Election Misinformation, Disinformation, and Media Literacy

The League of Women Voters Presents a Panel Discussion on Tuesday, November 10, 7:00-8:30 PM on Zoom

As we have seen in the 2026 midterm election, mis- and disinformation are increasingly widespread in our media landscape of polarization, algorithms, artificial intelligence, and unlimited corporate spending on elections. This poses a grave threat not just to our electoral system, but to our very democracy.

Our expert panel will share thoughts on how can we arm ourselves and others to counter this threat by educating ourselves and the public in how to spot distortion, half-truths, and deception.

• Paul Gronke is a nationally known scholar of American politics and elections. He is founding director of the Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC), Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Service at Portland State University, and an emeritus professor of political science at Reed College. Under Gronke’s leadership, EVIC has become a national center of excellence for policy research into election administration, reform, and integrity. A major focus of Gronke’s current research is the Local Election Official (LEO) Survey which EVIC has been undertaking since 2018.
• Shannon Grimes is the Lead Researcher with the Sightline Institute’s Democracy program, whose core mission is fixing the broken systems that empower extremists, shut out voters, and limit real choice. Grimes’s work focuses on advancing electoral reforms in Washington and Oregon. Among her publications, her article on Five Early Conclusions about Portland’s City Council examines how cherry-picking data and providing information out of context can be used to create a case for political opposition.
• Becky Gladstone is a registered lobbyist with the League of Women Voters of Oregon (LWVOR), specializing in cybersecurity, election security, and other governance issues. She is co-author of the LWVOR study, Privacy and Cybersecurity and of the League positions to protect the public against disinformation, digital manipulation, false claims, and/or privacy violations.

This virtual webinar is held free of charge and open to the public. To receive a Zoom link, register in advance. The program will be recorded for rebroadcast by MetroEast Community Media and will be available by video and podcast from our website.

Funding for the production is provided by the League of Women Voters of Portland and the Carol and Velma Saling Foundation.