A22 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 15 , 2022
BY MICHAEL E. MILLER
AND FRANCES VINALLsydney — The cartoon appeared
online early one Friday morning.
Created by a far-right Australian
party in the style of “South Park,”
it lit up social media with its
crude jokes and bogus claims
about stolen elections.
In a Canberra office covered in
computer screens, the alerts be-
gan pouring in.
“This needs a #FactCheck,” one
person tweeted.
“Is this not illegal?” another
asked.
Tagged in the torrent of tweets
was the Australian Electoral
Commission (AEC). Within min-
utes, the federal agency respond-
ed, calling the video “false” and
“disappointing.” The agency’s ac-
tions quickly led Twitter to label
the cartoon as “misleading,” and
Facebook and TikTok took it
down completely.
The incident last month re-
flects the rising tide of misinfor-
mation Australia faces as it pre-
pares to go to the polls on
Saturday. But it also shows the
benefit of a single agency over-
seeing a country’s electoral proc-
ess.
“We’re really standing on the
front lines of protecting Aus-
tralia’s democracy,” said Evan
Ekin-Smyth, the AEC’s head of
digital engagement. “If we’re not
in the conversations, arguing for
elections, defending people’s
perceptions of democracy, well,
who is?”
In the United States, elections
are overseen by a patchwork of
partisan state and local officials.
Add in the electoral college and
the system can sometimes seem
chaotic or even susceptible to
undue influence, as Americans
learned in 2020.
“There are a myriad of major
and minor differences in how
electoral laws and regulations
are administered across Ameri-
ca,” said Pippa Norris, a profes-
sor at Harvard University’s Ken-
nedy School of Government.
“This violates basic principles of
equality and consistency in elec-
toral processes and voting rights,
leads to excessively partisan con-
siderations gaming the system,
and encourages numerous mal-
practices.”
Australia’s electoral system, in
contrast, is praised by analysts
around the world.
Steven J. Mulroy, a professor at
the University of Memphis and
the author of a book on American
election law, called it the “gold
standard in election administra-
tion.”
Ariadne Vromen, a political
scientist at the Australian Na-
tional University, noted that few
other countries have independ-
ent electoral commissions.
“That is one of our good inno-
vations, as well as compulsory
voting,” she said. “People in Aus-
tralia trust those processes. They
might not feel particularly
warmly or trusting about the
political actors, about politicians
themselves and about political
parties, but they do trust the
institutions.”
That trust is now being tested.
The flood of misinformation
that fueled the Jan. 6, 2021,
attack on the U.S. Capitol hasn’t
spared Australia. Since the coun-
try’s last federal election in 2019,
Ekin-Smyth said, false claims
about Australian elections have
skyrocketed. Some appear im-
ported from the United States.
“There have been claims
around the use of Dominion
voting machines,” he said, citing
a baseless claim pushed by for-
mer president Donald Trump
and some of his advisers. “We
don’t use Dominion voting ma-
chines. We never have, and yet
people are claiming that we are
going to use them and that the
election is rigged off the back of
it.”
As the challenges have
changed, so, too, has the AEC.
When Ekin-Smyth joined in
2011, the AEC didn’t even have a
Twitter account. A decade later,
half a dozen people now helphim tweet at a blistering pace: up
to two dozen times per hour. It
also has accounts on Facebook,
Instagram, LinkedIn and You-
Tube, has partnered with TikTok
on an election guide, and has
held an “Ask me Anything” on
Reddit.
The aim is to counter bogus
claims before they have a chance
to spread.
“We’re not blind to the fact
that social media moves incred-
ibly swiftly,” Ekin-Smyth said.
“And the action that social media
organizations can take is bril-
liant. But the action we can take
even quicker by responding on
our channels is perhaps going to
be even more effective.”
That action is sometimes seri-
ous, as when the AEC recently
referred an allegedly doubly reg-
istered candidate to the Austral-
ian Federal Police for investiga-
tion.
Yet the AEC also has a sense of
humor, mixing in posts aboutCrumpet the election cat and
jokes and GIFs.
“Their meme game is pretty
strong,” Vromen said. “And the
informal language is really im-
portant. It’s personalized. It’s
using everyday norms of engage-
ment. And that is the kind of
thing that people will notice and
will share.”
The snappy tweets do occa-
sionally draw pushback from
critics who think the AEC should
be more staid, or even silent. But
Ekin-Smyth said it was impor-
tant to talk to people on their
terms.
“We’re a bunch of public serv-
ants,” he said. “But most of
Australia isn’t, and they don’t
talk like them, so why should
we?”
With the election approach-
ing, the AEC has received scores
of complaints about false or
misleading statements by candi-
dates, parties or influence
groups. It polices only informa-tion about the political process,
not political speech.
“A party or candidate talking
about another party, their pol-
icies, their history — we cannot
be the regulators of truth for
that,” Ekin-Smyth said. “We don’t
have legislation that allows it.
But also there would be some
practical problems and some
perception problems if we were
making decisions on those
things.”
In March, for example, a con-
servative lobbying group created
a mobile billboard with a cartoon
depicting Chinese President Xi
Jinping casting a vote for Aus-
tralia’s center-left Labor Party.
The AEC directed the group to
change the billboard — not for its
message, but because it showed
Xi’s ballot with a check on it.
Australians are required to rank
candidates or parties.
In the case of misinformation
online, the agency has to be
careful not to respond in waysthat could amplify it.
When the far-right One Nation
party posted its video April 29
falsely suggesting illegal votes
had decided the 2010 Australian
federal election, Ekin-Smyth
consulted with the AEC’s legal
and executive teams before craft-
ing a response.
“This commentary about the
electoral system is very disap-
pointing,” he tweeted from the
AEC’s account. “Registered par-
ties are aware of electoral integ-
rity measures in place including
information received/roll objec-
tion action taken for deceased
Australians, and outbound & in-
bound postal vote verification
steps.”
Some Twitter users com-
plained he hadn’t been more
strident, and Ekin-Smyth did use
stronger language in subsequent
tweets. But he also didn’t want to
fuel a controversy that would
spread the video even more
widely.
Colleagues, meanwhile, were
contacting social media compa-
nies, which labeled the video
misleading or took it down.
“It was probably one of the
more egregious examples we’ve
seen,” Ekin-Smyth said. “Some of
the claims in there are just
incorrect, and they clearly have
the ability to undermine people’s
confidence in the system.”
He shrugged off suggestions
the AEC was unfair to One Na-
tion. The commission had taken
no issue with previous cartoons
that, though crass, didn’t mis-
lead people about the electoral
system. One actually explained
preferential voting well, he said.
With social media stoking
tribalism, the AEC requires all its
employees — including its
100,00 0 temporary election
workers — to sign a declaration
of political neutrality.
“There is a lot of responsibility
to it,” Ekin-Smyth said, “because
a failed election — real or per-
ceived — as we’ve seen in other
jurisdictions, is potentially dev-
astating.”Twitter account defending Australian democracy could be model for U.S.
COURTESY OF THE AUSTRALIAN ELECTION COMMISSION
Employees monitor social media for misinformation about Australian elections at the Australian
Electoral Commission’s Canberra command center.BY SAMANTHA SCHMIDTbogotá, colombia — The for-
mer colonel clutched his notes as
he waited for his name to be
called. Santiago Herrera Fajardo
had struggled to sleep the night
before, waking up at 3 a.m. to
practice the speech that would
define the rest of his life.
To reach the microphone, he
had to walk past rows of mothers
and daughters who had waited
nearly 15 years to hear him
explain how and why his soldiers
killed innocent men in one of the
worst atrocities in Colombia’s
history.
An army veteran of nearly 30
years, now stripped of his uni-
form, he asked the Holy Spirit to
help these families see his sincer-
ity. Would they believe him?
“Today, with all the shame and
shrinkage that a soldier can feel,
but with the most respect for the
pain of the victims, I recognize
that while I was in this position,
a de facto criminal structure
operated in the brigade,” Herrera
told Colombia’s peace tribunal
during the April 26 hearing. “I
pressured my subordinates to get
results, in combat casualties, at
any cost.”
Herrera, 57, admitted to urg-
ing his soldiers to kill as many
people as they could to meet
body count demands set by com-
manders at the peak of Colom-
bia’s bloody 50-year conflict. He
promoted competitions between
units, offered vacations as re-
wards and threatened to give
soldiers negative reviews if they
fell short.
Herrera is one of the highest-
ranking military leaders to ac-
cept responsibility in Colombia’s
“false positives” scandal. Be-
tween 2 002 and 2008,
U.S.-backed forces killed an esti-
mated 6,402 people and falsely
labeled them as guerrilla fighters
to signal they were winning the
war, according to the country’s
Special Jurisdiction for Peace.
The jurisdiction was formed
through the country’s 2016 peace
deal with its largest rebel group,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia — the FARC.
Many of the victims were poor,
unemployed or disabled men
who were lured by the promise of
a job. Their bodies were often
altered, dressed up as enemy
combatants and posed with
guns.
Nearly 15 years later, Herrera’s
testimony is part of a bold exper-
iment in restorative justice that
could become a model for other
countries. In exchange for admit-
ting their responsibility and co-
operating with the jurisdiction,
perpetrators can receive lighter
sentences, such as house arrest.
But Herrera is one of only 10
military leaders who have ad-
mitted their involvement. More
than 3,000 members of Colom-
bia’s security forces have false
positives cases pending before
the jurisdiction. And even those
who want to cooperate face
significant barriers to speaking
openly about their roles — and
the roles played by their superi-
ors — according to former mili-
tary leaders and international
observers.
Former soldiers and ex-FARC
combatants alike have faced
death threats not to speak. But
critics say the former soldiers
have received less legal support
than the former FARC fighters.
Peace negotiators arranged in-
dependent counsel for the ex-
FARC combatants. Some former
soldiers have complained that
their government-provided law-
yers have conflicts of interest.
They accuse their lawyers of
pressuring them to modify their
testimonies or omit information
to protect higher-ranking defen-
dants. The lawyers have denied
the accusations.
“What is clear is that they have
for too long been left alone,
abandoned by their own institu-
tions,” said Dag Nagoda, ministercouncilor at the Norwegian Em-
bassy, which has been monitor-
ing the implementation of the
peace accords. “They’ve been
labeled rotten apples in the pub-
lic debate, and there has been
little accompaniment.”
The concern for these defen-
dants is a practical one, Nagoda
said: “If they don’t speak up, the
peace process won’t work.”
Carlos Ruiz Massieu, head of
the U.N. Verification Mission inColombia, said it’s clear that
Colombian institutions and in-
ternational partners “needed to
do a better job with the military.”
To family members of the
victims, the hearing helped final-
ly clear the names of their loved
ones. But many felt the admis-
sions didn’t go far enough.
Blanca Monroy, whose son
was killed in 2008, said she
hoped Herrera and others who
testified could be an example forthose who are “drowning in their
own poison” to come forward.
The first call Herrera received
after his testimony was from a
former comrade who is sched-
uled to appear before the juris-
diction soon. He praised Herre-
ra’s “honesty and clarity.”
But it didn’t take long for
Herrera to receive other messag-
es, calling him a traitor for
speaking out. Some criticized
him for publicly naming ex-gen-
eral Mario Montoya, the former
army chief who Herrera said
pressured him to boost body
counts.
Herrera had been jailed for
seven years before beginning the
transitional justice process. He
didn’t have much left to lose. But
he still feared for his life, and for
the safety of his wife and daugh-
ters, ages 17 and 13.
The walls of Herrera’s home
office celebrate his decades-long
military career. There’s the com-
posite from his military school.
There’s the photo of him and his
three brothers, all in uniform, on
the day in 1983 when he was
promoted to second lieutenant.
That career came to an end
over what happened in 2007,
when he took charge of a brigade
in Catatumbo. He says Montoyatold him he needed to boost
combat kills. “I’ll be back,” Her-
rera says Montoya told him, “and
if you haven’t changed the re-
sults, get ready because I’ll re-
lieve you.”
Montoya has repeatedly de-
nied wrongdoing. His lawyer,
Andrés Garzón, said Montoya
followed army standards that
measured operating results in
seven categories, not just body
counts. Garzón accused Herrera
and other former military lead-
ers of lying in their testimonies
to reduce punishment.
Herrera soon started noticing
unusual deaths, but he didn’t do
anything about it. “In the degra-
dation of the conflict, you no
longer care about that,” he said.
“You care about statistics.”
When the killings came to
light, Herrera and other leaders
denied the extent of their roles.
But the military soon came un-
der intense pressure to hold
leaders accountable. Colombian
courts have described the kill-
ings as a crime against humanity,
“a systematic and widespread
practice” against civilians that
frequently came with “acts of
torture.”
After being held in pretrial
detention for seven years, after
hearing the stories of victims and
meeting with former FARC mem-
bers, Herrera started to acknowl-
edge his responsibility.
“The arrogance of the power
and the rank goes away,” he said.
“Then you become much more
human and begin to under-
stand.”
Before the hearings, Herrera
and other military leaders met
with the families of victims.
María Fernanda Franco Gómez
was 7 years old when her father
was taken and killed by soldiers.
Now 22, she yelled at the former
officers.
“How could you let this hap-
pen? Don’t you have children?”
she shouted. “You’re worse than
monsters.”
Herrera promised he would
try to get her more information
about her father’s death. She
didn’t believe him, she said in an
interview.
But at the hearing, Herrera
told Franco he had found more
details. He gave her his number
and said he would try to learn
more.
The look on her face relaxed.
Herrera asked if he could give a
hug. Franco politely declined.
They shook hands instead.
“We all deserve a second
chance,” he said.
“Yes, we all do,” she agreed,
“but you have to earn it.”Diana Durán contributed to this
report.Ex-Colombian colonel confronts killings of innocents
NICOLE ACUNA/SPECIAL JURISDICTION FOR PEACE/REUTERS
Victims’ relatives weep at an April hearing organized by Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace, which is examining the “false positives”
scandal in which more than 6,000 people falsely labeled as guerrilla fighters were killed by government forces from 2002 to 2008.ISABEL VALDES FOR THE SPECIAL JURISDICTION FOR PEACE
Santiago Herrera Fajardo, a former army colonel, is one of the
highest-ranking officers to accept responsibility for the killings.