Lmao, Zuckerberg donated money to non profits so that they could ensure people get a chance to vote. “Orchestrated to influence”. Oh no. People who wouldn’t get a chance to vote got one.
You can solve this problem by just…making it so everyone can vote, my dudes.
> You can solve this problem by just…making it so everyone can vote, my dudes.
Yea here in india they solve that problem by giving out a bowl of biryani and packet of liquor in exchange for chance to take them to polling booth and a promise of a vote for them.
“My reaction is that this was a carefully orchestrated attempt to convert official government election offices into get-out-the-vote operations for one political party and to insert political operatives into election offices in order to influence and manipulate the outcome of the election,” said von Spakovsky, a Republican who now runs the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative.
He added: “All states should ban private funding of government election offices no matter the source.”
Serious question but why on earth would you assume that a Republican from the Heritage Foundation is operating in good faith? They are openly partisan and it’s members responsible for things such as this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Memorandum
I assume you’re sympathetic to them rather than confused about that but figured I would ask than just assume.
Well the message basically is ; this is bad and should be illegal.
I assume the republicans have money as well so they could do the same if they so wish. Saying no one should do it, therefore sounds reasonable.
And as for the source, reading from Europe I must say I don't really see that much unbiased news/articles anymore not here and certainly not in the U.S. Everything political seems to have a leaning to it - left or right so there is from my pov no good unbiased sources.
Or maybe you could point me in the direction of the list over approved sites? :)
If I were to make a guess, I would say that the Heritage Foundation thinks that all funding of GotV efforts are bad and should be illegal. They are not really fans of enfranchisement beyond the elite they serve. While Republicans have money, it is a commonly held belief that almost all increases in participation by infrequent voters (or eligible but unregistered voters) tends to favor the Democratic party. If the benefit goes to the other party then there is no reason for Republicans to spend in this particular area.
I apologise that this probably reads more troll-like than intended but I’m actually not much clearer after that honestly. What part here was bad and should be illegal?
Why would you assume that $400 million in election spending is nonpartisan? Has Zuckerberg otherwise established himself as an altruist?
Fun fact, Facebook tried to recruit me onto their elections team due to my past leadership experience with GOtV (Get Out the Vote) initiatives and I bailed from the interview process because nobody could describe the work in a way that didn’t sound creepy as fuck.
I didn’t mention Facebook once and I sure as hell didn’t ask anyone to “trust Zuck”.
I asked why they were uncritically quoting the position of one of the most high profile partisan groups who have an extensive history of bad faith claims as though this was some neutral third party.
There are a lot of buzz words in that statement. The Democrats’ position is that more voter turnout in general favors Democrats. This seems to be true, but at the same time the ideal amount of voter turnout is 100%. So the question is, is it bad for democrats to spend money on increasing voter turnout in general? For example, half the tech companies were airing ads telling people to vote, or showing notices in their UI. Are more reminders telling people to vote actually a bad thing?
The counterquote:
> Spokesman Ben LaBolt said the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which received the bulk of the funding, “issued an open call to local election jurisdictions across the country and provided funding to all jurisdictions that applied no matter whether they were historically Republican, Democratic or swing districts.”
They even went on to say that more of the funded districts were historically Republican than democrat.
Reading the federalist article, it has a very aggressive tone. So it’s hard to take it seriously. Take this sentence, for example:
> CTCL demanded the promotion of universal mail-in voting through suspending election laws, extending deadlines that favored mail-in over in-person voting, greatly expanding opportunities for “ballot curing,” expensive bulk mailings, and other lavish “community outreach” programs that were directed by private activists.
It’s very clearly implying that giving more people a chance to have their vote counted correctly is a BAD thing.
What would be bad was if Zuckerburg’s money was spent by non-partisan non-profits campaigning for the democrats. That would need to be a campaign or PAC donation or something like that. It did not seem like that was the suggestion from those articles, though it was implied.
Either way, it’s OBVIOUSLY bad that the rich and powerful can donate huge swaths of money during election cycle. What we really need is:
- Better voting standards nationally, to maximize voter turnout across the board by default. This way no one feels like they need to donate millions of dollars to try to get people to submit their ballot in the first place.
- Reversing citizen’s united.
- Do public campaign financing with no outside donations permitted.
- Make sure that polling is funded well-enough. Polling locations shouldn’t need to accept outside money to operate. Similarly, polling needs to be available (closing polling locations in major cities is asinine)
I feel like the article tries to pin this on “big tech” specifically, probably because it’s one of the current Republican scapegoats, but the reality is all companies and rich donors already have a huge influence in our elections and politics. Some of the changes I mentioned have been proposed in congress, but it is very difficult to get bipartisan support because no one is keen on supporting a policy that might help them loose an election.
realistically, while this may be overstepping the bounds of some faith in fairy tales like “democracy” and “untarnished will of citizens”, this is very very low on the ladder of nasty voting tactics. Compare to gerrymandering, or outright fraud, or SCOTUS deciding elections over and over, or much worse shenanigans in the 19th and 20th
Also OP’s article is “editorialized” in the same sense that Triumph of the Will is “biased”. A statement like
> The Post’s publication of a report that said Zuckerberg effectively “bought” the 2020 election also sparked outrage from the New York State Republican Party, which retweeted a link to the paper’s front-page coverage.
I assume it’s because the way the US election systems are set up that only a small handful of states end up deciding the elections as has been demonstrated consistently again and again.
You can solve this problem by just…making it so everyone can vote, my dudes.