• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, November 7, 2016

While social media has been a boon for political campaigns and advocates, helping raise awareness and organize voter drives cheaply and quickly, it also cuts the other way, enabling practitioners of the dark art of voter suppression to spread disinformation intended to confuse and discourage their opponents’ supporters.

While there are a number of techniques, their ultimate aim is always the same: keep potential voters out of the polling both.

BuzzFeed reports several voter suppression scams by Trump supporters circulating online in the final lead-up to the election, including one coordinated effort on Twitter attempting to convince would-be Clinton voters that they can “vote from home” by texting.

Tweets to that effect have come from multiple accounts, although it’s not clear how many individuals are actually involved, with many apparently targeted to African-American voters, widely viewed as a key constituency in several swing states, including Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio.

Another voter suppression effort reported by BuzzFeed, also circulation on Twitter, wrongly states that voters will need to bring seven different kinds of identification, including a passport and Social Security card, to polling places in order to vote.

Yet another disinformation theme claims that the deadline for voting has been extended by one day to November 9. Some of the tweets carry the false disclaimer “paid for by Hillary for President,” which is likely a violation of federal election law.

As with other content banned by Twitter, including ordinary commercial scams and terrorist propaganda, the social network has a hard time policing the voter suppression campaign because the perpetrators are able to quickly create new accounts and disseminate additional messages to established networks of followers.

Of course social media has also helped boost genuine political engagement. A survey of 2,000 millennials by Yik Yak found that 62% had recently registered to vote, and 9% said they had registered because of something they saw on social media.