In the last days before the U.S. presidential election, Elon Musk's X suspended the official account of a progressive-donor-backed ballot initiative called SwapYourVote. The volunteer-run website tries to get third-party voters in swing states to cast their ballots for Kamala Harris, matching them with Democrats in solidly blue states who agree to vote for the candidate of the swing state voter's choosing. The X account was restored, reportedly at around 11 a.m. PT, on Tuesday, after having been suspended two days prior, on Sunday, when X tagged it spam.

"The account was picked up by one of our automated spam defenses and has been reinstated," said an email from X to TechCrunch on Tuesday. X forbids on its platform manipulation and spam policy the amplification of information through automation.

Vote swapping, also known as co-voting or vote pairing, is a controversial practice that dates back to America's 2000 presidential election, where more than 36,000 Ralph Nader and Al Gore supporters traded votes.

So far, SwapYourVote reports that more than 12,000 voters have registered to vote in the 2024 election. This is still a very small fraction of America's total voters, but in some swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, this can make all the difference because it is where elections often go by thousands of votes.
SwapYourVote organizers are not sure what they did to break that policy in the first place.

We don't know what happened," read an email from a spokesman for SwapYourVote to TechCrunch. "Maybe we were caught up by automated spam filters because the account was new and we posted a lot? It still feels suspicious that this will happen so close to the election," he adds.

X's content moderation has been pretty haphazard in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, even for the expressed intent of Musk to transform X into a free speech haven. Just this week, researchers at Clemson University discovered an assemblage of 686 AI bots operating political influence campaigns on X, many spreading pro-Trump or pro-GOP disinformation. In September, X temporarily suspended the account of a journalist who posted leaked vetting documents for JD Vance. It later blocked links to the leaked document, stating the content was harmful.

Trying to access a link to the X account for @SwapYourVote on Tuesday morning met a user with a message that read "Account suspended" and "X suspends accounts which violate the X Rules." The social media accounts of SwapYourVote on other platforms such as TikTok and Instagram remained active and accessible on Tuesday.