BETHLEHEM, Pa. — We’re headed into the home stretch of the 2024 election season.
The political ads. The flyers that fill your mailbox. The canvassers at your door.
There’s a lot of noise that will only be amplified between now and Nov. 5.
Earlier this year LehighValleyNews.com partnered with the nonpartisan group Keep Our Republic to focus on how our local elections work. It was aimed at combating misinformation, building trust in the process and shedding light on how fair, secure and accurate elections are conducted.
Now we need your help.
In an effort to keep the community informed and help stop the spread of misinformation, LehighValleyNews.com has partnered with the Center for Media Engagement to look out for — and call out — election misinformation.
We are monitoring election-related messaging, with a focus on the state and especially local levels. We’ll do so in these final weeks of the campaign season and even in the weeks after the election.
Whether it’s websites, social media or even traditional media, we’re interested in checking instances of incorrect information about the election process — and working to share correct information.
Topics include the election process, polling places, mail-in balloting or anything that you think requires greater clarity to ensure the facts don’t get drowned out by the fiction.
We are monitoring election-related messaging, with a focus on the state and especially local levels. We’ll do so in these final weeks of the campaign season and even in the weeks after the election.
Our work is being supported by the Center for Media Engagement, which is based at The University of Texas at Austin. LehighValleyNews.com is among a handful of newsrooms across the country selected to participate.
How can you help?
If you see something for us to look into, email us at news@lehighvalleynews.com.
You also can report information directly as we test out a new community tool. It enables you to submit a report about local election information that you think might be inaccurate — or that raises questions you want answered.
For example, information about where to vote or how to vote.
We won’t report on or respond to every submission, but we will review them all to look for trends and to see if they raise questions that need to be answered.
By taking part, you can help keep our community informed, prevent false information from spreading and get answers to your questions.
What kind of information do I submit?
- In general, you should submit any information that seems questionable
- That could be a photo or video, a link to the source or a detailed description of what you saw that seems to be off
- Nothing is too insignificant — if you have doubts about it, chances are other people do too
How do I submit a report?
- Head to the submission website and create an account
- After you make an account, log in and click the "Report" button
- When asked, "Which agency would you like to report to?" choose LehighValleyNews.com
- Follow the step-by-step instructions to categorize your submission and share the information
- Once you hit submit, we'll receive it and look into it
We know that the Lehigh Valley is ground zero for political persuasion. We live in a swing region in a battleground state that will most likely will determine who leads America for the next four years.
This also is an important election to select our leaders in Congress and the Pennsylvania Legislature.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed, if not confused, by the election messaging that comes at us in so many different ways.
This work is part of our newsroom’s effort to provide clarity, answer questions and give voters of all stripes confidence that they have the facts about our election process.
