“Secret campaign to use Russian-inspired tactics in 2017 Ala. election stirs anxiety for Democrats”

WaPo:

A secret effort to influence the 2017 Senate election in Alabama used tactics inspired by Russian disinformation teams, including the creation of fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of voters to help elect Democrat Doug Jones in the deeply red state, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

But unlike the 2016 presidential campaign when Russians worked to help elect Donald Trump, the people behind the Alabama effort — dubbed Project Birmingham — were Americans. Now Democratic operatives and a research firm known to have had roles in Project Birmingham are distancing themselves from its most controversial tactics.

Jones’s narrow, upset victory over Republican Roy Moore in all likelihood resulted from other factors, political analysts say. Moore spent much of the special-election campaign battling reports in The Post that he had decades earlier made unwanted sexual advances toward teenage girls.

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