Texas GOP voting meme shows how Donald Trump -style messaging won internet attention

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A Twitter meme posted Friday by the Republican Party of Texas compared waiting in line for COVID-19 reviews to waiting in line to vote quickly caused anger from the left, dizziness from the right, and became one of the top trending posts on the platform that day.

The video above is from a previous story.

In other words, experts on propaganda and misinformation on the internet said, the meme did exactly what it was intended to do.

“The goal is to further divide people, but divide them by making them feel like they’re part of a group,” said Sam Woolley, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin who also serves as director of project for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement.

He added that such an approach is “driven by a view that other people who don’t believe in what you believe are the enemy, rather than fellow Americans.”

The meme, which came from the official account for the Texas GOP, used a photo of a line of test site at COVID-19 in New York and included the text, “If you can wait in line several hours for the test … You can vote in person. ” This is a message said by some critics who have suggested that excessive wait times are acceptable and that mitigates issues disproportionately affecting communities of color.

Such memes, according to experts, are part of a growing political social media strategy that has been successful in recent years: Package complex information into short, simplified bites, and use it to divide people in distinct groups opposed to each other.

“You’re farming anger,” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher of disinformation and cyberattacks at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, wrote in a tweet to angry people responding to the meme. He said responding to the tweet gives the GOP a bigger megaphone: “Your angry quote tweet = the goal.”

Polarizing memes have become more notorious in American politics since former President Donald Trump was elected, Woolley said, adding that social media accounts for Republicans and Democrats have used them as tools. On the left, the Occupy Democrats, a group that publishes extensive political posts on its website and social media accounts, have used polarized memes to build a social media following on Facebook. Far-right Republican groups have used politically divisive memes to attack supporters of expanded voting measures, Black Lives Matters protesters and to push for masks and vaccines.

But Woolley said the Texas GOP meme was different because it was released from a political party’s official social media account. The meme marks a departure from typical account photo posts, which tend to focus on law, events, and announcements.

“It’s not uncommon, and especially concerning, that this comes from the official Texas GOP account,” Woolley said.

Earlier this year, the Texas Legislature passed new voting restrictions, supported by the Republican Party, that banned 24 -hour voting and added new voter ID requirements. GOP leaders also failed to successfully push Gov. Greg Abbott to call state lawmakers for a fourth special session to ban vaccine mandates. Instead the governor issued an executive order banning vaccine mandates.

A spokesman for the Republican Party of Texas said in a statement to the Tribune that it was hypocritical for the Biden Administration to allow people to line up to get a COVID-19 review, but to endorse the vote-in-mail as a ways to reduce the spread of COVID-19 from standing in line and in personal interaction.

“If one is safe, so is the other,” James Wesolek, spokesman for the Republican Party of Texas, wrote in a statement. “We enjoy watching liberals lose their minds when faced with the truth yesterday.”

Similar rhetoric to the one used in the Texas GOP meme on Friday appeared in the most up-to-date social media posts in spring 2020. Public health experts and election security experts recommend that states use mail-in that ballots as an alternative to personal. voting to prevent the spread of coronavirus to vulnerable populations. In response, far -right groups began sharing memes comparing waiting in line to vote in other common activities where people have to wait in line.

A meme reposted by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller showed a photo of a line of customers waiting outside a store with carts and another showing a line to vote. “If you can do it six feet away … you can do it six feet apart,” the meme stated.

The formula evolved in the summer of 2020 when Black Lives Matter protests swept across the country in response to the police murder of George Floyd. Former President Donald Trump tweeted in August. 19, 2020: “IF YOU CAN PROTEST A PERSON, YOU CAN VOTE A PERSON!”

The Friday meme, which followed the same formula, garnered criticism from some Democrat politicians, policy experts and other Twitter users who said testing and voting on COVID-19 should be made more accessible. of government, and the lines create delays and challenges that do not equal the right to deprivation. voters of color.

The tweet garnered more than 12,000 retweets and more than 52,000 likes as of 9 pm Saturday on Twitter. Angry reactions are raising attention to the meme, something the Republican Party acknowledged in the next tweet, pointing out that the “Texas GOP” is the No. 4 trending Twitter topics in the US on Friday.

“Cry more,” another Texas GOP post stated, after saying the meme was made “pronouns to bio people” crazy.

Anger tends to overly simplify what can be a complex bipartisan issue, says James Slattery, a senior staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, who advocates for equal access to voting in elections. .

“No one really enjoys wasting time on lines for a lot of time,” Slattery said. “You shouldn’t wait in line to vote, and you shouldn’t wait in long queue to be tested for COVID.”

Long voting lines do not equal the impact on voters of color, research has found. A 2020 study at the University of California at Los Angeles found that people living in predominantly Black neighborhoods wait 29% longer to vote than those living in predominantly White neighborhoods.

The longer voters have to wait to vote, the less likely they are to vote, Slattery said. He said the main causes of the long line of voters in Texas in the recent elections came from staff shortages during the influx of voters, lack of resources or training for poll workers who causing machine malfunctions and logistics problems, and state polling place closures. Texas counties close more polling places than any other state, according to a 2016 review by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“State and local governments should make it easier for people to vote because at the end of the day it’s all about holding those governments accountable,” Slattery said. “Voting is unlike almost any activity in our society. You have a fundamental right to vote that is critical to the survival of our democracy.”

Natalie Martinez contributed reporting.

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans – and engages with them – about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

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