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clairemann

Democracy Can't Survive Unless the Far Right Is Marginalized | Time - 0 views

  • As our nation comes to grip with the horrific events of January 6 and watches the Republican Party descend further into Trumpism as it pushes hundreds of restrictive voting laws across the country, the obvious question is how does American democracy come back from all this?
  • The super-majority of Americans across the political spectrum who reject the extremism need to come together. This includes the pro-democracy right
  • But only a new small “l” liberal Republican Party—distinct from the increasingly illiberal Trumpist GOP, can establish a new partisan identity that gives center-right voters a meaningful home.
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  • Republican Party is an illiberal anti-democratic nativist global outlier, with positions more extreme than France’s National Rally, and in line with the Germany’s AfD, Hungary’s Fidesz, Turkey’s AKP and Poland’s PiS, according to the widely respected V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute.
  • The GOP has been sliding into authoritarianism over two decades, using increasingly demonizing rhetoric against its opponents.
  • Historically, democracy dies.
  • Three-quarters of Americans disapprove of the January 6 mob’s actions, and Trump’s seemingly immovable approval floor dropped by about more than six points. In the days after, only 13 percent of Americans considered themselves “Trump Supporters” while another 16 percent considered themselves “Traditional Republicans.” If “Trump Supporters” were their own party, they’d be about as popular as Germany’s far-right AfD, which polled at about 15 percent for 2019, though their support more recently dropped off to 11 percent.
  • . For decades, majorities of Americans have told pollsters they want more parties to choose from, and registered their dissatisfaction with the two-party system by increasingly identifying as independents.
  • But as the two parties began sorting more clearly along liberal-conservative lines as “culture war” issues starting in the 1970s, and as American politics nationalized around these cultural issues, and, starting in the 1990s, as the long-time Democratic control of the House ended, every election became a high-stakes all-or-nothing fight for control of federal power.
  • The only way to elevate the moderate Republicans is for Congress to use its constitutional authority (Article I, Section IV) to change how we vote, and create electoral opportunities for a center-right to rise again.
ilanaprincilus06

Dominion Voting Systems Files $1.6 Billion Defamation Lawsuit Against Fox News : NPR - 0 views

  • the network spread false claims that the voting machine company was involved in voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
  • "Fox endorsed, repeated, and broadcast a series of verifiably false yet devastating lies about Dominion,"
  • Fox News issued a statement Friday morning stating that it "is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court."
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  • Dominion is not the only election technology company to say it was targeted by Fox News. Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against the network,
  • Dominion's court filing alleges that Fox "recklessly disregarded the truth"
  • "The lies did not simply harm Dominion," the company's lawsuit says. "They harmed democracy. They harmed the idea of credible elections. They harmed a once-unshakeable faith in democratic and peaceful transfers of power."
cvanderloo

In Georgia County, Elections Bills Have Consequences : NPR - 1 views

  • Long before Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a 98-page law that enacted drastic changes to election rules in Georgia this week, some lawmakers were already facing pushback amid an inflamed debate over voting rights.
  • Hancock County is about 100 miles east of Atlanta and one of the poorest in the country.
  • "He knows how important absentee voting and early voting is to this community," he said. "And he goes and introduces legislation to make it harder, more difficult for the very people to vote that are paying him as county attorney!"
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  • Thornton said he believes that an attorney should be an advocate, not an adversary, and others agree
  • One bill Fleming introduced, HB 531, would have curbed Sunday early voting, restricted mail-in voting, even made handing out food and water to voters a misdemeanor crime.
  • Fleming was county attorney that year when about 20% of Sparta's voters — all Black — had their voter registrations challenged before a mayoral race.
  • While Republicans have proposed hundreds of restrictive bills across the country, Warren says the particular measures discussed in Georgia are personal for Black people like himself that experienced Jim Crow laws firsthand.
  • Warren said Facebook posts and meetings with community members helped mobilize action before the county commission, and now says other local jurisdictions that have hired Fleming as attorney are considering dropping him, too.
  • In the short term at least, it appears that some Republicans are paying attention. The bill signed into law Thursday reversed course on some of the harshest measures, keeping no-excuse absentee voting and actually expanding in-person early voting access.
edencottone

Opinion | I Want Trump to Face Justice. But the House Shouldn't Impeach Him. - The New ... - 0 views

  • events of Jan. 6. Our democratic institutions were assaulted.
  • All responsible parties, including President Trump, must face justice.
  • make the wrong decision in how to hold him accountable, it could damage the integrity of our system of justice, further fan the flames of division, and disillusion millions of Americans ─ all while failing to accomplish anything.
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  • tools that lie before Congress, it is clear that pursuing impeachment only days before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated is not the answer.
  • inadequate time to reasonably investigate, present and debate articles of impeachment.
  • new administration
  • These aren’t minor concerns. A hasty impeachment could raise a host of consequences that could have a striking impact on the long-term stability of our country.
  • an impeachment on the grounds that they do will inevitably erode the norms around what may be considered constitutionally protected speech.
  • a snap impeachment will undoubtedly fuel the divisions between our citizens at a time when the wounds of Jan. 6 are still raw.
  • We cannot rush to judgment simply because we want retribution or, worse, because we want to achieve a particular political outcome.
  • opportunity to build bridges and unite the American people around our shared values.
  • new Congress
  • Failing to do so will undermine our efforts to bring people together.
  • Congress long after Mr. Trump has left office, inhibiting Congress’s ability to tackle the Covid-19 crisis, reignite our economy and other pressing issues.
  • a too-quick impeachment will not suddenly change the minds of millions of Americans who still do not recognize the election of President-elect Biden as legitimate.
  • rushed proceedings will be seen as validating the view that impeachment is part of a multiyear campaign to delegitimize Mr. Trump’s 2016 election.
  • detriment of the Constitution.
  • I implore our congressional leaders and Mr. Biden to take a moment to consider what is at stake.
  • options include censure, criminal proceedings and actions under the 14th Amendment, after a complete and thorough investigation into the events leading up to the assault on the Capitol.
  • I acknowledged Joe Biden as president-elect on Nov. 7.
  • But make no mistake, our Constitution is the bedrock of our great nation.
  • We cannot and should not support a rushed, divisive action simply because the emotions of the moment demand it. That is not the American way.
jmfinizio

Opinion: The real key to winning this election - CNN - 0 views

  • the ghosts seem to be turning out in large numbers to cast their ballots early.
  • The long lines are an important reminder that the 2020 election will be won or lost based on the ground game.
  • Voting restrictions (photo identification requirements, registration limits and more) that have been imposed in more than 25 states heighten the importance of obtaining as large a margin as possible.
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  • This election feels historic down to the bones.
  • This means that each party needs to make sure that every supporter has a clear voting plan if they have not already mailed-in their ballots.
  • Each party needs to do the better job selling the message that not voting is simply not an option.
  • We live in a passive, observational age where so much of our politics has turned into what we watch, hear, read, email and tweet.
  • The party that forgets to pay sufficient attention to the ground game is the one that will be rendered powerless come January 2021.
lucieperloff

American Exceptionalism Blinds Us To Election Risks | Time - 0 views

  • Lieutenant Colonel Jabbar of the Afghan Commandos was good at chess.
  • Lieutenant Colonel Jabbar of the Afghan Commandos was good at chess.
    • lucieperloff
       
      What is this related to?
  • not so much the way Jabbar beat me but the way it so surprised those who watched.
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  • The veneer of American exceptionalism on the battlefield still held and those who watched my games with Jabbar—mostly support personnel who likely had little interaction with Afghan officers—displayed a soft sort of jingoism in their disbelief that an Afghan might beat one of their own.
  • Again, it’s that soft jingoism. A belief that we can’t lose.
    • lucieperloff
       
      Very dangerous but also very American
  • However, the idea that the military would have any role to play in adjudicating a U.S. election is, of itself, a chilling proposition.
  • Imagine a scenario where unrest around the election matches what we witnessed this summer, when the Trump administration deployed the National Guard. Except now the military hasn’t been deployed to quell those protesting social injustice, but rather to quell those who dispute the result of an election.
  • No democracy can survive without the assurance of a peaceful transfer of power.
    • lucieperloff
       
      So many unknowns and what-ifs in regards to this
  • Could an implicit bias in our exceptionalism take us blindly from “our city on a hill” along a winding path that leads to the lowlands of dysfunction? Are we already on that path?
peterconnelly

Opinion: No more union-busting. It's time for companies to give their workers what they... - 0 views

  • This year, workers at Amazon, Starbucks and other major corporations are winning a wave of union elections, often in the face of long odds and employer resistance. These wins are showing it's possible for determined groups of workers to break through powerful employers' use of union-busting tactics, ranging from alleged retaliatory firings to alleged surveillance and forced attendance at anti-union "captive audience meetings." But workers should not have to confront so many obstacles to exercising a guaranteed legal right to unionize and bargain for improvements in their work lives and livelihoods.
  • For decades, wage suppression, growing income inequality and persistent racial and gender wage gaps have characterized the US labor market.
  • But now, as workers are pointing the way to better workplaces and a more equitable economy, employers and policymakers need to pay attention. Policymakers must better protect workers' union rights, and employers must start respecting workers' right to participate in union elections without interference or coercion.
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  • Unions are among the most effective mechanisms available for addressing massive economic inequalities. Congress should adopt labor law reforms to better protect workers' right to organize, starting with the widely popular Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. Among other things, the PRO Act would create the first serious monetary penalties for employers that retaliate against workers for unionizing.
  • Congress must also adequately fund the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) so the agency can enforce labor law.
  • Many US workers say they want a union, but far too few have one. Right now, workers who've won recent union elections are inviting employers to meet them as equals and start bargaining union contracts.
  • Labor unions are highly correlated with safer conditions because they give workers a voice in setting workplace policies and the ability to engage management in addressing concerns without fear of retaliation.
  • The Black-led, multiracial committees that have led organizing drives at Amazon warehouses and the young women baristas leading breakthrough organizing victories at Starbucks are changing the public face of the labor movement in powerful and promising ways.
  • Two-thirds of union workers are women and/or workers of color.
  • In any company, the transparency and consistency of a union contract that sets wage rates, scheduled raises and procedures for promotions helps guard against forms of discriminatory bias that otherwise disadvantage women and workers of color.
  • Unionizing workers will continue to need extraordinary solidarity, persistence and public support in order to succeed. This is a moment of opportunity for all of us. Anyone ready to start reversing the worst economic inequalities the US has seen in almost a century can choose now to join and support workers who are organizing unions.
Javier E

How 2020 Forced Facebook and Twitter to Step In - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • mainstream platforms learned their lesson, accepting that they should intervene aggressively in more and more cases when users post content that might cause social harm.
  • During the wildfires in the American West in September, Facebook and Twitter took down false claims about their cause, even though the platforms had not done the same when large parts of Australia were engulfed in flames at the start of the year
  • Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube cracked down on QAnon, a sprawling, incoherent, and constantly evolving conspiracy theory, even though its borders are hard to delineate.
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  • Content moderation comes to every content platform eventually, and platforms are starting to realize this faster than ever.
  • Nothing symbolizes this shift as neatly as Facebook’s decision in October (and Twitter’s shortly after) to start banning Holocaust denial. Almost exactly a year earlier, Zuckerberg had proudly tied himself to the First Amendment in a widely publicized “stand for free expression” at Georgetown University.
  • The evolution continues. Facebook announced earlier this month that it will join platforms such as YouTube and TikTok in removing, not merely labeling or down-ranking, false claims about COVID-19 vaccines.
  • the pandemic also showed that complete neutrality is impossible. Even though it’s not clear that removing content outright is the best way to correct misperceptions, Facebook and other platforms plainly want to signal that, at least in the current crisis, they don’t want to be seen as feeding people information that might kill them.
  • When internet platforms announce new policies, assessing whether they can and will enforce them consistently has always been difficult. In essence, the companies are grading their own work. But too often what can be gleaned from the outside suggests that they’re failing.
  • It tweaked its algorithm to boost authoritative sources in the news feed and turned off recommendations to join groups based around political or social issues. Facebook is reversing some of these steps now, but it cannot make people forget this toolbox exists in the future
  • As platforms grow more comfortable with their power, they are recognizing that they have options beyond taking posts down or leaving them up. In addition to warning labels, Facebook implemented other “break glass” measures to stem misinformation as the election approached.
  • Platforms don’t deserve praise for belatedly noticing dumpster fires that they helped create and affixing unobtrusive labels to them
  • Warning labels for misinformation might make some commentators feel a little better, but whether labels actually do much to contain the spread of false information is still unknown.
  • News reporting suggests that insiders at Facebook knew they could and should do more about misinformation, but higher-ups vetoed their ideas. YouTube barely acted to stem the flood of misinformation about election results on its platform.
  • Even before the pandemic, YouTube had begun adjusting its recommendation algorithm to reduce the spread of borderline and harmful content, and is introducing pop-up nudges to encourage user
  • And if 2020 finally made clear to platforms the need for greater content moderation, it also exposed the inevitable limits of content moderation.
  • Down-ranking, labeling, or deleting content on an internet platform does not address the social or political circumstances that caused it to be posted in the first place
  • even the most powerful platform will never be able to fully compensate for the failures of other governing institutions or be able to stop the leader of the free world from constructing an alternative reality when a whole media ecosystem is ready and willing to enable him. As Renée DiResta wrote in The Atlantic last month, “reducing the supply of misinformation doesn’t eliminate the demand.”
  • Even so, this year’s events showed that nothing is innate, inevitable, or immutable about platforms as they currently exist. The possibilities for what they might become—and what role they will play in society—are limited more by imagination than any fixed technological constraint, and the companies appear more willing to experiment than ever.
mcginnisca

Republicans have a candidate who could take back the White House. They're just not voti... - 0 views

  • John Kasich may be running a distant third in the primary, but he's the Republican presidential candidate best positioned to beat Hillary Clinton in a general election matchup
  • The researchers then took the results of those interviews and combined them with voter demographics and economic data to forecast an outcome in each state. These models, as expected, show Clinton pretty easily winning Electoral College majorities over Trump and Cruz, the two Republican frontrunners.
  • Yet she still loses overwhelmingly — she trails Kasich in a couple of traditional swing states (Colorado and Kasich's home state of Ohio), and even narrowly trails him in bluer states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Maine, and Oregon.
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  • By contrast, both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump would lose to Clinton in a general election battle, according to the Morning Consult projections — though, interestingly, not in historic blowouts but instead by similar margins to Mitt Romney's 2012 loss
  • "If the election were held today, John Kasich would receive 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 234, largely due to strong performances in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic,
  • Trump would get just 210 electoral votes, and Cruz would get 206.
sissij

Divisions in My Dorm Room - The New York Times - 0 views

  • If I had voted, however, I would have picked Mr. Trump. I was focused on school. I had no idea that a few days later I would be dismissed as a “Trump supporter” and a person of “privilege” who “reflected an us versus them mind-set” in an essay by my college roommate in this publication — an essay that would go viral and change my life.
  • As minorities, my mother, father, grandparents and I have experienced racial hate. My skin may be light, but I understand discrimination. I may not know each person’s individual experience, but am able to empathize with others.
  • Why should we be afraid to express our opinions? If we see one another not as a Clinton supporter or a Trump supporter, but as human, perhaps we can discover empathy in the troubled nation in which we exist.The narrative should be one of inclusiveness, openness, respect and love. It is not only about making “America Great Again,” it is about making America home again.
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    This article shows a slice of the conflict that happening around us everywhere since the result of the election is announced. This is from the perspective of a college student who prefer Donald Trump and her reasoning doesn't sound all like crazy, it's rather rational. From the cries and intense argument over the election, we can see that America is still far from being inclusive. People are still very extreme. The one-sided information on the social media might be one of the reason why people are so blinded to only one side and refuse to respect others' choices. --Sissi (11/28/2016)
Javier E

The post-truth world of the Trump administration is scarier than you think - The Washin... - 0 views

  • it’s time to cross another bridge — into a world without facts. Or, more precisely, where facts do not matter a whit.
  • “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, of facts,” she declared on “The Diane Rehm Show”
  • Hughes, a frequent surrogate for President-elect Donald Trump and a paid commentator for CNN during the campaign, kept on defending that assertion at length
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  • What matters now, Hughes argued, is not whether his fraud claim is true. No, what matters is who believes it.
  • “You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally,” said Lewandowski, who was another ill-advised CNN hire. “The American people didn’t. They understood it. They understood that sometimes — when you have a conversation with people, whether it’s around the dinner table or at a bar — you’re going to say things, and sometimes you don’t have all the facts to back it up.”
  • two other Trump surrogates echoed this sentiment.
  • Ousted Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, speaking during an election post-mortem at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, blamed journalists for — yes — believing what his candidate said.
  • “Mr. Trump’s tweet, amongst a certain crowd, a large — a large part of the population, are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some — in his — amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies, and there’s no facts to back it up.”
  • but Trump is not a guy at a bar; he was the Republican nominee for president of the United States and will pretty soon be the leader of the free world
  • When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway about the same election-fraud claim discussed above — specifically, whether disseminating misinformation was “presidential”
  • “He’s the president-elect, so that’s presidential behavior,” Conway said, using mind-bending pseudo-logic
sissij

Take a Bad Year. And Make It Better. - The New York Times - 0 views

  •  
    Why does everybody think 2016 was a bad year? I think it is just because of the confirmation bias. The bad things that listed in this article do not happen only in 2016. There are deaths and war every year, the shout out that 2016 is a bad year appear particular after the election of Trump, so I think this presidential election is a catalyst for many people to reflect back on the bad things happened in 2016. Also I think saying goodbye to a year does not mean a new start for us because time is always continuous. Bad things won't disappear as a year goes by. --Sissi (12/31/2016)
kushnerha

When Was America Greatest? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The slogan evokes a time when America was stronger and more prosperous. But Mr. Trump doesn’t specify whether he’s expressing nostalgia for the 1950s — or 10 years ago. That vagueness is reflected by his voters, according to the results of a new survey, conducted online by the digital media and polling company Morning Consult.
  • Trump supporters offered a wide range of answers, with no distinct pattern. The most popular choice was the year 2000. But 1955, 1960, 1970 and 1985 were also popular. More than 2 percent of Trump’s supporters picked 2015, when Mr. Trump’s campaign began.
  • Political science research suggests that Americans’ optimism can be influenced by whether their political party is in the White House. So it’s perhaps not surprising that Democrats feel better than Republicans about current circumstances.
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  • In March, Pew asked people whether life was better for people like them 50 years ago — and a majority of Republicans answered yes. Trump supporters were the most emphatic, with 75 percent saying things were better in the mid-1960s.Democrats, though, were less enthusiastic about the past. Forty-eight percent said life was better now than it was 50 years ago, while 17 percent of Democrats said it was the same, and only 28 percent said it was worse.
  • In the Morning Consult survey, 44 percent of people over all said America’s greatest years were ahead of it, while 36 percent said those years had already passed. But in an election when America’s past greatness has played such a starring role, we wanted to see more details about just how voters saw the past and the future.
  • So, when was the greatest year?Over all, 2000 was the most popular choice, a preference that cut across political party, candidate preference, gender and age. The year’s popularity may partly reflect people’s fondness for round numbers. But many voters explained their choice by referring to a greater sense of security. The Sept. 11 attacks occurred the following year. (An election year also has something for all partisans to grab onto. Bill Clinton was president that year, but George W. Bush won the election to replace him.)
  • Some people, of course, reached farther back into history. The year the Declaration of Independence was signed, 1776, got a few votes. One person chose 1789, the year the Constitution took effect. One person chose 1800. One chose 1860, the year Southern states began to secede from the Union. But most answers were of a more recent vintage.
  • partisan patterns in views of America’s greatness. Republicans, over all, recall the late 1950s and the mid-1980s most fondly. Sample explanations: “Reagan.” “Economy was booming.” “No wars!” “Life was simpler.” “Strong family values.” The distribution of Trump supporters’ greatest years is somewhat similar to the Republican trend, but more widely dispersed over the last 70 years.
  • Democrats seem to think America’s greatest days were more recent; they were more likely to pick a year in the 1990s, or since 2000. After 2000, their second-most-popular answer was 2016. Sample explanations: “We’re getting better.” “Improving social justice.” “Technology.” Even 2008, a year of financial collapse, was pretty popular, perhaps because President Obama was also elected that year.
Duncan H

What Mitt Lost While He Won - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • In the end, Mitt Romney didn’t lose the Michigan primary, and he didn’t lose his near-lock on the Republican nomination. Rick Santorum isn’t going away, but a solid victory in Michigan and an easy win in Arizona leaves the Romney campaign’s basic math more or less intact. If their candidate can keep winning contests in the West and Northeast and holding serve across the Midwest, Romney’s rivals won’t be able to stop him from grinding out a victory.
  • But the frontrunner did lose something in the days leading up to the Michigan vote. He lost his general election narrative.
  • From the very first debates onward, Romney has spent the primary campaign walking a fine line — trying to assuage widespread right-wing doubts about his ideological reliability, while crafting a persona and a policy portfolio that will appeal to moderates as well as conservatives come November.
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  • Romney had sketched out an economic plan that avoided the supply-side gimmicks and outright crankery embraced by many of his rivals. He had backed the smartest conservative thinking on entitlements and was rewarded with bipartisan cover when Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden endorsed a similar model for Medicare reform.
  • Thanks to his own smooth evasiveness and the blunders of his rivals, meanwhile, he had managed to sidestep the obvious resemblances between his Massachusetts health care bill and the White House’s Affordable Care Act. And by selling himself as a turnaround artist rather than an ideologue, a champion of the middle class rather than a defender of his fellow 1 percenters, he seemed well-positioned to campaign on competence, experience and sound economic stewardship in the general election.
  • But then came the South Carolina primary, and Romney’s fumbling, tone-deaf responses to Newt Gingrich’s attacks on his career at Bain Capital. His awkwardness didn’t have direct policy implications, but it revealed a surprising inability to defend his own chosen electoral narrative against fairly obvious attacks. And with the businessman-turnaround artist narrative compromised, it became much easier for Romney’s rivals to turn the focus to his moderate past and long list of flip-flops.
  • It was to change this dynamic, presumably, that Romney’s campaign decided to have him come out for the first time with a big tax reform plan of his own, which he unveiled last week in a speech at Ford Field. In its broadest strokes, the plan isn’t terrible: It promises lower rates and a broader base, which is the goal of just about every sensible tax reform proposal, and it cuts rates for most taxpayers, not just businesses and the rich. But the Romney campaign has declined to explain exactly how the cuts will be paid for, offering vague promises of loophole closing and spending cuts that suggest a return to supply-side irresponsibility.
  • If left unrevised and unaddressed, this irresponsibility threatens to demolish the pillars of Romney’s general-election argument. First, it will make it considerably harder for him to attack the White House’s record on deficits, which would otherwise be a central part of the case against the president. Second, it will make Romney’s own vision for entitlement reform easy to demagogue and dismiss, since President Obama will have grounds to argue that his opponent only wants to cut Medicare and Social Security in order to cut taxes on the rich.
  • Both of these problems, needless to say, will be exacerbated if Romney continues to be unable to talk about his wealth in anything save the most clueless and flatfooted fashion. The White House might prefer to face Rick Santorum in the general election, but an out-of-touch rich guy running on Medicare cuts and an ill-considered tax plan will make for a pretty inviting target in his own right.
  •  
    What does this bode for the future?
sissij

How the Republicans Sold Your Privacy to Internet Providers - The New York Times - 0 views

  • the House quietly voted to undo rules that keep internet service providers — the companies like Comcast, Verizon and Charter that you pay for online access — from selling your personal information.
  • President Trump will be able to sign legislation that will strike a significant blow against online privacy protection.
  • The bill is an effort by the F.C.C.’s new Republican majority and congressional Republicans to overturn a simple but vitally important concept
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  • Reversing those protections is a dream for cable and telephone companies, which want to capitalize on the value of such personal information.
  • Apparently, the Trump administration and its allies in Congress value privacy for themselves over the privacy of the Americans who put them in office. What is good business for powerful cable and phone companies is just tough luck for the rest of us.
  •  
    In today's class, we discussed how the parties now only have a shell and don't really serve as a safeguard of democracy. The parties become more like a entrance ticket to the election. Many people get in a parties not because the ideology appeals to them, but because by entering the party, it raise the chances and opportunity of winning an election. Now, money and power are played as stakes in politics and the general population is left to ignorance. Sometimes, I feel like the company are the real citizens who the government is serving, not the people. --Sissi (3/29/2017)
Javier E

Most Campaign Outreach Has No Effect on Voters - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • David Broockman, a Stanford University assistant professor, and Joshua Kalla, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed data from 49 field experiments—state, local, and federal campaigns that let political scientists access their data to evaluate their methods
  • For every flyer stuck in a mailbox, every door knocked by an earnest volunteer, and every candidate message left on an answering machine, there was no measurable change in voting outcomes. Even early outreach efforts, which are somewhat more successful at persuading voters, tend to fade from memory by Election Day.
  • Broockman and Kalla also estimated that the effect of television and online ads is zero, although only a small portion of their data speaks directly to that point.
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  • The findings suggest that a lot of the time, energy, and money poured into traditional campaigning methods is wasted, and that the campaign operatives hawking tried-and-true tactics don’t have the evidence to back up their claims.
  • It also casts doubt on the theory of the swing voter who can be persuaded with enough flyers, ad exposure, and conversations with earnest volunteers
  • In reality, Broockman and Kalla find, direct outreach is most effective at improving voter turnout, suggesting that campaigns should focus on getting their core supporters to the polls than reaching out to a mythical middle.
  • This new study suggests that intentionally curated, issue-specific persuasion campaigns may shift people’s views more easily than partisan political campaigns.
  • Emma Green: So, is political campaigning useless?Joshua Kalla: The short answer is ‘no.
  • There are lots of things that campaigning can accomplish. Two decades of research on voter registration and hundreds of field experiments show really cost-effective ways to increase turnout in the base.But on persuasion, yes, we find that on average, there are very small effects.
  • Kalla: A lot of campaign operatives think there’s this big pool of moderate, undecided voters that we can spend money on to persuade them to our side. That strategy is probably not the right strategy. And we should be skeptical of big claims of persuasion.
  • Kalla: All the money is being poured into the same time and the same place. It’s hard to imagine that the hundredth TV ad that a person views is really worth it from a monetary perspective, versus that same money spent in a different race or a lower race. There’s a case to be made that too much money is being spent in the same ways and on the same people.
  • But the takeaway from this paper should not be that campaigns should stop. Campaigns do a lot of work that is measurable in return on getting voters to vote, and persuading voters. It’s just a question of how the money is spent.
  • Kalla: The first order of understanding an election and how people vote is partisan identity. Most people vote based on whether there’s a D or an R next to their name. Unpacking that should be more the focus than the horserace.
  • We don’t see persuasive effects in general elections where a Democrat is talking to a Republican. But in ballot-measure campaigns and primaries and the transgender work, it seems that persuasion is possible.
  • Most Americans view themselves in a partisan lens. When it comes time to vote, it’s less a function of a person running for office than a person with a party label beside his or her name.
  • Green: But what about the roughly 39 percent of Americans who identify as independents?Kalla: A lot of independents tend to be what political scientists term as “closeted partisans.” They might not explicitly identify with a party, but if you ask them which party they lean toward, they’ll often give you an answer. Their behavior tends to look a lot like the behavior of people who explicitly identify as partisans.
  • Green: Our democracy is based on this romantic idea that encounters in the public square—conversations, essays, speeches, etc.— have the power to change how people view the world. If you’re saying that’s basically not true, where does that leave us? Are we all just destined to remain isolated in the prisons of our own convictions?
  • Kalla: I want to draw a distinction with the transgender canvassing work. That was very much focusing on getting people to be introspective and think about times that they or their loved ones have been discriminated against, and how that made them feel, and how that real, lived experience informs their views on non-discrimination laws and views toward LGBT people. That’s close to an ideal of how we want democracy to function.
  • That’s not the type of discourse you see in campaigns. I don’t think TV ads or every glossy postcard is really going to lead to enlightened discourse among the American public.
aprossi

(4) It's now a crime in Georgia to approach voters in line to give them food and water - 0 views

  • The latest on Georgia's new law suppressing voting access
  • It's now a crime in Georgia to approach voters in line to give them food and water 
  • A lawsuit has already been filed over the new Georgia law limiting voting
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  • A Georgia state lawmaker was arrested for protesting the bill outside the governor's office
  • Georgia passed a sweeping elections bill restricting voting access. Here's what you need to know.
  • Georgia secretary of state vows to "ensure" eligible citizens will be able to vote under new elections law
  • Stacey Abrams calls Georgia elections bill "nothing less than Jim Crow 2.0"
  • Voting rights groups have slammed Georgia's far-reaching bill, particularly for its provisions aimed at the secretary of state and local election officials.
  • At least 45 states have seen bills aimed at voter suppression. These are the key states to watch.
katedriscoll

The Bloodsport of the Hive Mind: Common Knowledge in the Age of Many-to-Many Broadcast ... - 0 views

  • Common knowledge is that which I know and that which I know everyone else knows. That, at least, is the easiest way to put it for my purposes here, which is how a large number of people came to believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election—and subsequently constructed an intellectual edifice around this conviction that led to the January 6 Capitol riots.
  • David Lewis gave the most well-known account of common knowledge in 1969:Let us say that it is common knowledge in a population P that X if and only if some state of affairs A holds such that:1. Everyone in P has reason to believe that A holds. 2. A indicates to everyone in P that everyone in P has reason to believe that A holds. 3. A indicates to everyone in P that X.David Lewis, Convention (1969)In other words, in an imagined group of people P, you get common knowledge of “Trump won the election” only if you have a situation in which every member of the group is not only given reason to believe that Trump won the election, but also that everyone else in the group has reason to believe (and likely the same reason to believe) that Trump won the election.
ilanaprincilus06

Argentina Legalizes Abortion In Historic Senate Vote : NPR - 0 views

  • Argentina's Senate voted early Wednesday to legalize elective abortion, marking a historic shift in the heavily Catholic country that is the homeland of Pope Francis
  • the Senate passed the bill 38-29 with one abstention just over two weeks after the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Argentina's Congress, narrowly approved the measure.
  • "Today we took a huge step and we are getting closer to the Argentina we dream of. We are writing our destiny, we are making history."
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  • Argentina joins a small group of Latin American and Caribbean countries that have legalized elective abortion, including Uruguay, Cuba and Guyana.
  • in mid-November. Fernández, who was elected in late 2019, has been vocal about legalizing abortion during his presidency and says he will sign the measure.
  • "Today we are a better society that expands rights to women and guarantees public health," Fernández wrote after the legislation passed.
  • In 2018 and 2020, people backing the legalization have sported green clothing and often held or worn green bandannas — a visual that has become linked with the movement.
  • Despite being largely illegal throughout the region, about 5.4 million abortions occurred annually in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2015 and 2019, the Guttmacher Institute reported.
mshilling1

How Conspiracy And Disinformation Are Affecting U.S. Politics : NPR - 0 views

  • From President Trump's phone call to Georgia officials demanding to "find" more votes to Trump supporters heading to D.C. to reject the election results — disinformation is playing a key role.
  • Hannah, since we were talking about the embrace of conspiracy theories, we can't ignore what we've heard in the last 24 hours - The Washington Post releasing this recorded phone call of President Trump trying to persuade Georgia officials to reject their election results. And he used conspiracy theories and debunked information to make his case
  • I mean, we all knew Trump was clinging to the election conspiracy, promoting disinformation around it. But it's still quite something to hear it, to hear the president of the United States attempt to cajole and intimidate by invoking conspiracy, to hear him source his information to the Internet.
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  • So, you know, this ploy is doomed, but the effect is the continued erosion of trust in democratic institutions by giving credence to these bogus theories.
  • You talk about mainstreaming. A new NPR/Ipsos poll shows that a majority of Americans - more than 80% - are concerned about the spread of false information
  • But if you look a little closer, it breaks down kind of predictably along partisan lines with each side blaming the other for the spread.
  • I am looking forward to having the conversation about how we rebuild the trust in our democratic institutions, including our election systems, with people of good intent, with people who want to do that. And I just think that this certain segment of the population isn't interested in doing that because it doesn't fulfill their objectives.
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