Tag: 2020 election
How to be a good digital citizen during the election – and its aftermath
In the runup to the U.S. presidential election there has been an unprecedented amount of misinformation about the voting process and mail-in ballots. It’s almost certain that misinformation and disinformation will increase, including, importantly, in the aftermath of the election. Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information, and disinformation is misinformation that is knowingly and deliberately propagated.
While every presidential election is critical, the stakes feel particularly high given the challenges of 2020.
I study misinformation online, and I can caution you about the kind of misinformation you may see on Tuesday and the days after, and I can offer you advice about what you can do to help prevent its spread. A fast-moving 24/7 news cycle and social media make it incredibly easy to share content. Here are steps you can take to be a good digital citizen and avoid inadvertently contributing to the problem. Continue reading.
Lincoln Project: Absentee
Potential for uncounted military votes looms large in swing states
Six battleground states have tight deadlines for mail ballots
Many states have thousands of mailed military ballots. Many states have tight deadlines for counting them. And many states are swing states. But this year six states stand out for checking all three of those boxes.
In Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, state law provides little or no time after Election Day for military ballots to be counted. If the election is close enough, the outcome in one or more of those states could tilt the national contest one way or the other, and counting those ballots — or not — could determine the outcome.
Several factors could make it harder to count all ballots on time, whether mailed or cast in person. These include postal system delays as well as the sheer number of ballots of all types that are being cast — perhaps the most in U.S. history. Continue reading.
Democrats prep teams of lawyers for ‘Election Week’
House Democrats, confident of gaining ground in Tuesday’s elections, are also girding for a protracted legal battle over the results of contested races.
President Trump and his Republican allies have voiced heavy doubts about the validity of ballots cast this cycle, particularly in states that have expanded early voting and mail-in options to account for health concerns surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.
With that in mind, the House Democrats’ campaign arm has teamed up with Democrats in the Senate, the states and within the grass-roots community to field teams of lawyers spread around the country in anticipation of long, litigious fights over the legitimacy of ballots. Continue reading.
Scoop: Generals privately brief news anchors, promise no military role in election
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley held an off-the-record video call with top generals and network anchors this weekend to tamp down speculation about potential military involvement in the presidential election, two people familiar with the call tell Axios.
Why it matters: The nation’s top military official set up Saturday’s highly unusual call to make clear that the military’s role is apolitical, one of the sources said — and to dispel any notion of a role for the military in adjudicating a disputed election or making any decision around removing a president from the White House.
- Milley told the anchors that the U.S. military would have no role whatsoever in a peaceful transfer of power, one source added.
Also on the ballot: The future of the Trump political dynasty
If Trump wins, his family can set the political dialogue for the better part of a decade. If he loses, the Trumps may have to search for power elsewhere.
In the last century, it was the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes and the Clintons.
Now, it could be the Trumps.
Four years ago, the Trump children followed President Donald Trump’s cannonball into American politics, making their own ripples along the way. Continue reading.
Trump signals chaotic stretch after election
President Trump is signaling that Election Day could be followed by a stretch of uncertainty and chaos as a purge of top officials, legal challenges to election results and potential resistance to a normal transition cloud the prospects for an orderly post-election period no matter who wins.
Among the possible scenarios is a quick effort to fire or sideline Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, whose prominence and increasingly pointed criticism of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic have angered the president.
Other federal health officials whose approach to the pandemic has frustrated the president also may be targeted, people familiar with the discussions say. That means the team leading the fight against the biggest public health challenge in decades could be reshuffled as Trump or Joe Biden bring in new leadership after the election. Continue reading.
Trump’s plan to steal the election has ‘key role’ for Fox News: media critic
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has warned that unless former Vice President Joe Biden defeats President Donald Trump by 6% or more, Trump and his Republican allies will manipulate the courts in order to “steal the election” in key swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania. Carville is hardly the only one who fears that the Trump campaign will play dirty on and after Election Night. And according to Media Matters’ Matt Gertz, Trump has an accomplice in his plan to “steal the election”: Fox News.
In article published the day before the election, Gertz explains, “With Election Day looming, the expert consensus is that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is in a strong position, with President Donald Trump needing to catch a number of breaks to win. But Fox News’ propagandists are making it sound like the president is the odds-on favorite, priming their audience to attribute any defeat to Democratic fraud. Fox’s effort is a necessary, if not sufficient, step toward enacting Trump’s openly touted plan to try to steal the election — if it is close enough to do so — by preventing the counting of ballots legally cast for Biden. And even if the network fails to keep Trump in the White House, its reckless disinformation could raise tensions to feverish heights, potentially leading to political violence.”
Gertz notes that Fox News’ recent election coverage has “revolved around presenting anecdotal evidence that favors a Trump win as superior to polling data pointing to a likely Biden victory.” Continue reading.
My party is destroying itself on the altar of Trump
Benjamin L. Ginsberg practiced election law for 38 years. He co-chaired the bipartisan 2013 Presidential Commission on Election Administration.
President Trump has failed the test of leadership. His bid for reelection is foundering. And his only solution has been to launch an all-out, multimillion-dollar effort to disenfranchise voters — first by seeking to block state laws to ease voting during the pandemic, and now, in the final stages of the campaign, by challenging the ballots of individual voters unlikely to support him.
This is as un-American as it gets. It returns the Republican Party to the bad old days of “voter suppression” that landed it under a court order to stop such tactics — an order lifted before this election. It puts the party on the wrong side of demographic changes in this country that threaten to make the GOP a permanent minority.
These are painful words for me to write. I spent four decades in the Republican trenches, representing GOP presidential and congressional campaigns, working on Election Day operations, recounts, redistricting and other issues, including trying to lift the consent decree. Continue reading.