Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon once proclaimed that his approach to fighting Democrats was to aggressively game media narratives — specifically to “flood the zone with s---.” The idea, typified by Trump’s political campaigns and extremist right-wing media outlets like Breitbart, was to tar one’s opponents using a firehose of misinformation and disinformation.

An unsettling example can be found in a recent New York Times report that identified a “loosely coordinated campaign” ahead of the midterm elections to toss out tens of thousands of ballots and voter registrations in a number of states:.

Groups in Georgia have challenged at least 65,000 voter registrations across eight counties, claiming to have evidence that voters’ addresses were incorrect?

As the Times investigation notes, “the vast majority” of the complaints have been tossed out, often because they’re based on bad information or a misunderstanding of how voter registrations work.

First of all, bombarding election officials with complaints takes up state resources and creates the possibility of accidentally culling legitimate ballots or voter registration records.

Third, this burgeoning network of groups — often with serious and neutral-sounding names like Election Integrity Fund and Force — are creating an impression of mistrust and controversy around routine election processes that’s going to chip away at already-eroding voter trust in the election process

Combined with efforts like bogus “election police” units, needless election audits, preposterous lawsuits to overturn election results and right-wing sheriffs groups, there is, indeed, a lot of flooding of the zone going on