Twitter and Facebook are taking steps to stop the spread of misinformation about Oregon’s elections system, after Republican Secretary of State Bev Clarno’s administration alerted the social media companies to what she said were falsehoods being shared on their platforms. (1/14)
Oregon election officials hear complaints from voters during every primary election, because some people who receive nonpartisan ballots believed they registered as Democrats or Republicans. (2/14)
This year, those frustrations were amplified when a Facebook group called “My party was changed Oregon” and the Oregon Republican Party launched an effort to gather first-hand accounts from voters who say their party affiliation was changed without their consent. (3/14)
Some voters contacted @Oregonian to say they were upset to receive non-partisan ballots. Most of them turned out to be infrequent voters who had been registered as non-partisan voters for years and had not voted in recent primaries, public records showed. (4/14)
Then on May 18, the website Gateway Pundit which Facebook says is “known for publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes” published an unverified claim that Oregon officials changed hundreds of Republicans’ ballots to nonpartisan. (5/14)
After Clarno’s administration contacted the social media companies, Facebook tagged the post as “partly false” and began referring people to fact checks on it.
You can read PolitiFact’s fact-check here: politifact.com/article/2020/m… (6/14)
You can read PolitiFact’s fact-check here: politifact.com/article/2020/m… (6/14)
Twitter suspended the “My party changed” account on Friday. (7/14)
After the primary, “Elections officials highlighted social media activity that was occurring on their platform that was false,” wrote Andrea Chiapella, legislative and communications director for the secretary of state. “Third-party fact checkers deemed it partly false.” (8/14)
That has not deterred people involved with the Oregon group. Nicole Chaisson, founder of the Facebook group “My party was changed Oregon,” announced online Tuesday that she was preparing to launch paid Facebook ads to solicit more such stories. (9/14)
Chaisson would not say who was going to pay for the ads, describing them only as “people affected themselves” by party registration changes. (10/14)
Oregon is one of nine states with closed primaries, which means voters must be registered with a party to participate in its primary. (11/14)
Since Oregon’s automatic voter registration law took effect, the number of unaffiliated voters has skyrocketed because people who were not previously registered are automatically signed up as non-affiliated when they get or renew a drivers license or state ID card. (12/14)
Elections officials send out postcards asking those voters if they want to pick a party. (13/14)
All voters see the nominees from both major parties during the November general election. So those who don’t vote in primaries can think they are registered with the party they identify with.
Read the full story: trib.al/9LOyUnv (14/14)
Read the full story: trib.al/9LOyUnv (14/14)
