A recent Aspen Institute report on “information disorder” takes aim at political advertising on social media. The report claims that “political campaigns” use what are known as “promoted posts” to “smear opponents and drive voter suppression.” That description — and the broadening of “voter suppression” to include negative political campaigning — is part of a growing trend that threatens political speech online.
Voter suppression once meant poll taxes and purged voter rolls. The term referred to efforts to legally or physically interfere with voters’ attempts to cast their ballots. Attempts to beguile or confuse voters, on the other hand, have long been normal — if unsavory — aspects of political campaigning. Under this traditional standard, limiting voting times or closing polling places in an opponent’s strongholds amounts to voter suppression, but misleading voters about an opponent’s policy positions does not.
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