“Elections are the fabric of our society”: nine months before the US presidential election, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is working to combat disinformation in this state which is expected to play a key role in the November election.
Arizona (southwest), narrowly won in 2020 by Democrat Joe Biden, is the target of all kinds of false accusations of electoral fraud, amplified by former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, who continue to ensure that the last presidential election was stolen from them.
While Arizona voters will vote in March for the primaries that Donald Trump and Joe Biden should easily win for their respective parties, Adrian Fontes, 53, says he is actively working “to ensure that voters do not feel intimidated » by going to the polls.
In an interview with AFP, this democratic official assures that the 2024 elections, which will be held in a very polarized political context, will serve as a test for the State as to its resistance to disinformation.
Encouraged by false theories of vote “smuggling,” people armed and wielding cameras showed up at polling places across the state during the 2022 midterm elections.
The US Department of Justice said the actions raised “serious concerns about voter intimidation.”
Bamboo
These episodes of violence also harm the recruitment of volunteers responsible for ensuring the smooth running of the polls and who are targets of “threats”, points out the official.
In Arizona as elsewhere, the authorities are struggling this year to recruit assessors. In December, for example, some counties in the state had only reached half of their quota of volunteers for the primaries.
This is not something new, according to Mr. Fontes, but these difficulties “are much more exacerbated today”.
Joe Biden’s victory in this state in 2020, only the second by a Democratic candidate in 70 years, and his narrow margin of difference – around 11,000 votes – have fueled the wildest conspiracy theories about the course of the election. election.
Adrian Fontes notably remembers a false rumor amplified by an audit commissioned by the Republican camp in 2021, which raised the possibility of fraudulent ballots sent by plane from Southeast Asia and containing bamboo fibers.
“The audit had started looking for evidence of bamboo in the ballots — when originally one guy had started this story as an example of some ridiculous theory” that could have been created about the election , explains Mr. Fontes.
This year, the threat of disinformation campaigns is particularly exacerbated by the possibilities offered by artificial intelligence (AI).
The American telecoms regulator (FCC), for example, recently banned automated calls using voices generated by an AI program, after calls that impersonated President Biden’s voice.
Risks which require constant vigilance, according to the Secretary of State. “It is to protect society from people who would harm it that I do this work.”
