Prior to the 2020 elections, Connecticut faced a false swarm of online swirling votes. One widely seen on Facebook falsely stated that an absentee ballot was sent to the dead. On Twitter, users spread a false post that a ballot-carrying tractor trailer crashed on Interstate Highway 95, sending thousands of voter slips through the air and across highways.
Concerned about a similar flood of unfounded rumors and around this year’s midterm elections, the state shares factual information about voting and establishes its first-ever position for professionals to fight false information. Will spend about $ 2 million on marketing for this. With a salary of $ 150,000, it combines fringe sites like 4chan, far-right social networks like Gettr and Rumble, and mainstream social media sites to eradicate early false alarms about voting and companies before they get infected with the virus. Is expected to work on. Delete or flag posts that contain false information.
Scott Bates, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary of Connecticut, said: “False information can undermine people’s confidence in elections, and we see it as a serious threat to the democratic process.”
Connecticut has joined a few states preparing to fight the rumored onslaught and is lying about this year’s elections.
Oregon, Idaho, and Arizona have educational and advertising campaigns aimed at disseminating accurate information about voting times, voter eligibility, and absentee voting on the Internet, television, radio, and signage. Colorado has hired three cybersecurity experts to monitor false alarms on the site. The California Secretary of State’s office is looking for false information and is working with the Department of Homeland Security and scholars to look for false information patterns across the Internet.
Most of these state moves are under democratic control, and voters’ confidence in the integrity of elections has plummeted.and ABC / Ipsos Poll Since January, only 20% of respondents are “very confident” in the integrity of the electoral system, and 39% are “somewhat confident”. A number of Republican candidates have accepted the falsehood of former President Donald J. Trump regarding the 2020 elections and campaigned for false allegations that he was stolen.
It is almost certain that some conservatives and civil rights groups will complain that efforts to limit false information can limit freedom of speech. Republican-led Florida has enacted legislation limiting the types of social media moderation that sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter can perform, and supporters say the site limits conservative voice. increase. At the federal level, the Department of Homeland Security recently suspended the work of its advisory board on disinformation after a barrage of criticism from conservative lawmakers and advocates of free speech.
Rachel Goodman, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, an independent advocate, said: “But in order to maintain that credibility, it must be made clear that they are not engaged in any kind of censorship or oversight that raises constitutional concerns.”
Connecticut and Colorado officials said the problem of false alarms only worsened after 2020, and without more coordinated push to counteract it, more voters would trust the integrity of the election. He said he could lose. They also said they were afraid of the safety of some elected workers.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic Secretary, said: Griswold, who will be reelected this fall, has been threatened to support the 2020 election results and refute Mr. Trump’s false allegations about fraudulent voting in the state.
Other Secretaries of State, who head the offices that normally oversee elections, have received similar backlash. In Georgia, Republican Brad Rafensperger, who proved President Biden’s victory in the state, faces fierce criticism with false claims about the 2020 elections.
In this year’s primary, Mr. Lafence Purger defeated false information that there were 66,000 minor voters, 2,400 unregistered voters and more than 10,350 dead in the presidential election. None of the claims are true. He won the primary last week.
Colorado is relocating the false intelligence team that the state created for the 2020 elections. The team consists of three election security experts who monitor false alarms on the Internet and report them to federal law enforcement agencies.
Griswold oversees a team called the Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit. She said she would only look for false election-related information on issues such as absentee ballots, polling stations, and eligibility.
“The facts still exist and lies are being used to shave off our fundamental freedoms,” Griswold said.
Connecticut officials said the state’s goal was to patrol the Internet for false elections. On May 7, the Connecticut State Assembly approved $ 2 million for Internet, television, postal, and radio education campaigns on the election process, and for hiring election information security officers.
Officials said they prefer candidates who are fluent in both English and Spanish to deal with the spread of false information in both languages. Officers track false alarm posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, looking for new stories and memes, especially on fringe social media platforms and the dark web.
“We know we can’t boil the ocean, but we need to know where the threat is coming from and before it’s transferred,” Bates said.
