Category Archives: social media and social protests

“AI could create a disinformation nightmare in the 2024 election”

July 14, 2023, 1:06 pmcheap speech, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

Joshua Tucker in the Hill: “[J]ust as social media reduced barriers to the spread of misinformation, AI has now reduced barriers to the production of misinformation. And it is exactly this combination that should have everyone concerned.”

“Secretaries of State brace for wave of AI-fueled disinformation during 2024 campaign”

July 14, 2023, 12:50 pmcheap speech, election administration, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

Cyberscoop: Secretaries of State are already preparing for election disinformation during the 2024 presidential campaign that will be supercharged by artificial intelligence, many of them told CyberScoop during the National Association of Secretaries of State Conference that’s taking place… Continue reading

“The Future of Online Speech Shouldn’t Belong to One Trump-Appointed Judge in Louisiana”

July 13, 2023, 11:31 amelection subversion risk, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

Kate Klonick in the NYT: No feat of rhetoric could disguise the flagrantly political nature of the federal court ruling on July 4 that restricted the Biden administration’s communications with social media platforms — but Judge Terry A. Doughty,… Continue reading

Civic Information Handbook

July 11, 2023, 4:51 amelection subversion risk, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

From Karen Kornbluh and Adrienne Goldstein, in collaboration with UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, comes this valuable resource. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction: Social media platform tools are better suited for campaigns seeking to manipulate… Continue reading

“Justice Dept. asks 5th Circuit to delay judge’s social media order”

July 11, 2023, 4:37 amelection subversion risk, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

WaPo reports on DOJ’s motion to stay the preliminary injunction limiting government communications with social media companies: “The 22-page request came just hours after U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty denied the Justice Department’s request for a stay. Doughty imposed… Continue reading

“Meta cut election teams months before Threads launch, raising concerns for 2024”

July 11, 2023, 4:31 amelection subversion risk, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

CNN: Meta has made cuts to its teams that tackle disinformation and coordinated troll and harassment campaigns on its platforms, people with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN, raising concerns ahead of the pivotal 2024 elections in the… Continue reading

“State Dept. cancels Facebook meetings after judge’s ‘censorship’ ruling”

July 5, 2023, 2:47 pmchicanery, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

WaPo: One day after a Louisiana federal judge set limits on the Biden administration’s communications with tech firms, the State Department canceled its regular meeting Wednesday with Facebook officials to discuss 2024 election preparations and hacking threats, according to a… Continue reading

“Federal Judge Limits Biden Officials’ Contacts With Social Media Sites”

July 5, 2023, 7:28 amFirst Amendment theory, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

NYT: A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic… Continue reading

“Meta won’t say if politicians can post AI-made fakes without warnings”

April 7, 2023, 1:12 pmcheap speech, chicanery, social media and social protestsJustin Levitt

It seems … suboptimal … for platforms to be building terms-of-service policy ad hoc and mid-campaign for AI images and video in a political context.

Continuing “Twitter Files” Tussle

April 6, 2023, 5:53 pmcheap speech, election subversion risk, social media and social protestsJustin Levitt

General background: there’s an explainer here about the “Twitter Files” (and the controversies over the “Twitter Files”). One of the controversies is about Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the Election Integrity Partnership, an academic research coalition studying misinformation related to elections.… Continue reading

My New One at Slate: “Meta is Bringing Trump Back to Facebook. It Should Keep Him on a Short Leash to Protect Our Democracy.”

January 25, 2023, 8:12 pmcheap speech, election subversion risk, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

I have written this piece for Slate. A snippet: Meta’s decision Wednesday to replatform former president Donald J. Trump on Facebook and Instagram is lamentable and ill-considered. The company’s own standards required his continued exclusion from the social media platform… Continue reading

“Former top Twitter official forced to leave home due to threats amid ‘Twitter Files’ release”

December 12, 2022, 5:20 pmchicanery, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

CNN: Twitter’s former head of trust and safety has fled his home due to an escalation in threats resulting from Elon Musk’s campaign of criticism against him, a person familiar with the matter told CNN on Monday. Yoel Roth, who… Continue reading

Read the Position Papers for Friday’s Stanford/UCLA Conference, “Should Donald Trump Be Returned to Social Media?”

October 12, 2022, 7:45 amcheap speech, election subversion risk, social media and social protestsRick Hasen

Very diverse group of papers from a set of very smart people for this Friday’s conference (not too late to register for the virtual webinar): Chinmayi Arun Guy Charles Evelyn Douek Katie Fallow Katie Harbath Rick Hasen David … Continue reading

“Disinformation Has Become Another Untouchable Problem in Washington”

July 6, 2022, 3:24 pmcheap speech, social media and social protestsDan Tokaji

NYT: The memo that reached the top of the Department of Homeland Security in September could not have been clearer about its plan to create a board to monitor national security threats caused by the spread of dangerous disinformation.The… Continue reading

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Election Law Blogger

Rick Hasen

Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law and Professor of Political Science
UCLA School of Law
Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project

Contributors

Tabatha Abu El-Haj

Professor of Law, Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law
@tabathaabuelhaj
View posts ›

Guy-Uriel E. Charles

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
View posts ›

Travis Crum

Professor of Law, Washington University School of Law
View posts ›

Edward B. Foley

Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law, The Ohio State University
View posts ›

Rebecca Green

Professor of Law and Director, Election Law Program, William & Mary Law School

Justin Levitt

Professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
View posts ›

Derek T. Muller

Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
View posts ›

Spencer A. Overton

Professor of Law,
The George Washington University Law School
View posts ›

Richard H. Pildes

Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, NYU School of Law
View posts ›

Nicholas Stephanopoulos

Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
View posts ›

Dan Tokaji

Fred W. & Vi Miller Dean and Professor of Law
University of Wisconsin Law School
View posts ›

Franita Tolson

Dean and Carl Mason Franklin Chair in Law at USC Gould School of Law
View posts ›

Recent Books by Rick Hasen

A Real Right to Vote

A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy
Now available from Princeton University Press!
Read the Kirkus Review
Book tour information
Watch book discussion on Morning Joe
Order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop

Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics–and How to Cure It

Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics--and How to Cure It (Yale University Press, 2022)
Cheap Speech book website

Named one of the best books on disinformation by the New York Times

Election Law–Cases and Materials

Election Law–Cases and Materials (7th edition, Carolina Academic Press, 2022) (with Daniel Hays Lowenstein, Daniel P. Tokaji, and Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos)

2025 Casebook Supplement (Free)

Election Meltdown

Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy
(Yale University Press, 2020)

Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law: Examples & Explanations

Legislation, Statutory Interpretation, and Election Law: Examples & Explanations (2d ed. Wolters Kluwer, 2020)

Recent ELB Podcast Episodes

The ELB Podcast

Season 6, Episode 8 Danielle Lang: Is Trump’s Executive Order on Voting a Threat to Democracy?

Season 6, Episode 7,
Combatting False Election Information: Lessons from 2024 and a Look to the Future (Marwick, Starbird, Tucker)

Season 6, Episode 6, What Do Documentary Proof of Citizenship Laws Accomplish? (Fontes, Olson, Perales)

Season 6, Episode 5, Fair Elections and Voting Rights: What's Ahead for the Next Four Years? (Gardner, Karlan, Richer)

Season 6, Episode 4, Katie Harbath: The Present and Future of Social Media, Politics, and Elections

Season 6, Episode 3, From Nov. 5 to Jan. 6: Are We Prepared for a Fair and Safe Election? (Ginsberg, Diamond, Kleinfeld, Tolson)

Season 6, Episode 2, The United States Electoral College and Fair Elections (Fishkin, Hollis-Brusky, Muller)

Season 6, Episode 1, Democracy and the Risks to the 2024 Elections (Aden, Fortier, & Roth)

More podcast episodes ›

Recent Op-Eds & Commentaries by Rick Hasen

One Person Who Should Not Be in Charge of Elections, N.Y. Times, Aug. 22, 2025 (online version August 20, 2025)

Trump Started a Redistricting War. Only Congress Can Stop It, MSNBC Opinion, August 5, 2025

The Supreme Court Just Signaled Something Deeply Disturbing About the Next Term, Slate, August 4, 2025

Two Supreme Court Justices Invited an Outright Assault on Democracy. Now It’s Here, Slate, May 14, 2025

America Needs More Judges Like Judge Myers, The Atlantic, May 7, 2025

We’re Getting Dangerously Close to a Losing North Carolina Candidate Being Declared the Winner, Slate, Apr. 14, 2025

What Elon Musk Won in Wisconsin, Slate, Apr. 3, 2025

The Ultrarich Have Reshaped Presidential Elections. Here’s Where They’re Looking Next, Slate, Mar. 27, 2025

Trump’s Executive Order on Elections is a Blatant Power Grab, MSNBC Opinion, Mar. 26, 2025

One Possible Explanation for Judge Merchan’s Last-Minute Decision to Sentence Trump, Slate, Jan. 3, 2025 (with Jeremy Stahl)

Voting in the U.S. Shouldn’t Be This Hard, MSNBC Opinion, Nov. 5, 2024

Thousands of Pennsylvania Ballots Will Be Tossed on a Technicality. Thanks SCOTUS, Slate, Nov. 4, 2024

Why the “Blue Shift” Everyone Seems to Have Forgotten About Might Be More Dangerous This Time, Slate, Oct. 24, 2024

Elon Musk Might Have Broken the Law Against Bribing Voters. Whoops!, Slate, Oct. 16, 2024

Two Big Questions Raised by Elon Musk’s Trumpian Transformation of X, MSNBC Opinion, Oct. 14, 2024

Why the Supreme Court May Not Decide the 2024 Election After All, Slate, Oct. 10, 2024

Jack Smith’s Big New Jan. 6 Brief is a Major Indictment of the Supreme Court, Slate, Oct. 2, 2024

A Last-Minute Effort to Mess with the 2024 Vote is Underway. It’s Scarier Than Expected, Slate, Sept. 20, 2024

Why It Will Be Harder for Trump to Challenge This Year’s Election, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 29, 2024

Democrats Sure Aren’t Acting as If Trump Beating Biden is an Existential Threat to Democracy, Slate, July 10, 2024

Kamala Harris Replacing Joe Biden is not Antidemocratic, Slate, July 22, 2024

Trump Immunity Ruling Will Be John Roberts’ Legacy to American Democracy, Slate, July 1, 2024

The First Amendment Just Dodged an Enormous Bullet at the Supreme Court, Slate, July 1, 2024

That Big Jan. 6 Supreme Court Decision is Not the Big Win for Trump People Think It Is, Slate, June 28, 2024

A Democratic Super PAC’s New Trump Ad Might Be Borderline Criminal, Slate, June 26, 2024

Why It’s Hard to Muster Even a ‘Meh’ Over Trump’s New York Criminal Trial, Los Angeles Times, April 14, 2024

2016 Election Fraudster ‘Ricky Vaughn’ Might Finally Be About to Face the Music, Slate, April 1, 2024

The Supreme Court Just Delivered a Rare Self-Own for John Roberts, Slate, March 5, 2024

It’s Past Time to Quit Hoping the Courts are Going to Stop Trump, Slate, March 4, 2024 (with Dahlia Lithwick)

The Biggest Supreme Court Case Nobody Seems to Be Talking About, Slate, February 23, 2024

How to Actually Guarantee the Right to Vote: A Six-Point Checklist, The Atlantic, February 13, 2024

A Grand Bargain is Emerging in the Supreme Court’s Trump Cases, But Chaos May be Ahead, Slate, February 8, 2024

Donald Trump is Asking the Supreme Court for the Bush v. Gore Treatment, Slate, February 7, 2024

Trump’s Lawyers Made Some Very Odd Strategic Choices in the Supreme Court Ballot Case, Slate, January 29, 2024

The 2024 Election Will Be Fair. People Still Won’t Believe It, Politico, January 25, 2024

The U.S. Lacks What Every Democracy Needs, New York Times, January 16, 2024

More op-eds and commentaries by Rick ›

Recent Academic Articles and Working Papers by Rick Hasen

Faux Campaign Finance Regulation and the Pathway to American Oligarchy (conference paper dated Apr. 24, 2025, draft available, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5229707)

Bush v. Gore‘s Ironic Legacy, 53 Florida State University Law Review (forthcoming 2026), draft available, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5188686

Reckoning with the Undead Irreparable Injury Rule, Review of Litigation (forthcoming 2025), draft available, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4901755

The Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Transformation of U.S. Election Law, 134 Yale Law Journal 1673 (2025)

From Bloggers in Pajamas to The Gateway Pundit: How Government Entities Do and Should Identify Professional Journalists for Access and Protection, reprinted in THE FUTURE OF PRESS FREEDOM: DEMOCRACY, LAW & THE NEWS IN CHANGING TIMES (Cambridge U. Press, RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja R. West eds., 2025)

States as Bulwarks Against, or Potential Facilitators of, Election Subversion, in Our Nation at Risk: Election Integrity as a National Security Issue (Karen Greenberg and Julian Zelizer, eds. NYU Press, 2024)

Election Reform: Past, Present, and Future in Oxford Handbook of American Election Law (Eugene Mazo, ed., 2024)

Nonprofit Law as a Tool to Kill What Remains of Campaign Finance Law: Reluctant Lessons from Ellen Aprill, 56 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 1233 (2023) (festschrift symposium honoring Ellen Aprill)

Identifying and Minimizing the Risk of Election Subversion and Stolen Elections in the Contemporary United States, 135 Harvard Law Review Forum 265 (2022)

Research Note: Record Election Litigation Rates in the 2020 Election: An Aberration or a Sign of Things to Come?, Election Law Journal, https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/epdf/10.1089/elj.2021.0050 (2022)

Optimism and Despair About a 2020 “Election Meltdown” and Beyond, 100 Boston University Law Review Online 298 (2020) (part of symposium on my book, Election Meltdown)

Three Pathologies of American Voting Rights Illuminated by the COVID-19 Pandemic, and How to Treat and Cure Them, Election Law Journal (2020)

More academic articles by Rick Hasen ›

Recent Books by ELB Contributors

Tokaji & Yablon- Election Law in a Nutshell

Election Law in a Nutshell (3d ed., West Academic Publishing, 2024)
by Daniel P. Tokaji & Robert Yablon

Pildes – The Law of Democracy

The Law of Democracy: Legal Structure of the Political Process, 6th ed.
(Foundation Press, 2022)
by Samuel Issacharoff, Pamela S. Karlan, Richard H. Pildes, Nathaniel Persily, and Franita Tolson

Persily – Social Media and Democracy

Social Media and Democracy
(Cambridge Press, 2020)
by Nathaniel Persily and Joshua A. Tucker

Podcasts by ELB Contributors

Tolson – Free and Fair Podcast

Free & Fair with Franita and Foley
Franita Tolson and Edward Foley

Recent Articles by ELB Contributors

Tabatha Abu El-Haj, Networking the Party: First Amendment Rights & the Pursuit of Responsive Party Government, 118 Colum. L. Rev. 1225 (2018).

Bruce E. Cain, Wendy K. Tam Cho, Yan Y. Liu & Emily R. Zhang, A Reasonable Bias Approach to Gerrymandering: Using Automated Plan Generation to Evaluate Redistricting Proposals, 59 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 1521 (2018).

Edward B. Foley, Requiring Majority Winners for Congressional Elections: Harnessing Federalism to Combat Extremism (May 10, 2021). Ohio State Legal Studies Research Paper No. 61

Anita S. Krishnakumar, Cracking the Whole Code Rule (February 19, 2020). St. John’s Legal Studies Research Paper No. 20-0002, New York University Law Review, Forthcoming

Justin Levitt, Failed Elections and the Legislative Selection of Electors, 96 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1052 (2021)

Derek T. Muller, Election Subversion and the Writ of Mandamus, William & Mary Law Review (forthcoming)

Spencer Overton, Power to Regulate Social Media Companies to Prevent Voter Suppression. GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2020-23, GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 2020-23, 53 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1793 (2020)

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, The Sweep of the Electoral Power (October 20, 2020). Constitutional Commentary, Forthcoming, Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 21-07