With only weeks to go until the U.S. presidential election, recent news about Russian disinformation adds to the concerns about Russian interference with voters.
During the recent vice presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, discussion of Russia and Putin was conspicuously absent, despite the fact that Russian troll factories continue to propagate disinformation to the American electorate, using traditional propaganda techniques, updated with AI, according to new research.
Adding to that, during a recent awkward meeting between former President Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump bragged of his “very good relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That follows Trump’s comment during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, when Trump declared he and Putin could end the war in Ukraine together. Democratic nominee Harris remarked that “Putin would eat you for lunch.”
What is more clear is that many believe Russian disinformation efforts shared in multiple languages in the U.S. are geared toward swaying voters to Trump. The U.S. is pursuing multiple efforts—including sanctioning– to counteract Russia’s messaging.
Beyond this effort, the battle to correct such disinformation pushes needs to be in many languages as well. All voting messaging needs to be in as many languages as there are voters.
Out of the 350 languages spoken in the US, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese and Arabic are the most common after English. While many of these people are bilingual, 30-57% report not speaking English very well. Thus, for many voters in the US, having election information in their native language is not just a bonus, it’s essential.
Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires that election materials be provided in languages other than English, but only in districts where at least 5% of potential voters speak the same language and only if they do not speak English “very well.” That leaves many voters uncovered and does not address their inability to access wider political discourse that informs voters long before they reach for government-produced election information.
It is vital that U.S. governmental institutions, news outlets and political candidates combat the disinformation by putting forth the truthful information, in more languages and more often. Providing multilingual American voters with a high quantity of high-quality information in their own languages, ensures that Russia’s manipulative messages do not exist in a vacuum.
The presidential election outcomes in 2024 could once again be determined by thin margins in just a few swing states, all with sizable communities who speak languages other than English. In 2020, for instance, President Joe Biden won by just over 12,000 votes in Georgia, a state with more than 1.4 million multilingual residents.
In an election that some predict will hinge on vibes, picking up on cultural nuances, not just the language, can have a big impact.
And while the Latinos con Harris-Walz WhatsApp channel is an excellent example of bilingual, bicultural outreach, it seems to lack the catchy kind of English-language, organic content that has gone viral in English.
Drawing on Kamala Harris’ Southeast Asian heritage, the lotus image (“lotus” means “kamala” in Sanskrit) has been deployed for clever slogans (#LotusForPotus), user-generated social media content and campaign merchandise, including yard signs linking Taylor Swift and Harris.
On the other side, the Trump campaign has utilized Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law who was born in Lebanon to rally Arab Americans, though no coordinated Arabic-language campaign has emerged. Trump’s campaign has pushed ads in Spanish, which were fodder for “Abuelas React to Trump’s Spanish Ads,” an example of the kinds of culturally-informed social media trends that campaigns could embrace.
With the election looming, there is still time to speak to voters in all their languages.
For example, campaigns can produce non-English content by leveraging the skills of native speakers and heritage speakers (those who grew up in the U.S. with another language spoken at home).Because they often consume social media in both English and their home language, they know what disinformation is spreading and needs to be confronted, and they can tap into the “meme culture” of both languages to create equally viral but reliable messaging.
Even non-native speakers can contribute by phone banking with a prepared script or writing postcards with messages whose grammar and spelling they double-check with online tools.
After Russia landed Sputnik on the moon in 1957, the U.S. entered the space race and at the same time passed the National Defense Education Act which launched world language education in this country.
Almost seven decades later, the U.S. needs a renewed vision of languages in political and civic life so no one is silenced. Every vote and every person counts.