Although I am not actually serious, this is why we need a “test” to allow people to vote. Basically a small majority of people believe anything fundamentally stupid because it fits their very narrow and partisan political outlook.
So...
There's a book written by two sociologists called "Generational Theory" that defines generations being roughly 20 years. In it, they postulate that Generation X is from 1961 - 1981, Gen Y is from 1982 - 2005, and Gen Z is from 2006-2029. This was an academic framework to discuss broader underlying trends in society that explain world events and decision-making on a cycle of 4 types of generations (awakening, unraveling, crisis, and high),* and not what kind of popular music you grew up with. But those numbers weren't 'clean' and there was an opportunity to incite a fake culture war, so popular media changed the dates to 1965 to start Gen X and 1980 to start Millenials, changing the framework to be every 15 years.
I have, on several occassions, brought this up when people are talking about 'millenials' or 'gen z' or 'gen a', particularly pointing out that gen alpha isn't even born yet. The response, 100% of the time, is that the book is wrong and that it's just 'their opinion' because the first piece of information they heard was the mainstream news media telling them that millenials are 1980-1995 and gen z is 1995-2010, and that can't possibly be wrong. Also, there's 'no way' someone who grew up with constant internet connectivity is in the same generation as someone who had a Teddy Ruxpin, despite the fact that this isn't the point of the framework. But disregarding the opinion of two academics because the news says otherwise is the equivalent of discarding Copernicus's heliocentric model of the universe because the MSM reports that the sun revolves around the Earth.
From a day-to-day aspect this is trite, but consider the fact that the Navy as of 5 years ago was teaching media talking points for generational stereotypes in a senior leadership course, and that the material was completely devoid of anything that is actually in the academic works.
Where am I going with this?
If you give people an exam where they get a question wrong for believing that the President can't deploy the ANG to protect federal property, they will walk away believing that the government is rigging the election and you'd have a civil war to deal with. The "fact" that is in their head is whatever their favorite information source is telling them, and that information source isn't actually beholden to reporting things that are actually true.
*The millenial generation is unraveling and the Gen Z generation is crisis. This could explain the dramatic decrease in democracies across the world over the last few decades.
