Facebook's new political ads rules trip up primary candidates before June election

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption First look at Russian Facebook ads aimed at dividing U.S. The Russian ads, released by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, offer the public the first in-depth look at the attempts to divide the U.S. ahead of the 2016 election.

SAN FRANCISCO — New rules requiring political campaigns to verify their identities before getting authorization to buy ads on Facebook are preventing some candidates from getting their message out in the critical last days before June primary elections. And one congressional candidate says it may tip the election to his opponent.

“The irony of the situation is that Facebook created this feature to mitigate meddling in elections, but that’s exactly what this has turned into," said E. Brian Rose, who’s challenging incumbent Rep. Steven Palazzo in Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District’s Republican primary. "It has sabotaged me and other politicians who have elections coming up in the next week or two."

Facebook has adopted new requirements ahead of the midterms in November to block the type of interference by Russian operatives that rocked the 2016 presidential election.

Scrutiny of Facebook intensified after a Russian propaganda operation was charged with orchestrating a Facebook advertising campaign to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. The roughly 3,500 Facebook ads that were created by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency are at the center of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s February indictment of 13 Russians and three companies seeking to influence the election.

The social media giant says it began alerting political advertisers to the new process in April. In May, Facebook sent emails to Facebook page administrators reminding them of the upcoming changes.

But two candidates running in Mississippi primary elections on June 5 say they only found out on Thursday afternoon when Facebook started rejecting their ads.

Richard Boyanton, who is challenging veteran Sen. Roger Wicker in the Republican primary, says Facebook was a handy tool for a smaller campaign in a competitive statewide race, allowing him to cheaply and easily target voters in remote places. Then Facebook informed him Thursday that he could not buy any more ads until he verified his identity.

“This is really throwing us over the bridge all of the sudden” in the midst of an election, said Boyanton. “Why couldn’t they find a window of opportunity in the country when we didn’t have an election going on? It aggravates me.”

Facebook declined to comment.

For Rose, too, Facebook has been a critical part of his grass-roots political strategy since November 2016, allowing him to build a following and narrowly target voters.

“They pushed us towards this and sold us on the positives of using Facebook. However, they cut our legs off,” Rose said. “If I had known Facebook would do this in the final days of our push, I never would have gone this route, I would have used a different strategy.”

On Thursday, Rose says he completed the process to receive an authorization code from Facebook in the mail.

“The message stated the mail would arrive in 12 to 14 days," he said. "This is disastrous, because the election is 12 days from today."

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