NYT reports. … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaigns
NYT reports. … Continue reading
WaPo: Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg has decided to donate significant components of his shuttered presidential campaign to the Democratic Party, a historic bequest that includes an $18 million cash infusion to organize for the general election in swing states.The … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
CNN reports. … Continue reading
WaPo: An onslaught of political advertising is par for the course in any election year. The 2020 presidential contest proves to be no exception.So, on first glance, nothing was unusual when former vice president Joe Biden, who appears to be … Continue reading
Boston Globe: Sudden changes to election procedures could lead to long lines and confusion, Hasen said.“You’ve got to have good planning, and you have to have good messaging. If people don’t know where to go, then they can be disenfranchised,” … Continue reading
AP reports. … Continue reading
Rob Yablon has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Minn. L. Rev. Headnotes). Here is the abstract: Amid ongoing concerns about foreign electoral interference and fake news, digital platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have been rolling out new political … Continue reading
WaPo: Social media sites are once again at the center of a debate over online speech after Twitter applied its new “manipulated media” label for the first time yesterday to a deceptively edited video of former vice president Joe Biden. White House social … Continue reading
WaPo: Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg has decided to form an independent expenditure campaign that will absorb hundreds of his presidential campaign staffers in six swing states to work to elect the Democratic nominee this fall.The group, with a … Continue reading
NYT: Facebook said on Thursday that it had removed misleading ads run by President Trump’s re-election campaign about the 2020 census, in a stand against disinformation ahead of the decennial population count that begins next week.Earlier this week, Trump Make … Continue reading
Judd Legum for Popular Information. … Continue reading
AP: Four years after Russia-linked groups stoked divisions in the U.S. presidential election on social media platforms, a new report shows that Moscow’s campaign hasn’t let up and has become harder to detect.The report from University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Young Mie Kim … Continue reading
Aaron Blake for WaPo. … Continue reading
NYT: In an unprecedented effort to self-finance a presidential campaign — which some rivals derided as an attempt to buy the White House — Mr. Bloomberg’s bid cost him more than half a billion dollars in advertising alone. He also spent … Continue reading
WSJ: TV viewers in Super Tuesday states know this: Michael Bloomberg and his presidential campaign are on almost every channel. All day. And nearly all night.The former New York City mayor appears on presidential primary ballots for the first time … Continue reading
You can listen to the fourth episode of the Election Meltdown podcast (in conjunction with Dahlia Lithwick and Slate Amicus) at this link. (Episode 1 on voter suppression/voter fraud is here, Episode 2 on election administrator incompetence is here, and Episode 3 on campaign dirty tricks is … Continue reading
CNN: The first significant ad buy for state Sen. Erica Smith, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in North Carolina, appears to be backed by Republicans.Faith and Power, a new political action committee with ties to Republicans, formally launched on January … Continue reading
Dave Levinthal thread starts here: 1/ A short thread about a news organization, the Trump campaign and a fundraising message …On Thursday, my colleague @JimSmall received a garden variety campaign solicitation from the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a … Continue reading
Deep dive by McKay Coppins in The Atlantic. … Continue reading
Rebecca Green has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, Washington Law Review). Here is the abstract: In the United States, we have long accepted that candidates for public office who have voluntarily stepped into the public eye sacrifice claims to … Continue reading
NYT: A doctored, phony image of President Barack Obama shaking hands with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran. A real photograph of a Muslim girl at a desk doing her homework with Donald J. Trump looming in the background on television.It is not always easy … Continue reading
SacBee: Some Northern California voters are receiving documents that resemble U.S. Census forms, but they are in fact fundraising appeals from the Republican National Committee.The document, printed on heavy paper, is labeled “2020 Congressional District Census,” with the words “DO … Continue reading
Donald Sherman WaPo oped. … Continue reading
NYT: Michael R. Bloomberg put more than $200 million of his personal fortune into his presidential campaign by the end of December, with the overwhelming bulk of that sum going to a mammoth advertising campaign on television and online, according to … Continue reading
Politico: Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said on Thursday he has “no problem” with a White House lawyer’s argument that American politicians can accept damaging information on their opponents from a foreign country — a proposal that shocked … Continue reading
New memo (via Brian Svoboda): However, intentional distortions of audio and/or visual representations can be far more damaging. Members have a duty, and a First Amendment right, to contribute to the public discourse, including through parody and satire. However, manipulation … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
Politico: Allies of Donald Trump have begun holding events in black communities where organizers lavish praise on the president as they hand out tens of thousands of dollars to lucky attendees.The first giveaway took place last month in Cleveland, where … Continue reading
Tom Edsall in the NYT: If you attend an evangelical or a Catholic Church, a women’s rights march or a political rally of any kind, especially in a seriously contested state, the odds are that your cellphone ID number, home … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
PBS: The new survey from PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist Poll found that 59 percent of Americans say it is hard to identify false information — intentionally misleading and inaccurate stories portrayed as truth — on social media. Another 37 … Continue reading
WSJ: Nearly a dozen technology companies said they will provide free or reduced-cost cybersecurity services to presidential campaigns, which experts and intelligence officials have warned are ripe targets for intrusion and disinformation.They join a growing number of firms offering protection on a … Continue reading
One of the important findings from yesterday’s major CFI Report on campaign finance that has gone unnoticed so far is that Citizens United did not lead to a significant increase in election spending by publicly-traded corporations. As the introduction to … Continue reading
WaPo: Trump’s vaunted political money machine is helping drive record sums to the Republican National Committee, and not just from the same donors who supported him in 2016. Enticed by exclusive gatherings and ecstatic about the president’s tax cuts, an eclectic … Continue reading
Marketplace reports. … Continue reading
Here is the order list showing the grant in Barr v. American Association of Political Consultants. The question presented in the cert petition (minus citations): The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), Pub. L. No. 102-243, 105 Stat. 2394, … Continue reading
Two stories today about campaign funds active longer than their campaigners. One focuses on FEC requests for explanation from retired officeholders still spending from campaign accounts. The other describes the plans that Rep. Cummings had for his unspent campaign money … Continue reading
Ibram Kendi with a thoughtful piece on the terminology of “swing voters”: some “swing” from candidate to candidate or party to party, and some swing between voting and not voting. … Continue reading
Bertrall Ross and Doug Spencer have a new paper out in the Northwestern Law Review: “Passive Voter Suppression: Campaign Mobilization and the Effective Disfranchisement of the Poor.” The abstract: A recent spate of election laws tightened registration rules, reduced convenient voting … Continue reading
Speaking of mobilization, the Washington Times has questions: The National Rifle Association, after shedding its president and top lobbyist this year amid a string of internal disputes and legal battles, finds itself at a crossroads with Republican politicos wondering whether … Continue reading
Former WWE star Rhino was a 2016 candidate for Congress … and seems to think that the rigors of campaign finance compliance may have impacted his last run in the WWE. … Continue reading
From The Guardian: An explosive leak of tens of thousands of documents from the defunct data firm Cambridge Analytica is set to expose the inner workings of the company that collapsed after the Observer revealed it had misappropriated 87 million … Continue reading
Algernon D’Ammassa offers an intriguing critique of the “running a race” frame of American elections, tied to both news coverage and the “Campaigns, Inc.” influence of consultants. … Continue reading
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz reflect in NiemanLab on the impact of the structure of the news media market, and innovations in the delivery of news, on coverage of the 2020 elections. The lede: Coverage of the 2020 U.S. presidential … Continue reading
The WaPo summarizes the reported candidate and party committee hauls for 2019 ($463 million for Trump and the RNC, for example). It seems fair to compare RNC solo fundraising to DNC solo fundraising, and Trump’s re-elect to Obama’s 2012 re-elect. … Continue reading
A study by Sebastian Jäckle et al. finds an advantage up to 11% for congressional candidates based on appearance alone. The study itself – titled “A Catwalk to Congress” – is here. … Continue reading
SCOTUSblog has a running decade-in-review series, and Citizens United occupies 14% of the space so far. … Continue reading