Democrat Senator Heidi Heitkamp is trailing Republican Kevin Cramer in the polls and, barring divine intervention, will probably get beaten like a rented mule next Tuesday. But Democrats are nothing if not dangerous when they are injured and cornered.

With the assistance of Facebook, which allegedly is carrying out a fight to suppress bogus news and offensive ads by Republicans, the North Dakota Democrats are running an ad on Facebook telling North Dakota hunters that they will lose their hunting licenses if they vote.

This is a straight up voter suppression tactic.

This is the North Dakota Democratic Party running blatantly false ads to scare hunters out of voting.https://t.co/USIAujm8kA pic.twitter.com/nA0pC1wY9Z

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) November 1, 2018

https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1058048534262505474

National Review took a few moments out from finding things to criticize Trump about to look into this:

The ad, which was verified by Facebook and catalogued as a political ad paid for by the North Dakota Democratic-NPL, links to a page titled “Hunter Alerts,” which contains a number of logos but has no further information regarding the potential loss of hunting licenses.

North Dakota secretary of state Al Jaeger was at a loss to explain what the ad might refer to when contacted by local blogger Rob Port.

“We’re not involved at all in the requirements for getting a hunting license. A question like what you have needs to be directed to the Game & Fish Department. I doubt that there’s any connection,” Jaeger told Port.

Randy Meissner, the licensing manager for the North Dakota Game & Fish Department, was similarly confused when asked about the ad.

“We’ve never heard of that,” Meissner said.

There are two parts to this story. The information in the ad itself, if not illegal per se, is deliberately and calculatedly false and certainly skirts the boundaries of permissible behavior. But this is the Democrat Party. After watching them when they controlled the federal government, who is surprised that they would do this?

The second part is the collusion on the part of Facebook with this voter suppression effort. Facebook verified these ads as originating with the North Dakota Democrats. They contain false and possibly illegal information. And as Facebook has a role in curating these ads and giving them an imprimatur, one has to assume they did some due diligence to confirm who was placing the ads.

That latter issue again underscores the degree to which the big tech companies are putting their thumbs on the scale in federal elections. When Elizabeth Heng tried to run an ad highlighting her family’s survival of Khmer Rouge atrocities, the same clowns that approved the North Dakota ad refused to run hers. Never mind that it is against federal law for a broadcaster to refuse to run a candidate ad and that is the role Facebook has here.

This nonsense must cease. The tech companies are not equipped–educationally, culturally, or ethically–to act as gatekeepers for our elections and they need to be told that in the strongest possible language.

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