(Atlanta) Several Democrats have sent a letter to Facebook’s parent company, asking it to stop allowing ads claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
In the letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the secretaries of state of Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Vermont said allowing such ads erodes confidence in elections and fuels threats of political violence against election office workers, which has already led some to leave the profession. Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, who does not oversee elections, also signed the letter.
“Meta allows extremists and election deniers to further undermine our elections,” the secretaries wrote in their email to the tech giant on Thursday. “As Secretaries of State, we strongly oppose Meta’s decision to allow ads promoting voter denialism and urge you to repeal this policy before it causes further damage. »
Nearly four years later, conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election and false claims of widespread fraud and manipulation of voting machines persist. Former President Donald Trump continues to insist, despite no evidence of widespread fraud, that he won this election.
Reviews, recounts and audits in swing states where he contested his defeat have all confirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Even Donald Trump’s former attorney general believes there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the election.
In an interview this week with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mr. Trump falsely claimed to have won Wisconsin despite losing to Mr. Biden by about 21,000 votes. He said he would accept the results of next November’s elections “if everything was honest.”
Since the 2020 election, election office workers in all regions of the country have been victims of death threats and harassment. A recent survey by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice found that 34 percent of local election officials reported knowing one or more local election officials or poll workers who left their jobs at least in part due to fears for their safety, threats or intimidation.
YouTube, the Google-owned video service, announced a policy similar to Meta’s last year, in which it said it would stop removing content falsely claiming that previous U.S. presidential elections were tainted.
Meta defended the work she does to protect elections globally. A company spokesperson provided details about how Meta viewed the elections, referencing its 2022 plan for the midterm elections in which the company said it would “continuously review content to determine whether it violates our community standards, including our policies regarding elections and election interference, hate speech, intimidation and harassment.”
Meta said election-related content that includes misinformation about “voting dates, locations, times and methods” as well as calls for violence related to voting or the outcome of an election will be removed. In that plan, the company clarified that it would reject ads that question the legitimacy of an upcoming or ongoing election.
But it’s the 2020 election-related ads that have the group of Democratic secretaries of state worried, including various campaign ads from earlier this year repeating false claims that the election was rigged.
The protest was organized by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, a political action committee affiliated with the Democratic National Committee. The letter only circulated among Democrats.
“When people believe an election was stolen, they are less likely to have confidence in the system, which lowers turnout,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said in a statement Friday. interview. “We want voters to know the truth about elections and feel empowered to participate,” she added.