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Donald Trump’s digital campaign team allegedly tried to dissuade millions of African Americans from voting in the 2016 US presidential election, according to an investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 News.
Investigative journalists from the channel said they had seized a file used by Trump’s team four years ago that contains about 200 million American voters who were classified into different categories to send them specific ads on social media.
Among them, more than 3.5 million black Americans were allegedly included in a category called “deterrence” that was aimed at pressuring them to abstain from voting.
Channel 4 reporters said that African Americans, who are generally loyal to the Democratic Party, were the target of this strategy more than other communities.
In the state of Georgia, for example, blacks made up 61% of members of the “deterrence” category when they only represent 32% of the population, according to research.
“It was a strategy that preceded a collapse in the black vote in key states like Wisconsin,” the report said.
Trump went on to win the election.
Its 2016 digital campaign had included a team from the now-defunct British firm Cambridge Analytica, accused of having collected and used personal data from Facebook users without their consent for political purposes.
Brad Parscale, the digital director for the 2016 campaign, insisted his team was not targeting black voters.
“I would say that I am almost 100% sure that we did not do any campaign directed at even African Americans,” Frontline told PBS.
But Channel 4 News investigators said they saw a confidential document in which Cambridge Analytica acknowledged targeting black Americans.
The report also said negative publicity was used to dissuade people from voting for Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the 2016 election, where the Democratic candidate described young black men as “super predators” in videos viewed by millions of people. on Facebook.
“What is shocking, disturbing, about this is that there is this category of repression,” said Jamal Watkins, vice president of civic engagement at the American civil rights organization NAACP, as quoted by the television channel.
“We use data, similar to that in voter files, but it is to motivate, persuade and encourage people to participate. We do not use the data to say who we can dissuade and keep at home,” he said.
“It is a change in the notion of democracy.”
Facebook says it has rules that prohibit voter suppression and is running the largest voter information campaign in US history.
The voter suppression allegations and controversial claims about Trump’s tax affairs come on the eve of the first televised election campaign debate with former Vice President Joe Biden in Cleveland, Ohio.
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