Subterms
Senate House Governor Attorney General Secretary of State More than 210 Republicans who questioned the 2020 election have won seats in the U.S. House and Senate and in state races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general, according to results as of 7 a.m. on Wednesday. More than 30 of them have denied President […] More
Concerns about misinformation on Twitter have flared in the days since Elon Musk’s takeover on Oct. 27, pushing away advertisers, rattling researchers and increasing fears that conspiracy theories and false narratives could pollute the political discourse on the platform ahead of the midterm elections.Researchers at the Fletcher School at Tufts University said in a report that “early signs show the platform is heading in the wrong direction under his leadership — at a particularly inconvenient time for American democracy.”The researchers said they had tracked narratives about civil war, election fraud, citizen policing of voting, and allegations of pedophilia and grooming on Twitter from July through October. They said they had found that the discussion reflected a commitment to combating misinformation, hate speech and toxic ideas.“Post-Musk takeover, the quality of the conversation has decayed,” as more extremists and misinformation peddlers tested the platform’s boundaries, the researchers wrote.Before Mr. Musk took control of Twitter, posts pushing back against misinformation, hate and other toxic speech were usually many times greater than the original false or misleading posts, the Tufts researchers discovered.Conspiracy theories focused on unfounded allegations of pedophilia or “grooming,” which advance an anti-L.G.B.T.Q. message, have encountered less resistance from a Musk-led Twitter, the Tufts report found. Earlier spikes in the topic were accompanied by strong condemnation; after Oct. 28, researchers wrote, “the conversation deteriorated quickly” as users tested Twitter moderators by repeatedly writing “GROOMER,” in an echo of a coordinated campaign to spread antisemitic content as the platform adjusted to Mr. Musk.On Monday, with hours to go before the vote, Mr. Musk tweeted out a link to Twitter’s rules, which he said “will evolve over time.” Watchdog groups quickly noticed that the page did not explicitly address misinformation, although it did prohibit users from using the platform to manipulate or interfere in elections, employ misleading and deceptive identities or share harmful synthetic or manipulated media. A separate page about misinformation in Twitter’s “Help Center” section remained live.Fears about ads appearing in proximity to misinformation and other problematic posts have led General Mills, United Airlines and several other large companies to pause their spending on Twitter in recent days. Content moderation has sparked heated exchanges on Madison Avenue with and about Mr. Musk. More
The new owner of Twitter has embarked on a tweeting spree to push back, spar and justify his actions.Illustration By The New York Times; Photo By Adrees Latif/reutersUnder pressure and facing a wave of criticism, Elon Musk has increasingly turned to his favorite release valve: Twitter.Since Saturday, Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man and the new owner of Twitter, has embarked on a tweeting spree so voluminous that he is on a pace to post more than 750 times this month, or more than 25 times a day, according to an analysis from the digital investigations company Memetica. That would be up from about 13 times a day in April, when Mr. Musk first agreed to buy Twitter.His recent tweets have covered an increasingly broad range of topics. Over the last four days, Mr. Musk, 51, needled the comedian Kathy Griffin and beefed with the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on the platform. He made masturbation jokes aimed at a rival — and much smaller — social media platform. He posted, then deleted, a tweet engaging with a quote from a white nationalist. And he defended his ownership of Twitter, including why he had laid off 50 percent of the company’s staff and why people should not impersonate others on the service.All in all, Mr. Musk, who described himself in his Twitter profile as “Chief Twit” before later changing the description to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator,” has tweeted more than 105 times since Friday, mainly about Twitter, according to a tally by Memetica.“Birds haven’t been real since 1986,” Mr. Musk tweeted on Sunday in a discussion thread about Twitter, including a meme from an absurdist conspiracy theory that posits that birds are actually robot spies. He did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Musk is under tremendous scrutiny 11 days after completing his $44 billion deal for Twitter, which was the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company in history. On Friday, he cut roughly 3,700 of the company’s 7,500 employees, saying he had no choice because Twitter was losing $4 million a day. At the same time, he has found himself embroiled in the same content debates that have plagued other social media companies, including how to give people a way to speak out without spreading misinformation and toxic speech.More on Elon Musk’s Twitter TakeoverA Familiar Playbook: In his first days at Twitter, Elon Musk has been emulating some of the actions of Mark Zuckerberg, who leads Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.A Different Kind of Deal: Silicon Valley moguls used to buy yachts and islands. Now they are rich enough to acquire companies they fancy.‘Hard Fork’: In an episode of The Times’s tech podcast, two Twitter employees described the atmosphere inside the company in the aftermath of the acquisition.Effect on Midterms: Mr. Musk is in the middle of firing thousands of Twitter employees, including many who helped fight misinformation. What could that mean for the upcoming elections?Already Mr. Musk has had to delay the rollout of a subscription product that would have given people check marks on their Twitter profiles. Advertisers have paused their spending on Twitter over fears that Mr. Musk will loosen content rules on the platform. And the midterm elections are set to be a test of how a slimmed-down Twitter will perform in catching inflammatory posts and misinformation about voting and election results.In a report that was published on Monday, researchers at the Fletcher School at Tufts University said the early signs of Mr. Musk’s Twitter “show the platform is heading in the wrong direction under his leadership — at a particularly inconvenient time for American democracy.”The researchers said they had tracked narratives about civil war, election fraud, citizen policing of voting, and allegations of pedophilia and grooming on Twitter from July through October. “Post-Musk takeover, the quality of the conversation has decayed” as more extremists and misinformation peddlers have tested the platform’s boundaries, the researchers wrote.Amid the hubbub, Mr. Musk’s behavior on Twitter suggests that he intends to simply post through it. And while he has always been a prolific tweeter, he has raised the level in recent days.On Friday, Mr. Musk, who has more than 114 million followers on Twitter, proposed a “thermonuclear name & shame” campaign against brands that had stopped advertising on the platform. He said that he had done everything he could to appease advertisers but that activists had worked against him to cause brands to drop out of spending on Twitter.At the same time, the billionaire was embroiled in a fight over his plan to charge Twitter users $8 a month for a subscription service, Twitter Blue, which would give a check mark to anyone who paid. The check mark had been free for notable people whose identities had been verified by the company, including celebrities, politicians and journalists, as a way to protect against impersonation.Critics were unhappy about Mr. Musk’s plans to monetize the check mark, saying it could lead to the spread of misinformation and fraud on the platform. In protest, some Twitter accounts that had check marks changed their display names and photographs to match Mr. Musk’s account over the weekend, a move intended to illustrate why it would be confusing if anyone could buy a check mark.On Sunday, Mr. Musk announced that he would permanently suspend any account “engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying ‘parody.’” The billionaire, who had previously criticized Twitter when it permanently barred users, then barred Ms. Griffin, who had posed as him on the service.Mr. Musk, who has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” is learning the basic expectation of content moderation for popular social networks, said Daphne Keller, director of the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center.“His ideas have been incoherent for a while,” she said.On Sunday night, Mr. Musk responded to a tweet featuring a quote from a white nationalist, before deleting the post and moving on to squabble with Mr. Dorsey over Birdwatch, a feature that lets community members add context to tweets that they believe are misleading. Mr. Musk, who previously lauded the feature, proposed changing the feature’s name to “Community Notes.”“Community notes is the most boring Facebook name ever,” replied Mr. Dorsey, who owns a $1 billion stake in Mr. Musk’s Twitter.Then on Monday, Mr. Musk suggested he might pursue civil society groups and activists who were pushing for Twitter advertiser boycotts, when he replied to a right-wing commentator that “we do” have grounds for legal action. Legal experts said the holding of boycotts for social and political goals is protected under the First Amendment.Mr. Musk also tweeted that people should vote Republican in Tuesday’s midterm elections. “Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic,” he tweeted. He later posted that he was an independent with a “voting history of entirely Democrat until this year.”He soon moved on. Mr. Musk’s attention became fixed on Mastodon, a Twitter competitor that has gained traction over the past 10 days. Playing off Mastodon’s name, he made several crude jokes about masturbation — then deleted those posts an hour later.Tiffany Hsu More
Researchers have identified a series of Russian information operations to influence American elections and, perhaps, erode support for Ukraine.The user on Gab who identifies as Nora Berka resurfaced in August after a yearlong silence on the social media platform, reposting a handful of messages with sharply conservative political themes before writing a stream of original vitriol.The posts mostly denigrated President Biden and other prominent Democrats, sometimes obscenely. They also lamented the use of taxpayer dollars to support Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces, depicting Ukraine’s president as a caricature straight out of Russian propaganda.The fusion of political concerns was no coincidence.The account was previously linked to the same secretive Russian agency that interfered in the 2016 presidential election and again in 2020, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, according to the cybersecurity group Recorded Future.It is part of what the group and other researchers have identified as a new, though more narrowly targeted, Russian effort ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections. The goal, as before, is to stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system. This time, it also appears intended to undermine the Biden administration’s extensive military assistance to Ukraine.“It’s clear they are trying to get them to cut off aid and money to Ukraine,” said Alex Plitsas, a former Army soldier and Pentagon information operations official now with Providence Consulting Group, a business technology company.The campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans like Nora Berka — have added fuel to the most divisive political and cultural issues in the country today.It has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most contested races, including the Senate seats up for grabs in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania, calculating that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort.The campaigns show not only how vulnerable the American political system remains to foreign manipulation but also how purveyors of disinformation have evolved and adapted to efforts by the major social media platforms to remove or play down false or deceptive content.Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert warning of the threat of disinformation spread by “dark web media channels, online journals, messaging applications, spoofed websites, emails, text messages and fake online personas.” The disinformation could include claims that voting data or results had been hacked or compromised.The agencies urged people not to like, discuss or share posts online from unknown or distrustful sources. They did not identify specific efforts, but social media platforms and researchers who track disinformation have recently uncovered a variety of campaigns by Russia, China and Iran.The State of the WarGrain Deal: Russia rejoined an agreement allowing the shipment of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea, one of the few areas of cooperation amid the war, easing uncertainty over the fate of a deal seen as crucial to preventing famine in other parts of the world.On the Diplomatic Front: The Group of 7 nations announced that they would work together to rebuild critical infrastructure in Ukraine that has been destroyed by Russia’s military and to defend such sites from further attacks.Turning the Tables: With powerful Western weapons and deadly homemade drones, Ukraine now has an artillery advantage in the south, where a battle for the city of Kherson appears to be imminent. The work of reconnaissance teams penetrating enemy lines has also proven key in breaking Russia’s hold in the territory.Refugees: The war has sent the numbers of Ukrainians seeking shelter in Europe soaring, pushing asylum seekers from other conflicts to the end of the line.Recorded Future and two other social media research companies, Graphika and Mandiant, found a number of Russian campaigns that have turned to Gab, Parler, Getter and other newer platforms that pride themselves on creating unmoderated spaces in the name of free speech.These are much smaller campaigns than those in the 2016 election, where inauthentic accounts reached millions of voters across the political spectrum on Facebook and other major platforms. The efforts are no less pernicious, though, in reaching impressionable users who can help accomplish Russian objectives, researchers said.“The audiences are much, much smaller than on your other traditional social media networks,” said Brian Liston, a senior intelligence analyst with Recorded Future who identified the Nora Berka account. “But you can engage the audiences in much more targeted influence ops because those who are on these platforms are generally U.S. conservatives who are maybe more accepting of conspiratorial claims.”Many of the accounts the researchers identified were previously used by a news outlet calling itself the Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has previously linked the news outlet to the Russian information campaigns centered around the Internet Research Agency.The network appears to have since disbanded, and many of the social media accounts associated with it went dormant after being publicly identified around the 2020 election. The accounts started becoming active again in August and September, called to action like sleeper cells.Nora Berka’s account on Gab has many of the characteristics of an inauthentic user, Mr. Liston said. There is no profile picture or identifying biographical details. No one responded to a message sent to the account through Gab.The account, with more than 8,000 followers, posts exclusively on political issues — not in just one state but across the country — and often spreads false or misleading posts. Most have little engagement but a recent post about the F.B.I. received 43 responses and 11 replies, and was reposted 64 times.Since September the account has repeatedly shared links to a previously unknown website — electiontruth.net — that Recorded Future said was almost certainly linked to the Russian campaign.Electiontruth.net’s earliest posts date only from Sept. 5; since then, it has posted articles almost daily ridiculing President Biden and prominent Democratic candidates, while criticizing policies regarding race, crime and gender that it said were destroying the United States. “America under Communism” was one typical headline.The articles all have pseudonyms as bylines, like Andrew J, Truth4Ever and Laura. According to Mr. Liston, the website domain was registered using Bitcoin accounts.Electiontruth.net lists a cafe in Cotter, Ark., as its contact. The cafe has closed, replaced by the Cotter Bridge Market. The market’s owners said they knew nothing about the website.Trent Bozeman for The New York TimesFor its contact information, electiontruth.net lists a cafe inside a converted gas station in Cotter, Ark., a town of 900 people on a bend in the White River. The cafe has closed, however, and been replaced by Cotter Bridge Market, a produce shop and deli whose owners said they knew nothing about the website. No one at Election Truth responded to a request for comment submitted through the site.Mr. Liston said that links to electiontruth.net appeared to be closely coordinated with the accounts on Gab linked to the Russians.In another campaign, Graphika identified a recent series of cartoons that appeared on Gab, Gettr, Parler and the discussion forum patriots.win. The cartoons, by an artist named “Schmitz,” disparaged Democrats in the tightest Senate and governor races.One targeting Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is Black, employed racist motifs. Another falsely claimed that Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, would release “all Fentanyl distributors and drug traffickers” from prison.The cartoons received little engagement and did not spread virally to other platforms, according to Graphika.A recurring theme of the new Russian efforts is an argument that the United States under President Biden is wasting money by supporting Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion that began in February.Nora Berka, for example, posted a doctored photograph in September that showed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as a bikini-wearing poll dancer being showered with dollar bills by Mr. Biden.“As working class Americans struggle to afford food, gas, and find baby formula, Joe Biden wants to spend $13.7 billion more in aid to Ukraine,” the account posted. Not incidentally, that post echoed a theme that has gained some traction among Republican lawmakers and voters who have questioned the delivery of weapons and other military assistance.“It’s no secret that Republicans — that a large portion of Republicans — have questioned whether we should be supporting what has been referred to as foreign adventures or somebody else’s conflict,” said Graham Brookie, senior director of the Digital Forensics Lab at the Atlantic Council, which has also been tracking foreign influence operations.The F.B.I. and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not respond to requests for comment about the Russian efforts. Mr. Brookie called the revived accounts “recidivist behavior.” Gab did not respond to a request for comment.As before, it may be hard to measure the exact impact of these accounts on voters come Tuesday. At a minimum, they contribute to what Edward P. Perez, a board member with the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election security organization, called “manufactured chaos” in the country’s body politic.While Russians in the past sought to build large followings for their inauthentic accounts on the major platforms, today’s campaigns could be smaller and yet still achieve a desired effect — in part because the divisions in American society are already such fertile soil for disinformation, he said.“Since 2016, it appears that foreign states can afford to take some of the foot off the gas,” Mr. Perez, who previously worked at Twitter, said, “because they have already created such sufficient division that there are many domestic actors to carry the water of disinformation for them.” More
Declining trust in institutions is fostering mistrust about voting, leading many Americans to embrace conspiracy theories about elections.A recent exchange between David Becker, a nonpartisan elections expert, and a Twitter user named “@catturd2” — an account with nearly a million followers that sometimes exchanges posts with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the new owner of Twitter — offered a telling example of why misinformation is such an intractable problem.“Funny how we could easily count every vote in every state on election night until a few years ago,” the account tweeted. The false claim racked up 67,000 likes.“With all due respect to catturd,” Becker clarified to his much smaller list of 15,000 followers, “we have never, in the history of our nation, come close to counting all the votes on election night. Every state takes weeks to count all the ballots (incl military) and officially certify the results. Every state. Always.”Why does this matter? Because false information about the mechanics of voting fosters mistrust and is leading many Americans — overwhelmingly on the right — to embrace conspiracy theories about elections.And by the way, Musk is in the middle of firing thousands of Twitter employees, including members of the trust and safety teams that manage content moderation.“It’s an egregiously irresponsible thing to do just days before midterms that are likely to be mired by voter intimidation, false claims of election rigging and potential political violence,” said Jesse Lehrich, a co-founder of the nonprofit watchdog group Accountable Tech.First: Lest there be any doubt, the notion that America ever counts every vote on election night is both flatly untrue and easily checkable. California, for instance, has never come anywhere within shouting distance of that goal. Close races there can take weeks to call. New York State is notoriously slow at counting votes; in 2020, local election boards did not start counting absentee ballots until seven days after Election Day. Some waited even longer.There’s no conspiracy here. It takes a long time to count votes in a country as big as the United States. This is why states have processes in place to certify the results over the course of weeks. Alaska, for instance, isn’t planning to tabulate and release unofficial results of its election until Nov. 23. That’s entirely normal.But with Twitter in turmoil, Lehrich is worried about how misinformation about voting might spread unchecked over the next few days and weeks. “Things are going to fall through the cracks, even if Elon doesn’t do anything intentional to sabotage stuff,” he said.Tweeting alonePart of what’s going on here is declining levels of trust in the pillars of American civic life — a decades-long trend captured vividly in “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam’s famous book from 2000.The numbers are even worse now. Jeffrey Jones, an analyst at Gallup, noted in July that Americans had reached “record-low confidence across all institutions.”News organizations polled near the bottom of Gallup’s list. Just 16 percent of the public said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, and only 11 percent said the same for TV news.The differences by party were stark. Just 5 percent of Republicans and 12 percent of independents said they had high confidence in newspapers, and only 35 percent of Democrats said the same. All of these numbers had declined from a year earlier.Coming in the middle of a midterm election in which journalists are trying to inform millions of voters about what’s happening and to help them assess the ideas and personal characteristics of the candidates, Gallup’s finding was alarming.And that’s just one data point. A recent poll by Bright Line Watch, a project run by a group of political scientists, found that 91 percent of Democrats were confident that their vote would be counted, versus just 68 percent of Republicans. That lack of trust is the starter fuel of election denialism.Organized groups on the right have been going after the press for decades, and conservative politicians often take up the chorus. Richard Nixon’s ill-fated vice president, Spiro Agnew, called journalists “nattering nabobs of negativism”; Donald Trump attacked the news media as the “fake news” and the “enemy of the people”; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ripped the “corporate media” despite being a frequent guest on Fox News — which, yes, is a corporation. If Walter Cronkite walked among us today, he’d be pilloried as a liberal shill.The left has its own beef with the news media. This week, Dan Froomkin, a reliably acerbic liberal critic of political coverage, wrote a post asking, “Why aren’t mainstream journalists sounding the alarm about the threat to democracy?” He lamented how, in his view, political reporters were “just covering it like another partisan fight.”Political reporters do cover partisan fights; there’s an election going on, and readers care about who is winning, who is losing and why.But mainstream news outlets also invested heavily this year in coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, election denialism, political violence, dangers to election workers, plots to disrupt the midterms, misinformation and threats to democracy more generally. There’s been a lot of tough, critical coverage of election denialism.Local news is often another story. Here’s a tweet from KTNV, a television station in Nevada: “Democrat Cisco Aguilar and Republican Jim Marchant are running to be the next Secretary of State in Nevada. And both have the same focus: election integrity.”The text of the article implies that Marchant, the leader of a far-right slate of candidates for top election posts in several states who deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, is spreading “unfounded claims of widespread election fraud.” But it doesn’t say so explicitly.In an interview, Aguilar pointed to the KTNV article as an example of how news coverage had treated the candidates too evenhandedly and was giving Marchant a platform he didn’t deserve. (Marchant did not respond to an email sent to three of his known addresses.)When I asked Adrian Fontes, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, how he planned to combat misinformation if he wins his race against Mark Finchem, a far-right Republican who has stoked conspiracy theories about elections, he made a similar argument.“Actually, it’s not a hard problem,” Fontes said, urging journalists to stop “chasing shiny objects” and “crazy conspiracy theories” and focus instead on what election workers do.“As secretary of state,” he said, “I plan on celebrating them, elevating them and making sure that guys like you, respectfully, don’t ignore them in favor of the weirdos.”Facts are stubborn things, except when they’re not.Increasingly, though, millions of Americans aren’t getting their information from people like me. They’re following sources that have none of the checks and balances — however imperfect — that most mainstream outlets have in place.Over the last few decades, as it has stoked mistrust in the mainstream media, the right has built up a closed-off alternate ecosystem that includes Fox News, but also fringier outlets like Newsmax or One America News Network. But even those places put their names behind their stories, and viewers have a good sense of the perspective and slant they represent.This morning, I asked @catturd2 on Twitter if the user behind the account planned to issue a correction or delete the incorrect information. No response yet, but the account wrote in another tweet: “LOL – Look what Twitter did to my tweet – trying to fact check it with the fake news commie NYT,” followed by five laugh-cry smiley face emojis.Surveys show that younger people increasingly trust what they see on social media about as much as they trust traditional news sources. Data also shows that readers often can’t tell the difference between news reporting and opinion, even when they are labeled explicitly. Social media timelines jumble them all up together.And, as the Pew Research Center has noted, people don’t even agree on what a “fact” is: “Members of each political party were more likely to label both factual and opinion statements as factual when they appealed more to their political side,” Pew wrote in 2018.Those people staking out drop boxes in Arizona to intimidate voters based on false information, or demanding the hand-counting of ballots in Nevada? They aren’t getting their information from mainstream sources.How do honest and fair reporters reach them with accurate news? That’s a much deeper societal challenge, and nobody seems to have any good answers.What to read tonightDonald Trump is expected to announce a third White House campaign soon after the midterms, possibly as soon as Nov. 14, Michael Bender and Maggie Haberman write.In Wisconsin, one the nation’s most evenly divided swing states, Republicans are close to capturing supermajorities in the State Legislature that would render the Democratic governor irrelevant, even if he wins re-election, Reid Epstein reports.San Luis, Ariz., a small farming outpost on the border, played a critical role in the making of “2,000 Mules,” a conspiratorial movie about supposed election fraud in 2020. Now some residents are scared to vote, Jack Healy and Alexandra Berzon write.Sheera Frenkel looks at the phenomenon of “participatory misinformation” on the internet, where hunting for voter fraud has became a game.viewfinderDon Bolduc arriving on Wednesday at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, N.H., for his debate against Senator Maggie Hassan.John Tully for The New York TimesFist-pumping in a classic political battlegroundAt 5:30 p.m., there was an all-out sprint from campaign workers, volunteers and supporters.The goal: to find the best view of a parking lot where Senator Maggie Hassan and her Republican challenger, Don Bolduc, would arrive for their final debate. Each candidate’s supporters fought for position so their signs would be visible.Inside the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, the stage was being set for Hassan, a Democrat, and Bolduc, whose Senate race has tightened in recent weeks, giving Republicans hope for an upset victory.Hassan was the first to arrive, working the line for about a minute before heading inside. Within 30 seconds or so, Bolduc arrived, to cheers and jeers.He pumped his fists in front of supporters, and I captured this image — a look at grass-roots political theater in New Hampshire.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. 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
It was a jumpy, 20-second video clip that touched off a firestorm: During a local primary election two years ago, the former mayor of this farm town of San Luis, Ariz., was filmed handling another voter’s ballot. She appeared to make a few marks, and then sealed it and handed a small stack of ballots to another woman to turn in.That moment outside a polling place in August 2020 thrust this town along the southern border into the center of stolen-election conspiracy theories, as the unlikely inspiration for the debunked voter fraud film “2,000 Mules.”Activists peddling misinformation and supported by former President Donald J. Trump descended on San Luis. The Republican attorney general of Arizona opened an investigation into voting, which is still ongoing. The former mayor, Guillermina Fuentes, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation for ballot abuse — or what the attorney general called “ballot harvesting” — a felony under Arizona law.Ms. Fuentes is one of four women in San Luis who have now been charged with illegally collecting ballots during the primaries, including the second woman who appears on the video. But there have been no charges of widespread voter fraud in San Luis linked to the presidential election. Liberal voting-rights groups and many San Luis residents say that investigators, prosecutors and election-denying activists have intimidated voters and falsely tied their community to conspiracy theories about rampant, nationwide election fraud. The film “2,000 Mules,” endorsed by Mr. Trump, has helped to keep those claims alive, and is often cited by election-denying candidates across the country.But the episode also unleashed long-simmering and real frustrations in San Luis over political control. Some residents cheered what they call a long-overdue crackdown on local corruption, which they say is a real issue.It has all added up to a sense of division and unease in a close-knit city of roughly 37,000 where Cesar Chavez died, a place built by generations of Mexican farm workers, where lines of migrant workers travel back and forth every day across the border to harvest lettuce and broccoli.“They’re running scared,” Luis Marquez, a retired police officer and school board member, said of voters. “They feel they’re going to get nailed if they do something wrong.”Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesThe border wall in San Luis, on Sunday. Lines of migrant workers from this close-knit town travel back and forth every day across the border to harvest lettuce and broccoli.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesNow, many here say they are afraid to cast ballots or help with voting in the midterms, for fear of receiving a visit from investigators, being monitored by activists or running afoul of a relatively new Arizona ballot abuse law that largely prohibits collecting ballots on behalf of voters other than family members or housemates.The practice is legal in more than a dozen states, and often used to help housebound seniors or people in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas vote. Conservative critics have called it a potential source of voter manipulation and fraud, though their allegations of widespread election fraud are unfounded. The terms “mule” or “ballot harvesting” are used to describe the practice of illegally ferrying other voters’ ballots to polls.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.“They’re running scared,” Luis Marquez, a retired police officer and school board member running for re-election in San Luis, said of voters. “They feel they’re going to get nailed if they do something wrong.”As early voting began last month, Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced that two more San Luis residents — one of them a current city councilwoman — had been indicted on charges of ballot abuse during the 2020 primary election. Separately, the Yuma County sheriff is investigating 26 potential voting cases across this county in Southwest Arizona.José Castro, a local Baptist pastor, has been trying to persuade his congregants to go to the polls. Two longtime friends, Tere Varela and Maria Robles, normally visit a senior center during elections to guide Spanish-speaking retirees through the ballots. But they said they were planning to stay away in November.“We don’t want to help,” Ms. Robles said one recent afternoon. “We’re afraid.”“Is that the purpose of this?” Ms. Varela asked. “To keep us from voting?”Members of the Sol Azteca dance company performed on Sunday at a church fund-raising festival at San Judas Tadeo Catholic Church in San Luis.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesA sunset view from San Judas Tadeo Catholic Church on Sunday.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesSan Luis offers a glimpse into the tensions unfurling across this strained democracy as Election Day approaches. So far, more than 33 million early votes have been cast nationwide with few reported problems, but there have also been flashes of volatility: election workers have been threatened, poll watchers have staked out ballot boxes and elected officials are girding for challenges to the legitimacy of the midterm results.Arizona was a flash point in Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims immediately after the 2020 presidential election, and the scene of a divisive partisan audit of ballots. Crowds of angry, armed Trump supporters gathered nightly outside election offices.Since then, Republican nominees for statewide office have spread falsehoods about election fraud, and several voters have filed complaints saying that they had been filmed and questioned by strangers at ballot drop boxes. The volunteer poll watchers, some masked or armed, described themselves as there for “election security.” Their presence is part of an organized national effort by conservative groups galvanized by lies that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump.The authorities in the Phoenix area have stepped up security in response. The sheriff of Maricopa County has referred two incidents to prosecutors, and said his officers would sit outside polling places “if that’s what we have to do to protect democracy.”Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is also Arizona’s Democratic candidate for governor, has referred six voter-intimidation complaints to the U.S. Justice Department. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Arizona restricted election-monitoring activists from filming voters, carrying weapons near polling sites or spreading election falsehoods online.The upheaval over voting in San Luis erupted shortly after the 2020 primaries. That year, the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office announced on Aug. 7 that it had opened an investigation in coordination with the attorney general’s office after local elections officials received complaints of election tampering.Some of those complaints had originated with two local Republicans, David Lara and Gary García Snyder.Campaign signs, including for Luis Marquez, seen on Sunday near the border wall in San Luis.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesMayor-elect Nieves Riedel in San Luis on Monday.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesAfter they complained to law enforcement, Mr. Snyder and Mr. Lara said they were contacted by two leaders with True the Vote, a conservative vote-monitoring group based in Houston that for years has promoted false claims of rampant fraud. The organization’s leaders, Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, traveled to Arizona later in 2020 to meet with Mr. Snyder and Mr. Lara, the men said.Inspired by what they heard in Yuma, True the Vote focused on proving, through voter fraud, the existence of an elaborate national conspiracy to manipulate the outcome of the presidential election — a theory since debunked by experts, governmental agencies and media outlets that have looked into it.This spring, Salem Media Group, a conservative media company, and the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza released “2,000 Mules,” which centered on Ms. Engelbrecht, Mr. Phillips and their claims. In the film, an unidentified woman from San Luis appears, saying that the city’s elections have been “fixed” for years by local politicians running a cash-for-votes scheme.Ms. Fuentes, the former San Luis mayor, and the woman seen on the video with her, Alma Juarez, were charged in December 2020 with violating Arizona’s ballot abuse law. Earlier this year, they each pleaded guilty to one count of ballot abuse, for accepting four ballots of other San Luis residents.Ms. Fuentes became the first person in Arizona sentenced to jail time under the law, enacted in 2016. Ms. Fuentes’s lawyer, Anne Chapman, criticized the sentence as “an unjust result in a political prosecution.”Activists with the Arizona Voter Empowerment Task Force, a voter-rights group, said the law prohibiting “ballot harvesting” had the effect of criminalizing ballot collection efforts that had helped older residents and people with disabilities in rural and low-income communities like San Luis get their ballots to the polls.People bought breakfast from a food truck before sunrise in San Luis on Monday.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesDavid Lara was one of two local Republicans who complained of election tampering in San Luis.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesWhile more than 80 percent of Arizona voters typically cast early ballots, many of them through the mail, there is no home-mail delivery in San Luis, limited public transportation and many people do not have cars, making it harder to vote.Ms. Fuentes has many admirers in San Luis who praised her for fighting to register and turn out voters.She first ran for office in 1994 and served multiple terms on the City Council and was still on the school board when she was sentenced last month to 30 days in jail. Now, she will be barred from holding elected office or voting.“My mom is not a criminal,” said her daughter, Lizette Esparza. “It’s a political persecution.”Ms. Fuentes had also been charged with forgery and conspiracy, but ultimately pleaded guilty only to a charge relating to ballot collection. A sentencing report from her defense team said she was “extremely remorseful for her involvement in this matter” but had done nothing fraudulent. Her lawyers wrote that in the Election Day video in which Ms. Fuentes handled another voter’s ballot, she was actually checking to make sure the ovals were properly filled.But other residents said the criminal investigation shined light on real corruption and bare-knuckle politics inside their city. In 2012, for example, Ms. Fuentes and others in city government challenged a political rival’s ability to hold office based on her limited English proficiency.In interviews, several residents said they had grown cynical about politics in San Luis. They felt that local officials hoarded power and traded votes for government jobs and benefits. In a court filing, prosecutors with the attorney general’s office said the video of Ms. Fuentes indicated she had been “running a modern-day political machine seeking to influence the outcome of the municipal election in San Luis, collecting votes through illegal methods.”Nieves Riedel, who runs a prominent home-construction business, is a Democrat who rejects lies about the 2020 election. But she was also convinced that some of her city’s leaders had for years tilted local races and manipulated voters into casting ballots for powerful incumbents.“Was voter fraud being committed in the city of San Luis? Yes,” she said. “But not at the national level. It’s small-town politics.”Over the summer, Ms. Riedel won an election to become San Luis’s next mayor. She said she was concerned with improving the jammed two-lane roads and providing better jobs and colleges to keep young adults from leaving. She said she was dismayed, but not surprised, to see outsiders latch onto her city’s troubles for their own ends.“Both parties are capitalizing on this, to settle scores and prove points,” Ms. Riedel said. “I can assure you that both parties can care less about the people of San Luis.”As voting gets underway in San Luis and the candidates for City Council and school board knock doors and plant campaign signs along the desert roads, Mr. Lara said he would again be on the hunt for irregularities. He is coordinating efforts to monitor the main ballot drop box in San Luis.“We have our people,” he said, but declined to be more precise about their activities. “We don’t want to tip off the enemy.” More
