tips on spotting these false viral trend rumors.

➕ While millions of Americans went trick-or-treating over the weekend, journalists at The Associated Press spent Halloween preparing for election night on Nov. 3. This behind-the-scenes video shows how the news agency is gearing up to call races and help audiences make sense of the results.

➕ A student journalist at the University of Pennsylvania is one of six people who filed a lawsuit challenging the White House’s restrictions on journalists, arguing that limiting press access violates the public’s First Amendment rights to information.

➕ Widespread access to social media can supercharge the spread of misinformation — but it can also empower teens like Chloe Kizito from Ontario, Canada, to publicly investigate and correct false claims they see online.

➕ Experts agree that AI is bad for the environment, can be harmful for young people who rely on it and can amplify misinformation — but is it also bad for cooking? Some dedicated users of The New York Times’ Cooking app think so, and they are speaking out against its new AI features.

➕ A shocking number of local newspapers have closed over the last 20 years — but some local universities are stepping in to fill the void with news products that give students practical experience, with the guidance of faculty.

➕ You might be familiar with doomscrolling, but have you heard of “bloomscrolling”? This social media trend encourages people to curate their feeds with uplifting posts by intentionally following inspiring, educational or humorous accounts.

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Your weekly issue of The Sift is created by Susan Minichiello, Dan Evon, Peter Adams, Hannah Covington and Pamela Brunskill. It is edited by Lourdes Venard and Mary Kane.

You’ll find teachable moments from our previous issues in the archives. Send your suggestions and success stories to thesift@newslit.org.

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Check out NLP's Checkology virtual classroom, where students learn how to navigate today’s information landscape by developing news literacy skills.