North Dakota cracks down on digital deception after campaign smear tactics

The North Dakota Senate passed House Bill 1204 on Wednesday with a 45-1 vote, expanding state law against false political advertisements to explicitly include social media, text messages, and phone calls. Sen. Sean Cleary (R-Bismarck), who introduced an amendment adding text messages and phone calls to the original bill, previously served as campaign manager for Rep. Julie Fedorchak. During the 2024 primary election, anonymous text messages falsely claimed Fedorchak had dropped out of the race, prompting her to call the incident “election fraud.” Despite this, Fedorchak won the primary with 46% of the vote. “As election communications evolve, I think our laws need to change with it,” Cleary said. The bill now returns to the House for approval of Cleary’s amendment before potentially heading to the governor’s desk.