At first glance, voting in a U.S. election seems like an easy enough process. You register and vote. However, things in life are rarely that simple. Yesterday, we reported about the 107,000 voters in the state of Georgia who were removed from voter rolls right before the 2018 Gubernatorial election. Today, there are reports of something as dangerous and as familiar as alleged American voter suppression. The United States Justice Department has brought forward its first cased of alleged voter interference in the 2018 midterm elections.
The U.S. Justice Department has elected to charge Russian based accountant, Elena Khusyaynova, for attempting to use social media to “sow division and discord in the U.S. political system.” The Russia base accountant was charged in larger conspiracy that was attempting to use an excess of $10 million to defraud the United States.
Since the charges were revealed, methods behind these social media ads were made more apparent. One alleged conspirator said, “If you write posts in a liberal group …you must not use Breitbart titles. On the contrary, if you write posts in a conservative group, do not use Washington Post or BuzzFeed titles.” Another alleged conspirator wrote, “Colored LGBT are less sophisticated than white, therefore complicated phrases and messages do not work. Be careful dealing with racial content. Just like ordinary Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans, colored LGBT people are very sensitive towards #whiteprivilege,”
Once the charges were made official, FBI Special Agent said, “The Conspirators’ activities did not exclusively adopt one ideological viewpoint; they wrote on topics from varied and sometimes opposing perspectives.”
