A Michigan Republican listed the wrong election date in an ad aimed at Black voters, according to a legal complaint filed on Sunday.
Tom Barrett, who is running for Congress in Michigan’s 7th congressional district, placed an ad in the October 2 issue of the Michigan Bulletin, a Black-owned weekly publication based in Lansing. The ad boldly stated: “On November 6 VOTE FOR TOM BARRETT.” The problem is that the election is on November 5.
In response, the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus filed a legal complaint with the state attorney general, accusing Barrett’s campaign of trying to hurt Black voter turnout with the ad. The group says that such efforts are illegal in Michigan, where purposefully spreading misinformation about the election process to stop people from voting is a crime.
“At best, Tom Barrett and his Campaign have committed a shocking oversight which will undoubtedly lead to confusion by Black voters in Lansing,” the legal filing states. “And, at worst, this ad could be part of an intentional strategy to ‘deter’ Black voters by deceiving them into showing up to vote on the day after the 2024 election.”
The caucus’s complaint calls for investigations not only from Michigan’s attorney general but also from a local county prosecutor. In response, Barrett’s campaign claims that the wrong date was just a “proofing error” and didn’t have any negative intent, according to spokesperson Jason Roe. He noted that the campaign sent mailers to Black voters on October 2 and 9 with the correct election date.
“Our campaign has been committed to outreach to the Black community and Black leaders because it is important to Senator Barrett that every community be heard in this election,” Roe told The Washington Post in a statement. “The goal is to earn more support from Black voters.”
But as of Monday, 12 days after the initial error, the campaign had yet to publish a correction. Roe said that the next issue of the Bulletin will contain an ad with November 5 as the date. But the caucus is not convinced.
“It strains credulity that this was a simple mistake,” said the caucus’s legal filing. “Tom Barrett and his Campaign placed two nearly identical ads in two different newspapers within a week of each other. The ad placed in the newspaper read predominantly by Black voters has the wrong election date; while the ad placed in the newspaper not read predominantly by Black voters has the correct election date.”
There’s a long history of Republicans and conservatives promoting misinformation in attempts to depress Black voter turnout. In 2020, several Facebook ads targeted Black and Latino voters with various false claims about President Biden and Black Lives Matter. Robocalls have in years past even told Black voters to stay home, claiming that a Democratic victory was assured.
A report in June from nonprofit Onyx Impact, which fights disinformation among Black Americans, said that 40 million Americans could regularly be targeted and fed disinformation within Black online spaces as the election nears. With November 5 only weeks away, bad actors could be targeting voters everywhere to cause chaos.
