‘MaidenGate’: Twitter warriors allege US election fraud committed by hijacking of changed names… others label claim a ‘conspiracy’

Tens of thousands of people have reacted to US voter-fraud allegations, after a blogger claimed her mother’s maiden name had been used to illegally cast a ballot. However, some believe it's just another ‘baseless conspiracy.’

The hashtag #MaidenGate was launched late on Monday to highlight the story of the Donald Trump-supporting blogger ‘Lauren,’ who also goes by the letter ‘L’ online. By Tuesday morning, it had become one of the top American Twitter trends, having prompted tens of thousands of tweets, despite the fact that L’s claims are baseless as of yet.

The MaidenGate saga began with Lauren’s claim that her mother’s vote had been“stolen in Michigan,” where she used to live, by someone unknown who had used her maiden name to vote there. According to the blogger, her mother had told her about unusual election-related message she had received prior to Election Day. The message seemed curious to both women, as they were apparently falsely implying the mother was going to vote in Michigan.

Lauren also tweeted that her mother had only mentioned the message to her once Election Day was over, but that she now claims to have “evidence,” as yet undisclosed, of a fraudulent vote having been cast.

The incident prompted Lauren to start an awareness campaign urging voters to check their voting data by looking up any previous name they had been known by or any addresses in other states where they had once lived.

Lauren made efforts to draw the attention of a number of prominent conservative personalities to the MaidenGate trend. Some Trump supporters had been alleging voter fraud in the election since the Republican president himself cited it as the reason he was slated to lose it. Trump-supporting pundit Michelle Malkin took up the charge to spread the word about the alleged MaidenGate conspiracy, implying that the pro-Women activist group Supermajority might have been involved in it.

The hashtag also allowed MaidenGaters to start gathering further claims of incidents similar to that alleged by Lauren and her mother.

Despite claiming to have proof of massive fraud, Lauren opted not to reveal it, supposedly to avoid“posting people’s private information.”

Not everybody gave in to MaidenGate, with some users calling it a “baseless conspiracy theory,” that had been used to exploit some Americans’ lack of understanding of how intra-state voter registration works.

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