The secretary of state in Oregon has temporarily shut down a phone line set up for the upcoming election because he said the “system was overwhelmed” by misinformation coming from outside of the state.
On Thursday, the secretary of state’s office issued a press release that said all of these phone calls started happening because of conspiracy theories about the election that are spreading online. The theories say that election officials in Oregon kept GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump off of Oregon’s voter pamphlet.
In reality, what happened is that Trump’s campaign decided they didn’t want to submit an official statement to be put onto the voters’ pamphlet in the state. He also didn’t send one as part of the Republican Party’s primary for Oregon that was held back in May.
Earlier in the week, the state Republican Party explained why there wasn’t a campaign statement on the pamphlet, saying in a statement:
“Many people are wondering why no campaign statement from President Donald J. Trump was included in the Oregon Voters’ Guide which arrived in Oregonians’ mailboxes this week. The decision not to submit a statement was made by the Trump campaign earlier this year.”
The closure of the phone line comes only a few days after a popular conservative social media account known as Libs of TikTok shared a video that showed a person flipping through Oregon’s pamphlet. It also included screenshots of Trump not being included.
The account, which has more than 3.5 million followers on the X social media platform, wrote:
“Oregon voter pamphlets do not include Donald Trump. He is also not listed on the Oregon State Government website under presidential candidates. What’s going on?”
A community note was attached by X to that post explaining that Trump “did not submit an optional statement or pay the required $3,500 for candidates to appear in the state’s pamphlet.”
Despite this, enough people jumped on the misinformation that the account, and many others posted, and flooded the Oregon election help line with complaints. That forced the secretary of state’s office to have to close down the line because they simply couldn’t handle the influx of calls.
It’s something that the state obviously didn’t want to do, especially so close to Election Day.
In a statement released this week, LaVonne Griffin-Valade, the Democratic secretary of state of Oregon, said:
“Oregonians who need assistance will now have to wait because some individuals operating in bad faith are misleading people online. We need to do more as a country to discourage this kind of behavior. Spreading rumors and false claims of election interference does nothing to help Oregonians.”
This type of election misinformation is something that all states are fighting in some way. With only a few weeks left until the election, it’s very likely that the number of instances of misinformation are only going to increase, too.
