Disinformation

No American is above the law, including former Presidents and their advisors. Steve Bannon learned that today through a jail sentence and a fine for defying a subpoena from the January 6th Committee.

“Americans deserve more than lip service and half-measures from the platforms,” said Yosef Getachew, director of Common Cause’s media and democracy program. “These platforms have been weaponized by enemies of democracy, both foreign and domestic.”

"It felt very much like the national effort to vilify and stop absentee voting," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a good government advocacy group.

If someone did attempt to register a dead relative, that application would most likely be rejected, said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a group that advocates for voting access. If a dead person did make it onto the voter rolls, "the person attempting to impersonate the deceased person would still have to navigate identification requirements, signature verification, and the possibility that the voter registration would be flagged once the appropriate databases did get updated," Gutierrez said. "The odds of this person successfully casting a ballot for their dead relative are extremely low, and the odds of them using this ploy to have any meaningful impact on the outcome of an election are practically zero, whereas their odds of getting themselves into very serious legal trouble and probably spending some time in prison would be extremely high," Gutierrez said.

"It's a snake eating its tail at this point," Sylvia Albert, Common Cause's director of voting and elections, told Newsweek. The challenges to GOP's election denial tactic were unraveled in the Republican primaries, where GOP candidates are pitted against one another. As some moved onto the general ballot, others refused to accept the primary wins of members of their party. "If you have multiple election deniers up for election, and one of them wins, the other one is still going to deny that the election actually took place," Albert said. She added, "The right has gotten themselves to somewhere they didn't expect."

“We certainly know elections can, and have been, and will be again decided by a handful of votes, so anything that affects voters has the potential to change the outcome,” said Jesse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at Common Cause, an advocacy organization whose efforts include fighting mis- and disinformation. “That would include voter myths or disinformation which could either cause the voter to miss the chance to participate because they believed incorrect information, or cause them to not participate at all because they don’t believe in the integrity of the election process,” Littlewood said. ... The steps a voter should take are “the same whether it’s a tweet, a Facebook post, a WhatsApp chat from your uncle or aunt or a Telegram message from former President Trump,” Littlewood said. “You should take the same steps of verifying that it’s a trusted source of information and verifying the motivation of who the provider of the information is,” he said. ...