Voter suppression has evolved into racialized digital warfare
Let me know if you experience dawning horror as I did.
Graphic courtesy of Consumer Reports
Tuesday’s debate debacle was a mess, and everyone knew it. The words “unprecedented,” “ugly,” and “chaotic” filled my feed as the news reports came in. My face was in a permanent cringe by the time the night was over. It was a bizarre experience that no one hopes to have to sit through again.
There were more than a couple of frustrating moments that night (looking at you, Proud Boys and “China plague”), but one of the many statements that caught national attention was President Donald Trump’s insistence on the fraudulent nature of mail-in voting — an echo of 2016 — despite a dearth of evidence.
“Take a look at West Virginia, mailmen selling the ballots,” Trump said. “They're being sold. They're being dumped in rivers. This is a horrible thing for our country.”
As I said, there is zero evidence for this — just take a look at any fact-checking outlet. His comments, however, do raise an important point: mail-in ballots may not be a danger to election integrity, but what about voter suppression efforts?
Just yesterday, two conservative activists were charged with “conspiring to intimidate voters in violation of election law and using a computer to commit crimes,” according to Associated Press. The two men made false robocalls to residents in Detroit, a predominantly Black city, as well as urban areas in four other states, telling residents that voting by mail could lead to arrest, debt collection, and forced vaccination.
Voter suppression is not unique to this year’s election; it is woven into the fabric of American history. Despite the end of slavery in the nineteenth century, the right to vote was denied to Black men again and again through literacy tests, poll taxes, and elaborate registration systems. Latinx men were also barred from participating in a range of civic activities even after they became eligible for citizenship in 1848. The same intimidation tactics were used on Black and Latinx women after the nearly 100-yearlong fight for women’s suffrage secured the vote for white, Latinx, and Black women in 1920.
Because the U.S. denied citizenship to Native Americans, they were refused the right to vote until 1924, though states often banned people who lived on a reservation or were enrolled in a tribe from voting, among other discriminatory policies. Asian Americans were similarly prohibited from attaining citizenship until 1952, when all restrictions on naturalization were lifted for Asian immigrants.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 expanded protections of minority groups’ right to vote, but that wasn’t the end of voter suppression. Many methods today continue to target people of color, especially Black Americans, and women. It’s no surprise then that the voter turnout rate for white people remains higher than that for people of color, despite historic jumps for all racial groups in 2018.
Occupy Wall Street joined the NAACP to defend voting rights in New York City in 2011. Photo courtesy of Michael Fleshman.
Because our lives have grown increasingly reliant on devices and the Internet, social media has become a central part of our presence online. With this kind of access, new but no less dangerous practices have allowed voter suppression to flourish — and even escalate to new levels.
Every social media platform has to deal with misinformation and disinformation. It has become as much a part of our lives as eating breakfast — even more so this year, when we are confined to our homes and turn to electronics to engage with the world. But very few people are trained in media literacy to verify every single claim they read on social media.
Most platforms have allowed users to post and say whatever they wish as long as it doesn’t invoke hate speech. But as efforts to sway the election creep in online, tech companies are now having to reconsider its policies — especially when voter suppression targets people of color.
How it’s done
A recent investigation by British news network Channel 4 found that the Trump campaign attempted to deter 3.5 million Black voters from voting in 2016. Using negative Hilary Clinton ads, the campaign sought to keep voters home in a bid to secure a Trump win. A leaked database revealed the list of voters categorized “Deterrence” and showed that Black Americans made up far more of the category compared to the general population. In Georgia, for example, a third of the population is Black, but they made up 61 percent of the “Deterrence” category there.
Overall, people of color — labeled by the campaign as Black, Hispanic, Asian, and “Other” — comprised 54 percent of the people listed under “Deterrence.” It’s unknown whether the ad campaign made its intended impact, but of the 4.4 million 2012 Obama voters who stayed home in 2016, more than a third were Black.
Trump isn’t alone in attempting voter suppression online. A Russian company with ties to Vladimir Putin had its operatives pose as Americans leading up to the 2016 election. On social media, they posted messages and ads, telling people to vote by text (an invalid option in the U.S.), and targeting voters of color by attacking their candidates and urging boycotts or votes for third-party candidates. “The night before Election Day, ads appeared urging people to ‘boycott the election’ because neither of the presidential candidates would serve Black voters,” Brennan Center’s Young Mie Kim writes.
The Russian company’s strategy was smart. In the months before November 2016, Russian groups appeared to target voters of color by promoting community and affinity based on racial identity. According to a report by Kim, Nefertiti’s Community was one such example, promoting Black art and design, while another named itself Blacktivist. These groups later targeted the same people with voter suppression-intended content.
Images courtesy of Young Mie Kim
Another attempt to suppress voters of color spread rumors in 2018 via flyers and social media that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be enforcing operations at polling locations. On Oct. 24, days before the election, ICE had to publicly state on Twitter that the rumors were false. The same thing had occurred in 2016 — fabricated photos made the rounds on social media claiming to show ICE officers arresting voters at the polls. As we know, the vast majority of immigrants are people of color; instigators clearly wanted to intimidate them into staying at home. This kind of racially motivated scheme is well and alive in our democracy.
Other tactics don’t overtly target voters of color but affect them nonetheless. False voting information circulated heavily on social media in 2018, with some accounts directing users to vote by text. Others claimed that voters of a certain party had to vote the day after Election Day. In August this year, some voters in Florida received texts with a link to a YouTube video, which appeared to announce a Republican primary candidate’s campaign discontinuation. The candidate, Byron Donalds, is Black.
These issues are not new, but the manner of easy escalation on social media means that misinformation and disinformation easily spin out of control. It’s an even more effective approach when dispatched on ethnic media platforms like WhatsApp and WeChat. These two apps, which serve specific ethnic groups in the U.S., carry a wide community of first-generation immigrants. Without access to or inclusion in mainstream media, users flock to WhatsApp and WeChat for news and information. Their information ecosystem narrows to the one app and its posts.
WhatsApp, a globally used app owned by Facebook, carries a large Indian American and Latinx network in the U.S. The messaging app has influenced elections in Brazil and India, and led to what Indians call mob lynchings of at least 36 people in India due to spread of misinformation. (Their definition of “lynching” has a different connotation compared to the U.S. meaning, which is primarily racialized and targets people of color, particularly Black folks.) A 2019 report from New York University’s Center for Business and Human Rights warns that WhatsApp has the power to affect election outcomes in the States.
Chinese-owned WeChat, which is likely to remain untouched ahead of November despite Trump’s looming ban, is also a powerful tool for spreading misinformation among its Chinese American users. A 2018 study found that misinformation is often transplanted from hyperpartisan American news sites and social media, with conservative outlets having a farther reach. “This asymmetrical polarization means misinformation originating from right-wing, English-speaking media potentially gains wider traction, alongside stories relevant to Chinese Americans that are politicized according to hot-button issues particularly salient among the immigrant community,” Chi Zhang writes for Columbia Journalism Review.
Testing out new rules
As social media evolved, so have our ethics regarding its operations. Now, tech giants are taking steps to address criticisms, especially when it comes to microtargeted ads. Microtargeting is most likely what enabled the Trump campaign and Russian operatives to target voters of color. It allows entities like political campaigns to target specific users — based on gender, location, race, interests, likes, purchases, search history, etc. — with its ad content.
To limit political campaigns’ ability to target voters, tech companies have taken a wide range of actions. Google has curtailed the scope of microtargeting available to campaigns while Twitter, TikTok, and Pinterest have banned political ads outright. Snap and Reddit send ads through human review and prohibit false or misleading statements. Facebook plans to ban new political ads spanning the week before the presidential election, but critics have argued the company needs to do more. Facebook and Instagram did launch a Voting Information Center in August and implement a verification process for political ads.
To combat election-related misinformation, Twitter announced in September it would add fact-check labels or hide tweets with misinformation about election rules or election rigging. Facebook also works with third-party fact-checking services to inform users if a post contains misinformation.
WhatsApp has taken measures to limit the number of forwards available and launched a fact-checking tool. WeChat has not added a similar service, but it regularly removes accounts that circulate false news (though that’s tied up in censorship) and launched a feature in 2017 that collects and debunks online rumors.
When is it enough? Is it possible to ever fully eradicate misinformation and disinformation online? Probably not. But these companies have taken first steps to figure out the role of tech in democracy — necessary steps if we are to fight voter suppression, especially when it involves people of color.
It’s ironic that Trump is challenging election integrity when he himself attempted to interfere with voter turnout in 2016. It’s also troubling, because who knows what kind of malicious digital attempts are being made as all attention is focused on mail-in voting? This country has targeted voters of color throughout its history, and it’s no different today. And as tech — and we, its consumers — continues to evolve, we’ll have to discover together how we position ourselves to fight misinformation, disinformation, and efforts to interfere with elections.
More on tech + voting:
The Social Dilemma, a documentary released on Netflix earlier this year, examines the ways technology psychologically manipulates its users. I’ve heard from many friends that it gives you chills.
Independent watchdog Freedom House has an in-depth report on digital election interference around the world. Read more here.
What else I’m reading:
The relentless of Black grief by Marissa Evans
How private Black tragedy shapes American politics by Teresa Wiltz
This week’s plug for The Yappie:
Trump’s use of racist rhetoric last night — calling the coronavirus the “China plague” — is a reminder that Asian Americans are still vilified in this country. But they’re not keeping quiet about it. More than 600 people showed up to fight anti-Asian hate in San Francisco last Saturday, part of a national response to an attack on an 89-year-old Chinese American woman that set her on fire.
“If you believe your grandmother should be safe walking in the streets, this is for you,” rapper China Mac told the crowd.
Just for fun:
Comedian Ziwe Fumudoh does a show called “Baited with Ziwe” where she tries to get guests to make “unwitting racial faux pas,” as she calls it, and I just found out my all-time love Aparna Nancherla guested on an episode!! Aparna Nancherla is one of my favorite comedians out there. She’s actually an Amherst alum, too! Check out the episode “Model Minorities” here and watch Aparna’s amazing work on the Netflix show “The Standups.”
See you next week!