Truth in Common Helps us Fight Disinformation, Build Healthier Discourse

Yes and how many years can a mountain exist, full it is washed to the sea, yes and how many

years can some people exist before they're allowed to be free, yes and how many times can

a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see, the answer my friend is blowing

in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind. Hey we're back in this week on WUK540 AM and the

Civic Media app in my guest, Diana Triost of Truth and Common. We're going to jump right

into an election related disinformation in what to do about it. Go ahead, Diana. The floor

is yours. All thanks. A focus of the organization this year, meaning Truth and Common, is to really

focus in on the falsehoods that have been spread about our electoral processes. As you know,

there's been tons of sort of frivolous investigations into electoral processes ever since 2020, Michael

Gabelman. A lot. Sorry. Especially Michael Gabelman, Wisconsin. Right. I know you've had one

yourself. Exactly. So in our in Truth and Common educational experiences, we've been all

years sort of drilling down in that particular aspect and what I what I tried to what we do is

sort of elevate those falsehoods that have been spread in the location. For example, in Pennsylvania,

we talk about this narrative that kind of came about that there were more votes, somehow more votes

in Pennsylvania than there were voters in 2020 and some due to some great investigative reporting,

they're they've uncovered that the very person who seated that narrative through, you know, someone

who has started out as genuinely curious and saw something that she thought was it appropriate

or just had a suspicion, but then went to do her own research and is not a professional researcher

used publicly available data but wasn't a skilled researcher and came up with all sorts of

assertions that were then, you know, sort of right away debunked, but now has started to not

one, but two organizations that are working to discredit elections in the state and even beyond.

So these kinds of there's tons of these kinds of efforts, unfortunately. So one thing we do in our

workshops is really share examples that are relevant to the community where we're speaking,

just so people have it heads up again, getting back to this notion of pre-bunking, meaning look,

here's the narrative that came about and what's going to happen in November, we can be pretty sure

that for example, if there's a mistake, because mistakes are made in elections, they're perfect,

there's human error in any process where they're humans and we have hardworking election workers

and volunteers and so on. So, but if something like a printer breaking down happens in your local,

frankly, no matter where you are, but especially in a background state, it's going to be turned into

claims abroad almost instantly. You know, I could, I would almost put money on that happening.

Sure. So any mistake is going to be turned into claim abroad. There's a lot of people sort of

working to put on the ground resources in place to help dispel those kinds of fraud falsehoods in

the moment, but the falsehoods travel much more quickly than the fact checks can on social media.

So it takes kind of each of us being aware of, hey, there's going to be claims of fraud to come,

a lot of them are going to be partisan oriented with a political agenda seated for that reason

and just to be aware. And one resource that you Wisconsin's have and that I don't know if people

know about is on your election, Wisconsin Elections Commission website is a page and it's accessible

through the homepage of the election commission, a page on Wisconsin fact checks. So it goes through

falsehoods like, does Wisconsin have duplicate voter registration numbers? And if you click on that,

no, all Wisconsin voter registration numbers are unique. And like all fact checks, it sort of

gives you the receipts as to how that's been disproven. So election boards everywhere are spending

a whole lot of time debunking these falsehoods. They tell you they're not equipped to do that in

many cases, but then you have organizations like, you know, your boards like in Wisconsin that are

doing so and have it publicly available in Maryland. We actually have a website that helps you,

you can report election related disinformation that you see on the election board website. So

go to your local election board county and state is where it matters. The Walker Show County

and then the Wisconsin State Elections Board are really the players here and they both have really

high quality websites. Yeah, I think that's great. That's an education to me and I appreciate that

in sharing that because it's still you're you're dealing that there's a lot of people people

I respect that I believe that the election was fixed in 2020 and I was challenged by when I was on

the council to binding a constituent to look at the 2020 election. And here's what I come up with

and again, this is fact is evidence based. Joe Biden's margin of victory in Milwaukee County

very blue County, of course, was 0.8% higher than Hillary Clinton's was in 2016. Donald Trump's

margin of victory in fire engine red, Laxha County where its Republican influencer or controlled

was all was 5% lower than it was in his victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. There's your

margin. There's your difference. And also when you go to Dane County, we're in 2016, a lot of pro

Bernie liberals did not vote for Hillary and protest or didn't vote at all. And they came out in 2020

when they saw that, but shall we say the error of their ways? And so the numbers are there like I

so I don't understand why people would still think that this was stolen. And again, you're seeing

these stories all over the country and in in Georgia and we all heard a phone conversation in which

the former president was basically bullying these state officials with Georgia to come up with 80,

thousand more votes or whatever that was to make up the the the margin or the difference of his

his defeat there. And so like anyway, go ahead. What if it is two minutes left? Tell us what we

haven't talked about already here real quick. Well, I mean, just on your last comment, I don't care

I really don't care what your politics are. We have to have safe and secure voting processes.

That is what democracy is all about. Yeah. So we're able to, you know, remain on partisan and still

focus in on this reality because we can't have people disenfranchised but not being able to vote

and we can have our voting processes discredited because of someone's political gain. So here

in our final minute, I want to thank you for joining us, Deanna. And we also her and I are

petitioning a watch out public library system. And I'm also going to reach out to Carroll University

about having truth and common come here to do a workshop. And if you're interested, just reach

out to me or visit our website, truth and common network. Thanks again for joining us, Deanna,

trials, truth and common. Have a great Labor Day weekend, everybody. Please remember safety is

everyone's responsibility. James Santel is on next with Atticus. We'll go to Emil Mahagogalera and

tell you knows that two minute people have died.

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.