Electoral saboteurs are already leveraging the tools of the day to throw the New Hampshire primary.
A robocall utilizing a digitally manipulated recording of President Joe Biden rang the phones of New Hampshire Democrats over the weekend, imploring them to “save” their votes during the presidential primary on Tuesday, calling the write-in campaign “malarkey.”
“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday,” the call said, before dishing the phone number of Kathy Sullivan, the former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.
NBC reports that NH voters are getting robocalls with a deepfake of Biden’s voice telling them to not vote tomorrow.
“it’s important that you save your vote for the November election.”https://t.co/LAOKRtDanK pic.twitter.com/wzm0PcaN6H
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) January 22, 2024
Sullivan, still a prominent New Hampshire Democrat, is the brains behind Granite for America, a super PAC dedicated to urging Granite State voters to write-in Biden as a candidate on Tuesday after the state rejected a new Biden-backed DNC calendar that moved New Hampshire’s historically front-and-center primaries down the totem pole.
“I want them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible because this is an attack on democracy,” Kathy Sullivan, a former state party chair, told NBC News about whoever’s behind the robocalls, adding that she plans to involve federal law enforcement.
“I’m not going to let it go. I want to know who’s paying for it? Who knew about it? Who benefits?” she added.
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office said it is investigating the matter as an “unlawful attempt” at voter suppression.
“Although the voice in the robocall sounds like the voice of President Biden, this message appears to be artificially generated based on initial indications,” the AG’s office said in a statement, noting that it had received several complaints about the unsolicited contact. “These messages appear to be an unlawful attempt to disrupt the New Hampshire Presidential Primary Election and to suppress New Hampshire voters. New Hampshire voters should disregard the content of this message entirely.”
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told NBC News that “the campaign is actively discussing additional actions to take immediately.”