United States midterm elections 2018: Will infiltrators be able to sow divisions?

The United States is likely to hold midterm elections on November, 6, 2018.

Through midterms elections, Americans elect members of both houses of US Congress: Senate and House of Representatives.

All 435 seats in House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the United States will be contested in the elections.

As many as 39 state, and territorial governorships and numerous other state and local elections will also be contested.

The US authorities are going to polls amid fears of alleged Russian meddling which also marred the 2016 Presidential Elections.

AS investigations continue into the Russian meddling despite strong opposition from President Trump, Facebook recently detected suspicious activity on its platform that is being seen as coordinated influence campaign ahead of midterm elections.

The activity is said to have some semblance to the previous effort that was reportedly employed by the Russians to manipulate the presidential elections.

Facebook Inc says it had identified a new coordinated political influence campaign to mislead its users and sow dissension among voters ahead of November’s U.S. congressional elections.

It said it had removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram, part of an effort to combat foreign meddling in U.S. elections.

The company stopped short of identifying the source of the misinformation. But members of Congress who had been briefed by Facebook on the matter said the methodology of the influence campaign suggested Russian involvement.

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, which was shown the suspended pages ahead of the takedown, said they showed similarities in language and approach to previously fake accounts from the Internet Research Agency, which is known as the “troll factory” because it stirs up public opinion on social media sites.

After Facebook announcement, human rights, feminist and anti-racism activists have become worried that they are being influenced and  infiltrated  trough these   pages.  One of the pages named  Resisters   was being considered alarming because it was pushing for confrontation at multiple protests, including against “Unite the Right 2,” with a potential for violence. 

Last year  Unite the Right rally, hundreds of members of the alt-right and white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia and this year they announced to hold the  "Unite the Right 2".

Counter-protest rallies announced on suspicious pages have the potential to trigger violence , although the US authorities are more vigilant after the US presidential election.

The Americans are seeing the influence campaign as part of an effort to sow divisions  among them.

Though it is not yet clear whether the Russians are behind the campaign,Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters at the U.S. Capitol:  “I can say I think with pretty high confidence I think this is Russian-related.

During his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki earlier this month, Trump appeared to state that he believed Russia was no longer trying to influence the U.S. election process.

Trump later amended that, saying he was “very concerned” about Russian interference in the election. On Friday, Trump held a meeting with his national security advisers on election security.