Skip to main content

Twitter brings back Election Labels for candidate accounts for 2020 elections

Twitter will be bringing back its “Election Label” feature for the 2020 races to help users distinguish between the accounts of various candidates on the social network.

According to a post published on Twitter’s company blog on December 12, the popular social network is not only verifying the campaign accounts of candidates who have qualified for the 2020 primary elections, but it will also be bringing back Election Labels, a secondary feature it employed in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.

An Election Label is an identification feature for certain Twitter accounts that contains further details about a given verified election candidate. In addition to having a blue check mark next to a candidate’s Twitter name, there will also be a short, gray label underneath their name that contains a ballot box icon, their state and district number, and the office they’re running for. Election Labels aren’t just limited to a candidate’s profile page, however, Once they’re rolled out, Twitter says that the label will appear “on every tweet sent and retweeted by the candidate’s account, even when embedded on sites off of Twitter.”

Twitter Election Label
Twitter, Inc.

Election Labels aren’t just for any candidate account on Twitter. According to the post, the labels are only for accounts of candidates who have already qualified for the general election ballot for the 2020 elections and are running for the following offices: The U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and governor. In contrast, for candidate accounts to obtain Twitter verification badges, the social media company requires that they must be for candidates “who have qualified for primary elections.”  The first primaries are slated to begin on February 11 in New Hampshire. The first caucus, in Iowa, will be on February 3.

Election Labels are expected to start appearing on candidate Twitter accounts (tentatively) after March 3, which is Super Tuesday, also known as the day when the largest number of U.S. states are holding a primary or caucus. The labels will not appear on a candidate’s account until the candidate has officially qualified to appear on the general election ballot, and the company says that the labels’ appearances “will happen on a rolling basis” since election and caucus dates vary from state to state.

Twitter verification badges for candidate accounts are another matter, however, and the company announced December 12 that it has begun the process of verifying the Twitter accounts of candidates. Candidate accounts that are eligible to be verified must have already qualified for the primary elections for the following offices: The U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, or for governor.

The Twitter verification process and the use of Election Labels are part of a partnership Twitter has with Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan and nonprofit online encyclopedia that covers American politics. In the context of this partnership, Ballotpedia is helping Twitter identify which candidates have qualified for the general election ballot.

Twitter has been big into implementing new features lately. The news about Election Labels comes a day after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that his company would fund “a small independent team” to develop an “open and decentralize standard for social media.”

Editors' Recommendations

Anita George
Anita has been a technology reporter since 2013 and currently writes for the Computing section at Digital Trends. She began…
Facebook to ban ads that claim election win before official announcement
facebook hacked

Facebook has announced it will prohibit ads from appearing on its service that prematurely announce a winner following the November 3 presidential election.

The measure also includes political ads from the camps of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden that claim victory before an official announcement is made.

Read more
Conspiracy theories already spreading ahead of Trump-Biden presidential debate
trump versus biden

Accounts associated with the conspiracy group QAnon have been amplifying rumors about Democratic candidate Joe Biden on Facebook and Twitter ahead of the first presidential debate with President Donald Trump on Tuesday night.

The accounts make claims that Biden will be wearing an earpiece for the debate — ostensibly to be fed answers — as well as other claims involving performance-enhancing drugs.

Read more
What the biggest tech companies are doing to make the 2020 election more secure
what the biggest tech companies are doing to secure 2020 election i voted sticker

As we gear up for the November election, all eyes are on tech companies to ensure there’s no spread of misinformation about the voting process or other false claims.

In 2016, Russian aids used Facebook to target Americans on the platform, and the manipulated content spreading fake news reached as many as 126 million Americans, according to The New York Times.

Read more