KTAR News
This is the fifth in a five-part series called “Arizona Votes 2024: One Year Out,” which will examine the lead-up to the upcoming election in Arizona.

PHOENIX — Bill Gates is familiar with misinformation on the personal and professional level.

The Maricopa County supervisor was the board’s chairman in 2022, overseeing that year’s election. As a result, he became a target for claims of election interference and threats of violence.With the 2024 election a year away, misinformation remains a major problem in Arizona and while solutions for the disturbing trend are present, are hard to achieve.

“It’s not accidental. There is some intent in spreading this misinformation,” Gates said. “That’s sort of what makes it misinformation.”

Gates also says it wasn’t former President Donald Trump who brought misinformation to Arizona elections, but rather actors in the last election cycle, including Republican Kari Lake.

Who falls for election misinformation?

Misinformation researchers James Weatherall and Cailin O’Connor spend their time looking into and proposing solutions to combat misinformation.

The pair, who recently wrote a book on the topic called “The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread,” say to understand misinformation and how it spreads, you have to also understand human nature.

“We’re all susceptible to misinformation. We all hold false beliefs,” Weatherall said. “I am certain that I do, of course I don’t know what they are.”

In other words, he explains that the failure to parse out truthful from false information is not an individual failure.

“People should not take away from that that smart people don’t fall for misinformation and dumb people do,” O’Connor said. “That’s way too simple.”

People having false beliefs is natural and misinformation itself isn’t new.

“Basically as far back as you go with human beliefs you find misinformation,” O’Connor said. “So, as long as people are staring information socially, they’re sometimes going to be sharing things that aren’t true.”

A more recent phenomenon, however, is the communities built around believing election lies.

That includes Lake, who fared well in her 2022 gubernatorial primary and gained national notoriety for her rhetoric but ultimately lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs.

Joe Blackbourn founded The Integrity Project in Arizona, an apolitical group of researchers and educators who investigate and propose solutions to combat the rise of misinformation.

He says that trend of strong primary numbers but not in a general election isn’t uncommon.

“I think moderation is actually quite popular, as it is in a lot of places,” Blackbourn said. “But it’s extremism that makes headlines.” MORE