Part three of an investigation into how the Harris-Walz campaign is manipulating social media sites to artificially boost their popularity, spread election disinformation, and skirt election laws.
In the previous installments of this investigation into how the Harris-Walz presidential campaign is dishonestly manipulating online platforms, I noted the existence of a Discord server where campaign employees coordinate with a volunteer army to flood social media sites with campaign propaganda. The volunteers also vote en masse on social media to artificially boost Harris-Walz content or downvote content that is harmful to their campaign. Not only is this deceptive and misleading to voters, it’s a clear violation of these websites’ Terms of Service.
In part one and part two of the investigation, I noted this strategy had been successful at manipulating both Reddit and X. Over the past month, one out of every eight of the top stories in the eight-million-member Politics subreddit was planted by the campaign. On X, the campaign appears to have successfully voted down Community Notes accurately calling out the Harris campaign for tweeting out brazen lies.
But one activity I found on the Discord server was particularly concerning. After years of Democrats erroneously insisting that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election and otherwise warning of foreign election manipulation, the Harris-Walz campaign is actively recruiting foreigners to work on the campaign and is even encouraging them to donate to American political causes.
There appears to be no vetting, and given that the Harris-Walz campaign’s Discord community overtly engaged in disinformation campaigns, it was ripe for infiltration and abuse by foreign intelligence and other bad actors attempting to influence the election — although I saw no concrete proof of that.
However, my research found multiple foreign nationals actively volunteering for the Harris-Walz campaign. This activity, while permitted by the FEC, raises questions about whether foreigners should be allowed to volunteer for official U.S. political campaigns. Their comments ranged from showing excitement at how they could volunteer to “save democracy”…
… to Canadians sharing their plans to make road trips to Michigan, where they aim to go door-to-door canvassing …
…and asking how they, as foreigners, could donate money to “help fund the Harris-Walz campaign” using a legal donation loophole …
… which was praised by the server’s moderators, who went on to distribute the link to other channels (chats) in the Discord server.
The server’s moderators embraced the foreigners with open arms. Moderators are powerful users in Discord communities — they have the power to delete messages, ban users, and make announcements that reach the entire server’s user base (35,000 individual people at the time of writing). They were overjoyed to see non-American support, and eager to help foreigners learn how they could make a meaningful impact in the upcoming presidential election.
On Oct. 20, 2024, the campaign pinged the abroad group, desperately urging foreigners to spam call Wisconsin voters. Their goal was to reach 5 million telemarketing calls on Kamala’s birthday.
When one foreign user expressed concern about “meddling in US elections,” a moderator quickly assured him this was perfectly legal, and urged him to phone bank for Kamala.
While the Federal Election Commission does prohibit foreign nationals from making monetary donations and contributions to U.S. campaigns directly, it does explicitly allow foreign nationals to volunteer for campaigns as long as they are uncompensated. Unfortunately, the FEC does not account for donation loopholes, which are currently being propagated throughout the Harris-Walz Discord server.
The Harris-Walz staff are clearly teaching foreigners how to skirt FEC regulations. This may not be illegal, but it is enticing foreign nationals to influence American elections — something that Democrats have spent years warning is a serious threat to democracy.
Whether this directly violates election laws is also beside the point for many Americans, who believe foreign nationals should not be allowed to volunteer for U.S. presidential campaigns. American elections should be for Americans, and the Harris-Walz campaign is actively inviting foreign influences into their campaign.
https://thefederalist.com/2024/10/31/harris-campaign-recruits-foreign-volunteers-tells-noncitizens-how-to-skirt-donation-rules/