WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is “waging an insidious campaign” to make Americans distrust the election process by deliberately offering misinformation on the security of ballots, the chairwoman of a House elections subcommittee said Tuesday.
Chairwoman Rep. Marcia L. Fudge, D-Ohio, pointed to Trump’s unverified claims of massive fraud in mail-in ballots and election rigging as well as his encouragement of supporters to vote twice.
“The American people are voting and will be voting now through Nov. 3, and through all this, the president and others are waging an insidious campaign to sow distrust in our electoral process,” Fudge said at a virtual hearing of the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections.
Professor Chris Edelson of American University said the fear of misinformation in this year’s election is based on what happened in 2016.
“The Mueller report concluded that Russia attacked the (2016) election in at least three ways,” said Edelson. “One was through misinformation, through people posing as social media accounts. The second was the stealing of emails and disseminating them. The third was actually attacking election infrastructure itself (like) voter registration files.”
He and others, including the U.S. intelligence community, say those tactics are in use again this year.
Spencer Overturn, president for the Black think tank Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said part of this year’s attempts to affect the election is through voter suppression, a repeat of efforts used in 2016.
“In 2016 an organization associated with Russian military intelligence erected fake accounts pretending to be African Americans and they urged Black people to protest by not voting,” said Overturn. He added that 38% of the Russian advertisements were directed at Black voters, despite the fact that Black voters made up only 13% of the electorate.
In 2016, Black voter turnout declined for the first time in 20 years, according to Pew Research Center.
The Election Assistance Commission has been working to minimize the effects of misinformation and voter suppression, said Commission Chairman Benjamin Hovland. He said the group has focused on cybersecurity.
Hovland praised the National Association of Secretaries of State’s #TrustedInfo2020 campaign, calling it an “integral part of ensuring Americans get the right information on how to participate this year.” The campaign directs voters to trustworthy websites, such as those of elected officials.