Recently, Alabama’s Republican secretary of state, John Merrill, got into a Twitter spat with Mallory Hagan, a Democrat running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, over whether Merrill is suppressing the vote in the state. To have candidates for political office, one of them an incumbent office holder, debate such a contentious issue on Twitter demonstrates how much social media has become a part of the conversations surrounding elections, including the upcoming midterms.