Elections

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      I Worked at Facebook. It’s Not Ready for This Year’s Election Wave.

      by

      The world is not ready for the coming electoral tsunami. Neither is Facebook. With so many elections on the horizon — France, Kenya, Australia, Brazil, the Philippines and the United States will hold elections this year — the conversation now should focus on how Facebook is preparing.I know what it’s like to prepare for an election at Facebook. I worked there for 10 years, and from 2014 through the end of 2019, I led the company’s work across elections globally. It has poured more than $13 billion into building up its safety and security efforts in the United States since the 2016 elections, when the platform was too slow to recognize how its products could be weaponized to spread misinformation.Responsible election plans cannot be spun up in days or weeks. It takes time not only to organize internally but also to make meaningful and necessary connections with the communities around the world working to secure elections. Facebook must begin serious, concerted, well-funded efforts today.For some of the elections happening in the first half of this year, Facebook is cutting it close. But there’s still time for Facebook to commit to a publicly available road map that outlines how it plans to build up its resources to fight misinformation and hate speech around the world. Algorithms that find hate speech and election-related content; labels that give people more context, like those in the United States applied to content that questioned the election results; and efforts to get people accurate information about where, when and how to vote should all be a part of the baseline protections Facebook deploys across the globe. On top of these technical protections, it needs people with country-specific language and culture expertise to make tough decisions about speech or behavior that might violate the platform’s rules.I’m proud of the progress the company made in bringing more transparency to political and issue ads, developing civil society partnerships and taking down influence operations. None of that progress happened spontaneously. To combat the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that exposed 126 million Americans to its content before and after the 2016 elections, for example, Facebook needed new policies, new expertise and a revamped team at the platform dedicated to these issues. Because of those innovations, the company was able to take down 52 influence networks in 2021.Facebook couldn’t do this work alone. Partnerships with organizations such as the Atlantic Council, the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and many others were crucial.But even then, providing the technical infrastructure to combat misinformation is only half the battle. Facebook faced scrutiny again in 2020 and 2021 for how it handled everything from President Donald Trump’s Facebook account to false election fraud claims and Jan. 6. Many of the conversations I had at the time revolved around balancing the right to free speech with the harm that speech could cause someone.This is one of the central dilemmas companies like Facebook grapple with. What is the right call for company administrators when a sitting president of the United States violates their platform’s community standards, even as they believe that people should be able to hear what he has to say? When are people exercising their right to organize and protest against their government, as opposed to preparing for a violent insurrection?Similar issues come up in other countries. Last year the Russian government pressured Apple and Google to remove an app created by allies of Aleksei Navalny, an opponent of President Vladimir Putin’s. Refusing the government would have put their employees in Russia at risk. Complying would go against free-expression standards. The companies chose to protect their employees.These are the kinds of difficult questions that crop up in every country, but Facebook also needs country-specific monitoring. Human expertise is the only way to truly understand how heated discussions are shifting in real time and to be sensitive to linguistic and cultural nuances. The word “dill” in Russian translates to “ukrop,” for example, which has been used as a slur against Ukrainians. Some Ukrainians, however, reclaimed the word and even named a political party after it. A global framework that fails to account for these kinds of situations or that is overly reliant on technology to address them is not prepared to confront the reality of our complex world.Facebook has invested billions in this kind of work. But a majority of its investment for classifying misinformation, for example, has focused on the United States, even though daily active users in other countries make up the vast majority of the user base. And it’s not clear which efforts Facebook will extend from U.S. elections to those in other countries. It’s unlikely that within the next two years, much less the next few months, Facebook can build up protections in every country. But it must start planning now for how it will exponentially scale up people, products and partnerships to handle so many elections at once in 2022 and 2024.It should be transparent about how it will determine what to build in each country. In 2019, Facebook had more than 500 full-time employees and 30,000 people working on safety and security overall. Even with that amount of human talent, it could cover the national elections in only three major countries at once. At least that many people were needed for the United States in 2020. In two years, people in the United States, India, Indonesia, Ukraine, Taiwan, Mexico and Britain are to go to the polls in national elections. Facebook will need to consider hiring at least 1,000 more full-time employees to be ready for the next big election cycle. If the company is cutting it close for 2022, it has just enough time to be really ready for 2024.These problems are not ones that Facebook can fix on its own. Its parent, Meta, is a private company but one with tremendous influence on society and democratic discourse. Facebook needs to continue to recognize the responsibility it has to protect elections around the world and invest accordingly. Governments, civil society and the public should hold it accountable for doing so.Katie Harbath is the chief executive of Anchor Change, a company focused on issues at the intersection of tech and democracy. She formerly worked at Facebook, where she helped lead its work on elections.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats Decried Dark Money in Politics, but Used It to Defeat Trump

      by

      A New York Times analysis reveals how the left outdid the right at raising and spending millions from undisclosed donors to defeat Donald Trump and win power in Washington.For much of the last decade, Democrats complained — with a mix of indignation, frustration and envy — that Republicans and their allies were spending hundreds of millions of difficult-to-trace dollars to influence politics.“Dark money” became a dirty word, as the left warned of the threat of corruption posed by corporations and billionaires that were spending unlimited sums through loosely regulated nonprofits, which did not disclose their donors’ identities.Then came the 2020 election.Spurred by opposition to then-President Trump, donors and operatives allied with the Democratic Party embraced dark money with fresh zeal, pulling even with and, by some measures, surpassing Republicans in 2020 spending, according to a New York Times analysis of tax filings and other data.The analysis shows that 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with the Democratic Party spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020 — compared to roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the G.O.P.The findings reveal the growth and ascendancy of a shadow political infrastructure that is reshaping American politics, as megadonors to these nonprofits take advantage of loose disclosure laws to make multimillion-dollar outlays in total secrecy. Some good-government activists worry that the exploding role of undisclosed cash threatens to accelerate the erosion of trust in the country’s political system.Democrats’ newfound success in harnessing this funding also exposes the stark tension between their efforts to win elections and their commitment to curtail secretive political spending by the superrich.Spurred by opposition to President Trump, donors and operatives allied with the Democratic Party embraced dark money with fresh zeal in 2020.Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesA single, cryptically named entity that has served as a clearinghouse of undisclosed cash for the left, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, received mystery donations as large as $50 million and disseminated grants to more than 200 groups, while spending a total of $410 million in 2020 — more than the Democratic National Committee itself.But nonprofits do not abide by the same transparency rules or donation limits as parties or campaigns — though they can underwrite many similar activities: advertising, polling, research, voter registration and mobilization and legal fights over voting rules.The scale of secret spending is such that, even as small donors have become a potent force in politics, undisclosed money dwarfed the 2020 campaign fund-raising of President Biden (who raised a record $1 billion) and Mr. Trump (who raised more than $810 million).Headed into the midterm elections, Democrats are warning major donors not to give in to the financial complacency that often afflicts the party in power, while Republicans are rushing to level the dark-money playing field to take advantage of what is expected to be a favorable political climate in 2022.At stake is not just control of Congress but also whether Republican donors will become more unified with Mr. Trump out of the White House. Two Republican secret-money groups focused on Congress said their combined fund-raising reached nearly $100 million in 2021 — far more than they raised in 2019. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Italian Lawmakers Say They Have Agreed to Re-Elect Sergio Mattarella as President

      by

      Mr. Mattarella has presided over a chaotic seven years in which the country swung wildly from the left to the right, acting as the guardrails of Italy’s democracy.ROME — After noxious and chaotic back-room negotiations, Italian lawmakers said on Saturday that they had reached a consensus to keep the status quo in place and would ask the country’s current president, Sergio Mattarella, to serve another seven-year term.The Italian Parliament is expected to re-elect Mr. Mattarella later Saturday, in the sixth day of secret votes that have revealed the fractious politics and crumbling alliances just beneath the surface of Italy’s national unity government.In Italy’s unpredictable politics, nothing is certain until the ballots are officially counted, and Mr. Mattarella, at 80, has been reluctant to serve again. But a week of inconclusive voting had already revealed the inability of the different political interests within the governing coalition to rally around a new candidate.The apparent choice of Mr. Mattarella essentially amounted to a punt — to avoid early elections and to prolong Italy’s current period of stability under Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who himself had coveted the job.But in a private meeting on Saturday morning, Mr. Draghi personally asked Mr. Mattarella to consider staying on because the political chaos over the inconclusive ballots had begun to suck in institutional figures, like the president of the Senate and the head of the Secret Service, two prominent women who were proposed as candidates only to be roundly rejected and tarnished.Mr. Draghi returned from the meeting and then called the governing coalition’s party leaders to try to broker a deal, according to an official in Mr. Draghi’s office who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it publicly.By leaving Mr. Draghi in place, the lawmakers hoped to avert the political chaos of early elections that his departure may have encouraged. The choice of Mr. Mattarella instead increased the likelihood that Mr. Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank, would continue to lead the unity government.Having Mr. Draghi’s hand on day-to-day affairs was certain to calm international markets as well as the European Union’s leadership in Brussels, which is counting on Italy to effectively manage hundreds of billions of dollars in pandemic recovery funds and demonstrate the wisdom of the bloc’s experiment in collective debt.Mario Draghi, left, at the Quirinal Palace in Rome in February 2021.Francesco Ammendola/Presidential Palace, via ReutersMr. Draghi’s supporters would have preferred that he be elected president, hoping that his steadying influence, even in the often ceremonial role of the presidency, would provide Italy stability beyond the country’s next scheduled elections, in 2023.But for them, the re-election of Mr. Mattarella amounts to the second-best option because it freezes the current political situation in place and leaves open the possibility that Mr. Draghi could still someday ascend to the Quirinal Palace, the home of presidents and the past home of popes.While Mr. Draghi is expected to stay on as prime minister for the months ahead, speculation is rife that Mr. Mattarella would resign early from his second term as president and open the way for Italy’s next Parliament to elect Mr. Draghi at a less politically delicate time. The official in Mr. Draghi’s office said Mr. Draghi and Mr. Mattarella did not discuss anything of the sort on Saturday morning.Mr. Mattarella “understands that this is a critical time for Italy,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, an expert in the Italian political system at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. “And that the status quo needs to be kept.”But months can be an eternity in Italy’s volatile politics. Most experts agree that as the elections get closer, the political ambitions and gamesmanship of the opposing political parties in the government will make it increasingly hard for the government to act, to pass new legislation, or even to stay together.And there is no guarantee that Mr. Mattarella would resign, or if he did, that the new Parliament would be filled with electors partial to Mr. Draghi.Mr. Mattarella was first elected in 2015 when he was championed by the prime minister at the time, Matteo Renzi, and he enjoyed broad support across the political spectrum. Born in Palermo, Sicily, he is the younger brother of Piersanti Mattarella, whom the mafia assassinated in 1980 during his term as Sicily’s governor.Sergio Mattarella, a reserved lawyer who taught parliamentary law in Palermo, was elected to Parliament in 1983 as a member of the Christian Democratic Party, which dominated postwar Italy until it imploded after a series of bribery scandals in the early 1990s. He served in Parliament until 2008, holding a number of high-level government posts under the Christian Democrats and in later center-left governments. In 2011, he was elected by Parliament to Italy’s Constitutional Court.As president, the grandfatherly Mr. Mattarella, with his snow-white hair and quiet style, has demonstrated moral authority in his ceremonial role.But he has also presided with a firm hand over a chaotic seven years in which the country swung wildly from the left to the right and elected among the most populist and anti-European Parliaments in Europe before transforming once again into an establishment bedrock under Mr. Draghi, whom Mr. Mattarella personally brought in to end a government crisis last year.After populists scored large victories in the 2018 elections, Mr. Mattarella prevented from taking power a government that he considered in violation of the Italian Constitution for its anti-European character, resulting in leaders of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement calling for his impeachment. It is a mark of how much Italian politics has moderated around Mr. Draghi that those same leaders today urged their followers to vote for Mr. Mattarella. But many of them had a strong personal interest in stability, as early elections were likely to cost many of them their jobs and pensions.Counting votes on Saturday at Parliament in Rome.Pool photo by Roberto MonaldoMr. Mattarella repeatedly made it clear that he did not want to stay in the job and had moved his things to a new apartment in Rome. Memes swapped among Italian politicians and reporters this week showed Mr. Mattarella answering the phone and pretending he was not home, or tying sheets together to sneak out of a window of the presidential palace. After news of his selection became public, Italian commentators jokingly expressed solidarity with his plight of having to pack and unpack boxes.But over a week of disastrous negotiations that highlighted the lack of cohesion across the political spectrum, but especially in the country’s center right, which came into the election hoping to flex its muscles but left weak and splintered, he emerged as the only name anyone could agree on.Matteo Salvini, the leader of the nationalist League party who had hoped the election would act as a show of force for the center right and his role as its de facto leader, exited the week much weaker and politically bloodied. All of his proposed candidates, and there were many, failed to gain traction.“We’ll ask Mattarella to stay,” he said Saturday. “And like this, the team stays as it is. Draghi remains at Palazzo Chigi” in his office of prime minister.Silvio Berlusconi, who had himself hoped to become president before withdrawing his candidacy shortly before voting began, had put a veto on Mr. Draghi becoming president because it could endanger the government. Mr. Berlusconi had a “long and cordial” phone call with Mr. Mattarella “ensuring him our fullest support,” according to Antonio Tajani, a leader of Mr. Berlusconi’s political party, Forza Italia. Mr. Tajani said he was very satisfied with the choice of Mr. Mattarella.The centrist Italia Viva party, led by Mr. Renzi, applauded the choice of Mr. Mattarella. “We voted for him then and today we vote for him again enthusiastically,” the group said on Twitter.If Mr. Mattarella is the winner of the week’s voting, and Mr. Draghi remains a player and a potential president for Italy, the election had its fair share of casualties, too. While the Democratic Party got its chosen candidate, the center right emerged seeming battered and inept. Some of its biggest power players talked about resigning. The contempt and diverging interests among the nominal allies spilled into view.Mr. Mattarella on Saturday outside the Quirinal Palace.Massimo Percossi/EPA, via Shutterstock For days, the competing political parties engaged in all sorts of tactics to pursue their narrow interests, gain the upper hand or defend against partisan candidates. They cast blank ballots and floated symbolic candidates used to measure the compactness of their voting blocs. They timed their own voters to make sure they were not writing down names on blank ballots. They publicly offered what they called ideal, real, credible candidates, but in reality, they meant to burn those candidacies by merely articulating the syllables of their names.On Thursday, the threshold for victory went down to 505 votes, an absolute majority, and tensions increased. On Friday, the number of votes increased to two a day, and Mr. Salvini, tried to force a candidacy of a political ally, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, the president of the Senate, despite threats from liberals and his nominal partners in the national unity coalition that it would prompt the collapse of the government.Her candidacy came up far short and did not even succeed in winning all of the votes of the center-right bloc. Momentum began to move toward Mr. Mattarella, but on Friday night, desperate politicians, including the embittered former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, whom Mr. Mattarella had replaced with Mr. Draghi, expressed backing for a generic female candidate. The move was roundly interpreted as a last-ditch power tactic and merely claimed new political casualties. But on Saturday, all of those gambits seemed to end and the members of the national unity government decided to keep things exactly how they were, with Mr. Mattarella as president and Mr. Draghi as prime minister. But everything also seemed different. The election had taken a toll.The election, Enrico Letta, the leader of the Democratic Party, told reporters on Saturday, showed “a political system that is blocked.” He added, “This isn’t working.”Elisabetta Povoledo More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Macron’s Comments on Algeria Resonate as Elections Loom

      by

      The French president acknowledged the suffering of colonists who fled Algeria after the war of independence, a group that has long voted heavily in favor of the right in France.PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron of France, addressing a community that has been fertile ground for the far right ahead of presidential elections this spring, on Wednesday acknowledged the suffering of the French and European colonists who fled Algeria after the 1954-62 war of independence and of their descendants.“The 1962 exodus is a tragic page of our national history,” he said, adding that the colonists and their descendants “were not listened to” and “were not welcomed with the affection that every French citizen deserves.”Mr. Macron’s speech was the latest step in a yearlong effort to resolve painful memories of France’s colonial past in Algeria. Following proposals made in a government-commissioned report, he acknowledged crimes committed by the French military and police and the state’s lack of regard for those who fled Algeria and had fought for France.But it also came as Mr. Macron enters the final stretch of a bruising campaign to serve a second five-year term in which his government has moved increasingly to the right on issues prominent in far-right campaigning such as immigration and the place of Islam in France.People fleeing Algeria on a boat, waiting to be taken back to France in 1962.Gamma-Keystone, via Getty ImagesOver the past year, Mr. Macron has recognized the suffering of nearly every community affected by France’s colonial history in Algeria, including independence fighters and immigrants, and Algerians who fought on the French side during the war of independence.“He achieved in six months what had not been done for 60 years,” said Benjamin Stora, a leading historian of the Algerian War and the author of the government-commissioned report.But Mr. Macron’s speech Wednesday recognizing the suffering of the colonists, known as Pieds-Noirs, and their descendants, was notable for its timing three months before an election in a political environment marked by heated debates over immigration and Islam that have echoes of the French colonial past in Algeria.Mr. Macron, right, received the report on colonization and the Algerian war from the historian Benjamin Stora in 2021.Pool photo by Christian HartmannThe trauma of that history continues to shape modern France, with nostalgia on the right and resentment among the country’s large Muslim population.The long shadow of France’s defeat in Algeria looms large in the rhetoric of Éric Zemmour, a far-right candidate for president whose parents left the country in the 1950s and who speaks of “reconquering” a France he says is being colonized by Islam and immigration. His message has resonated with many voters on the far right, leading to a jump in the polls last year that has gradually dissipated in recent months as Mr. Zemmour has struggled to broaden his base of support and attract working-class voters.Mr. Macron last year started addressing the recommendations in the Stora report by acknowledging the brutal killing of a leading Algerian lawyer, Ali Boumendjel, by French soldiers. He also facilitated access to sensitive archives of the Algerian War and was the first French head of state to commemorate the mass killing of Algerian independence protesters by the Paris police 60 years ago.The moves were widely criticized by the French right, which is still reluctant to openly criticize colonization, particularly the party of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, the National Rally, whose origins are rooted in popular opposition to the end of colonial Algeria.France’s National Archives near Paris. Mr. Macron facilitated access to sensitive archives of the Algerian War.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMr. Macron then asked “forgiveness” for the abandonment of Harkis, Algerians who fought for France during the war and have often shown strong support for Ms. Le Pen, his main challenger in the presidential elections in April.The Pieds-Noirs emigrated to Algeria from France and European countries, often as laborers and farmers, while the nation was under French rule, for about 130 years. After Algeria won its independence in 1962, about 800,000 of the colonists fled to France and many others who stayed were massacred. Their fate has long fueled resentment, and nostalgia for the colonial past, feelings that have often translated into support for the far right.In 2017, while campaigning for the French presidency, Mr. Macron called the colonization of Algeria a “crime against humanity,” infuriating Pied-Noir organizations. His words on Wednesday struck a very different tone.French troops in Algiers in 1956.Associated PressFrench paratroopers questioning a captive in Saint Eugene, Algeria, in 1957.Jacques Grevin/Agence France-Presse, via IntercontinentaleResponding to one of the main demands of the Pieds-Noirs, Mr. Macron officially recognized that French soldiers in March 1962 killed dozens of supporters of French Algeria. He also called for the mass killing of Pieds-Noirs by Algerian independence supporters to be “faced and recognized.”Learn More About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 6The campaign begins. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Georgia and Voting Rights: Deep Distrust Over a Plan to Close Polling Places

      by

      As legislation to expand voting rights was blocked in Washington, local residents debate a plan from officials in Lincoln County, Ga., who say they want to streamline and modernize their system.LINCOLN COUNTY, Ga. — The showdown over voting rights in the U.S. Senate may be over for now. But the issue is still smoldering in a stretch of Northeast Georgia countryside where local officials recently introduced a plan to close seven polling sites and consolidate them into one.The proposal in Lincoln County has attracted the attention and ire of major voting rights groups and suspicion among some Black residents who say the effort is just the latest example of voter suppression in a state where Republicans recently passed a restrictive new law. Hundreds of upset residents have filed protest petitions that could cause local officials to scale it back.But local officials say the current polling spots are in need of modernization — and that in a county where about two-thirds of the 7,700 residents are white, the plan is simply an effort to make it easier to manage elections. The remaining site would be located close to the polling place that currently serves the county’s one majority-Black precinct.“They seem to think that I’m trying to stop Black people from voting,” said the elections director, an African American woman named Lilvender Bolton. She would administer the plan that was under consideration last week by a mostly Republican-appointed board of two Black members and three white ones.In Georgia, a state where razor-thin voting margins have helped swing the White House and control of the Senate, any effort to change the process of voting has become fiercely contested. And after recent efforts by Republicans in Georgia and around the country to restrict voting, suspicions are high.Lilvender Bolton, who leads the Board of Elections, supports a plan to consolidate voting into one location.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesFor decades, a proposal like Lincoln County’s would have been subject to review from the Department of Justice to determine whether it was discriminatory, a step mandated by the 1965 Voting Rights Act and often referred to as “preclearance.” But this system was effectively gutted by a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, and has not returned since, despite efforts to revive it like last week’s Senate debate.David J. Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the failure to reinstitute preclearance this year was a missed opportunity.Mr. Becker was careful to note that he could not tell whether Lincoln County’s consolidation plan was politically motivated or well-intentioned. But with preclearance, he said, residents of areas like Lincoln County would at least have had a sense that a third party had taken a hard look at whether a proposed change to voting in their community would make it harder for minority groups to vote.“Preclearance was a stamp of approval that elections officials could use to tamp down exactly this kind of divisive rhetoric that’s going around,” he said.In 2019, the Leadership Conference Education Fund, a civil rights nonprofit based in Washington, issued a report analyzing the areas formerly subject to federal review and found a loss of 1,173 polling places between the 2014 and the 2018 midterm elections.Fully understanding the “potentially discriminatory impact of these closures,” the report’s authors wrote, would require “precisely the kind” of analysis “that the DOJ conducted under preclearance.”Even voting rights groups acknowledge that there are sometimes legitimate reasons for closing polling places: Populations shift, and sometimes the way people cast their vote changes, too. More voters may begin choosing to vote by mail or at early voting locations rather than their precinct.Officials want all voting to take place in Lincolnton, the county seat.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIn Lincoln County, Ms. Bolton, the county elections director, argues that the change would make it easier for her to manage Election Day. Her tiny staff is stressed, she said, by the responsibility of setting up and breaking down the complicated electronic voting machines in seven locations spread around the county’s 257 square miles.The failure of the voting overhaul effort in Washington comes after Republican state lawmakers, in the wake of former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in 2020, have moved to overhaul election systems in dozens of states, including Georgia, often in the name of protecting against dubious allegations of voter fraud promulgated by Mr. Trump and his allies.The Georgia legislature has also handed control of some or all appointments to local election boards in six counties to conservative judges or Republican-controlled county commissions.Given these recent developments, and the long history of racist disenfranchisement of Black voters in the South, some Lincoln County voters say they would be foolish not to suspect that they are being targeted.“How could you not see it as a pattern?” said Charlie Murray, 68, a Black resident who votes at a nearby church far from the county seat.“They’re making it harder for people to vote,” said another Black resident, Franklin Sherman, 29, a truck driver who usually votes in the same spot.Franklin Sherman, 29, opposes consolidating the precincts: “They’re making it harder for people to vote.”Nicole Craine for The New York TimesLincoln County was among the six Georgia counties in which the rules for selecting members of the local elections board were recently changed by the state legislature.County officials originally asked legislators for the change because they wanted to be able to stagger the members’ terms, said Walker T. Norman, the longtime chair of the county commission and a Republican.Another change — ending the tradition of letting the Democratic and Republican Parties each choose one board member — was prompted by a State Supreme Court ruling, which has been interpreted to hold that private entities cannot appoint members to government bodies, he said.The legislation mandating the changes was sponsored by State Senator Lee Anderson, a Republican who co-sponsored last year’s restrictive Georgia voting bill. He also publicly supported a baseless and unsuccessful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia and three other states. In a recent interview, Mr. Anderson said that in making the changes to the local elections board, he was simply responding to the wishes of Lincoln County officials.Mr. Norman is something of a legend in the county: The community gym proposed as the sole new voting site bears his name — “I got a road named after me too,” he said — and two years ago he changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican because he said it had become too hard to get elected as a Democrat. In an interview, he dismissed the idea that Black voters would be discriminated against by a consolidation. He noted that in all but one precinct, white voters outnumber Black ones.“You can see that they’re not for all the people,” Charlie Murray, 68, said of Lincoln County officials.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“So if we’re suppressing anybody, I’m afraid we’re suppressing the white vote,” he said. “But that’s not our intent, to suppress any vote.”Mr. Norman said that in recent elections, a majority of participants have voted early at a centralized location in Lincolnton. He also described a litany of problems with the current system: Three polling places are within about two and a half miles of one another. Some of the facilities are antiquated. Consolidation, he said, will require less equipment. “We don’t have to use but about half of the voting machines,” he said.But opponents, both Black and white, expressed more concern for the convenience of voters than for that of the voting officials and poll workers.Racy Smith, 56, the owner of a Lincolnton antique and curio shop, said it seemed “ridiculous” to close rural polling places in a county with limited public transportation. “My 86-year-old mom can still drive,” said Mr. Smith, who is white, “but there are so many that aren’t that active who live out in the county.”The Rev. Denise Freeman, a former member of the school board and an activist leading the fight against the consolidation, expressed skepticism about the board’s true motivation. “I think it’s the good ol’ boys flexing their muscle for more power and more control,” she said.On Thursday, Ms. Freeman gave a tour of some of the more remote areas of the county, a few miles from the J. Strom Thurmond reservoir, named for the Republican senator who was known as a segregationist but ended up voting to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act.Ms. Freeman talked about her role in the other major racially charged issue that rocked the county in recent decades: an allegation, in the early 1990s, that Black children had been told to sit in the back of a school bus by a driver.The Rev. Denise Freeman, a local activist, outside the proposed site for the new polling station, a gymnasium named after the longtime chair of the county commission. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesBlack parents discussed keeping their children out of school. Ms. Freeman spoke up about this issue and other perceived injustices, earning her share of enemies.Eventually, she said, an outside group came in to broker a sort of peace: the Department of Justice.Three decades later, the residents of Lincoln County will most likely need to sort out their disagreement over polling places on their own. On Tuesday, Ms. Bolton’s office was in the process of verifying hundreds of protest petitions from voters in two precincts. Under Georgia law, those two polling places will have to stay open if the petitioners amount to 20 percent or more of the total electors in each precinct.But Jim Allen, a board member, does not believe that the plan is dead. Some form of consolidation, he said, was likely to be considered eventually.Michael Wines More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Alabama Redistricting Decision Reasserts Voting Rights Act

      by

      Three federal judges in Alabama ruled that a new congressional map drawn by G.O.P. state lawmakers violated the Voting Rights Act.After years of court decisions battering the Voting Rights Act, a ruling in an Alabama redistricting case is reasserting the power of the 56-year-old law — and giving Democrats and civil rights groups hope for beating back gerrymandered maps.The decision from three federal judges ordered state lawmakers to rework their newly drawn congressional maps. The Republican-led legislature violated the Voting Rights Act, the judges ruled, by failing to draw more than one congressional district where Black voters might elect a representative of their choice.Alabama’s Republican attorney general, Steve Marshall, quickly appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Tuesday, and asked for a motion to stay the ruling.Still, the unanimous ruling — signed by two judges appointed by former President Donald J. Trump and one by former President Bill Clinton — was a sign that a key weapon against racial discrimination in redistricting could still be potent, even as other elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act have been hollowed out by Supreme Court decisions. The case hinged on Section 2 of the act, which bars racial discrimination in election procedures.A similar case already is pending in Texas, and the success of the challenge in Alabama could open the door to lawsuits in other states such as South Carolina, Louisiana or Georgia. It could also serve as a warning for states such as Florida that have yet to finish drawing their maps.“The Supreme Court has cut back on the tools that we in the voting rights community have to use to deal with misconduct by government authorities and bodies,” said Eric Holder, a former U.S. Attorney General who is now the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “Section 2 to now has remained pretty much intact.”The court’s ruling in Alabama — where the Black residents make up 27 percent of population yet Black voters are a majority in just one of seven House districts — comes amid a polarized redistricting cycle, in which both Republicans and Democrats have sought to entrench their political power through district lines for congressional and legislative maps. In much of the country, that has created districts that bisect neighborhoods or curl around counties to wring the best possible advantage.Civil rights leaders and some Democrats argue that process too often comes at the expense of growing minority communities. Black and Hispanic voters have a history of being “packed” into single congressional districts or divided up across several so as to dilute their votes.In 2013, the Supreme Court dealt the Voting Rights Act a significant blow in Shelby v. Holder, hollowing out a core provision in Section 5. The “preclearance” provision required that states with a history of discrimination at the polls get approval from the Justice Department before making changes to voting procedures or redrawing maps. Last year, the court ruled that Section 2 would not protect against most new voting restrictions passed since the 2020 election.Mr. Marshall, the Alabama attorney general, argued the only way to create two majority-Black congressional districts is to make race the primary factor in map-drawing and called the court’s ruling “an unconstitutional application of the Voting Rights Act.”“The order will require race to be used at all times, in all places, and for all districts,” Mr. Marshall wrote in his appeal Tuesday. “Based on the political geography of Alabama and the broad dispersion of Black Alabamians, it is essentially impossible to draw a map like those presented by plaintiffs unless traditional districting principles give way to race.”The case is very likely to advance to the Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas has already indicated he does not believe that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prevents racial gerrymandering, a question the court did not address when it struck down other elements of the law.The Alabama decision is the second this month in which a court has invalidated a Republican-drawn congressional map. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled state legislative and congressional maps drawn by Republicans violated a state constitutional prohibition on partisan gerrymandering. The North Carolina Supreme Court delayed the state’s primaries while a challenge to Republican-drawn maps there is heard.How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Texas Man Charged With Threatening to Kill Georgia Election Officials

      by

      A man accused of using Craigslist to call for the assassination of election officials is the first to be charged by the Justice Department’s task force on election threats.WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Friday charged a Texas man with publicly calling for the assassination of Georgia’s election officials on the day before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The case is the first brought by the department’s Election Threats Task Force, an agency created last summer to address threats against elections and election workers. Federal prosecutors accused the man, Chad Christopher Stark, 54, of Leander, Texas, of calling for “Georgia Patriots” to “put a bullet” in a Georgia election official the indictment refers to as Official A.Mr. Stark, according to the three-page indictment, made the threat in a post on Craigslist, the online message board, while then-President Donald J. Trump and his allies were putting public pressure on Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who certified Mr. Trump’s defeat in Georgia to Joseph R. Biden Jr.“Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors,” Mr. Stark wrote, according to the indictment. “It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment right it’s time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A]. Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges.”Mr. Stark was charged with one count of communicating interstate threats.The Craigslist posting came at a moment of intense political pressure against election officials in battleground states. Mr. Trump had phoned Mr. Raffensperger on Jan. 2 last year and demanded that he “find” nearly 12,000 votes to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in Georgia. The posting was published on Jan. 5, a day before a Trump-inspired crowd attacked the United States Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying Mr. Biden as the next president.On Thursday, a district attorney in Atlanta asked a judge to convene a special grand jury to help a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. If the investigation proceeds, legal experts say that the former president’s potential criminal exposure could include charges of racketeering or conspiracy to commit election fraud.Mr. Raffensperger on Friday did not confirm if he was among the election officials targeted.“I strongly condemn threats against election workers and those who volunteer in elections,” he said in a statement. “These are the people who make our democracy work.”Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said on Friday that the task force is reviewing over 850 reports of threats to election officials and has opened dozens of criminal investigations.During the 2020 election cycle and in its immediate aftermath, election workers “came under unprecedented verbal assault for doing nothing more than their jobs,” Mr. Polite told reporters Friday. “As the attorney general and deputy attorney general have both emphasized previously: We will not tolerate the intimidation of those who safeguard our electoral system.”The task force, created last June by the deputy attorney general, Lisa O. Monaco, developed a system to log and track all reported threats to election workers and F.B.I. agents, and federal prosecutors were trained to take in, assess and investigate the allegations. Mr. Polite said the task force has prioritized finding ways to enhance security for state and local election workers.The Texas case represents the task force’s first indictment and arrest. Mr. Polite declined to elaborate on what Mr. Stark may have planned to do.“The communication here speaks for itself,” Mr. Polite said, referring to Mr. Stark’s Craigslist post, which offered $10,000 and called for “Patriots” to “exterminate these people.”In addition to the two Georgia election officials, Mr. Stark’s Craigslist post also threatened a third Georgia official.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 17The House investigation. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Ingrid Betancourt se postula a la presidencia de Colombia

      by

      El anuncio de su candidatura llega en un momento crítico: los colombianos están hartos de la clase política y el futuro del acuerdo de paz está en riesgo.BOGOTÁ — Ingrid Betancourt, excongresista y quien fue mantenida como rehén por la guerrilla y llegó a simbolizar tanto la brutalidad del largo conflicto en Colombia como de los esfuerzos de reconciliación del país, se postulará a la presidencia, dijo el martes.Betancourt entra en una campaña presidencial muy abierta en un momento en el que Colombia está en una determinante encrucijada política y social.Cuando fue secuestrada hace 20 años, Betancourt estaba haciendo campaña para el mismo cargo. Ahora, dijo, el país se enfrenta al mismo “sistema corrupto” y “maquinarias politiqueras” que ella combatió entonces.“Hoy estoy aquí para terminar lo que empecé”, dijo en un estrado en un hotel del centro de Bogotá, la capital del país, acompañada por sus aliados.Betancourt, quien fue capturada en 2002 y retenida durante más de seis años por la mayor fuerza guerrillera del país, las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, anunció su candidatura a las elecciones de mayo mientras el país enfrenta enormes desafíos.Tras más de 50 años de guerra, el gobierno y el grupo rebelde, conocido como las Farc, firmaron un acuerdo de paz en 2016. Pero, desde entonces, una oleada de otros grupos armados ha irrumpido en el vacío y seguido combatiendo.La violencia ha aumentado en algunas zonas rurales y los críticos han culpado al gobierno por no invertir lo suficiente para abordar la desigualdad y la pobreza que han contribuido a impusar la guerra, como se había comprometido a hacer en el acuerdo de paz.Muchos colombianos están hartos del statu quo político, un sentimiento que estalló en la esfera pública en mayo del año pasado, cuando miles de personas salieron a las calles durante más de un mes para protestar por las penurias que solo empeoraron con la pandemia.Tras sus años de cautiverio —en los que a veces estuvo encadenada— Betancourt ha apoyado el proceso de paz y también ha criticado a las Farc, convirtiéndose en un símbolo de los intentos nacionales de reconocer los costos de la guerra, pero también de superarla.Sergio Guzmán, un analista de Bogotá, llamó a Betancourt la “candidata de la reconciliación” del país.En una entrevista con el Times el año pasado, Betancourt calificó el acuerdo de paz como “una ventana, una oportunidad generacional, de salir de la locura violenta en la cual hemos vivido toda nuestra vida”.La cuestión, dijo Guzmán, es si eso es lo que quieren los colombianos.“Todas nuestras elecciones han sido miedo, esperanza y odio”, continuó. “Ninguna elección se ha disputado sobre la base de la compasión y la reconciliación”.Hay un descontento generalizado con el actual presidente, Iván Duque, quien es un producto del poder político tradicional de derecha del país, mientras que un populista de izquierda, Gustavo Petro, lidera las encuestas en medio de una ola izquierdista y opuesta a quienes están en el poder que se extiende por América Latina.“¿Puede Ingrid convertirse en un bálsamo para esas emociones negativas predominantes que estamos sintiendo en este momento?”, dijo Guzmán. “No lo sé. Esa es una de las cosas que nos va a decir su candidatura”.Pero para ganar impulso entre los votantes, dijo, “tiene que vender la idea de que la reconciliación es mejor que el populismo”.Aunque Betancourt es ampliamente conocida en todo el país, una victoria en mayo no es ni mucho menos segura.Para llegar a las elecciones de mayo, Betancourt tendría que ganar las primarias de marzo, en las que competiría con otros candidatos de centroNathalia Angarita para The New York TimesEn este momento hay más de 20 aspirantes a la presidencia, y la mayoría de los más conocidos se agrupan en tres coaliciones: una de izquierda, encabezada por Petro; una de centro, a la que se une Betancourt; y una de derecha, cuyos miembros se consideran los abanderados del gobierno actual.Para llegar a las elecciones de mayo, Betancourt tendría que ganar las primarias de marzo, en las que competiría con otros candidatos de centro, como Alejandro Gaviria, exministro de Salud y hasta hace poco rector de una prestigiosa universidad.Guzmán señaló que Betancourt se incorporó a la campaña tarde en el calendario electoral y calificó su candidatura como “una medida desesperada”.Colombia nunca ha tenido una mujer en la presidencia, y Betancourt es una de las cuatro candidatas de las tres principales coaliciones.La candidata más destacada hasta el momento ha sido Francia Márquez, una joven política afrocolombiana y activista medioambiental que también es víctima de la guerra.Márquez, quien se ha unido a la coalición de la izquierda, se ha distinguido no solo por su identidad —la política colombiana ha estado dominada por hombres blancos y ricos—, sino por su franca adhesión a la política feminista y su disposición a criticar a Petro.Betancourt es hija de una política y de un político y diplomático colombianos, y posteriormente obtuvo la nacionalidad francesa a través de su primer marido.En 2002, tras su paso por el Congreso, Betancourt se lanzó a la campaña presidencial como integrante del Partido Verde Oxígeno, un movimiento político joven de filosofía pacifista, ecologista y anticorrupción. El 23 de febrero de 2002, cuando se dirigía a un acto de campaña en la ciudad de San Vicente del Caguán, fue detenida en un control de carretera y tomada como rehén por las Farc.Durante sus años de cautiverio en la selva, fue tratada brutalmente e intentó escapar en repetidas ocasiones, experiencias que relató en su libro No hay silencio que no termine.Fue rescatada por el gobierno colombiano y, con los años, se ha convertido en la víctima más conocida del país. Pero también ha sido objeto de críticas: de quienes dicen que ha restado atención a víctimas más pobres y menos conocidas, y de otros que la han criticado por pedir una indemnización al gobierno colombiano tras su cautiverio y rescate.Betancourt vive desde hace años en Francia y regresó a Colombia hace apenas unos meses. En su discurso de campaña, se refirió directamente a las críticas de que el traslado estaba diseñado para obtener un beneficio político personal.“He vuelto en busca del mayor beneficio político”, dijo, “que todos tengamos una verdadera democracia”.El anuncio de su campaña no dice mucho sobre sus propuestas políticas, más allá de las repetidas promesas de luchar contra la corrupción y de abordar el impacto de la violencia en el país.“Mi historia es la historia de todos los colombianos”, dijo.En un país de más de 50 millones de habitantes, nueve millones están registrados en el gobierno como víctimas del conflicto.“Mientras las Farc nos esclavizaba a mí y a mis compañeros, los cárteles de la droga, los violentos y los políticos corruptos han estado esclavizando a cada uno de ustedes”, continuó.“Vamos a salir de esta cultura mafiosa, mentirosa, violenta y vamos a aprender de nuevo a ser ciudadanos libres”.Sofía Villamil More