BOSTON (AP) - Former U.S. Senate candidate Shiva Ayyadurai’s Twitter account has been suspended.
“Account suspended. Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules,” his account read on Friday.
In an email Ayyadurai blamed the suspension, which he said occurred on Monday, on actions by Democratic Secretary of State William Galvin and other state election officials.
Ayyadurai said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday those actions by Galvin and others “initiated algorithms that are now permanent to coerce and chill the Plaintiff’s speech” ultimately leading to his suspension.
A spokeswoman for Galvin said Friday that he and other members of the office are declining to comment on the lawsuit.
In 2018, Ayyadurai ran as an independent in the 2018 U.S. Senate race, which was won by incumbent Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
During the campaign, Ayyadurai displayed a sign on a campaign bus reading: “Only a REAL INDIAN Can Defeat the Fake Indian.”
Ayyadurai was born in India. The slogan referred to Warren’s claims of Native American ancestry.
Last year, Ayyadurai lost the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate to Kevin O’Connor, an attorney, who went on to lose to Democratic incumbent Sen. Edward Markey.
After September’s state primary, Ayyadurai made the misleading claim that the state committed election fraud by destroying over 1 million ballots. In fact, no Senate ballots were destroyed in Massachusetts, according to Debra O’Malley, a spokesperson for Galvin.
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