CA: “Gavin Newsom signs election ‘deepfake’ ban in rebuke to Elon Musk” (I Think It’s Likely Unconstitutional)

cheap speech

Politico:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the country’s toughest law banning digitally altered political “deepfakes” on Tuesday, following through on a vow to act after rebuking Elon Musk for sharing a doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The new California law — which will take effect before the November election — channels rising alarm about artificial intelligence’s capacity to disrupt elections by sowing misinformation, with voters increasingly confronted with deepfake images and audio impersonating candidates. Musk, who owns X, stoked that debate when he shared the AI-altered video of Harris in July, drawing Newsom’s public promise to prohibit similar practices.

I have strong concerns that this law is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. (In my book Cheap Speech, I talk about laws that require labeling of deepfakes that I do believe are consistent with the First Amendment, but this law does not follow my suggested model and requires government officials to decide what “parody” or “satire” is.)

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“Court may decide if Arizonans with missing citizenship records can vote in state races”

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WaPo:

A key election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County plans to ask the state’s highest court as early as Tuesday to prohibitnearly 100,000 longtime residents from voting in state and local races this fall after discovering the state has no record of asking them for documents proving their citizenship.

Like other states, Arizona requires voters to swear that they are citizens when they register to vote. But for 20 years, Arizona law has gone further and required residents to show birth certificates, naturalization papers or other documents proving citizenship to vote in state and local elections.

At issue is a pool of voters who county and state officials have no record of submitting those documents. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said the vast majority are likely longtime citizens who are eligible to vote in all races. He said more are registered as Republicans than as Democrats.

No matter how the court rules, the voters can provide the necessary documentation before Election Day and receive a full ballot.

While the group is a small fragment of the 4.1 million registered to vote in Arizona — and the issue will not affect federal races like the presidential contest or Arizona’s hotly contested race for the U.S. Senate — they could be decisive in close statehouse races, elections for countywide seats or a ballot measure that will decide the extent of access to abortion.

The lawsuit could also injecta new element of chaos into the presidential election in a battleground state just a month and a half before Election Day because of how it could be rhetorically used by former president Donald Trump and his allies. The lawsuit, to bebrought by the Republican county recorder who helps run elections, will ask the Arizona Supreme Court to act with lightning speed. County elections officials planned to mail ballots to military and overseas voters on Thursday….

“I have always told the truth, and we uncovered what is a design system flaw,” saidMaricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer (R), who plans to file the lawsuit. “That means that this pool of people who we thought had documented proof of citizenship on file with the motor vehicle division does not necessarily have documented proof of citizenship on file. So, therefore, we did what we thought was the only morally responsible thing, and we disclosed that.”

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