美国大选投票刚开始几个小时，部分地区投票站甚至尚未开门，但共和党策略师、挺特朗普网红乔伊·马纳里诺（Joey Mannarino）似乎已经看够了。
Voting had only been underway in the US for a few hours and polls still hadn’t even opened in some parts of the country, but Republican strategist and pro-Trump influencer Joey Mannarino had apparently seen enough.
“全国各地都在报告大规模选民欺诈！”马纳里诺于美东时间上午9点02分在X平台断言，并未提供任何证据支持其言论。“民主党人正在从我们脚下窃取国家！”正如历届选举年一样，随着投票站开门、选民陆续到场、投票机开始运转，一些辖区出现了问题。
“MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF VOTER FRAUD BEING REPORTED ALL OVER THE COUNTRY!”Mannarino asserted on X at 9:02 am EST, offering no evidence to support his declaration. “The Democrats are stealing our country right out from under us!”As in any other election year, as polling places opened, people began showing up to vote, and voting machines started whirring into action, some jurisdictions ran into problems.
佛罗里达州太空海岸发生严重洪水，导致约20个投票点不得不迁移。周末的恶劣风暴很可能导致亚利桑那州马里科帕县短暂停电，迫使多个投票站暂时关闭。宾夕法尼亚州卢泽恩县缺少一台扫描仪箱。而在纽约州威斯特切斯特县，现任共和党众议员迈克·劳勒（Mike Lawler）与民主党人凯特·康利（Cait Conley）展开激烈角逐的众议院选战投票，周二早些时候因机器停止接收纸质选票而受阻。
Severe flooding along Florida’s Space Coast meant about 20 polling places had to be moved. Bad storms over the weekend likely caused brief power outages in Arizona’s Maricopa County, forcing the temporary closure of several polling places. Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County was missing a scanner box. And in Westchester County, New York, voting in the hotly contested House race between incumbent Republican representative Mike Lawler and Democrat Cait Conley hit a roadblock early on Tuesday morning when machines stopped accepting paper ballots.
投票机故障——就像恶劣天气和停电一样——在选举期间相当常见。虽然通常归因于部件老化等寻常问题，但这些故障往往成为谣言或阴谋论的源头。
Voting machine malfunctions—much like bad weather and power outages—are fairly common during elections. While typically attributable to some mundane problem like ageing components, these malfunctions are often the source of rumors or conspiracy theories.
正如近年来的其他选举年一样，存在一个由“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）网红、共和党议员、挺特朗普网络喷子和政府官员组成的网络，他们拥有庞大的在线受众，正等待着任何——字面意义上的任何——东西，以便声称其为选民欺诈的证据。特朗普政府也一直在铺垫，诱导其选民相信美国投票系统针对他们被操纵了。
And like other election years in recent memory, there’s a network of MAGA influencers, Republican lawmakers, pro-Trump trolls and administration officials with enormous online audiences who are waiting for anything—literally anything—that they can claim is evidence of voter fraud. The Trump administration has also been laying the groundwork, priming their electorate to believe that the American voting system is rigged against them.
在有关韦斯特切斯特县选票扫描仪无法工作的报道出现几分钟内，一些最大的选举阴谋论推动者便抓住这一全县范围的故障，声称民主党人正在破坏设备，以阻止劳勒获胜。
Within minutes of reports that ballot scanners in Westchester weren’t working, some of the biggest proponents of election conspiracy theories seized on the county-wide glitch to claim that Democrats were sabotaging equipment to prevent Lawler from winning.
韦斯特切斯特县选举委员会在投票开始两小时后发布的一份声明中，最初将故障归咎于“选票纸张的厚度”。但20分钟后，县官员更新了声明，删除了关于纸张厚度的表述，转而归咎于一个笼统的“涉及选票纸张的问题”。在另一份在线发布的声明中，韦斯特切斯特县行政长官肯·詹金斯表示，一旦选票机器的问题得到解决，他将“召集一个两党团队，对导致这一惨败的决策和失误进行彻底审查，确定责任归属，并确保此类事件不再发生。”
詹金斯写道：“我想非常清楚地表明，这种情况是不可接受的。”当天晚些时候，纽约州官员发布了一份额外声明，称问题在于该县大多数机器的程序已过时，这意味着它们无法识别和处理选举日选票。
The Westchester County board of elections initially blamed the fault on “the thickness of the paper ballots” in a statement issued two hours after polls opened. But 20 minutes later, county officials updated the statement, removing the reference to the thickness of the paper and instead blaming a general “issue involving paper ballots.”In a separate statement published online, Westchester county executive Ken Jenkins said that once the issues with the ballot machines are resolved, he’ll “convene a bipartisan team to conduct a thorough review of the decisions and failures that led to this debacle, determine where accountability lies and ensure that this never happens again. “I want to be absolutely clear,” Jenkins wrote. “This situation is unacceptable.” Later in the day, New York State officials put out an additional statement, saying that the problem was that most machines in the county had outdated programming, which meant they could not recognize and process Election Day ballots.
“立即的首要任务是让每个投票站至少恢复一台投票机的扫描功能，并在当天进展中陆续上线更多机器，”官员表示。他们补充说，编程问题只导致选票被拒绝，而未导致计票错误，因此选民应完全相信“每一张有效选票都会被计数”。
“The immediate priority is to restore scanning capability to at least one voting machine at every polling location, with additional machines being brought online as the day progresses,” officials said. They added that the programming issue had only caused ballots to be rejected, not tabulated incorrectly, so voters should have full confidence that “every valid vote will be counted.”
在 X 上，众议员共和党全国委员会发帖称，连同民主党一起，“正在寻求联合法院命令，要求在县选举委员会进行中央计票。”纽约众议员克劳迪娅·特尼（Claudia Tenney）——她支持挑战 2020 年选举结果的努力——也加入了争论。“毫无惊讶，”特尼写道，“纽约的民主党人会不择手段地作弊。”保守派广播员马克·莱文（Mark Levin）将特尼的帖子转发给他 500 万粉丝。
In a post on X, the Republican National Committee wrote that together with Democrats it is “seeking a joint court order to require central tabulation of ballots at the County Board of Elections.”New York representative Claudia Tenney—who has backed efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election—also jumped into the fray. “No surprise,” Tenney wrote. “The Democrats in NY will do anything and everything to cheat.”Conservative broadcaster Mark Levin shared Tenney’s post to his 5 million followers.
各类 MAGA 世界的影响者也纷纷发表意见。“这就是左派如何偷窃选举，”凯蒂·米勒（Katie Miller）写道，她已嫁给白宫政策与国土安全顾问史蒂芬·米勒（Stephen Miller）的副首席幕僚。
All manner of MAGA-world influencers have also weighed in. “This is how the Left steals elections,” wrote Katie Miller, who is married to White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser Stephen Miller.
“禁止投票机并起诉使用它们作弊的人，”前特朗普总统发言人莉兹·哈灵顿（Liz Harrington）写道。
“Ban voting machines and prosecute those who’ve used them to cheat,” wrote president Donald Trump’s former spokesperson Liz Harrington.
“民主党人今天已经在纽约试图偷窃选举，”MAGA 影响者劳拉·卢默（Laura Loomer）写道。卢默还就其他投票站问题发表了看法。“民主党人已经在作弊，”她在 Loomer Unleashed 账户上回应关于马里科帕县因停电导致投票中心关闭的帖子。
“Democrats are already trying to steal the election in New York today,” wrote MAGA influencer Laura Loomer. Loomer also weighed in on polling location problems elsewhere. “The Democrats are already cheating” she wrote on her Loomer Unleashed account, in response to a post about power outages forcing closure of voting centers in Maricopa County.
华盛顿大学信息公众中心（Center for an Informed Public）追踪关于选举的网络谣言，发现关于投票机故障的 X 帖子——“往往带有阴谋论框架”——在东部标准时间上午 10:00 之后每分钟出现约 150 次。
The Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, which tracks online rumors about elections, found that posts on X about the malfunctioning machines—“often with a conspiratorial framing”—were coming about 150 times a minute just after 10:00am EST.
尽管劳勒敦促选民“排队等候”，并在扫描仪出现问题的情况下投下选票，但支持特朗普的网红菲利普·布坎南（网名Catturd）转发了劳勒的帖子，写道：“每一次。每一次。选举。总是出点什么[n]问题。”Catturd还放大了关于佛罗里达州布罗沃德县“民主党搞鬼”的阴谋论，该县曾出现技术故障，但很快就得到了解决。
While Lawler urged voters to “stay in line” and cast their ballots despite the issues with the scanners, pro-Trump influencer Phillip Buchanan, known as Catturd, shared Lawler’s post writing: “Every. Single. Election. It's always somthing [sic]”. Catturd also boosted conspiracies about “Democrat shenanigans” in Florida’s Broward County, which suffered technical difficulties which were quickly resolved.
X上知名的支持特朗普的QAnon账号MJ Ultra补充道：“佛罗里达州布罗沃德县腐败透顶。”网名为DC Draino的罗根·奥汉德利称西切斯特发生的事情为“马里科帕窃选法”，同时也放大了关于布罗沃德县的阴谋论。与此同时，特朗普提名的牙买加大使卡丽·莱克也分享了关于西切斯特问题的阴谋论，并抨击马里科帕县所谓的自由派“搞鬼”。莱克毫无根据地声称，她2022年亚利桑那州州长竞选和2024年参议院竞选都被操纵了。
MJ Ultra, a prominent pro-Trump QAnon account on X, added: “Broward County Florida is corrupted as hell.”Rogan O’Handley, known online as DC Draino, called what was happening in Westchester the “the Maricopa Method of stealing” while also boosting conspiracy theories about Broward County. Meanwhile Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Jamaica, Kari Lake, also shared conspiracy theories about the issues in Westchester, as well as calling out so-called liberal “shenanigans” in Maricopa County. Lake has baselessly claimed her 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race and her 2024 Senate race were rigged.
所有这些在X上持续发酵之际，特朗普大多在忙于其他事情。他花了大半个上午在Truth Social上抱怨，人们当真了他周二开玩笑说要将林肯纪念堂反射池改名为“特朗普反射池”的计划。他最终还是发帖谈到了劳勒的竞选，但没有提及选票扫描仪的问题。
While all of this has been unfolding on X, Trump has been largely preoccupied with other matters. He spent the better part of the morning complaining on Truth Social that people had taken him seriously when he announced—jokingly, he says—on Tuesday his plans to rename the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to “The Trump Reflecting Pool.”He eventually got around to posting about Lawler’s race, but didn’t mention the issues with the ballot scanners.