Manitoba government mulls recommendation to crack down on election disinformation

The Manitoba government is considering expanding its election law to ban disinformation about election workers, the electoral system and more.

Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said Monday he's especially concerned about artificial intelligence and so-called "deepfake" videos that can make people appear to say or do things they didn't.

"It's pretty unreal what can be done, and how easily maybe it can be done," Wiebe said.

"In the past, there maybe always was an opportunity to fake some things, but now the technology has made it so much easier to do."

The provincial Elections Act already bans people from disseminating false information about candidates, impersonating election officials and more. Penalties include up to a $10,000 fine and a year in jail.

Manitoba's chief electoral officer, Shipra Verma, has said the law should be expanded to also ban, during the period leading up to an election, objectively false information about election officials, the electoral process, the equipment used in elections and more.

False information about voter eligibility and voter registration processes should also be banned, as well as any forged material that falsely claims to be from a candidate, an election official or a political party, Verma wrote in the recent annual report from Elections Manitoba.

"We consider that we need to make our legislation stronger to protect Manitobans ... so that election integrity is not compromised through the use of disinformation, misinformation," Verma told a legislature committee Monday night.

Wiebe said it makes sense to protect election workers.

"I, as a candidate, can't go out and explicitly lie about my opponent in an election. That is already prohibited and certainly we want to extend those protections to our election workers and to the system and the structure of the system."

It's not clear when the NDP government might put forward a bill to make any changes. The throne speech earlier this month, which outlined the government's priorities for the coming year, included a general promise to protect elections and democracy from third-party and foreign interference.

Claims of electoral wrongdoing in the United States have been the subject of court battles. Rudy Giuliani, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, has been disbarred in Washington, D.C. and New York for pursuing false claims about Trump’s 2020 election loss.

— with files from The Associated Press