Fellow Steven Rosenfeld issued three recent reports on the upcoming elections and why it’s crucial to America’s future for voters to maintain faith in the democratic system—and dangerous to spread information to the contrary, without evidence.
GOP Attempts To Purge Voter Rolls Failing Before Midterm
As a key deadline approaches next week on updating statewide voter rolls before the November election, it appears a controversial data-mining operation mostly used by red states to purge legitimate voters is withering, or at least dormant, in 2018.
A Letter to the Author of a Very Misguided Article About the Hacking of American Elections
Dear Michael Harriot: Your latest article in The Root—arguing that Russia hijacked the 2016 presidential vote count and the “updated” essay attempting to clean up those errors but not backing down—isn’t merely another edgy musing with dots that don’t that connect, or substituting your gut feeling for proof.
Putin’s Propaganda War Is Key to His Meddling in U.S. Politics—And We’re Not Prepared for It
A curious dichotomy has appeared in the American political world when it comes to preventing a repeat in 2018’s elections. While there’s been much ado and action from officials to prevent hacking the computer systems that comprise the voting process—one of Russia’s 2016 tactics, there’s also a corresponding absence of federal action when it comes to proactive efforts to stop online propaganda, which was Russia’s other major focus.
Rosenfeld’s reporting underscores how a rising tide of alarmist reporting about voter trends isn’t reflecting what’s new in 2018 nor will encourage Americans to believe their vote matters, will be counted, and that they can have confidence in the process. As the 2018 midterms approach, Americans of every political persuasion need to know what’s being done to safeguard voting from cyber threats, which is a lot, compared to the federal government’s hands-off approach allowing freewheeling online propaganda to continue largely unabated from 2016.