Illinois State Board Of Elections Reports Election Misinformation To Social Media Companies

From The Center Square:

By Greg Bishop

The Illinois State Board of Elections says they have a close relationship with social media companies to stop the spread of election misinformation, but not all misinformation related to the election.

ISBE spokesman Matt Dietrich said Facebook in particular has been helpful.

“They’ve done a lot to promote voter registration,” Dietrich told WMAY. “They recently gave us a very generous amount of ad credits so that we could recruit poll workers through Facebook.”

Facebook advertising data show ISBE benefited from between $50,000 and $60,000 of credits for a series of ads about becoming a poll worker.

The total spent on ISBE ads “about social issues, elections or politics,” Facebook reports, was $111,312 over the past two-and-a-half years. About $49,000 of that was in the past week.

Dietrich said they also have a direct line with other social media giants.

“We can directly report any social media mischief that we see,” Dietrich said. “Those accounts can be taken down directly by Facebook, by Twitter, by Google.”

He gave an example of someone claiming on social media they received two additional mail-in applications for people who don’t live there anymore and they were going to send in to get more ballots to vote.

“That actually happened in Fayette County,” he said. “We can report that directly to Facebook as disinformation, inaccurate information and potentially dangerous information if other people try to do the same thing.”

But there’s other misinformation that could impact Illinois’ elections.

A Vote Yes For Fairness Facebook post promoting an imposter account of an Illinois businesswoman had been shared nearly 200 times as of Friday. The group, funded by $56.5 million from Gov. J.B. Pritzker, spent between $10,000 and $15,000 to reach an estimated 1 million people or more with a message supporting the proposed constitutional amendment that would change the state's flat income tax to a progressive income tax.

A publicist for Uline, a packing company operated in Illinois, said the tweet from Liz Uihlein is fake and has been taken down for being an imposter account.

While the more recent shares of the Vote Yes For Fairness Facebook post are people urging other Facebook users to report the post for being false information, people who shared it last week used the post to support the progressive tax. One user that shared the post used the hashtag #EatTheRich.

But Dietrich said that’s not the kind of misinformation they work with the social media companies to address.

“We only get involved if it’s disinformation about the voting or registration process,” Dietrich said.

It’s unclear if the Vote Yes For Fairness post has been reported for being false or misleading. Vote Yes For Fairness, Pritkzer, nor Facebook have publicly acknowledged the message is misleading.

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