An Unrepresentative Democracy: How Disinformation and Online Abuse Hinder Women of Color Political Candidates in the United States

In a press interview, former Vermont state house representative Kiah Morris said she reported at least 26 incidents to the local police where she and her family felt threatened between 2016 and 2018. The severity of the targeted abuse both on and offline ultimately led Rep. Morris to a premature resignation three months before the end of her second term in office in 2018. In the same story, U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams expressed the view that the onslaught of mis- and disinformation and abuse seemed to be to designed to intimidate women of color out of government: “Early on, when we were getting the list of credible threats coming in for members of Congress, they were centered around members of color and there are only 25 black women that serve in the United States…there’s not that many of us…which I think is part of the whole thing of people trying to scare people [black women] into silence.”