Structural Reform of U.S. Elections: The Choice Between Instant Runoff (Hare) and Convergence (Condorcet) Voting [updated]

June 14, 2024, 10:23 amUncategorizedNed Foley

The Election Law team at Ohio State University is hosting a thought-provoking webinar on Wednesday, June 26, from 3-4 pm to discuss the possibilities of Structural Reform of U.S. Elections, with a focus on the nuanced differences two different electoral… Continue reading

Combating Misinformation and Building Trust in Elections: Assessing Election Official Communications During the 2022 Election Cycle

June 6, 2024, 11:43 amcheap speech, election administrationRick Hasen

New report from Thessalia Merivaki and Mara Suttmann-Lea. Abstract: In this project, we identify the dominant trust-building campaigns used by state and local election officials, with an emphasis on combating misinformation, during the 2022 election cycle. In partnership with the… Continue reading

“NewsBreak: Most downloaded US news app has Chinese roots and ‘writes fiction’ using AI”

June 5, 2024, 2:28 pmcheap speechRick Hasen

Reuters: Last Christmas Eve, NewsBreak, opens new tab, a free app with roots in China that is the most downloaded news app in the United States, published an alarming piece about a small town shooting. It was headlined “Christmas… Continue reading

Washington state law cannot bar felons from running for president

June 3, 2024, 10:15 amballot accessDerek Muller

This piece, by a columnist at the Seattle Times, is suddenly attracting terrific attention. It notes that Washington law allow someone “to challenge the right of a candidate to appear on the general election ballot after a primary” “Because… Continue reading

“You Think You Know How Misinformation Spreads? Welcome to the Hellhole of Programmatic Advertising”

June 1, 2024, 11:13 amcheap speechRick Hasen

Steven Brill in Wired: In 2019, other than the government of Vladimir Putin, Warren Buffett was the biggest funder of Sputnik News, the Russian disinformation website controlled by the Kremlin. It wasn’t that the legendary champion of American capitalism had… Continue reading

“How Texas’ push for election transparency undermines the secret ballot”

May 29, 2024, 2:42 pmchicanery, election administrationRick Hasen

Votebeat and the Texas Tribune: Texas’ efforts to make elections more transparent allows the public — in limited instances — to pierce the anonymity of the ballot and find out how people voted, undermining the secrecy essential to free elections.… Continue reading

Justice Alito’s Flag Story Doesn’t Add Up

May 29, 2024, 7:20 amethics investigations, Supreme CourtRick Hasen

New must-read reporting from Jody Kantor in the NYT: To better understand the clash, The Times interviewed Ms. Baden, her mother and her husband, as well as other neighbors, and reviewed the texts that Ms. Baden and her husband sent… Continue reading

“Debunking misinformation failed. Welcome to ‘pre-bunking’; Election officials around the world are adopting ‘prebunking’ campaigns, as AI and other threats jeopardize voting.”

May 26, 2024, 2:13 pmcampaigns, cheap speechRick Hasen

WaPo: Election officials and researchers from Arizona to Taiwan are adopting a radical playbook to stop falsehoods about voting before they spread online, amid fears that traditional strategies to battle misinformation are insufficient in a perilous year for democracies around… Continue reading

Republican Party of Nebraska Fails to Oust Incumbents

May 15, 2024, 5:47 ampolitical parties, political polarization, primariesTabatha Abu El-Haj

AP News reported recently that after being taken over by loyalists to Trump, “[t]he Nebraska GOP . . . refused to endorse any of the Republican incumbents who hold all five of the state’s congressional seats.” In three instances, it… Continue reading

“Can Suing People for Lying Save Democracy?”

May 11, 2024, 3:20 pmcheap speech, chicaneryRick Hasen

New Yorker: Freeman hired a lawyer, though it wasn’t clear what could actually be done. But, in 2021, the lawyer was approached by a nonprofit called Protect Democracy. The group had been founded a few years earlier by former… Continue reading

“Can Proportional Representation Create Better Governance?”

May 7, 2024, 7:45 amUncategorizedNicholas Stephanopoulos

Protect Democracy link. A new report by John M. Carey and Oscar Pocasangre argues that proportional representation promotes consensus-building, accountability, and political stability without producing excessive fragmentation. Rather than understanding PR and winner-take-all systems as divergent models, the report… Continue reading

“How a post falsely claiming migrants are registering to vote spread to millions in four weeks”

May 2, 2024, 6:05 amfraudulent fraud squadRick Hasen

NBC News: The rumor started as a post on X. The post published in early April misrepresented federal data from the Social Security Administration to falsely suggest that hundreds of thousands of migrants may have registered to vote in Pennsylvania,… Continue reading

Idaho Voters Likely to Vote This Fall on Shifting to Top 4 Primaries, with Instant Runoff Voting in the General Election

May 1, 2024, 12:47 pmUncategorizedRichard Pildes

This story reports that proponents of this ballot measure appear to have gained enough signatures to get the measured qualified for the ballot this fall. This is “the Alaska model” of primary reform, a reform that both Ned Foley and… Continue reading

“Meta Faces E.U. Investigation Over Election Disinformation”

April 30, 2024, 9:06 amcheap speechRick Hasen

NYT: Meta, the American tech giant, is being investigated by European Union regulators for the spread of disinformation on its platforms Facebook and Instagram, poor oversight of deceptive advertisements and potential failure to protect the integrity of elections. On Tuesday,… Continue reading