Russian Electoral Interference: Present, Past, and Future
Russian Electoral Interference: Present, Past, and Future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq_p1edwlPE
Tag: elections
The End of the Voting Methods Debate
“A new voting method, AADV (Approve/Approve/Disapprove Voting), was proposed in 2020. Each voter has the option to approve of either one or two of the candidates, and also has the option to disapprove of one candidate. Each candidate’s approvals and disapprovals are separately summed. Disapprovals are then subtracted from approvals to obtain the net approvals for each candidate. The candidate with the most (positive) net approvals is declared the winner. If no candidate achieves positive net approvals, NOTA (None Of The Above) has won. If NOTA should win, all candidates are disqualified and a new election must be held with new candidates.”
https://reason.com/2024/07/05/the-end-of-the-voting-methods-debate/
Biden is out of the 2024 race. What happens to his campaign donations?
“The Biden campaign said it had $240 million in cash on hand earlier this month, compared to former President Donald Trump’s $331 million. Campaign finance rules put some limits on what Biden can do with that money now that he’s no longer running for president.
The money isn’t just in limbo, however. Though it’s not yet completely certain whether Harris will become the nominee — she’d need Biden’s delegates at the Democratic National Convention to assume the candidacy, though his endorsement certainly puts her ahead of any possible competition — she could access Biden’s funds more easily than another Democrat. And the campaign pot only seems to be growing: Major Democratic donors, some of whom had paused their contributions after Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month due to concerns about his candidacy, reportedly reopened their wallets after Biden’s announcement Sunday.
Biden and Harris already share funds in a campaign committee under campaign finance laws that allow the president and vice president to run together as one ticket, said Saurav Ghosh, the Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform. If she were to remain on the ticket as the presidential nominee, “the new ticket would maintain access to all the funds in the campaign committee,” Ghosh added.
That would make Harris’s transition to the top of the ticket seamless — at least when it comes to the money.”
https://www.vox.com/joe-biden/361991/361991biden-campaign-funds-after-drops-out
It was not undemocratic for the Democrats to dump Joe Biden
“the party isn’t avoiding an election, they’re trying to win one, by picking a nominee who (they hope) can win more people’s votes”
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“yes, 15 million people did indeed end up voting in those primaries. But how democratic was that process? Biden won the primaries because he won the inside game. It was party elites who determined the (few) options available to voters. Polls showed the voters would in theory have preferred someone else, but they weren’t offered a realistic opposing candidate.
Furthermore, asserting that the primary result is all that matters, and that taking anything else into account is “undemocratic,” is a very limited and blinkered definition of democracy. After all, those 15 million people are a paltry sum compared to the 150 million people who may vote in the general election — people who, according to polls, overwhelmingly think Biden is too old to serve another term. Many of those people wanted another candidate — shouldn’t their views matter?”
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Another issue is that primary voters did not have the information that Biden would perform so poorly in the debate when they cast their votes.”
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“party elites didn’t push Biden off the ticket in an effort to steal the power of the presidency from him. They abandoned him because they fear he is hurting the party’s electoral chances — that is, because he’s lost support from voters.”
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“maybe it would have been nice if Democrats had had an actual presidential primary process rather than this mess. But that didn’t happen — and, considering the options, party officials abandoning Biden to try and nudge him aside in favor of someone who can win was a reasonable response.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/362062/biden-drop-out-republicans-accuse-democrats-coup
Why Can’t All States Call Their Results on Election Night? Featuring Ben Ginsberg
Why Can’t All States Call Their Results on Election Night? Featuring Ben Ginsberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATVsuYMM_i4
Modi won the Indian election. So why does it seem like he lost?
“Overall, the BJP lost 63 of the seats it previously held in the Lok Sabha. That means that, although the BJP still has the most seats of any party in the lower house of parliament, it doesn’t have a majority. Together with its coalition partners, the BJP still has a 293-seat majority, but that’s not enough to make constitutional amendments unchallenged. Modi and the BJP will now encounter more friction — both from the opposition and potentially from within the coalition it formed as an insurance policy during the campaign.”
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/354352/modi-india-election-gandhi-bjp-uttar-pradesh-inauguration-hindutva
India’s election shows the world’s largest democracy is still a democracy
“If the basic test of whether a country remains a democracy is that the party in power can still suffer a setback at the ballot box, India passed”
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“Results from the nation’s parliamentary elections — the largest in the world — indicate a shocking electoral setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Setback,” to be clear, is a relative term here. At the end of the staggered six-week election, Modi will become only the second Indian prime minister to win a third consecutive term. As of this writing, the BJP-led National Democracy Alliance (NDA) has won 289 seats in the 543-seat parliament and is leading in one more. A majority requires 272 seats.
The BJP itself has won 240 seats. That’s more than any Indian party won between 1984 and 2009, when Modi first came to power, and in most elections, it would have been an amazing result. But the expectations game is real, and Modi and his party lost it.
During the campaign, the NDA had a stated goal of winning 400 seats: a supermajority that would have allowed them to push through major legislative and constitutional changes. They didn’t come close. And after winning an absolute majority on its own in the last election, the BJP will likely now have to rely on its smaller coalition partners in the NDA to form a government.
Exit polls over the weekend were also wildly wrong, with most incorrectly projecting around a 350-seat victory for Modi. (One of the more bizarre media moments on Tuesday was a prominent pollster breaking down in tears on Indian TV over his erroneous forecast and being comforted by his fellow panelists on camera. Not something you’re likely to see from Frank Luntz.)
The opposition Congress Party, which very recently looked headed for political oblivion under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, the much-mocked fourth-generation scion of India’s most prominent political dynasty, appears likely to double its tally from the last election.”
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/353785/india-election-2024-modi-bjp
Republicans are ramping up election fraud claims ahead of November
“Forget election season; election denial season has officially kicked off.
Over the last few weeks, Republican legislators have held committee hearings as well as introduced and passed legislation preventing noncitizens from voting — something that is already illegal in state and federal elections, and very rare. Former President Donald Trump has ramped up his claims that the 2024 election will be stolen — even above and beyond his typical portending. The cast of the 2024 veepstakes have all been toeing the line on election denialism. And let’s not forget the hundreds of election-denying candidates running for election or reelection up and down the ballot.
“This effort has the effect, and perhaps has the intent, of planting the seeds of doubt about an election that some Trump supporters must think he might lose,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.
There was a moment in the weeks following the 2022 midterm elections where it felt like maybe, just maybe, the election denial trend was starting to fade. Voters had roundly rejected election-denying candidates, including in some of the most high-profile races on the ballot, and the vast majority of candidates who lost their election conceded, including even some of the most dedicated election deniers. But it’s become clear over the past few weeks that Republicans are not yet ready to abandon the election denial narrative and are instead angling to make it a central issue come November.”
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“Roughly the same percentage of Americans believe the 2020 election was stolen today as did in 2021. Polling from YouGov and The Economist in April showed 36 percent of Americans said Biden did not legitimately win, similar to the 38 percent who said so in April 2021 — making it clear what kind of lasting impact this rhetoric can have on voters’ perception of an election’s legitimacy. It also raises the specter of a repeat of the violence we saw on Jan. 6; meanwhile, threats against election workers have continued in the four years since the last presidential election.”
https://abcnews.go.com/538/republicans-ramping-election-fraud-claims-ahead-november/story?id=110640715
‘None of them have clean hands’: Dems rebuke Alito, SCOTUS over flag controversy
“Top Democrats are calling for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to recuse himself from cases related to former President Donald Trump after reports surfaced that an inverted American flag, a symbol linked to the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement, was flown outside his home in the days following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
According to The New York Times, the flag was seen flying on Jan. 17, 2021, three days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Alito told the Times: “I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” and said that his wife, Martha-Ann, had raised it in response to “objectionable and personally insulting” yard signs put out by their neighbors.
The report marks the latest blow to the Court as it faces heightened scrutiny over judicial ethics after a ProPublica investigation revealed that both Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas had personal relationships and financial exchanges with billionaire GOP donors. Separate reports also showed Thomas’ wife, Virginia, to be a fierce supporter of the former president.
Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has long called for a congressionally enforced code of conduct for the Court, released a statement Friday night calling on Alito to recuse himself from cases relating to Jan. 6 and the 2020 election, reiterating a previous admonishment that “the Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making.”
“Flying an upside-down American flag — a symbol of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement — clearly creates the appearance of bias,” Durbin wrote. “Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former President’s immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/18/alito-flag-recuse-jan-6-reactions-00158775
Trump turns his legal woes into a campaign fundraising machine
“for his fundraising purposes, the trial may be a boon. Trump’s best fundraising days this year have been driven by his legal jeopardy, which his joint fundraising committee has worked to monetize. His appeals to supporters often reference his legal woes, and