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      in US Politics

      Facebook and Twitter take emergency steps against Trump false victory claims

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      Facebook and Twitter have deployed emergency measures to counter Donald Trump’s false claims of victory on their social networks, bringing them more directly into conflict with the US president than ever before.The two tech platforms had announced plans in the run-up to the election to counter misinformation about the vote, as well as premature claims of victory, and on the night of and day after, both companies mostly stuck to the plan.Facebook notably dropped the euphemistic phrasing that had previously accompanied its announcements, which discussed the risk that “candidates” may falsely claim a win. It also walked back a previous policy that would have allowed candidates to claim state-level victories before they were called, despite barring the premature announcement of a national win. On Wednesday it started to flag posts from Trump and affiliates claiming the president had won Pennsylvania and other battleground states, even as ballots continued to be counted and official results had yet to be announced.A company spokesperson cited Trump by name in explaining its decision, saying: “Once President Trump began making premature claims of victory, we started running notifications on Facebook and Instagram that votes are still being counted and a winner is not projected. We’re also automatically applying labels to both candidates’ posts with this information.”When it came to reacting to individual posts, both platforms faced criticism for their responses. In late-night posts cross-posted to both Twitter and Facebook, Trump declared: “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” That post was followed by a second that read: “I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!”Misinformation experts say because such posts are able to achieve widespread circulation before being addressed, more comprehensive policies to correct the effects of the misleading posts should be put in place, calling it a “democratic emergency”.“False claims of voter fraud, early victory and election-stealing are helping plunge the country further into chaos and confusion, creating alternate realities for Americans,” said Fadi Quran, the campaign director at Avvaz, an online activist network and non-profit. “Platforms must immediately adopt more effective policies such as retroactively sending corrections to all users who see misinformation and downgrading the reach of repeat misinformers.”Facebook initially labelled the first post with a simple box advising readers to “see the latest updates on the 2020 US election”. More than 30 minutes after it was posted, the company updated its warning to note that “final results may be different from initial vote counts, as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks”. By that time the post had well over 100,000 reactions.Twitter restricted distribution on the first post from Trump on Tuesday night, blocking it from being retweeted or replied to, and appended a note saying the content “is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process”. A spokesperson said the warning was “for making a potentially misleading claim about an election. This action is in line with our civic integrity policy.”Neither platform took specific action against the second post claiming “a big WIN!”. Twitter said the lack of action was because it was unclear what, specifically, was being referenced. While the post could have constituted a premature claim of victory in the national race, it could just as easily be construed as a legitimate expression of pleasure at winning a state such as Florida, which had declared several hours earlier. More

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      in Elections

      Will Trump's false election claims gain steam? Disinformation experts weigh in

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      Misinformation loves a vacuum, and the uncertainty around the outcome of the US presidential race has created a mighty one. As election officials work to count ballots, Donald Trump and his allies have launched a campaign to cast doubt on the electoral process. False declarations of victory and false allegations of fraud are being pumped into the information void, where their salacious narratives compete with the more prosaic reality that counting takes time.
      We spoke with experts on disinformation about why people believe the false narratives Trump is pushing, what those people might do in response, and why Trump’s latest conspiracy theory might not catch on the way he hopes.
      The big lie
      For months, Trump has seeded doubt about the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, laying the groundwork for the vague conspiracy theories about fraudulent ballots that he tweeted wildly about throughout the day Wednesday.
      Trump’s claims are perfectly suited to people who share what Whitney Phillips, a professor of communications at Syracuse University, calls “deep memetic frames” or “deeply, viscerally held stories about the world that shape what you think to be true and what you think should be done in response”. One such frame is characterized by deep distrust of institutions and “a general sense that there are people who are out to get people who look like us” – such as the so-called “Deep State”.
      This mindset has been prevalent in recent months amid the rise of QAnon and Covid-skeptic communities, Phillips said. “In some ways, the sensationalist child-eating, blood-drinking QAnon stuff distracts from the really corrosive part of the narrative, which is the idea that liberals, scientists and Jews are all coming to get you, so you better go get your guns.”
      Phillips views Trump’s failure to debunk or denounce conspiracy theories as preparations for selling this latest conspiracy theory. “In the past few months, Trump started using the deep state by name; he started specifically engaging with and embracing QAnon,” she said. “That underlying frame – ‘don’t trust “them”’ – was the groundwork for his efforts to contest the election.”
      Notably, this disinformation effort remains a top-down approach. “We’re not talking about misinformation from the grassroots or foreign actors, said Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, at a Wednesday morning election debrief. “It’s known influencers.”
      Online to offline
      Among people who believe Trump’s false claims about election theft, there is likely to be a strong impetus to take action. “Anytime people feel that their rights are being taken from them, especially by the government, we do see widespread social unrest,” said Joan Donovan, research director at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
      Already, protesters have targeted the TFC Center in Detroit, demanding access to the office where ballots are being counted. And worryingly, the American right does not have the same tradition of street protest that the political left does.
      “If you don’t have a robust repertoire of tactics as you’re heading into a street protest, then it becomes very appealing to use violence as the messenger,” Donovan said. “It does tend to enliven the spirit of paramilitary organizations and people who are supporters of the second amendment, who believe that a Democratic president would be coming for their guns. We’re going to see a lot of those issues coalesce in the next few days.”
      The role of the platforms
      Under intense pressure from the traditional news media, researchers and civil society, the social media platforms that long allowed Trump tremendous leeway to break their polices have taken a more aggressive stance toward his false claims about the election. In the run-up to the election, Twitter and Facebook began applying misinformation labels to some of Trump’s false statements, and Facebook even expanded its policy on premature declaration of victory on Wednesday – an uncommonly quick response from a company that tends to dig in its heels when facing criticism from the press.
      The labels are by no means a panacea. “For people behind a certain frame, a label on a tweet is just more evidence that there’s censorship,” said Phillips. Stamos also noted that the lack of lasting punishments (like suspensions or bans) for repeat offenders has created a reverse incentive for certain influencers. “They seem to enjoy being punished,” he said. “It’s part of their brand now.”
      Losing the megaphone
      While Trump is certainly pushing the false idea of a stolen election, and while some of his supporters are deeply susceptible to believing that narrative, it’s still unclear if the narrative will take hold more broadly.
      “In order to do disinformation well, you have to have a few key elements,” said Donovan. “One is an online cavalry ready to troll. The second is either key figures or key evidence that allow you to make your claim. The third thing is the claim has to be very straightforward and people have to have something to circulate.”
      While various videos and photos have emerged as supposed “proof” of fraud, they have all been debunked by fact-checkers and none appear ready for prime time – the fourth element of a successful disinformation campaign. “To really break out, you need the megaphone of conservative media,” Donovan said.
      On election night, Fox News declined to validate Trump’s conspiracy theory and instead hewed generally to evidence-based projections. “The Maga coalition that brought Trump’s presidency into being has been fractured,” Donovan added. “The tale of the tape is going to be if Fox News calls it for Biden ahead of other outlets or in line with other major news outlets. If they are not on board with Trump’s challenges ideologically and in terms of evidence, then Trump is going to have a really big uphill battle in terms of controlling the narrative of who won.” More

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      in US Politics

      From Australia, it's hard to comprehend the depredations on display at the US election | Samuel Hendricks

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      Donald Trump’s premature declaration of victory, as predictable as a setting sun, should have surprised no one, and yet it sent shivers down the spine of history.
      He really did it. He wants to stop the counting and go to court – the very supreme court he succeeded in stacking only last week.
      Amid the tempest he has done much to create, Trump has a distinct advantage: he is an aspiring autocrat who puts no apparent bounds on himself. With his breathtaking disregard for constitutional process or established protocol, he has taken the country to the brink of an unprecedented crisis and barely seems to have blinked.
      The only question was and is how his opponent would respond.
      Joe Biden, in the grand tradition of Democratic contenders since Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace after the Watergate fiasco, has run on a campaign of being an upstanding guy. You win some, you lose some. But perhaps the Bush-Gore debacle of 2000, in which the Democratic former vice-president bowed out before things got too ugly, served as an object lesson to stay in the fight until the end.
      [embedded content]
      The Republican party, going back decades, has been playing to win, and playing dirty. Faced with shifting demographics, the economic convulsions of globalisation, the slack religiosity of post-60s America and tumbling innovations in technology and pop culture, it has found a way to bring a constituency around the notion of conservatism.
      That word may ring very different bells on Wall Street and in the farm belt and the rust belt and the south, but it gathers those who hear the call. The unifying note, if there is one to be discerned, is grievance – grievance over the denial of rights, whether they be social, economic, religious or political. Or just having a gun you’re convinced will be taken away. Never mind that the assertion of those rights might trample those of another.
      Disingenuous to the bone and completely faultless, Trump is the perfect leader of his party: waving the flag so hard the stars separate from the stripes.
      Most of all, however, Republicans have gamed the electoral system to turn their demographic minority into a governing majority. Through absurd gerrymandering, voter roll purges, voter ID laws, court challenges to ballot counts and other tactics, Republicans have made clear what they think of the democratic system they operate within and their real chances in it, all things being equal.
      The Democratic party is not on the same playing field. It desperately wants to govern, but in a country that seems not to want to be governed too much, a country proudly astride its past perceived glories. Trump has shown that plenty of Americans can be placated with empty bluster, and the anxieties of the present and the future can be wished away if you shout loudly enough.
      At the start of the race, forever ago, Biden seemed like a ring-in: the establishment figure, on in his years, who had no chance against the bucking youngsters with their big ideas (European social democracy–lite, fit for American consumption); the brilliant Elizabeth Warren, who would have fixed a different America; and the bronco Bernie Sanders, the slayer of economic inequality who, in a different country, might have launched and won with his own party.
      Biden bided his time. And his biggest political gift was the unimaginable tragedy of a pandemic that has ravaged the country and brought home the need for a leader capable of human sympathy, who might also have spent some time around the White House.
      Australians rightly fail to comprehend the depredations on display in this election. Regardless of how things end up, this drama will leave a long and lingering sense of confusion.
      Australia has a population the size of a big American state, on a land mass – an island – nearly the size of the entire US. It has a robust and independent national electoral commission and compulsory voting. No one doubts the count in Australia. Not everyone likes the outcome; there are many battles to fight. But we’re a democracy – we’ll work it out.
      It could never happen here. That’s what they all say.
      • Samuel Hendricks is the deputy editor of the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter magazine More

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      in Elections

      Which party will hold the keys to states’ legislative and congressional maps?

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      While the race for the White House is sorted out across tight midwestern battlegrounds, Republicans can already claim an important victory further down the ballot. The GOP held state House and Senate chambers across Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Kansas, and many other key states. This ensures a dramatic edge when it comes to redrawing new state legislative and congressional maps next year, following the completion of the census count.
      This year, Democrats had hoped to avenge the GOP’s 2010 Redmap strategy, which drove Republicans that year to control swing-state legislatures in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida, and majorities they have not relinquished since. That also allowed Republicans to draw, on their own, nearly five times as many congressional districts nationwide as Democrats.
      Tuesday’s election offered both parties the last chance to gain influence over maps that will define the state of play for the next decade. States have different rules on this: almost three-quarters of all states, however, give their legislatures the prominent role. That heightens the stakes of state legislative races in years ending in zero. On Tuesday, in the two states with the most at stake – Texas and North Carolina – Democrats fell far short, despite millions of dollars invested by the national party and outside organizations.
      In Texas, Democrats needed to gain nine seats in the state House to affect redistricting. They may not net any. Republicans picked up several open seats, and GOP incumbents held on in almost all the battleground districts enveloping the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston. In House district 134, which includes part of Houston, Democrat Ann Johnson ousted GOP incumbent Sarah Davis. But otherwise, the party ran far behind expectations.
      The consequences could linger until 2031, if not longer. Texas Republicans may look to redraw state maps next year based on the “citizen voting-age population” or CVAP, and depart from the longtime standard of counting the total population. A 2015 study by Thomas Hofeller, the late GOP redistricting maestro, found that such a switch “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,” and create a relative population decline in Democratic strongholds in south Texas and in otherwise fast-growing parts of Dallas and Houston.
      In North Carolina, meanwhile, even a new, fairer state legislative map – albeit one that still slightly favored Republicans – couldn’t help Democrats break the GOP’s 10-year hold on both the House and Senate. Democrats netted one Senate seat – they needed five – and lost ground in the state House. Republicans will not only have a free hand to draw maps next year, but they also appear to have gained seats on the state supreme court – which will adjudicate any dispute over these maps – and cut the Democratic majority there to 4-3. (Democrats did make gains on both the Ohio and Michigan state supreme courts, both of which could be asked to weigh in on the constitutionality of maps later this decade.)
      As a result, Republicans will have a free hand in drawing new districts across both states, providing the GOP with a renewed decade-long edge and also paving the way for conservative legislation on voting rights, health care, reproductive rights, education funding and much more. Any new voting restrictions, meanwhile, could assist Republicans in maintaining electoral college dominance in these states, as well.
      Democrats in Kansas had hoped to simply break GOP supermajorities and sustain a Democratic governor’s veto power over a GOP gerrymander that could devour the state’s one blue congressional seat. But they appear to have been unable to muster either a one-seat gain in the House or the three seats necessary in the Senate.
      Wisconsin Democrats, however, did successfully preserve the veto of Democratic governor Tony Evers, ensuring that the party will have some say over maps that have provided Republicans with decade-long majorities even when Democratic candidates won hundreds of thousands more statewide votes. Wisconsin was one of the most gerrymandered states in the country after the Republican takeover in 2010.
      Democrats flipped the Oregon secretary of state’s office as well, which plays a determinative role in redistricting should Republicans deny Democrats a quorum to pass a map. The party also denied Republicans in Nebraska’s ostensibly nonpartisan unicameral chamber a supermajority that would allow them to gerrymander the second congressional district in Omaha, which carries an electoral college vote.
      There was mixed news for gerrymandering reformers in two states where fair maps were on the ballot statewide. In Virginia, voters overwhelmingly approved a redistricting commission that will consist equally of lawmakers and citizens to draw lines next year. But in Missouri, by a narrow margin of 51% to 49%, voters repealed a 2018 initiative that would have placed maps under the control of a neutral state demographer. That will leave Republicans in full control of the process.
      After 2010, Pennsylvania has elected a Democratic governor, and Michigan has adopted an independent commission, suggesting less partisan maps next year. But by holding Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio, Republicans appear likely to draw at least four times as many congressional seats by themselves.
      That advantage, in turn, will endure long after whoever won Tuesday’s presidential election has left the scene. More

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      in Elections

      Biden says he's on course to win US election as Trump threatens to fight outcome

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      Joe Biden has claimed he is on course to win the US presidential election and issued a plea for national unity, even as Donald Trump threatens to fight the outcome in court.
      The former vice-president flipped the crucial battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, giving him 264 electoral college votes to Trump’s 214. The target is 270 to secure the White House.
      “After a long night of counting, it’s clear that we’re winning enough states to reach 270 electoral votes need to win the presidency,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. “I’m not here to declare that we’ve won but I am here to report that, when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
      Biden praised a historic turnout of about 150 million and noted that he was set to win Wisconsin by 20,000 votes, similar to the president’s margin in 2016, and leading in Michigan by more than 35,000 votes and growing – substantially more than Trump managed four years ago. Both states have been called for Biden.
      As Trump seeks to fire up his supporters for a bitter legal struggle, Biden called for people on both sides “to unite, to heal, to come together as a nation”.
      With his running mate, Kamala Harris, standing nearby, Biden struck the tone of a president-elect: “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as I will for those who did vote for me. Now, every vote must be counted. No one’s going to take our democracy away from us. Not now. Not ever.”
      It was a clear rebuke to Trump’s attempt to sow doubt with claims of fraud and threats to dispute the election all the way to the supreme court, ushering in a potentially prolonged and messy endgame to the election.
      Late on Wednesday there were signs of desperation as Trump felt his presidency slipping away. He tweeted a thread stating that he was establishing a “claim” on Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, all of which remain too close to call.
      “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead,” he wrote. More

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      in Elections

      Trump threatens to sue his way to victory amid millions of uncounted votes

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      With millions of votes waiting to be counted in the US presidential election, Donald Trump has effectively threatened to sue his way to re-election.
      As of Wednesday evening, the president and his campaign had promised to bring the election to the supreme court, sued to halt vote-counting in three battleground states and requested a recount in another.
      But at this moment, there is no evidence the campaign’s legal challenges will have a bearing on the election result under the law. Instead, the concern is how litigation plays in the court of public opinion, where the suggestion of fraud in one battleground state could cast doubt on the whole election.
      Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said Americans should be confident their votes will be counted, but warned of Trump’s history of voting disinformation.
      “The more desperate he may become, the more baseless allegations there are about the ways in which states count ballots, about our democratic process and his own authority over this process,” Gupta said.
      Post-election litigation is normal. Lawsuits are always filed on election day and the days after in response to issues such as equipment malfunctions, printing errors and polls not opening on time.
      Usually, they receive little attention. This year, they are under more intense scrutiny because the president has spent the year making frequent, baseless claims about election fraud.
      For one of these routine cases to affect the outcome of the election, the ballots being contested would need to be both (a) big enough in number to determine the state’s result (for example, a suit which concerns 50,000 votes in a state a candidate won by 30,000 votes) and (b) in a state decisive for the election result.
      As of Wednesday evening, election law experts said none of the lawsuits filed appeared to meet both these qualifications. “These case don’t seem to be very strong, they also don’t seem to be significant as a matter of votes,” said Paul Smith, vice-president for litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center.
      That could change as counting continues.
      For now, the more significant cause for alarm is the Trump campaign’s actions on Wednesday as election results turned in Biden’s favor. Instead of waiting for a media outlet to call Pennsylvania, as is traditional, the campaign said Trump had won it despite the fact that 1 million votes were still waiting to be counted.
      The campaign also announced it was suing to halt vote-counting in Michigan – which the Associated Press called for Biden, Pennsylvania and Georgia and that it would request a recount in Wisconsin, which the AP also called for Biden.
      The first three challenges are unrealistic – most states count ballots until the results are certified two to three weeks after election day and ending the process is not something the court would consider seriously.
      Hours before the Trump campaign filed the lawsuits against Michigan and Pennsylvania, the newly re-elected Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said as much.
      “Claiming you win the election is different from finishing the counting, and what we’re going to see in the next few days, both in the Senate races and the presidential race, is each state will ultimately get to a final outcome and you should not be shocked that both sides are going to have lawyers there,” McConnell said.
      Late on Wednesday, the Trump campaign has filed the lawsuit seeking to pause vote the count in Georgia, where Biden was trailing Trump by one point. The Fulton County Elections Director said that they would finish counting votes on Wednesday, “Whatever it takes.”
      The Wisconsin recount is also unlikely to fall in the Trump campaign’s favor. Biden was more than 20,000 votes ahead of Trump and statewide recounts in elections from 2000 to 2015 resulted in an average margin swing of 282 votes, according to FairVote.
      In response to the legal actions, Biden said: “Now every vote must be counted. No one is going to take our democracy away from us, not now, not ever. America has come too far.”
      One reason an election-upsetting lawsuit has not emerged is because before the election, hundreds of lawsuits were filed to work out the inevitable kinks that would follow the dramatic increase in mail in voting. This left fewer opportunities to challenge the process, because most issues had been tested in court.
      One exception to this is in Pennsylvania, where there were more open questions about how mail in votes would be processed. It is also one of the three states which wasn’t able to start processing absentee ballots until election day and it has an unresolved legal fight about whether mail-in ballots that arrive after election day should be counted. The Trump campaign also filed several lawsuits there on election day.
      If the election comes down to Pennsylvania, this is a recipe for chaos. As of Wednesday night, Biden could win the electoral college without Pennsylvania.
      This all followed Trump’s baffling early morning proclamation that he would go to the supreme court to stop voting – which had already stopped. If one assumes he meant he would go to the nation’s highest court to stop ballot counting, that too is unlikely to work out.
      Guy-Uriel Charles, a Duke Law School professor, said in a press call: “He certainly can’t just run to the US supreme court and file a suit there. That’s just not how our legal system operates.”
      It is possible, but unlikely, one of the new legal challenges his campaign filed could end up in the supreme court. But that case would have to have a legal basis, be tried in a lower court, then appealed to the nation’s highest court, which would have to accept it. And for it to matter in the presidential race, it would have to meet the qualifications of affecting a large enough number of ballots in a decisive state.
      Charles said: “But again, you can’t just walk into federal court and say, ‘I lost.’ You have to have a legal basis for saying a law has been violated.”
      In reviewing the day in legal challenges, the election law expert Rick Hasen wrote that the Trump campaign’s moves could be done to slow the vote or be a last-minute attempt to capture one of the battleground states.
      Hasen, a University of California, Irvine, professor, also echoed other legal experts’ concerns that the moves could simply be a disturbing effort to undermine Biden’s presidency, should he win.
      “We always knew Trump would claim without evidence that fraud cost him the election,” Hasen wrote. “These suits let him pile up what might appear to some supporters as evidence but are actually unsupported assertions of illegality.” More

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      in Elections

      'Simply wrong': Pennsylvania governor reacts to Trump campaign court bid to stop count – video

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      Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf has condemned a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s campaign to stop the counting of ballots in the crucial state. Democrat governor Wolf had previously tweeted that more than 1 million ballots were still to be counted. ‘This afternoon, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit to stop the counting of ballots in Pennsylvania,’ he said. ‘That is simply wrong. It goes against the most basic principles of our democracy’
      US election 2020 live: Biden wins Michigan in vital step towards presidency as Trump tries to challenge results
      US election 2020 live results: Donald Trump takes on Joe Biden in tight presidential race More