Protect our right to vote.
Make a difference in this election.
Our Mission to #WatchTheVoteATL
#WatchTheVoteATL sought to build capacity for local communities — universities and local community collaborators — to make use of public interest technology (PIT) and training to counter mis- and disinformation in the context of elections.
Our Objectives
- Develop skills in students and community members to become Trusted Messengers of elections security information & Community Advocates for fair and safe elections.
- Raise awareness of mis/disinformation on the internet.
- Drive civic engagement in the form of monitoring mis and disinformation, veracity-checking, and disseminating the truth.
- Build community.
Interested in our results?
“The ‘Watch the Vote’ project led by GA Tech and the Black Cross provided helpful information and feedback when County voters needed accurate elections data, content and resources were needed on online platforms where citizens get their information. Ensuring that accurate elections information is shared in a timely manner is critical.”
Jessica Corbitt, Director of External Affairs at Fulton County Government
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Fran Phillips-Calhoun, CPM, Intergovernmental/Interagency Affairs Division Manager
What We Found
During November’s election, 60 Georgia Tech students and partners from the social impact consultancy, The BLK+Cross, spent three days closely watching social media traffic focused on the Fulton County electoral environment. We read nearly 30,000 carefully curated posts on X, Facebook, Truth Social, Instagram, and TikTok sent from November 4-6. An artificial intelligence created by Georgia Tech students helped us classify and respond to a constant onslaught of content. From these social media posts, we created 187 incidents arising from serious material we felt deserved fact-checking and response. Of those incidents, 30 were escalated to our field community partners, independent non-partisan election observers, and other stakeholders who could take positive action.
Our takeaway from this experience: online political discourse centered on Fulton County elections, and elections overall, is a cesspool of lies and hate negatively impacting our politics and community. This includes a lot of disproved claims about the 2020 election (“Fulton County has 300,000 missing ballots”) and the current election (“[fraudulently marked ballots] still in boxes in some van in Fulton County”). Georgia Tech is researching social and technical methods to enhance our resilience, while with The BLK+Cross and other partners, we continue to explore conversation-based methods for gathering cultural intelligence and storytelling and develop training and literacy-building approaches, especially targeting the most at-risk communities.
Why We Have to Watch The Vote
The 2020 U.S. General Election revealed just how damaging mis/disinformation can be—not only at the national level, but at local election offices too. Fulton County has been at the center of election integrity challenges, with widespread false accusations, such as claims that poll workers engaged in voter fraud.
These types of claims weaken trust in the system and even lead to voter disenfranchisement. In 2024, we face the added challenge of AI-driven disinformation, and we need to be prepared to counter it.
About the Project
WatchTheVoteATL is a community-academic partnership led by The BLK+Cross/Alive and in Color and Georgia Tech Institute for People & Technology, to track and disrupt election mis/disinformation in Fulton County—OUR community.
The BLK+Cross brings over 20 years experience leveraging ethnographic and digital technologies to better understand and engage BIPOC, youth, and socially vulnerable populations through culture.
Georgia Tech offers world-leading expertise in mis/disinformation and election security, along with 15 years of frontline experience helping coalitions around the world address election integrity threats.
Receive updates from our monitoring effort.
Our Team / Our Partners
This project is in partnership with The BLK+Cross / Alive & In Color, the Institute for People and Technology at Georgia Tech, and the Internet Intelligence Lab, in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. We are grateful to the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing for providing laptops.