Twitter ‘Election Labels’ to identify 2020 US candidates

Twitter 'Election Labels' to identify 2020 US candidates

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter has announced to bring back its “Election Labels” feature for the 2020 US presidential election that received overwhelmingly positive feedback from voters and candidates and played a prominent role in election conversation in the 2018 US midterm election.

In the week before election day, people on Twitter saw Labeled accounts approximately 100 million times each day, and 13 per cent of US election conversation on Twitter included a Tweet with an ‘Election Label’.

“With just under a year until US Election Day and two months until the first votes are cast in the Iowa caucus, we’re launching two initiatives that will help people find original sources of information on Twitter by clearly identifying political candidates,” Twitter said in a statement on Thursday.

“First, we’re bringing back Election Labels, which we first launched during the 2018 US midterm election. “Second, starting this week, we’ll start identifying candidates who qualify for the primary ballot for US House, US Senate, and Gubernatorial races with a verified badge,” the micro-blogging platform added.

For both primary candidate verification and Election Labels, Twitter is partnering with civic non-profit organization Ballotpedia to utilize their expertise in identifying the official campaign Twitter accounts of candidates.

Election Labels provide information about political candidates, like the office they are running for, their state and district number, and contain a small ballot box icon. The Label will appear on the profile page of a candidate’s Twitter account and on every Tweet sent and retweeted by the candidate’s account, even when embedded on sites off of Twitter.

Labels will appear on the Twitter accounts of candidates running for the House of Representatives, Senate, or Governor in the 2020 election who have qualified for the general election ballot.

“You’ll start seeing Labels appear on applicable candidates’ Twitter accounts once the candidate has qualified for the general election ballot. This will happen on a rolling basis as states have different caucus and election dates, with the first occurring on March 3,” said the company. IANS