Declare Wire

One other excerpt worth highlighting: “An office can retain its responsibilities while losing the relationships that helped it do the work, according to a person familiar with U.S. efforts to address influence operations. But someone who once knew exactly whom to call may find that their counterpart has departed, or that the people still there are unsure whether leadership supports exchanging information.”

Consider two ways of evaluating the “war” for our attention on social media, particularly around Election Day, when rumors and random reports of misbehavior and controversies fly about. One is that it’s between good domestic guys and bad domestic guys, i.e., the political party/ideological movement you like and the one you don’t. Another is that it’s between foreign malefactors and just us — just the Stars ‘n Stripes. This story is about the second.

Foreign operators try and know, with at least some effectiveness, that they can leverage the “fog of war” in an instantly updating online environment to confuse us and turn us against each other. The partnerships described by Nextgov are intended to mitigate those effects. If those partnerships are weaker, it becomes all the more important for social media users to resist snap judgments about shocking claims, for the sake of — seriously — national unity.

Taken as a whole, the responses of those surveyed reflect the ongoing divide between digital reality and reality-reality. In the first, elections are perceived to have tons of vulnerabilities, based not necessarily on events in the real world but sensational characterizations of them, which in turn influence political behavior. In the second, of “reality-reality,” the vulnerabilities are the sensational characterizations themselves and the reactions to them — whether public opinion of institutional legitimacy or, to use that term again, (eventual) political behavior, such as presidential action.

Differences of opinion about the world as it “actually” is are as old as ancient Greek philosophy. But the issue here is whether to base a worldview on data such as the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Map or Declare’s Election Integrity Map, or to base it on assumptions about the unknown or unproven. To the first crowd, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts,” applies. To the second, it’s more like, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts — yet not all the facts can be known, and we assume the ones that aren’t prove our case, or at least provide us with the justification for ‘asking questions’ in perpetuity.” Tough sell there.

Declare covered election officials as far back as February who were concerned about the RTO’s consequences for mail ballots, specifically in “postmark states” which count late-arriving ballots just as long as the USPS has indicated it took possession by Election Day. See: “Election Clerks Fearful That USPS Will Not Prioritize Mail Ballots,” “How Clerks Respond When D.C. Throws Them a Curveball,” and “House Republicans Ask USPS to ‘Reconsider’ Rule Affecting Mail Ballots,” all from Miranda Combs.
(Chris Deaton)

Needless to say, Mr. Seei won’t be delivering the mail again anytime soon (as the DOJ memo notes, he “no longer works for the United States Post Office”). But not because he’s been charged with an election crime — rather because he admitted to being a negligent mailman. It’s an unfortunate story for the primary election voters of Eagle Mountain, Utah, where the alleged offense took place, but obviously not indicative of any broader issues with mail voting (unless there are fears that postal workers will soon en masse say “ah, screw it”). Any criticisms of the practice would need to account for evidence that’s actually relevant. (Chris Deaton)

Contributor Stephen Richer has written about the good and the bad of SAVE as a voter verification tool. The “good” boils down to it being one of multiple resources that are checked against each other, when used responsibly. The “bad” is that . . . it hasn’t always been used so responsibly. When consulted by itself, with no other data sources, it has resulted in the wrongful removal of many voters.

Relevant to the November elections, the Supreme Court’s decision was issued well inside the federal 90-day window during which states are prohibited from removing registered voters as part of “list maintenance.” That means attempted bulk removals based on the use of SAVE is likely to be a non-issue before Election Day. Afterward, the debate about its legality will resume.