The video explores various factual and sensational narratives circulating around American elections, focusing primarily on the Trump campaign, voter fraud allegations, and legal challenges in key swing states like Georgia. It provides an on-the-ground perspective from Trump rallies, analyses the credibility of claims regarding voter interference, and reflects on Trump's supporters' belief in his inevitability of victory. Through firsthand reporting, the video delves into how misinformation and disinformation spread quickly, notably through social media, and how these narratives have impacted public perception and election outcomes.

From a legal standpoint, the video outlines the numerous lawsuits in states like Georgia concerning voter eligibility and potential voting errors. This situation underscores a broader strategy where political actors might flood courts with litigations to sway or contest election results. Additionally, it highlights the challenges election workers face, such as receiving threats and handling controversies derived from misinformation campaigns. Despite a heightened atmosphere of anxiety, various stakeholders strive to maintain electoral integrity.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. subconscious [ˌsʌbˈkɒnʃəs] - (noun) - Part of the mind that influences actions and feelings but not consciously mental. - Synonyms: (unconscious, underlying, subliminal)

I think it must be seeping into all of our subconsciouses because the news that the Trump campaign is accusing the UK Labour Party of election interference doesn't sound a lot like it's got anything to do with fast food.

2. sequin [ˈsiːkwɪn] - (noun) - Small, shiny disc sewn onto clothing for decoration. - Synonyms: (sparkle, bead, spangle)

And some quite exciting merch, better than I've seen and a few others you can buy entirely sequins, spangled outfits with Make America Great Again or other Trump slogans written on them.

3. jurisdiction [ˌdʒʊərɪsˈdɪkʃən] - (noun) - The official power to make legal decisions and judgments. - Synonyms: (authority, control, power)

The concern, of course, is that this happened too late. They don't have the manpower to do it.

4. capitol [ˈkæpɪtl] - (noun) - A building where a legislative body meets, often the site of central government activities. - Synonyms: (legislature, parliament, government building)

But because of all of the election court cases that we're likely to see, which will be brought state by state, challenging that state's results, a lot of the focus is going to be on each state capitol rather than on Washington

5. discord [ˈdɪskɔːrd] - (noun) - Disagreement or conflict between people or groups. - Synonyms: (conflict, disunity, strife)

I think there's definitely the potential and the threat for there to be disruption and or even violence after the election.

6. controversy [ˈkɒntrəvɜːsi] - (noun) - Public disagreement or debate about something causing strong opinions. - Synonyms: (debate, dispute, argument)

And in Georgia, the controversy right now is swirling around a requirement, a rule that was passed that requires hand counting of all the ballots.

7. extrapolate [ɪkˈstræpəleɪt] - (verb) - To infer something unknown from known data, often extending beyond the original observation range. - Synonyms: (infer, deduce, conclude)

Yes, Sarah, unfortunately I am becoming have been currently am far too familiar with all of the stuff that's swirling around now at the moment with unfounded allegations of voter fraud or some that are real things, but they're extrapolated and so on and so forth.

8. rhetoric [ˈrɛtərɪk] - (noun) - Language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect, often regarded as lacking sincerity. - Synonyms: (oratory, eloquence, expression)

So many of the narratives that are spreading on social media right now, to be honest, are the same kinds of ones that we saw spread around the 2020 election and afterwards, right?

9. litigation [ˌlɪtɪˈɡeɪʃən] - (noun) - The process of taking a case to court. - Synonyms: (lawsuit, court case, legal action)

If Republicans are more particularly and Trump supporters don't get the result that they want, then they will flood the courts with litigation.

10. disinformation [ˌdɪsˌɪnfərˈmeɪʃən] - (noun) - False information spread deliberately to deceive. - Synonyms: (misinformation, deceit, falsehood)

Mariana, I don't know if you know that particularly around election time, disinformation can swirl around really quickly and really easily and that people read things on the Internet and then believe them and pass them on.

Will Donald Trump supporters accept US election result? - BBC Americast

I've been thinking a lot about fast food, burger and fries mostly, to be honest. Now that's because I'm on the road and that's because it makes an almost constant diet and it's addictive. But also I think it's because I just can't stop seeing online those shots of Donald Trump serving the burgers, frying up the French fries, I mean, admittedly to a very hand picked crowd of McDonald's customers, but I think it must be seeping into all of our subconsciouses because the news that the Trump campaign is accusing the UK Labour Party of election interference doesn't sound a lot like it's got anything to do with fast food. But when Anthony and I were talking about it the other day, this is what he said. I mean, I can't emphasize enough how much of, at least legally speaking, a nothing burger this is. What is a nothing burger, Anthony? It's what it sounds like. It's a burger that has nothing in it, substance less a big zero, a salad, an everything salad. So we've got nothing burgers or everything salads and everything in between to keep us going. Well then that's going to be the gauge for the next few days, isn't it? Between now and the election, when things happen, where are they on the scale between nothing burger and everything salad? Welcome to AMERICAST.

AMERICAST AMERICAST from BBC News. Hello, it's Sarah. I'm still in Atlanta, Georgia and it's Anthony. I'm at the BBC bureau in Washington D.C. and it is Marianna in London in the worldwide headquarters, but not for much longer. Marianna, when are you coming over here? I am flying over on Saturday and then I'll be out and about with my undercover voters in tow. They've packed all their suitcases, ready to go, hoping I don't lose any of them this time. Well, I'm looking. I've never met them in real life. I'm looking forward to it. I hope we run into you somewhere. There we go. And how's it been in Georgia? What's it been like? Well, I was at a Trump rally yesterday which was actually quite good fun, I have to say, as these things go. I mean, my measure of that is, you know how incredibly hostile people are towards media organizations like the BBC. And not very was the answer. And some quite exciting merch, better than I've seen and a few others you can buy entirely sequins, spangled outfits with Make America Great Again or other Trump slogans written on them. Maybe just Trump emblazoned on the back of your kind of baseball style jacket, A wide, wide array of Trump hats, including in shiny gold with red lettering these days and the classic Elon Musk black hat with black embroidery on it. And yes, I'm pretty happy folk, I would say.

Although of course, what's funny is, I mean, I'm in Georgia because it's a key swing state. Polls suggest it's absolutely tied. We don't know who's going to win. But then you go to an event like that and for obvious reasons, everybody's entirely on one side, so you're only hearing one side of the argument. But they're also all convinced that Trump's obviously going to win an overwhelming landslide because there's lots of people said to me they don't know a single person who's voting for Kamala Harris. So obviously the country can't be as divided as the polls say and Trump's gonna romp to victory. And Sarah, in terms of the legal cases, because when Justin and I were out in Atlanta, actually at the beginning of the year, really in January, time for Panorama, we spent a bit of time kind of talk about and looking at some of the cases that were unfolding the legal challenges around voting. What's the state of affairs with that at the moment? Well, there's a lot of them is a simple way of putting it. And not just in Georgia, although there are particularly a lot of them here in Georgia.

And without going into the details of absolutely everything, the broad premise is that a lot of lawsuits that are being brought at the moment are about who is and isn't allowed to vote. In lots of states, for instance, Republicans are bringing lawsuits alleging that there are lots of illegal immigrants on the voting register and that they shouldn't be allowed to vote. But if they don't take legal action, they will be able to cast ballots. Of course, these lawsuits are based around stopping people you think might be about to vote for the opposition being able to vote at all. And they're not unusual. I mean, this does happen in every electoral cycle. There's just a lot, lot more of them this year. But the fear among a lot of people here in Georgia and elsewhere is that they're also getting ready for challenges after the election. And that's really the purpose of them, that if Republicans are more particularly and Trump supporters don't get the result that they want, then they will flood the courts with litigation in every state where it's tighter. Trump thinks that he ought to have won and that this will wrap everything up in the courts for weeks and weeks and weeks really delay getting to decide who the president is. And I mean, I interviewed Steve Bannon about must have been about four months ago because it was just before he went into prison and he's just due to get out again. And he was really clear about this.

He said, look, we have dozens and dozens of these lawsuits ready to file the minute the polls close. And that was months ago. They were preparing to challenge any results that they don't like and see if they can get them overturned in the courts. Yeah. And in Georgia, the controversy right now is swirling around a requirement, a rule that was passed that requires hand counting of all the ballots, that it's not a retabulation by hand, it's just counting to see. Okay, you know, we, the machines figured there were a thousand ballots in this precinct. We're going to count them by hand and see if we come up with 1,000. Two Democratic groups immediately sued to try to block that, and they have found several judges who have agreed and put that hand counting requirement on hold. The concern, of course, is that this happened too late. They don't have the manpower to do it. I mean, I know when I'm sitting with a deck of cards and I try to count to see if there are 50 cards in the deck to make sure it's a full deck, I come up with a different number each time. Now imagine trying to do that for 5,000 ballots. That is what Democrats are saying is the concern here. And so at least for the moment, they're just going to machine count.

There are some rules on audits and things that happen after the fact that are still in place. But this mandatory hand count of every single paper ballot that is right now on the shelf. Mariana, I don't know if you know that particularly around election time, disinformation can swirl around really quickly and really easily and that people read things on the Internet and then believe them and pass them on. Yes, Sarah, unfortunately I am becoming have been currently am far too familiar with all of the stuff that's swirling around now at the moment with unfounded allegations of voter fraud or some that are real things, but they're extrapolated and so on and so forth. What sort of stuff has been coming your way? A very real world example of that was talking to Trump supporters yesterday. A lot of them all told me exactly the same story, and it was something that I had not come across. I was a bit confused about where they were getting this from. But they told me that in one county in Georgia, where there's already early voting going on right across the state, that the voting machines had been turning Republican votes into Democrat ones, that this had happened several times over, but that they were really, really relieved that this had been caught and all the voters whose votes had gone wrong had been called back to the polling station and allowed to vote again.

So they thought it had all been fixed. But, you know, it was starting the controversy around this idea that was around in 2020 as well, that machines would actually change your vote. So I started looking into it a little bit. Here's what actually happened. One voter went along, cast their vote, got the little printout slip at the end, and it didn't reflect who she had voted for for president. So presumably she wanted to vote for Donald Trump. And it came out. So she told an election worker who worked out that it had been user error, that she'd pushed the wrong button when it came to trying to vote for the president. So they voided that ballot, they let her vote again, and that was it, end of story. But she mentioned something on Facebook which got shared, I think, only 12 times before Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman, picked it up. Millions of views on X when she started exaggerating this story. The statement that came out from the Electoral Commission here explaining what happened has had fewer than 180 views. And that's the whole problem, isn't it? It's like this stuff will happen and can happen. You know, there's a kind of problem or an irregularity or something kind of goes a little bit wrong. Often it's resolved.

But someone might post about it online anyways, and then that single thing absolutely takes off and feeds into existing narratives about voter fraud, many of which were completely unfounded and have been and remain completely unfounded. And the thing is, so many of the narratives that are spreading on social media right now, to be honest, are the same kinds of ones that we saw spread around the 2020 election and afterwards, right? And if you remember back to 2020, while Joe Biden won a comfortable Electoral College margin and a lot of those states that put him over the top, he won by relatively narrow vote totals. 10,000, 14,000 votes in Arizona, you know, across the blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, also very close. And that evening, even Donald Trump came out, and instead of conceding defeat, he said that he actually did win the election. And of course, it's difficult to forget the absolute infamous telephone call that Donald Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffsonburger, who Interestingly, is still the Secretary of State and will be in charge of this election in Georgia here this year as well. And that phone call was recorded so we could hear what it was that Donald Trump said when he was basically asking him to find just enough votes to put him into victory. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have.

And so I guess there are questions now to what you were just saying, Sarah, about how to avoid a repeat of what happened last time. And to be honest, looking at my social media feed, the undercover voters feeds everywhere, I'm already seeing a proliferation of unfounded allegations about voter interference and voter fraud and real stuff that's being twisted and everything else. I guess the problem with it is that there are some people who've never accepted that Biden won in 2020. I think it's become an article of faith. I think you've got to a point where I think when I arrived in the States about three years ago, a minority of Republicans and Trump voters thought that the election had been stolen. More might have thought that there were some abnormalities, but, you know, it was quite small, the number of people who would actually say that there had been a concerted conspiracy to steal the election from Donald Trump. Now, you really rarely meet a Trump supporter who won't say that. If you ask them. Most of them volunteer the idea that Joe Biden is not a legitimate president, that Trump won that election.

And I don't know whether they've changed their minds about that or whether it has just gone into the bloodstream of the Trump movement. And I don't think you could hold your head up among a group of Trump supporters and say you think the 2020 election was fair, because I just don't think you're allowed to say that anymore. Yeah, I think it gets back to something that you observed earlier in this podcast, which is that all the Trump supporters you talk to think he's certainly going to win this time around because they don't know anyone who isn't a Trump supporter. I mean, it's such a kind of a tight community that they don't hear any kind of dissenting voices. And that's the same thing I heard when I was on the campaign trail in 2020. I remember having a conversation with a Trump supporter who was convinced Donald Trump was going to win because he said everyone he knows supports Donald Trump. He never sees anyone supporting Joe Biden. No one ever turns up at Joe Biden's rallies. So all the evidence in their mind points one direction, and then when the results are a different direction, it just they can't cognitively process that. There's a disconnect.

Anthony, you'll remember two years ago in the midterm elections, there was a bit of a divide among the Republican candidates, among those who were out now, election deniers saying that the 2020 election was stolen. And those who weren't, who just didn't want to talk about it, didn't think that it was a vote winner to be discussing it. And in a lot of cases, we saw the election deniers not do that well, and that's why it ended up that the Democrats performed a lot better in those midterms than people expected them to. There doesn't seem to be that level of controversy this year about whether or not you're an election denier. J.D. vance, you know, he plays it carefully. He won't say absolutely overtly on the record that the election was stolen. But there's just not so much focus now, I don't think, on whether people dispute those results and whether it makes you a kind of illegitimate candidate. Yeah, I think what you hear from Republican candidates now is they don't want to look past into the past. They're focused on the future. That happened four years ago. They dismiss it. And J.D. vance tried to dismiss it that way during that debate he had with Tim Walz, although he did come out and pretty directly say he thought that Donald Trump won the election after being badgered and pressured by reporters for weeks. But I think it's an understanding among Republican politicians that the leader of their ticket is saying this.

They have to kind of fall in line behind it, but the less they talk about it, the better. And Mariana, of course, we know all too well that if there are controversies around any of the results, they'll spread really, really quickly on social media. Do those platforms think that there is a responsibility to try and guard against huge amounts of misinformation and disinformation going out there? So I think it's interesting because there has been kind of, in a similar way to the one you just described, actually, this sort of narrative arc surrounding the social media companies in so much as after the January 6 riots and everything that happened following the 2020 election, there was immediately a lot of pressure on the social media companies and quite serious questions about, you know, allegations of failings on their part to remove posts or take stuff down there. Employees who spoke about how sort of stressful and difficult it was being inside the companies at that time. And so I remember thinking back in 2021 that perhaps we'd see this big change that, you know, there would be so much pressure on the social media companies.

They would have to really, really be on top of this kind of stuff next time there was an election anywhere, to be honest, but particularly in the United States. Since then, though, the crucial change has been that Elon Musk has, as we talk about a lot, he's bought Twitter, which is now called X, and he's kind of ripped up the old social media rule book in that sense. He prioritizes freedom of expression above all. El that he is not keen on removing particular posts, labeling them. They sometimes still do do that. They have community notes where people can fact check stuff themselves. But he is the way that the company works now is really different to how it worked even back in 2020. And I know that from speaking to people who've worked at the social media companies, you know, they, back in 2020, there were specific teams that were dedicated to dealing with election misinformation. There were employees who worked specifically on what we call sort, threat disruption. So allegations of foreign interference or influence operations and so on. So many of those people do not work at the companies anymore and have told me previously that their jobs have not been replaced. I should say all the companies, by the way, would say that they're doing loads to protect users and protect the user's voice and so on.

Now, Anthony, I know we can't keep you any longer. You've got to run. Where are you running to? I'm heading back to my home state. I'm going to Houston, Texas, where there's a really interesting Senate race going on. Of course, you know Ted Cruz, a Senate Republican who ran for President in 2016 and has been source of controversy and prominent critic of the Biden and Harris campaign. He is actually in a dogfight with Colin Allred, former NFL football player, a congressman from the Dallas area. The polls show it's a tight race, so I'm going to go there. Allred is having a rally with Kamala Harris, who will be in Houston on Friday. And I'm going to see if maybe this time at last, Democratic hopes of winning a statewide race in Texas could be realized. It should be interesting to be on the ground there. And I will note also, we've been talking about Donald Trump and his goings on. He's going to be in Austin. This is finally going to sit down for that podcast interview with Joe Rogan. Oh, we don't know when that's going to be broadcast yet, do we? That really will be interesting. Yeah.

Texas is the center of politics. Woohoo. Not exactly a swing state, but nonetheless, you find an excuse to get back there. Anthony. Absolutely. I'll get some barbecue, some Tex Mex. I'll be happy. Yeah, I'm going to catch my plane. Goodbye, everyone. Bye, Anthony. See you soon, Anthony. Sarah, I think it's so interesting what you were saying earlier in the episode about how people are preparing for what they see to be sort of allegations of voter fraud. Kind of already, like how they're gearing up the legal cases and to challenge it and everything else. There's another. Another set of people that I've been chatting to who are gearing up for the election, but more so for threats, violence, concerns about, I guess, the erosion of faith in democracy. I spent some time with some of the election workers in a place called Jefferson county in Colorado, and I have to say, they were so hopeful, they were so positive that they really want to reassure people about how democracy works. They're having tours, offering tours of the election center, including to people that believe conspiracy theories, because they really want them to see how secure it is, how the prison process works, how the machines work, everything else in a kind of bid to make people feel a little bit perhaps guarded against or protected from believing some of the unfounded claims that are spreading. But they're doing so while receiving a huge amount of online abuse threats, you know, so much so that they don't even tell people that they work in sort of elections and protecting elections. And some of these are elected officials, but honestly, you know, they are apolitical in the sense that they just are meant to run the elections.

Some of these people are volunteers. Like they're people who are doing it in their spare time and have never experienced anything like this. And I think my real worry over the next few weeks is that people like that who are seen as complicit in these unevidenced plots and complicit in fraud and so on become the main target of this abuse. And these are not elected politicians. A lot of the time they are genuinely, you know, someone's. Someone's mum or dad or brother or sister or cousin or aunt who are just trying to kind of keep democracy on the road. And that's quite a sad thing. Yeah, well, Georgia was ground zero for that four years ago because you had the case of two election workers who were counting at the polls, Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, who were picked out and named by Rudy Giuliani and in the end, of course, actually won a defamation battle against him and he now owes them $150 million. But they went through an absolutely dreadful time, genuinely frightened of going out of the house, receiving death threats, people posting their addresses online. It was absolutely awful what happened to them. And a lot of people who are preparing to work at the polls, both, you know, overseeing the votes on election day and people who are involved in the count here in Georgia are genuinely scared. I mean, a lot of them say they feel that this has to be done. They're kind of doing their duty, upholding democracy by getting involved, but they're frightened for what it could mean, what the consequences could be for them afterwards. And that's I mean, this is an unprecedented sit that's really quite frightening.

And how likely do you think, Sarah and I know we shouldn't play in the game of predictions, but here we are. How likely do you think that there is some kind of violence afterwards that feels not dissimilar to January 6th, or do you think it's kind of impossible to tell right now? I think there's definitely the potential and the threat for there to be disruption and or even violence after the election. I personally think it's unlikely to be a repeat of January 6th. A lot of the groups and organizations like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who were there, they don't want to get involved in any of that because don't remember hundreds of people are in jail after what happened at the January 6 riots. But because of all of the election court cases that we're likely to see, which will be brought state by state, challenging that state's results, a lot of the focus is going to be on each state capitol rather than on Washington. And it will all be being fought out long before January 6th as well. This will be through November, in December. So I think if there are flashpoints, they're much more likely to be somewhere like Atlanta or Pennsylvania or Detroit or anywhere in these key states where people think that the result hasn't gone their way, that they're waiting for the state supreme court justices to rule or something like that. Tension could get really high around that. So I think you might see smaller incidents flashing around the country rather than you will one central assault on D.C. in January.

I would say that some of the conspiracy theory groups that I investigate online are deep suspicious that January 6th now was what they'd call a false flag kind of event, that they were sort of there were people who pretended to be Trump supporters or that they were somehow Tricked into rioting there again, kind of contrary to all of the evidence available to us. And it's for that reason, I think those people wouldn't head again to the capitol because they've sort of decided that's not, that's not going to work. Or it's kind of part of the conspiracy theory. There's a name for it. They call it the fedsurrection. So not the insurrection, but one that was, that was inspired by the feds, the FBI or the federal government or something. So, yeah, once something's got a name, then there are people believing it, aren't there? When there's a Fed direction going around. And we have reached quite a kind of. I don't know, I don't know whether it is shocking now. It feels a bit shocking sort of state of affairs that, for example, when we were planning our trip to America, we're thinking about can we make sure that our flights are changeable in case something does happen after the vote and we might need to stay. And there's some kind of, in my case, social media inspired violence on either side. Because it is also worth saying that the assassination attempt that happened in July and the other examples of kind of breaches of security targeting Donald Trump, those have come from people targeting Donald Trump. And so there's a level of violence, I guess, political violence we've been seeing from committed activists on either side that could again, be pretty scary for everyone involved here. And you sort of don't know how it's going to play out.

Right. I think that is all we've got time for because you need to dash off, Sarah, and go and chat to some more people out and about in Georgia. But before we do go, why is it behind you? I've been looking, trying to figure it out. Yeah, this is our episode that we always do envision as well, if anybody wants to watch it on YouTube or the news channel. And well, this. Mariana, you'll see this in real life next week. This is what a pop up podcast americast studio looks like. And that sounds quite grand. What it actually consists of is some bunting, some little AmericasT flags that we've got a small AmericasT sign that we've propped up on the bed in a hotel room. But nonetheless, it's a lot better than I often do when I'm filming this on an iPhone by myself in a hotel room. And this is what you've got to look forward to when you join the pop up podcast studio. Yeah, very excited. And that is all for this episode of AmericasT. If you want to listen to more episodes, head over to BBC Sounds. Bye.

Politics, Leadership, Inspiration, Election Controversies, Social Media Impact, Voter Fraud Allegations, Bbc News