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How the 14th Amendment Prevents State Legislatures from Subverting Popular Presidential Elections
In November 2020, as it became clear that Trump had lost the popular vote and would lose the Electoral College, Trump and his supporters mounted a pressure campaign to convince legislatures in several states whose citizens voted for Joe Biden to appoint electors who would support Trump’s reelection in the Electoral College votes. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election not only failed, but some of them also rested on a misreading of the U.S. Constitution. There was a safeguard already in place – and it remains today, defending against this approach being used to subvert the 2024 presidential election.
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Officials Voted Down a Controversial Georgia Election Rule, Saying It Violated the Law. Then a Similar Version Passed.
The rule, which was pushed by nationally prominent election deniers, only changed in minor ways between being voted down in May and approved in August. Those adjustments made it even less compliant with existing law, experts say.
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Election Experts Cautious as Abbott Touts Voter Roll Purge
Federal and state law already required voter roll maintenance. Experts warn the governor’s framing of this routine process could be used to undermine trust in elections.
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The Hacking of the Trump Campaign Is 2016 All Over Again
Hackers affiliated with the intelligence service of a foreign county hack the campaign of a candidate for the U.S. presidency, scoop damaging material, and disseminate it to reporters. This describes both the 2016 hacking of the Clinton campaign by Russian hackers, and the 2024 hacking of the Trump campaign by Iranian hackers. But there are differences: In 2016, “The press seized on the hacked emails,” Quinta Jurecic writes, “and the Trump campaign capitalized exuberantly on Russia’s involvement in the election.” Trump called on Russia to do even more. Now, the press has behaved more responsibly, and “Kamala Harris has not yet weighed in on the campaign trail with any winking suggestions that Iran might want to continue rummaging around in the Trump campaign’s systems.”
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Texas Election Officials Are Dealing with a Flood of Challenges to Voter Registrations
Conservative groups and individual activists have targeted tens of thousands of Texans over their eligibility. But state and federal protections are in place.
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Election Deniers Secretly Pushed Rule That Would Make It Easier to Delay Certification of Georgia’s Election Results
On Monday, the GOP-controlled State Election Board is poised to adopt the rule, which would potentially allow county officials, including one who secretly backed the rule, to throw the election results of the swing state into chaos this fall.
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Red Flag Gun Laws Under Fire
Laws meant to keep firearms away from unstable people are under attack by Second Amendment radicals. An investigation by The Trace and Rolling Stone exposes the ugly campaign to undermine a bipartisan compromise to stop mass shootings.
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Foreign Actors Could Sow 'Chaos' in the 2024 Presidential Election, Cybersecurity Expert Says
In a tightly contested election, a “hack and leak” campaigns can be hugely “consequential” at the margins, says an expert.
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AI Disinformation: Lessons from the U.K. Election
The record-breaking 2024 figure of about 4 billion voters eligible to go to the polls across more than 60 countries coincided with the full-fledged arrival and widespread uptake of multimodal generative artificial intelligence (AI), which enables almost anyone to make fake images, videos and sound.
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What Is the Online Safety Act and Why Have Riots in the U.K. Reopened Debates About It?
Social media played a key role in the widespread coordination of riots in locations across the country. Online platforms have also served as a vehicle through which misinformation and hateful rhetoric has spread.
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Protecting Our Elections Against Tech-Enabled Disinformation
Electoral administrators around the world are dealing with a radically changed democratic landscape. Concerns focus on the pervasive presence of disinformation and false narratives, the rise of new technologies such as generative artificial intelligence, occasional madcap conspiracy theories, threats to electoral workers, and the need to maintain citizens’ confidence in electoral outcomes.
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Study Highlights Challenges in Detecting Violent Speech Aimed at Asian Communities
A study of language detection software found that algorithms struggle to differentiate anti-Asian violence-provoking speech from general hate speech. Left unchecked, threats of violence online can go unnoticed and turn into real-world attacks.
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Election Deniers Continue Attempts to Meddle with Certification – But the Process Is Resilient
Georgia’s State Election Board made it easier to delay certification, but disputes do not mean problems with the election.
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Today's Autocracies Are Networked In Efforts To Erode Democracy, Says Author Anne Applebaum
Autocracies around the world have become increasingly mutually reinforcing in their competition with democratic societies, Pulitzer Prize winning U.S. journalist and historian Anne Applebaum said.
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A Call to Protect Democracy from Political Violence
As the nation reels from the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions say we must be clear about the threat of guns in a heated election.
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The long view
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”