All posts tagged: elections

Facing interference accusations, Russia falsely declares Moldovan elections ‘undemocratic’

Facing interference accusations, Russia falsely declares Moldovan elections ‘undemocratic’

Published by Sam

Facing accusations of massive interference in Moldova’s presidential elections, Russia declared the voting “undemocratic and unfair.” The current head of state, pro-Western politician Maria Sandu, won her second term in office over a pro-Russian opponent, Alexandr Stoianoglo, in the second round of voting on November 3. On November 5, the Kremlin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov asserted that Moldova’s presidential elections were not democratic: “These [Moldovan presidential] elections were neither democratic nor fair. They were full of electoral manipulations.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that “violations during the election process were so widespread and obvious” that even the observation mission of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) “could not turn a blind eye to them in its preliminary conclusions.” Both the Kremlin’s and the Foreign Ministry’s claims are misleading. OSCE/ODIHR reported that Moldova’s November 3 presidential runoff was efficiently and professionally conducted, providing voters with genuine political alternatives. Additionally, candidates were able to campaign freely. The presidential race saw increased negative …

4B Movement: What Is It And Why Is It Trending After Donald Trump’s Win?

4B Movement: What Is It And Why Is It Trending After Donald Trump’s Win?

Published by Sam

At the moment, I’d say about one-sixth of the TikTok videos on my for you page are about Korea’s 4B movement. UK Google searches for the term have absolutely soared since November 5th ― the day before the US election’s results. The trend seems to apply worldwide. Pauline Hamilton, who is currently doing “very preliminary” research on the phenomenon in Korea (though she stresses she is “by no means an expert”) revealed that “4B” refers to a sort of online gender strike. Though Pauline hopes to speak directly with women participating in the 4B movement in the future, she’s currently sharing her broader knowledge on TikTok. “The 4B movement is an online movement predominantly in South Korea where women are partaking in the four ’B’s,” she explained. The “B” stands for the Hanja (Korean Chinese characters) word for “no” or “won’t”; within the movement, this is attached to the four actions of sex, child-rearing, marriage, and dating. 4B therefore (roughly) means strict adherents aim to avoid having sex with, dating, marrying, or making babies with …

Flaw in Right-Wing ‘Election Integrity’ App Exposes Voter-Suppression Plan and User Data

Flaw in Right-Wing ‘Election Integrity’ App Exposes Voter-Suppression Plan and User Data

Published by skeptic

In a since-deleted VoteAlert post reviewed by WIRED, a user wrote: “I’m probably going to be fired for this but I was hired by the Riverside County Registrar of Voters as an Election Officer in Hemet, CA. Since I’m in charge at this polling center, I’m asking for citizenship ID of anyone that looks suspiciously like they’re not here legally.” The post went on to suggest that the Riverside County Sheriff’s office wouldn’t intervene in her scheme. “It’s just a drop in the bucket but I’m going to do my part to stop election fraud,” she wrote. “Wish me luck🙏” WIRED traced the email associated with the post to a California woman who describes herself as a person who is “FED UP with all the bullsh*t,” according to one app profile. “You’re only getting the hard, smack-your-face TRUTH from me.” The woman, whose name WIRED is not publishing because it was revealed through a security flaw, did not respond to requests for comment. In a phone call, Riverside County public information officer Elizabeth Florer confirmed …

How To… Rig Your Rigged Elections

How To… Rig Your Rigged Elections

Published by skeptic

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org, Are you an aspiring oligarch, dictator or autocrat? Do you want to wield power whilst maintaining a façade of popular support and democratic mandate? Do you want to make your proles believe they have a choice? Well then, welcome to the first of our “How to…” series. A selection of articles dedicated to teaching aspiring authoritarians how to hide tyranny behind a reassuring mask of  freedom. Here we’ll go into the finer points of how it’s possible to have “elections” that mean almost nothing. What we talk about when we talk about rigging an election First things first, we need to establish what we mean when we talk about “election rigging”. Controlling the outcome of an election is a comparatively simple, even vulgar, process. All you need to do is manipulate the count and/or simply lie about the result. However doing this efficiently  – rigging an election with as little effort as possible and disguising that fact is more difficult. In short, if your rigged election is entirely reliant on simply forging …

Immigration plan on ballot could worsen worker shortage

Immigration plan on ballot could worsen worker shortage

Published by Sam

PHOENIX — Immigration is a top election issue across the country, but few places feel it more than Arizona, the only swing state along the southern border and home to one of the races that could make or break control of the Senate. Arizona businesses say a shortage of workers is threatening to hold up projects in industries such as construction, hospitality and agriculture — and that without changes to the federal immigration system, the economy could face a devastating hit. About 16.2% of Arizona’s workforce is made up of immigrants, according to a 2022 study by the American Immigration Council. Meanwhile, the state is also facing a job shortage, 197,000 as of June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Monica Villalobos, the president and CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said the lack of labor is leading to larger economic impacts, such as on housing prices. “We have several members that are in the construction industry that aren’t able to find workers to complete projects,” she said. “And when they can’t …

Voters more trusting of elections when polls are supervised by multiple groups

Voters more trusting of elections when polls are supervised by multiple groups

Published by José

A recent study has shown that voters are more likely to believe vote counts are accurate when election results are monitored by a range of different officials, including government election workers, political party representatives, and non-partisan observers. The research suggests that having various monitoring groups present at polling places can increase voter confidence in the election process, regardless of voters’ political leanings or pre-existing trust in electoral bodies. The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Political Science, was conducted by Fanisi Mbozi from New York University Abu Dhabi. Mbozi’s work builds on prior research that has largely focused on the role of non-partisan observers in enhancing perceptions of election integrity. However, Mbozi’s research expands this scope to examine how political party agents and government officials also contribute to voter confidence in the reliability of vote counts. By investigating these additional influences, the study sheds light on how diverse polling supervision might counter public distrust in election processes, especially in regions where vote-counting disputes are common. The motivation behind this research stems from recent election …

What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan

What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan

Published by skeptic

Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top donors—the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company he was heavily invested in, by fashioning Monopoly boards where the game’s “jail” space is replaced by “government regulation.” Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech investors have come out of the woodwork to support her campaign. While they often tout Harris as a business-friendly politician, they’ve been vocal in their dislike of Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan’s antitrust agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated tens of millions of dollars in support of the Biden and Harris campaigns and has organized other wealthy tech investors to do so as well. When Airbnb went public in December 2020, the company was valued at more than $47 billion. Hoffman sent at least a handful of other investors a board game styled after Monopoly called “Airbnopoly,” according to images of the game obtained by WIRED. A top Airbnb investor confirmed that he …

17 Atlantic Covers From Different Presidential Elections

17 Atlantic Covers From Different Presidential Elections

Published by skeptic

These covers offer a window into the unique and enduring ideas of each electoral era. Illustration by The Atlantic October 31, 2024, 3:18 PM ET This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present, surface delightful treasures, and examine the American idea. This year’s presidential election is the 60th in the history of the United States. The Atlantic has for 42 of those election cycles published stories examining the fitness of candidates to serve, the inclinations of the voting public to vote, and the sturdiness of our democratic institutions to carry on. Our magazine’s covers in October and November of presidential-election years offer windows into the unique—or uniquely persistent—national anxieties of each electoral era. One cover story from our archives imagined a hypothetical Inauguration Day on which, “for the first time in history, the Inaugural stand has been built on the West Front of the Capitol,” but by noon in D.C., “there is no new President—none of the candidates carried a majority of the electoral vote on …

How the U.S. Election Matters for the Rest of the World

How the U.S. Election Matters for the Rest of the World

Published by Sam

Israel and Gaza Patrick Kingsley is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief. Israelis, if they could, would vote by a large margin for Trump — the polls show that very clearly. But whoever wins, the long-term impact will probably be limited. Israeli society, not to mention the government, is more opposed to Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution than it has been in decades. No U.S. president is likely to change that. President Harris would probably put more pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire and open up talks with the Palestinians. But she would be unlikely to, say, cut off military support to Israel. President Trump would perhaps be less bothered about Israel allowing Jewish settlers back into Gaza, as part of the Israeli government would like to do. He also talks a much more aggressive line on Iran than Harris, which pleases many Israelis. But you don’t quite know which side of the bed he’s going to wake up on. You get the sense he’s more risk averse than he sounds, and he recently …

Workers Say They Were Tricked and Threatened as Part of Elon Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Effort

Workers Say They Were Tricked and Threatened as Part of Elon Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Effort

Published by skeptic

The video from inside the van shows a bumpy ride, with a cage separating the mostly Black door knockers from their driver. The driver also told the group of door knockers that he was in pain and had difficulty driving: “I just had surgery, bro,” the U-Haul driver says in another recording obtained by WIRED. “Like half of my foot is cut off.” “I’m scared,” the door knocker who spoke to WIRED replies on the recording. “And all [the manager] is concerned about is how many motherfuckin’ doors the bitch got,” the driver responds. The canvassers were then dropped off roughly 40 minutes apart from each other, relying on the mobile app to log their interactions at front doors. In a contract agreement reviewed by WIRED, door knockers were given specific “performance guidelines” along with a mandate to “keep the GPS function of their personal device turned on during all working hours.” Each knock at the door must be done in 15 seconds or less, and the contractors “must remain on a property for at …