오늘, Twitter suspended several accounts connected with sham election review proposals in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. 

Statement of Yosef Getachew, director of media and democracy at Common Cause:

We applaud Twitter stepping in to stop the disinformation being spread by these accounts.

The November 3rd election “was the most secure in American history” — according to the Trump Administration’s Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council.

And Trump’s own Attorney General, William Barr, said there was no evidence of “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election” – after FBI agents and US Attorneys had looked for it.

But in recent months, disinformation agents have been using social media platforms to sow doubt about our elections. These efforts and the calls for sham ballot reviews have largely targeted the ballots cast by Black and Brown Americans. The ill-conceived review in Maricopa County, Arizona devolved into a circus and taxpayers have been left to foot the bill for the mess. The county has been forced to spend almost $3 million to replace the voting machines that were compromised during the Cyber Ninjas review.

But fundraising by those looking to profit from the lies and the unfounded hysteria has only gained steam in recent months. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised from small-dollar donors who want to believe in a different election outcome.

Disinformation spread on social media has helped convince these people that donating their money will somehow lead to the election results being overturned.

This has inflicted incredible damage on our country’s tradition of peaceful transitions of power. It has undermined many Americans’ belief in free and fair elections.

We applaud the step Twitter took today. We urge Facebook and YouTube to follow suit and remove posts connected with sham election review proposals. Platforms have policies in place to combat the spread of this content among other types of election disinformation, but these policies must be consistently enforced and strengthened. 

Republicans around the country have spoken out against these sham election reviews.

We are glad Twitter has finally taken a stand against them, too.