ATLANTA (AP) – Several top Democratic state election officials have sent a letter to Facebook’s parent company asking it to stop allowing ads claiming the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
In a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the secretaries of state of Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Vermont said: He said allowing such ads would further erode trust in elections and increase the threat of political violence against election officials. Some people have already quit their jobs because of this. The letter was also signed by Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, who does not oversee elections.
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“Meta is allowing extremists and election deniers to further undermine our elections,” the secretaries said in a letter emailed to the tech giants on Thursday. “As Secretary of State, we strongly oppose Meta’s decision to allow advertising promoting election denialism and urge them to end this policy before it causes further harm.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (Reuters)
Almost 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 claim he won the election, aiming to return to the White House, despite no evidence of widespread fraud.
Investigations, recounts, and audits in the battleground states that Trump lost all confirm Democrat Joe Biden’s victory, and even Trump’s former attorney general believes the scale of fraud was large enough to swing the election. He said there was no such thing. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week, Trump falsely claimed he won Wisconsin, even though he lost to Biden by about 21,000 votes. President Trump told news outlets he would accept the results of the November election “if everything is honest.”
Since the 2020 election, election workers across the country have faced death threats and harassment. A recent survey by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice found that 34% of local election workers know of one or more local election workers or poll workers who left their jobs at least in part due to safety concerns, intimidation, or intimidation. It turned out that the respondents answered that This environment has led to a historic turnover of election workers across the country.
YouTube, the Google-owned video service, announced a similar policy to Meta last year, saying it would stop removing content that falsely claims past U.S. presidential elections were tainted by fraud.
Mehta has defended efforts to protect elections around the world. A company spokesperson provided details about how the company views elections, noting its plans for the 2022 midterm elections and stating that the company is committed to “our community standards, including policies on elections, voter interference, and hate.” “We continually review content to determine whether it violates the law.” Speech, harm coordination and promotion of crime, bullying and harassment. ”
As part of its efforts, Meta announced that it would remove election-related content, including false information about “voting dates, locations, times, and methods,” as well as calls for violence related to voting and election results. In its plan, the company specified that it would reject ads that question the legitimacy of upcoming or ongoing elections.
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But the group of Democratic secretaries of state is concerned about ads related to the 2020 election, including various campaign ads that repeated false claims from earlier this year that the election was fraudulent. The letter was sponsored by the Democratic Secretaries of State Association, a political action committee affiliated with the Democratic National Committee, and was circulated only among Democrats.
“When people believe that the election was stolen, it reduces their confidence in the system and reduces turnout,” Maine Secretary of State Shena Bellows said in an interview Friday. “We want voters to know the truth about elections and feel entitled to participate,” she said.
