Election Day: Fake Ohio Voter Suppression Video Goes Viral On Twitter

A video shot during ballot casting in Ohio on Tuesday, which allegedly showed voter suppression, went viral after being posted on multiple social media platforms.

Although Facebook told CNN reporter Donie O’ Sullivan they had taken down the video – which was shot by an Ohio voter – from their original networking site as well as Instagram, after consulting with their partners at the Associated Press who failed to verify the authenticity of the video, the clip continued to spread on Twitter.

As of the time this article was written, the video was still up on Twitter, being retweeted and liked over 5,000 times. The networking site, which feeds off viral content, said its policy prevented the company from speaking on individual tweets, regardless of whether it was fake or was viral.

Here is the video:

The video in question showed a female voter pointing at the voting machine which showed she had selected the Republican pair of Mike DeWine and Jon Husted in the governor’s race but the voter’s slip said she had voted for Democratic pair Richard Cordray and Betty Sutton.

The video was posted by the Twitter user “WWG1WGA” whose social media bio read, “Helping share the truth. One red pill at a time. Slow and steady. Where We Go One We Go All. Much love fellow Patriots. We are ALL in this together.”

New York Times tech writer Kevin Roose reached out to a spokesperson for the Franklin County, Ohio, board of elections, who confirmed the video wasn’t evidence of voter suppression in the state but just a faulty voting machine. Apparently, there was a paper jam in the machine which caused a voter to be handed previous voter’s voting slip.

That was also why the woman in the video, who cast her vote at 10:05 a.m. EDT, was handed a voting slip which had a time stamp of 9:39 a.m. EDT. The spokesperson further added the erroneous voting machine was taken offline and the voter was allowed to recast her vote.

According to a CNN report, Twitter removed thousands of user accounts that urged people to refrain from voting on 2018 Election Day after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had brought the matter to their attention.

"We removed a series of accounts for engaging in attempts to share disinformation in an automated fashion - a violation of our policies. We stopped this quickly and at its source," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement provided to CNN Business.

The fraudulent accounts were taken down between September and October, although the exact number of accounts removed or their nature of operation have not been revealed by the social networking site. Twitter also did not confirm the sources of the accounts, although it did mention they were set up domestically and did not have any foreign influences behind them.

The fake voter suppression video originating from Ohio was not the only made-up illegal voting news circulating during the midterms.

The Wired spotted a Facebook post which said voters were being forced to vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams by a group which imitated the antics of Marvel Universe character Black Panther, “armed with assault weapons” they were “roaming the streets and neighborhoods as well as the voting polls in Georgia to intimidate.”

Larry Schweikart, a conservative author also tweeted out the hoax news that "illegals" were being paid to vote for Democratic Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke. He also defended his fake tweet in an interview with Buzzfeed News. "I’m only countering what goes on, on the other side. The New York Times has yet to retract one in a billion articles so, no, it wouldn’t bother me,” he said.