Idea is to protect government’s ‘narrative’

Bob Unruh
WND News Center

The state of Oregon and its officials are being sued for their plan that would let the state essentially control the “information” that is used regarding elections.

A report from Just the News charges that the state is “trying to silence ‘criticism of its election system'” with its plan to hire an outside contractor to “identify and mitigate” what the state considers “mis-, dis- and malinformation.”

The First Amendment lawsuit names Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, her secretary of state, LaVonne Griffin-Valade, and elections director, Molly Woon.

State legislators have been joined by various others, including GOP officials and talk show hosts, in the case.

They want to stop any work on a “request for proposal,” essentially a government solicitation for a contractor, to work on an “election false information solution.”

Griffin-Valade awarded just such a contract last year with a U.K. company, Logically AI, the report said.

But the plan opponents charge the state is setting up those who criticize the elections system in the state for $10,000 fines if they are considered guilty of “communication of false statements of material fact intended to mislead electors on a variety of election topics.”

The plaintiffs also are asking for a grand jury to investigate the “alleged federal manipulation of COVID-19 statistics.”

The state’s planned MDM agenda, for “mis-, dis- and malinformation,” envisions an “early warning system,” the report said, to fight MDM and call in the feds as well as law enforcement.

The report said the strategy is similar to one used by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to censor messages it disliked in the 2020 and 2022 elections, on which the Supreme Court now is considering a challenge to its constitutionality.

The state plan is for a company to monitor media, social media and more to monitor comments and “refute” what the state dislikes.