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Media & Democracy 02.14.2024

Yahoo! News/USA Today: As the cradle of tech, California looks to be leader in AI regulation

Jonathan Mehta Stein is a co-founder of The California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, a project of good government group California Common Cause, which has been advising legislators on the threats emerging technologies pose to democracy. He points to the growing use of AI in elections across the world as evidence it's no longer a theoretical, but an active practice. In the first month of 2024, deepfakes promulgating misinformation in Bangladeshi and Slovakian elections proved to be significant election disruptions. Here in the United States, AI-generated content is met with considerable concern on the heels of rising political violence and distrust in election processes. "All of these new technologies that can deceive voters and undermine elections are coming on the heels of other depressing trends," Stein said. "In our democracy, trust in institutions and in the media are all-time lows. Beliefs that our elections are being run securely and votes are counted accurately are in doubt among huge percentages of the American population."

Voting & Elections 02.14.2024

South Bend Tribune (Op-Ed): Our civic health is on life support. Indiana's legislature doesn't care

The recent Indiana Civic Health Index should be a wakeup call for Indiana elected officials, like the alarm of medical devices alerting doctors and nurses to a patient in need of urgent care.   If you haven’t read the report, let me call out the alarms clearly. Indiana:   * ranked 50th in voting in the 2022 elections   * has consistently ranked in the bottom 10 in voting for the last 13 years  * moved backward in the rankings for both voting participation and voter registration in the last 11 plus years.   

Voting & Elections 02.13.2024

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Yahoo! News: Texas voter fraud activist leads closed-door poll watcher training at Arlington church

Such training sessions and the election day actions for which they prepare attendees are less about ensuring integrity in Texas elections than they are about voter intimidation, according to Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a nongovernmental organization that works to expand voting rights. While he was unaware of what Pressley’s session was to cover, he said in a phone interview that such groups “seem to be going out of their way to use poll watchers to intimidate or at least harass voters of color in different parts of the states.” Gutierrez pointed to a 2021 video of a Harris County Republican Party presentation in which a man identifying with the county’s Republican Party said that they were trying to recruit an “army” of 10,000 poll workers to fight voter fraud. In the video, the presenter can be seen using a cursor to point to a predominantly white part of Houston. He says that they were looking to recruit people with “the confidence and courage to come down in here” — moving the cursor to predominantly Black and Brown communities — to fight voter fraud. Gutierrez expressed concern over the lack of transparency of Tuesday’s training session in Arlington. “If groups are kicking people out of their training, you have to wonder what they’re training people on,” he said.

Voting & Elections 02.13.2024

Indiana Capital Chronicle: Controversial elections security bill could see changes

Julia Vaughn, who leads government watchdog Common Cause Indiana, similarly asked the committee to instead turn its attention to the BMV. “It seems backwards to attack this by examining the voter’s status. Why not get the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to quit illegally registering people?” she asked.

Yahoo! News/Politico: Adams’ pledge of government efficiency remains out of reach

“It’s that baseline of service that really affects how people think about their government,” said Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York, a government reform group. “It’s not about speeches and the big issues; it’s about whether you’ve made a noise complaint and nobody gets back to you for a week.” For Lerner, head of Common Cause, the city’s recent budget cuts — coupled with a struggle to fill vacant positions and a hiring freeze — could hurt the Adams administration’s ability to maintain the nuts and bolts of city government. Frustrations over those basics became palpable for her last year when a fire hydrant on her block began leaking in the summer. Repeated calls to 311 eventually led to visits from the fire and building department personnel, but they failed to stop the flow. Despite repeated follow-up calls, the hydrant continued to leak for months. Eventually, her neighbors inundated local elected officials with calls complaining about the lack of city responsiveness. "And guess what,” Lerner said. “In two weeks it got fixed."

Providence Journal: Access to public records was a problem in the bridge shutdown. Will that help reforms pass?

"It's a perfect example of something that is in the public interest," John Marion Jr., executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, said Thursday about the Washington Bridge emails.

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