Election Officials Brace For Violence Over Midterms

Bloomberg News reports:

State elections officials say they’re seeing an uptick in a new kind of social media-fueled danger to US midterms: online anger that threatens to spill over into real-world violence.

In Arizona, online conspiracy theories resulted in so many harassing phone calls to the secretary of state’s office, employees had to take a break from answering. In Michigan, officials have seen such a flood of violent rhetoric online that this week they sent letters to tech company CEOs pleading with them to do more to control their platforms.

Bloomberg reached out to all 50 secretaries of state and spoke with representatives of 12 offices, from Texas to Hawaii. All of those who commented said they’ve seen an increase in online suspicion about the electoral process.

Read the full article.

Elections misinformation online is culminating in real-life violence, and officials say tech platforms aren’t doing enough. For @business, I spoke with Secretaries of State across the country about their concerns: https://t.co/UlwNkhyv3b

— Elizabeth L. T. Moore (@elizltmoore) August 19, 2022

States Are Bracing for Social Media-Enabled Election Violence https://t.co/YR3bOZw87V

— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) August 19, 2022