Elections

Your congressman doesn’t control the police budget. Your senator probably doesn’t know where the worst hot spots are.Politicians around the country have promised in the closing days of the midterm election to crack down on crime. Would-be governors will crack down on crime. Senators will crack down on crime. Members of Congress will do it, too. Obviously, their opponents won’t.The law-and-order messaging is often disconnected from the nuance of crime trends (in 2022, homicide is up in some places, but down in others like New York City; yes, Oklahoma has higher violent crime rates than California). But it’s also devoid of the reality that these offices generally have little power to bend crime trends on the ground tomorrow.Crime surges and falls for reasons that experts don’t fully understand, and it’s hard for even the most proven ideas to quickly reverse its direction. But the people with ready levers to pull are not sitting in the Senate. And your current sense of order in your community is definitely not controlled by your congressman.“You’re not going to fix the problems from there,” said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and consultant with AH Datalytics in New Orleans (and a former Upshot contributor). “If you want to fix the problems, go run for mayor.”Your governor isn’t going to solve a spike in murder, he added. And it’s generally not the governor who’s been failing to solve it, either. As for Senate candidates who say they will make sure we keep criminals behind bars who don’t belong on our streets?“U.S. senators don’t determine state prison release policies,” said John MacDonald, a professor of criminology and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. “Who you elect to Senate is going to have zero impact on state prisons.”When voters choose candidates for higher office thinking of crime, they often misunderstand where and how criminal justice decisions get made, said Amy Lerman, a political scientist at Berkeley. The federal government controls a small fraction of the whole picture. In the U.S., there are 51 prison systems, and about 18,000 police departments.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.If you see a police officer while walking or driving around your community, that officer is most likely a local one. And those local officers generally report to locally elected bosses like sheriffs, or people appointed by locally elected officials like mayors, said Thomas Ogorzalek, a visiting scholar at the Center for Urban Research at CUNY.Those are the people, in turn, who decide what share of the city budget the police get, how many officers they’ll hire, where those officers will focus, if they’ll wear body cameras, and whether they’ll work alongside violence interruption workers, social workers and mental health clinicians.This may seem counterintuitive to voters: Broad crime trends are often national in scale (that was the case when crime plummeted across the country starting in the 1990s, and when gun violence surged just about everywhere during the pandemic). But it doesn’t follow that the answers are primarily federal ones.“We have a national problem that isn’t solved at the national level,” said Phillip Atiba Goff, a Yale professor and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity. “But our national narrative makes it harder to solve it at the local level — which is the only level where it’s going to get solved.”The federal government does play an important role. It funnels money to states and local governments, and often uses that money to incentivize local police to shift policies. Major components of the 1994 crime bill, for example, dedicated federal money to hire local police officers, fund victims’ services and construct state prisons.The federal government has also sent military-grade equipment to local police, although research suggests that has done little to reduce crime. In its other roles, the federal government offers technical assistance to local agencies and supports research on which policing strategies work.And it has a bully pulpit. President Biden signed an executive order in May directing federal law enforcement to restrict tactics like chokeholds and no-knock warrants. While the order has a limited reach, it could still nudge cultural changes among local departments. And individual senators and members of Congress can use their own megaphones to push policing priorities to local officials.As a whole, Congress could play a bigger role — but often chooses not to.“One of the reasons that we talk about the federal government having so little authority is not just because it can’t do a lot of things, but also because it won’t do certain things,” said Thomas Abt, a senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, and chair of the Violent Crime Working Group. “The single biggest thing that the federal government could do to limit violent crime in particular would be to pass reasonable regulations that limit access to deadly firearms.”Relaxed gun laws at the federal and state level have allowed more guns on the street and made the problem of local violent crime worse, said Darrel Stephens, a retired chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, and former longtime head of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.With that solution off the table, the Council on Criminal Justice released earlier this year a report on tangible actions that could reduce violence now, all of them aimed at local officials. A central tactic involves identifying the small subset of residents and places that drive the bulk of violence, a pattern that occurs across cities. Officials can then target those areas with police resources, outreach workers, city programs and community partnerships.“The strongest evidence deals with focusing on concentrations,” Mr. Stephens said, including crime that victimizes a small concentration of people. “What you’re trying to do is to tailor your response to your understanding of what’s contributing to the problem.”That might mean changing traffic patterns on specific streets, or offering behavioral therapy programs to particular residents. That level of specificity isn’t something you would expect a senator or governor to know much about: this intersection, this family, this apartment with unsecured doors.Local officials, on the other hand, oversee many of the levers voters may not think of as part of crime policy — whether that’s street lighting, public schools, summer jobs programs, recreation departments or housing programs. And they wield the most influence over other kinds of disorder, like uncleared trash, graffiti and vacant properties, that may shape the sense of unease voters connect to their fears of crime.Those other tools are “extremely important,” said Art Acevedo, a former chief of police in Houston, Austin and Miami. He offered as an example pre-K education, citing the greater likelihood that students who eventually drop out of school will go to prison.Mr. Acevedo lamented national politicians who parachute into communities after mass shootings, offer prayers and no legislation, while local police and elected officials face those families and manage everyday violence.“When it comes to actually being closest to it, and actually focusing on good policy — rather than good politics — it’s those local officials,” he said.There is a parallel case that good crime policy at the state and federal level is inseparable from education investments, safety-net supports and housing programs that could help break up concentrated poverty and despair. Research, for example, suggests that people newly released from prison who are given federal health coverage through Medicaid are less likely to return to prison.But these interconnected benefits play out over years, not immediately in the midst of a crime surge. And this is not the conversation about crime that’s happening in 30-second campaign ads and on debate stages with an election around the corner. More

A Republican congressional candidate in North Carolina criticized his Democratic opponent’s campaign on Friday for showing one of his homes in a TV ad, saying that someone had recently fired a bullet into his parents’ house.The Hickory Police Department confirmed that the parents of the Republican candidate, Pat Harrigan, had reported on Oct. 19 that someone had fired a bullet that put a hole in a window in their home’s laundry room the night before. No one was injured.The police report did not come to light until it was covered in local news reports on Thursday, and the campaign of Mr. Harrigan’s Democratic opponent, Jeff Jackson, took down the ad showing a different Harrigan residence. The ad had been running since Oct. 18, apparently the same date the bullet hole was found.During an appearance Friday morning on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Harrigan accused Mr. Jackson of “very poor judgment.”“In the era of Steve Scalise and Brett Kavanaugh, and now, Paul Pelosi,” he said. “This is just unbelievable to me.”Mr. Harrigan and Mr. Jackson are running for an open seat representing North Carolina’s 14th Congressional District, which was created after the 2020 census.The ad from the Jackson campaign showed footage of a house on the banks of a lake, where a man in a suit cuts through the waves on a Jet Ski. It said Mr. Harrigan “did so well” as a firearms manufacturer that he was able to purchase the residence and the Jet Ski. It also questioned whether Mr. Harrigan lived in the district.Pat HarriganJeff Jackson“We fully support law enforcement as they investigate this incident and believe any wrongdoing should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Mr. Jackson’s campaign spokesman, Tommy Cromie, said.Mr. Cromie said the ad was pulled out of “an abundance of caution and concern, but, to be clear, the home involved in the incident has never been featured in any of our advertising.”Mr. Harrigan’s parents told the police they found the bullet hole around 10 p.m. on Oct. 18, according to the police report, which was filed the next morning and described the incident as a “shooting (chance of injury) into occupied property.” The last time they could recall having seen the window intact was on Oct. 16, according to the report. The damage was estimated at $500.On Fox News, Mr. Harrigan said his parents were watching television when “a bullet cracks through” their home, 20 feet from his sleeping children, who were spending the night at their grandparents’ home.“This is completely out of the blue,” he added, “particularly for this neighborhood.”The incident in Hickory, about 58 miles northwest of Charlotte, was widely reported by local and national media on Thursday. The Associated Press said the bullet came from “a densely wooded area” and did not wake the children.The type of firearm was not identified, and a police spokeswoman, Kristen Hart, said Friday that the case remained under investigation. She told The Carolina Journal that investigators had found a bullet casing. Reports that the F.B.I. was also investigating could not be confirmed. More

To some Palestinians, the rise of the Israeli far right can scarcely make things worse. But many fear a surge of violence.JERUSALEM — For Jewish Israelis, the election this week of a far-right alliance has left some joyful, and others with a sense of bewilderment and foreboding.But to Palestinians in both the occupied territories and within Israel’s Arab minority, it has summoned a different and contradictory blend of emotions: fear, indifference and, in some cases, a sense of opportunity.Barring a last-minute change of heart, Benjamin Netanyahu, the returning prime minister, will form a government with a far-right bloc whose settler leaders variously seek to end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank, expel those they deem disloyal to Israel and make it easier for soldiers to shoot at Palestinians while on duty.One of those leaders, Itamar Ben-Gvir, until recently hung a large photograph of an extremist Israeli who shot dead 29 Palestinians in a West Bank mosque in 1994 on his wall at home. He still keeps a picture on display there of Meir Kahane, an extremist rabbi who sought to strip Arabs of their Israeli citizenship.To some Palestinians, the far right’s rise can scarcely make things worse for them. Israel has long operated a two-tier legal system in the occupied West Bank that tries Palestinians in military courts and Israelis in civilian ones; rarely punishes violent Israeli settlers; and already mounts near-daily raids in Palestinian areas — raids that have helped make this year the deadliest in the West Bank since at least 2015.Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to restrictions on their movement, almost all of them unable to drive into Israel, while neighboring settlers freely come and go. Many struggle to access their private land close to settlements and risk attack when they do.Volunteers from the Jewish Power party handed out fliers at a polling station in Nof Hagalil, Israel, on Tuesday in front of a picture of the party’s leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir.Amit Elkayam for The New York TimesIn Gaza, Palestinians live under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade that is intended to stop arms supply to militants, but severely restricts Gazans’ ability to leave or access certain medical equipment and 3G internet.For that reason, some hope Mr. Ben-Gvir’s arrival even brings opportunity: Some have long considered the Israeli state indistinguishable from the likes of Mr. Ben-Gvir, and they hope the world will now see what they see.But to many Palestinians, a far-right government, studded with lawmakers with a history of antagonizing Arabs, has no silver lining. It is simply terrifying.“I’m afraid of a very dark future,” said Issa Amro, an activist in Hebron, in the southern West Bank. “Ben-Gvir is very fanatic and extreme and, for me, a fascist. He is a big threat.”With Mr. Ben-Gvir in government, some Palestinians fear even more impunity for settler violence and even greater restrictions on their movements. They also fear that Mr. Ben-Gvir’s calls to deport people who oppose the state of Israel are a code for the expulsion of Palestinians.To Mr. Amro and the other residents of Hebron, Mr. Ben-Gvir is a known quantity — and not in a comforting way.Mr. Ben-Gvir lives in a settlement in Hebron, and has a history of confrontation with local Palestinians. A video from 2015 showed him involved in an attack on a Palestinian shop in the Old City of Hebron, pulling a clothes rack to the ground.A Palestinian vendor reading news about Israeli elections in a newspaper, in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Wednesday.Mussa Issa Qawasma/ReutersThe mosque massacre in 1994, whose perpetrator, Baruch Goldstein, was once feted by Mr. Ben-Gvir in his home, occurred a few hundred yards away.“I’m afraid that fanatic settlers will feel more empowered” by Mr. Ben-Gvir’s rise, said Mr. Amro. “I’m afraid that more Baruch Goldstein massacres will happen.”The mood in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood of East Jerusalem where settler movements seek to evict Palestinian residents, was also apprehensive.Mr. Ben-Gvir frequently visits and champions the settlers of Sheikh Jarrah, even setting up a tent there that he declared his temporary office. His provocative presence exacerbated tensions in the neighborhood that contributed to the outbreak of an 11-day war in May 2021 between Israel and militants in Gaza.Last month, he returned to Sheikh Jarrah, brandishing a pistol and telling policemen to fire at nearby Palestinians.“Friends, they’re throwing rocks at us,” Mr. Ben-Gvir said, pulling out his handgun. “Shoot them.”Mr. Ben-Gvir says he has become more moderate in recent years. He tells his followers to chant “Death to terrorists,” replacing their previous chant of “Death to Arabs.” He still calls Mr. Kahane “a hero,” but distanced himself from the rabbi’s most extreme positions.“I have no problem, of course, with the minorities here,” he recently said in a voice message to The New York Times, after declining an interview.But in Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinian residents blame Mr. Ben-Gvir for galvanizing the groups of Israelis who have roamed the neighborhood throwing stones, and the movements that seek their eviction. They fear his rise will cause “big harm for Sheikh Jarrah and Jerusalem in general,” said Muhammad al-Kiswani, a resident of Sheikh Jarrah who said his home had been damaged by the settlers’ rocks.The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem last month, an area rife with tensions between Palestinians and Israelis.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesAs they drove to Friday prayers, Mr. al-Kiswani’s 5-year-old son, Zeinidden, leaned forward at the mention of a familiar name.“Baba, is that — is that the man who had the gun?” asked Zeinidden.“Yes,” Mr. al-Kiswani told his son. Returning to the interview, he added: “Our children are developing mental issues because of what’s happening.”Some Palestinians, though fearful, predict that Mr. Ben-Gvir will do little that Israel hasn’t already done to Palestinians living under either occupation or as a minority within the state of Israel.“Our day-to-day won’t be that different,” said Nour Younis, an activist living in Tel Aviv. “We might pay the price, sure, but we already have been paying the price with any government.”Some Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, nevertheless hope this moment could also possibly bring about a better future. Jewish-led leftist parties suffered a near-wipeout in the election — and to claw their way back to influence, some hope that they will be forced to work more closely with, and establish greater empathy for, the parties and narratives of the Palestinian minority.“The days are also difficult for anyone who considers himself of the Zionist center-left,” said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a Palestinian lawmaker in the Israeli Parliament.“We need to think differently now,” she added. “This is not a reality we ever knew and it requires all of the democratic forces to work together in an effort to stop the raging right.”Others also hope the far right’s rise will bring greater international attention to Israel’s worst excesses, making them harder for the world to ignore, said Ms. Younis, the activist.“I look at the bright side — finally, Israel’s real face will show,” she said. “When this face is exposed to the international community, I hope they finally understand that there really isn’t a true partner for peace in Israel.”But others were less optimistic.The world would still lack empathy for Palestinians, with or without Mr. Ben-Gvir, said Maha Nakib, a Palestinian activist in Lod, an Israeli city with a recent history of interethnic tensions.“They don’t really care,” said Ms. Nakib. “Our eyes aren’t blue and our hair isn’t blond like the Ukrainians.”A Palestinian man looks out his house window in a refugee camp in Khan Younis this week in Gaza, which is under a joing Israeli-Egyptian blockade.Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/ReutersRami Nazzal contributed reporting from Ramallah, West Bank, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel. More

More from our inbox:Pennsylvania Political Ads: ‘A Flood of Falsehoods’A Republican No MoreBig Lie LawyersProtests in Brazil: A Harbinger for the U.S.?Flooded farmland in Hadeja, Nigeria, in September.Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Climate Pledges Fizzle as Havoc Looms for Globe” (front page, Oct. 26):Whatever happened to mutually assured destruction?During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union never attacked each other directly for fear of a nuclear war that would destroy both nations. But today, world-threatening climate change is apparently not enough to bring the U.S. and China to the negotiating table.Without prompt and drastic action by both nations (and others) to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the planet is aimed at a global temperature rise of at least 2.1 degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Tens of millions of people worldwide will be displaced from their homes. Hundreds of millions will suffer severe drought and food shortages due to crop loss. Billions will face dangerous, possibly deadly heat waves.Are the U.S. and China assuming that their populations will magically be spared? Or is an existential threat to both our nations no longer considered enough for our leaders to take seriously?Amy LivingstonHighland Park, N.J.To the Editor:There’s no doubt that our planet is fast approaching the point of no return for avoiding a future of unimaginable, ever-worsening climate chaos. As you report, the perilous position we find ourselves in is due largely to decades of gross inaction from the world’s biggest climate polluters. The only question now is what to do about it.Your article notes that some progress in the name of climate action has recently been made in the United States, with hundreds of billions of dollars in the Inflation Reduction Act allocated for encouraging “cleaner technologies.” But the fact is that incentivizing the development of cleaner energy sources will not by itself make a dent in carbon emissions.Our recent analysis showed that while use of renewable energy rose significantly in the previous decade, fossil fuel production increased even more. In truth, the only way to meaningfully reduce climate-killing carbon pollution is to halt it at its source, by stopping new oil and gas drilling and fracking, and preventing the buildout of new infrastructure like pipelines and export terminals that encourage the devastating extraction.Wenonah HauterWashingtonThe writer is the founder and executive director of Food & Water Watch.To the Editor:Carbon and methane emissions cause temperature to increase, and we are reading that methane emissions are rising faster than ever. At the same time, climate pledges around the globe to cut those emissions are falling short.Many people understand the potential negative effects of climate change, but don’t see the urgency to address it. We need to rectify all of these failings and create the will for faster action. Our citizens must understand and believe that the cost of inaction is too high and demand stronger action now.Perhaps some people are more worried about the immediate economic and inflation aspects. I want to remind them that every negative effect of climate change is bad for the economy and even more inflationary. Climate-related weather events (wildfires, floods, drought, hurricanes, etc.) drain production and supply and escalate demand and prices.If we don’t decrease the use of fossil fuels soon enough, climate migration will become a large issue. Such movements will harm local economies both to and from those migration areas. Climate inaction is too costly to ignore, and we need action now.Jonathan LightLaguna Niguel, Calif.Pennsylvania Political Ads: ‘A Flood of Falsehoods’Chester County elections workers scanning mail-in ballots in 2020. Unsigned letters circulated in the county this year warning residents that their votes might not have counted.Matt Slocum/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “With Push of a Button, Lies Flood a Swing State” (front page, Nov. 1):As a Pennsylvania voter, I find that it has become increasingly difficult to cut through the deluge of disinformation that has flooded the airwaves, our mailboxes and social media channels in connection with the coming election.Regrettably, far too many people choose to peddle propaganda in a brazen attempt to mislead voters, and the relative ease with which deceptive and denigrating material is widely disseminated degrades an already tenuous political system.With an electorate that is already jaded and exceedingly cynical because of the rancor that has become so pervasive in American politics, we cannot afford to give voters yet another reason to stay home on Election Day. Pennsylvanians deserve better than a flood of falsehoods that threatens to wash away the decency and credibility that we desperately need in our electoral process.N. Aaron TroodlerBala Cynwyd, Pa.A Republican No More Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:My grandfather was a conservative Pennsylvania Republican. My father was a conservative Pennsylvania Republican. And I naturally became a conservative Pennsylvania Republican, holding onto it as I moved over the years to Ohio, Connecticut and New York.Several months ago, I registered as a Democrat, pen twitching in my hand, yet knowing that it was time to speak up the only way politicians comprehend.Donald Trump brought me to this. He has yet to wear his proper label. He is, and should be publicly recognized as, a cult leader: unbelievably dangerous, persuasive and dense.Until Republican Party leaders recognize that they have been “drinking the Kool-Aid” because they are afraid of the cult leader, I have no use for them, nor should any clear-thinking Republican.J.H. QuestIthaca, N.Y.Big Lie Lawyers T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesTo the Editor:The continued attack on our free and democratic elections revealed in “Same Trump Lawyers Gear Up for Midterms” (news article, Nov. 3) is even more disturbing in light of the fact that almost all of the lawyers mentioned in the article face outstanding bar complaints from The 65 Project, the bipartisan accountability group I run.These complaints were filed months ago, and in the face of inaction by the various state bar associations, these Big Lie lawyers have continued their attacks on our democracy.Until the state bar associations take action by referring these attorneys to the relevant disciplinary committees and imposing sanctions — up to and including disbarment — their actions described in this article will just be another stop along the way to more attempts to overturn elections in 2022 and 2024.Michael TeterSalt Lake CityProtests in Brazil: A Harbinger for the U.S.?Supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro gathering outside the Brazilian Army’s national headquarters on Wednesday in Brasília, the capital. Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Denying Defeat, Bolsonaro’s Supporters Ask Army to Step In” (news article, Nov. 3):It used to be that we were afraid of a coup, of a strongman or the army taking over against the will of the people. Now it seems that the people themselves are the problem. In Brazil, tens of thousands are protesting the results of their recent election, demanding a new election or, most chillingly, a military government “permanently,” as one put it.This sounds disconcertingly familiar, as millions in this country are demanding similarly authoritarian forms of government. The focus here has been on disinformation and conspiracy theories circulating on social media, and on Donald Trump himself, America’s Bolsonaro. But the real problem, here as in Brazil, is the inexplicable desire of millions of ordinary citizens to live under an authoritarian regime.We should hope that Brazil’s reaction to Jair Bolsonaro’s loss is not a harbinger of our own experience two years hence.Tim ShawCambridge, Mass. More

On the messaging app Telegram this week, 300 people gathered in a channel devoted to Arizona politics to play an online game.The rules were simple: Find examples of voter fraud and win virtual points. If members of the group had names of undocumented immigrants who intended to vote illegally in Tuesday’s midterm elections and posted details, they were awarded two points. If they identified people who might be organizing buses to transport those immigrants to voting stations, they got 50 points.“I have a name for you,” one participant wrote in the Telegram channel on Monday. He submitted a common Latino name and said the person was undocumented and planned on voting. Though he didn’t provide evidence backing up his claim, he was given two points anyway.The group erupted in congratulations. “One down, one million to go,” another participant responded, according to messages viewed by The New York Times. “Gotta find them all.”That many of the posts, photos and videos used to score points have been widely debunked as misinformation did not slow down the group. Nor has it impeded the spread of the game to other social platforms, where dozens of private messaging channels are also engaged in a hunt for voter fraud.The Times reviewed 26 such games being played on the messaging apps and social platforms Telegram, WhatsApp, Gab and Truth Social over the past two months. In each, players were granted a loose system of points or honorary titles if they shared supposed evidence of voting irregularities. Many of the participants were encouraged to post as much as possible, egged on by raucous carnival-like conversations and posts.The games originated in online groups that purported to be about voter integrity and securing elections. It was unclear how long the games have existed, because many of the channels have changed names or cleared their digital histories. None appeared to turn up proof of voter fraud, which is exceptionally rare.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.But facts are often not the point of these games. Instead, they are part of a broader trend of “participatory misinformation,” in which people become more actively involved in sharing falsehoods and conspiracy theories. That leads to people integrating with a wider community and earning kudos, which makes them more likely to believe and invest in the misinformation, researchers said.“There’s a feeling that you can participate in the construction of a narrative and have impact,” said Kate Starbird, a professor of human-computer interaction at the University of Washington who studies misinformation. “It’s very empowering.”Fences surrounded the Maricopa County elections center in Phoenix this month. Misinformation about voting has flourished online.Olivier Touron/Agence France-Presse, via Getty ImagesThe gamification of voter fraud on social media has implications for how the legitimacy of the vote will be seen in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Confidence in the electoral process has eroded in recent years, with former President Donald J. Trump casting doubt on the 2020 presidential election’s outcome by falsely claiming he was the victim of duplicitous voting practices.In recent months, candidates such as Kari Lake, a Republican running for Arizona governor, have amplified voting misinformation on the campaign trail, such as questioning the accuracy of voting machines. Falsehoods about voting have circulated widely on Twitter, TikTok, Truth Social, Rumble and Gab.Some people now are so suspicious of the voting process that they have set up watch parties to monitor ballot boxes and prevent tampering on Election Day. States such as Georgia have passed laws that require people to show new IDs to vote. On Wednesday, President Biden condemned Mr. Trump and other Republicans for imperiling American democracy with lies about voting and the 2020 election.The voter fraud games add to the fraught atmosphere, Ms. Starbird said. They are “one more way that people are being pushed to spread, and even create, examples of voter fraud to fuel their false narratives and sow distrust in the midterms,” she said.Participatory misinformation has a history of spurring online conspiracy theory movements, researchers said. QAnon, a movement that revolved around the falsehood that the world was run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping Democrats, was nurtured by people seeking clues online about the identities of those running the group and seeing hidden meanings in supposed symbols and coded messages.After the 2020 election, the “Stop the Steal” movement, which falsely claimed that Mr. Trump had won, was also fueled by online participation. On Facebook, dozens of groups encouraged their followers to find examples that proved the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump.Since then, claims of voter fraud have grown to include unsubstantiated theories that voting machines were rigged, that dead people and pets had voted and that corrupt election officials were not counting certain kinds of ballots.In the voter fraud games on Telegram, WhatsApp and other platforms, the groups viewed by The Times ranged in size from a few dozen people to several hundred. Many players appeared to use pseudonyms and shared only scant personal information. While some of the games awarded points, others bestowed titles like “master” and “grand master” to those who posted multiple examples of purported voter fraud.The points and titles do not appear to add up to any real-world prizes. Instead they gave participants online clout and bragging rights over fellow players.In one Pennsylvania-based Telegram group, 200 people raced this week to find examples of “unverified ballots,” or ballots that were sent without verifying voters’ identities, after Mr. Trump falsely claimed on Tuesday that 250,000 of these ballots had been mailed to voters in the state.“There are hundreds of thousands, makes them easy to find,” one person in the group wrote. “I say one point a person.”In a WhatsApp group that was an offshoot of a larger Ohio-based Telegram group, nine participants recently kept a leaderboard as they played their game. At the top of the board was a member who the group said had uncovered cases of dead people who had voted. The player had not provided evidence of his accusations.Not all of the games have a formal structure, or take place in dedicated channels. On Truth Social, the platform started by Mr. Trump, the gamelike approach of awarding points or acclaim to users participating in misinformation has spilled into the comments sections.When Mr. Trump asserted to his 4.4 million followers on Truth Social on Monday that voter fraud was rife in Pennsylvania, for example, comments and links to his post included promises that those who found any alleged wrongdoing would be rewarded.One person who shared Mr. Trump’s post said he would give “special status” to anyone who captured footage of the unverified ballots. Others said they would go door to door to verify voters themselves and “get a point” if they found the ballots.On Telegram, some groups that have exhorted people to watch ballot boxes in Arizona to prevent voter fraud have also treated it like a game. “Ten points if you spend an hour” monitoring a ballot box, one person wrote in a Telegram channel with nearly 100 people. “1,000 if you catch them,” the person added, using expletives to describe undocumented immigrants.Similar Telegram channels have popped up in other states. In New Hampshire and Wisconsin, groups dedicated to monitoring the elections next week were also conferring points to players for finding local cases of voter fraud.In one Wisconsin-based Telegram group, where 100 people were engaged in scoring points by finding voter fraud, one participant, whose user name contained a racial slur, posted a video last week of someone claiming to burn ballots.The player obtained 10 virtual points for the video. But the footage had already circulated widely on the internet after the 2020 election and was debunked as fake. The person shown in the video was burning sample ballots, not ones that voters had used. More

After flying under the radar as academic experiments, the markets are facing close regulatory scrutiny. But they are worth preserving, our columnist says.I’ve used prediction markets for years, never for trading but rather as a source of information, an interesting adjunct to polls, economic and political models, and traditional reporting, especially when elections grow near.But the U.S. prediction markets that allow people to place legal bets on American elections have run into regulatory problems.PredictIt, the larger of the two prediction markets operating in the United States, has emerged over the last several years as a go-to source for journalists and academics seeking to harness the “wisdom of crowds” for a sense of where the elections are heading.At the moment, the bets on its site amount to a forecast of Republican control of both the House and the Senate. PredictIt’s older and more purely academic counterpart, the Iowa Electronic Markets, is showing the same essential picture.Kalshi, a third and overtly commercial derivatives market, had hoped to start trading contracts on the outcome of the midterm elections by now, but its application has stalled at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.The various markets — PredictIt, the Iowa market, overseas markets like Betfair in Britain and predecessors like the Irish sites Intrade and Tradesports — have had plenty of glitches through the years. They aren’t always accurate, and their results, if not interpreted carefully, look deceptively extreme. A thin edge in election polling can be magnified in these markets as a definitive advantage, but they are often fundamentally correct. Academic studies have found that they stack up quite well against opinion polls and standard political forecasts.Such markets have also provided compelling results in experiments aimed at estimating Hollywood movie box office results, improving weather forecasts and providing corporations and the Defense Department with information on security, health care and product quality control issues.They all work on the basic notion that when markets are broad and efficient enough and money is at stake, the collective information embodied in their prices is closer to the truth than the conclusions that most individuals can come up with on their own.This may well be true over the long run, but one flaw in this approach is obvious if you have been following the stock, bond, foreign exchange or commodity markets this year: Over short periods, markets are as fickle as a cat. I see no reason to assume that election markets are inherently wiser or steadier than the stock market, which I don’t trust as a guide to much of anything over short periods.Still, prediction markets are fascinating, and provide a worthwhile source of data on a vast array of subjects. They also have tremendous financial possibilities.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.“Prediction markets are going to be a very big business,” said William R. Hambrecht, an early investor in Silicon Valley companies like Apple and Adobe and a major investor in Aristotle, the company that runs PredictIt. “I don’t think you can overstate the potential, once the regulatory issues are resolved.”An Old American PastimeBetting on elections is, technically, illegal in the United States. But the reality is that it has been commonplace since the early days of the republic, Koleman Strumpf, a Wake Forest University economist, said in an interview.By the late 19th century, New York City had become a national center for betting on both finance and politics. Early in the 20th century, whenever elections rolled around, traders outside the New York Stock Exchange placed high-volume wagers on the Curb Market, a rollicking, over-the-counter outdoor marketplace for stocks, bonds and politics.In the current era, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission has permitted the two low-stakes markets — the Iowa Electronic Markets and PredictIt — to operate under academic exemptions.But in August, the commission ordered PredictIt to cease operations by Feb. 15. The agency hasn’t publicly explained its reasons for the cancellation, which PredictIt is fighting in the courts. One issue may be PredictIt’s popularity — the volume of betting on the site has sometimes exceeded the limits set when PredictIt began operating as an educational venture in 2014.A week ago, the commission staff recommended against Kalshi’s bid to start a higher-stakes trade in futures contracts on the control of Congress resulting from the midterm elections. The commission tends to side with its staff’s recommendations, but has not indicated how it will rule on the Kalshi case.In an email, Steven Adamske, a commission spokesman, said only: “Kalshi’s application is still pending, and I don’t have a timeline for when it will be announced.”In an interview, Tarek Mansour, a founder of Kalshi, pointed out that his exchange already offered robust trading on important questions like the future of inflation in the United States and the path of Federal Reserve interest rate increases, and that it was running an unofficial contest asking people to forecast the elections.“That’s an effort at educating people about our site,” he said. “We agree that we need regulation, and we are waiting patiently for guidance from the C.F.T.C.”The Two Election MarketsIt is possible that once the midterms are over, only the Iowa market will remain as a legal outlet for election betting. It has functioned since 1988 as a modest, money-losing “Internet-based teaching and research tool” that allows up to 2,000 people — students of the University of Iowa and anyone else with the money and interest — to place bets of $5 to $500 on the outcome of events, including U.S. elections.As long as it sticks to these unequivocally educational goals and people at the university are willing to take the time and effort to keep it running, its future seems reasonably secure.“It’s a labor of love,” said Thomas S. Gruca, the director of the prediction market and a professor at the university’s Tippie College of Business. “It takes a lot of time from a lot of volunteers to keep it going. But a lot of people are learning a lot because of it.”PredictIt is something of a hybrid. It is a joint venture. One partner is Victoria University of Wellington, a New Zealand institution. The other is Aristotle, a for-profit American political consulting, compliance, data and software company, whose founder, John Aristotle Phillips, first gained national attention in 1976 as “the A-bomb kid” — a Princeton undergraduate who successfully designed an atomic bomb in a physics class project.“It was about arms control,” he told me in an interview. “I showed that a bomb could be built, and that we needed more controls.”Aristotle does the day-to-day work running PredictIt, and the university has been playing a passive role. While the data from the prediction market at the University of Iowa is regularly used in classrooms and in research there, that is not the case for Victoria University.“We are not aware of any scholars at Victoria University of Wellington using the data, but, as they don’t need to come through us to access it, that would be a question better directed to PredictIt,” Katherine Edmond, the university’s director of communications, said in an email.PredictIt is used extensively by scholars around the world, but mainly by Americans, who are listed on its site, and have relied on it for years, as have journalists like me. In addition to filing suit, Aristotle has applied for permission to become a commercial exchange, like Kalshi, a move that would end the restrictions on its size and scope.A Modest PredictionFrom the standpoint of many economists, the prediction markets, for all their flaws, have been spectacularly successful.“There’s tremendous social utility to having these markets operate, and having this information available,” said Eric Zitzewitz, a Dartmouth professor who has studied prediction markets extensively. “There’s a lot of demand for them — people enjoy participating in them and consuming the information they provide.”Betting on elections won’t go away, no matter what the regulators decide. Such betting could migrate to overseas markets or to unregulated markets in cyberspace that are outside U.S. regulatory control.Far better, I think, would be to allow them to operate within U.S. borders as transparent, robust — and carefully regulated — operations. Until now, both the Iowa market and PredictIt have been small enough to be fairly innocuous in terms of their effects on elections themselves. When big money flows into prediction markets — as I suspect it one day will — the potential for real trouble will be far greater. Markets can be manipulated and corruption flourish, so smart and active regulators are needed to keep markets honest.That’s true for the stock market. Regulating U.S. prediction markets will become far more critical when large sums are focused directly on the outcome of elections, which are, after all, the foundation of our democracy. Prediction markets are important enough to be preserved. But elections are important enough for regulators to move slowly and carefully. More

Republicans have swiftly gained ground near the end of midterm elections polling.In the last days before Tuesday’s midterm elections, the polls have increasingly reached a consensus on the state of the race: Republicans lead.Most pollsters over the past few weeks have found Republicans opening a modest but consistent lead when they ask voters whether they’ll back Democrats or Republicans for Congress.The results are a reversal from polls conducted just over a month ago, when Democrats seemed to have the advantage.If the recent polls are right — and they may not be — Republicans will almost certainly take the House. The big question on election night would be whether and where individual Democratic candidates could withstand a hostile political environment. Control of the Senate would depend on it.How Republicans got hereIn one sense, the new Republican strength was foreseeable. The president’s party almost always gets pummeled in midterm elections, especially when his approval rating is as low as President Biden’s, which is hovering just over 40 percent. In the era of modern polling dating back nearly a century, no precedent exists for the president’s party to hold its own in the House when his approval rating is well beneath 50 percent.But for Democrats, the usual midterm losses for the party in the White House — or even a better than usual outcome — may still be something of a disappointment. Democrats seemed to be in a fairly strong position as recently as a few weeks ago. They gained support over the summer after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and amid rising concerns about the state of American democracy and gun violence. Some news also helped the party politically: falling gas prices and Biden’s surprising legislative successes.What is the most important problem facing the country today? More

Dr. Mehmet Oz owes much of his fortune and no small amount of his fame to Oprah Winfrey.But Ms. Winfrey, who branded Dr. Oz as “America’s Doctor” on her famed television show and went on to co-produce a spinoff, “The Dr. Oz Show,” announced her support on Thursday for her protégé’s Democratic rival, John Fetterman, in the tightly contested U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania.“If I lived in Pennsylvania, I would have already cast my vote for John Fetterman for many reasons,” Ms. Winfrey said during a virtual midterms-focused event, according to a clip shared by the Fetterman campaign late Thursday.A high-profile liberal who endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and offered public support for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, Ms. Winfrey had appeared as though she would sit out announcing her views on the Pennsylvania race. Last year, after Dr. Oz declared his candidacy, leaping into politics from 13 years as the celebrity host of his medical-advice show, Ms. Winfrey offered a noncommittal statement that “it’s up to the residents of Pennsylvania to decide who will represent them.”Dr. Oz, who was a prominent cardiothoracic surgeon in New York in the early 2000s, became a regular guest offering health advice on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” over five seasons. Ms. Winfrey’s company, Harpo Productions, helped create Dr. Oz’s own daytime show in 2009.The Fetterman campaign on Friday called the Oprah comments “a November surprise,” suggesting they could spur many voters. Although Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement of Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary is sometimes said to have helped him defeat Hillary Clinton, Ms. Winfrey’s comments in a 2022 Senate race would likely carry far less weight.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.On Friday, a spokesman for Mr. Fetterman, Joe Calvello, called the endorsement “a devastating rebuke.” The communications director for the Oz campaign, Brittany Yanick, said “Doctor Oz loves Oprah and respects the fact that they have different politics. He believes we need more balance and less extremism in Washington.”The Senate race in Pennsylvania is one of several critical contests on Tuesday that could determine which party will control the chamber. Dr. Oz, the Republican nominee, has significantly gained on Mr. Fetterman in the polls since this summer, leaning heavily on messages about public safety and the economy.Polling by The New York Times and Siena College last week found Mr. Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, up slightly against Dr. Oz, by a 49-percent-to -44-percent margin. But the poll was largely conducted before a debate showing by Mr. Fetterman, who had a stroke in May, that raised Democratic anxieties. (His doctor said recently, adding that Mr. Fetterman has “no work restrictions.”)Dr. Oz’s politics were largely unknown through his long years in the television limelight, thought he took liberal positions on abortion and gun control that he later disavowed in the Republican primary race for Senate. He won the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, who cited his potential appeal to suburban women who had watched him for years on TV.Ms. Winfrey made her comments on the Pennsylvania race during a virtual event for OWN Your Vote, part of the Oprah Winfrey Network, which aims to provide “Black women with tools and resources to overcome voter suppression in the November election,” according to its website. Dr. Oz has struggled to connect with Black voters in Philadelphia, who are a crucial Democratic constituency.During the virtual event, Ms. Winfrey also warned that “if we do not get fired up,’’ the wrong elected officials would be in position to make “decisions about how we care for our bodies, how we care for our kids, what books your children can read, who gets protected by the police and who gets targeted.” She ticked off a list of Democrats vying in other close races for Senate in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia, and she said she would have supported each of them if she were registered to vote in the state.“John doesn’t seek endorsements at all, he’s focused on the voters,” said Neil Makhija, the executive director of the group Indian American Impact and a friend of Mr. Fetterman’s, who confirmed his involvement in outreach to Ms. Winfrey’s allies. “But I think the campaign certainly recognized, if there was one endorsement that would be particularly powerful, it was Oprah’s.” More