Voting & Elections

More emphasis should be placed on removing false and misleading posts, said Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director at nonpartisan group Common Cause. “Pointing them to other sources isn’t enough,” he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Moore v. Harper, a Common Cause NC case, this fall. The court's decision could upend elections and voting in the United States.

Although secretaries of state are important positions, they do not have unlimited power, said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for expanded voter access. “Even in states where the secretary of state has an enormous amount of power, a secretary of state cannot — by themselves — overturn a democratic election,” Albert said. “Even where these individuals may want to take actions to undermine the ability for voters to vote and have a ballot count, they are still limited by the law and checks and balances in place.”

The 1,000-plus harassing and hostile contacts made to election officials covered the period from June 2021 to June 2022. The trend continued in July, the task force told the election officials, according to Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, who attended the briefing. ... In total, 89% of the contacts made to election officials were deemed protected speech and could not be investigated. “A lot of the questions were aimed at ‘Wait. Really? You can only investigate 11% of cases?’ And them saying, ‘Yes, I'm sorry but we can only investigate things not protected by First Amendment,’” Albert said.

Verizon's move means OAN "will be left without a major carrier to spread its often harmful and dangerous disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories," said Yosef Getachew, the media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. "This is a welcome change but long overdue." Getachew added: "We hope those remaining small pay-tv providers and streaming services still carrying OAN will follow suit and deprive the outlet of any platform to spread harmful conspiracy theories that have done real world harm. No company should profit from spreading content that endangers our democracy."

Yosef Getachew, Media & Democracy program director at the watchdog group Common Cause, criticized that content-neutral approach, citing Newsmax's pattern of sharing false claims — not just from guests, but employees — about fraud in the 2020 election, which a judge recently concluded the network knew "were probably false" at the time they aired. "Newsmax has amplified and aired content about the Big Lie, mischaracterized the January 6th insurrection, and is continuing to fuel election disinformation, which is damaging our democracy," Getachew told Insider. "And it's Verizon that profits off that."