[EL] ELB News and Commentary 9/28/17

Thu Sep 28 08:04:35 PDT 2017

“Twitter, With Accounts Linked to Russia, to Face Congress Over Role in Election”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95059>
Posted on September 28, 2017 7:22 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95059> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
NYT:<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/technology/twitter-russia-election.html?action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=65882172&pgtype=article&_r=1>
For three weeks, a harsh spotlight has been trained on Facebook<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/technology/facebook-russian-ads.html> over its disclosure that Russians used fake pages and ads<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/facebook-russian-political-ads.html>, designed to look like the work of American activists, to spread inflammatory messages during and since the presidential campaign.
But there is evidence that Twitter may have been used even more extensively than Facebook in the Russian influence campaign last year. In addition to Russia-linked Twitter accounts that posed as Americans, the platform was also used for large-scale automated messaging, using “bot” accounts to spread false stories and promote news articles about emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers.
Twitter has struggled for years to rein in the fake accounts overrunning its platform. Unlike Facebook, the service does not require its users to provide their real name (or at least a facsimile of one) and allows automated accounts — arguing that they are a useful tool for tasks such as customer service. Beyond those restrictions, there is also an online black market for services that can allow for the creation of large numbers of Twitter bots, which can be controlled by a single person while still being difficult to distinguish from real accounts….
Since last month, researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy<http://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/>, a bipartisan initiative of the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, have been publicly tracking 600 Twitter accounts — human users and suspected bots alike — they have linked to Russian influence operations. Those were the accounts pushing the opposing messages on the N.F.L. and the national anthem.
Of 80 news stories promoted last week by those accounts, more than 25 percent “had a primary theme of anti-Americanism,” the researchers found. About 15 percent were critical of Hillary Clinton, falsely accusing her of funding left-wing antifa — short for anti-fascist — protesters, tying her to the lethal terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 and discussing her daughter Chelsea’s use of Twitter. Eleven percent focused on wiretapping in the federal investigation into Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, with most of them treated the news as a vindication for President Trump’s earlier wiretapping claims.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Exclusive: Russian-bought Black Lives Matter ad on Facebook targeted Baltimore and Ferguson”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95057>
Posted on September 28, 2017 7:17 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95057> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
CNN:<http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/27/media/facebook-black-lives-matter-targeting/index.html>
At least one of the Facebook ads bought by Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign referenced Black Lives Matter and was specifically targeted to reach audiences in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, sources with knowledge of the ads told CNN.
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Posted in campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

Campaign Legal Center Hosting Event on Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections on Oct. 12<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95055>
Posted on September 28, 2017 7:11 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95055> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Details<http://mailchi.mp/dc1292f19f7f/youre-invited-examining-foreign-interference-in-us-elections?e=7d74c41031> and RSVP.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, campaigns<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=59>, chicanery<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>

“Campaign watchdogs cite ‘significant concerns’ if Texas lawyer Trey Trainor gets FEC post”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95053>
Posted on September 28, 2017 7:10 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95053> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Dallas News<https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2017/09/27/campaign-watchdogs-cite-significant-concerns-texas-lawyer-trey-trainor-gets-fec-post>:
Campaign watchdog groups blasted Austin lawyer Trey Trainor on Wednesday, warning senators that his ties to the White House and views on campaign finance should raise “significant concerns” should he win a spot on the Federal Election Commission.
Ten groups wrote a letter<http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/group-letter-to-senate-on-fec-nomination-of-trey-trainor.pdf> to senators expressing their concerns, though they stopped short of urging the Senate to reject the nomination.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, federal election commission<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=24>

The New Wave of Gerrymandering Scholarship — Part III<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95049>
Posted on September 27, 2017 5:07 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95049> by Nicholas Stephanopoulos<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=12>
The next article I’d like to flag is Jowei Chen’s forthcoming piece<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jowei/Political_Geography_Wisconsin_Redistricting.pdf> in the Election Law Journal, The Impact of Political Geography on Wisconsin Redistricting. In it, Jowei applies his simulation technique to the Wisconsin Assembly, randomly creating 200 district maps without considering any electoral data. As the below chart indicates, all of these maps both improve on the enacted plan in terms of traditional districting criteria and exhibit much smaller efficiency gaps. Indeed, fully three-fourths of the simulated maps have efficiency gaps within three percentage points of perfect neutrality.
[http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/pic5-300x228.png]
The implications of these results are easily grasped: Wisconsin’s political geography does not significantly favor either party in redistricting for the Assembly. If it did, that edge would be evident in the simulated maps. Therefore the spatial patterns of Wisconsin’s voters cannot justify the enormous efficiency gap exhibited by the enacted Assembly plan.
Because Jowei’s work has recently been the subject of discussion on this blog, I thought I’d make a few more points about it. First, in this analysis, he abided by more constraints than just equal population, contiguity, and compactness. Each of his simulated Assembly maps also split fewer counties and municipalities than the enacted plan, and complied with the Voting Rights Act by preserving the majority-minority districts ratified in earlier litigation. Each of the simulated maps thus satisfies all federal and state requirements.
Second, Jowei’s simulations help to show how the enacted plan’s Republican advantage was achieved. The below chart plots both the actual Assembly districts and ranges for the simulated districts from least to most Republican. In the first few districts on the left, the packing of Democratic voters is apparent. Several actual districts are more heavily Democratic than any simulated district. Next, in the middle of the chart, the cracking of Democratic voters is unmistakable. There are about a dozen Republican districts that would have been won by Democrats in almost all of the simulations. On the right side of the chart, lastly, there is clear evidence of Republican un-packing. There are substantially fewer heavily Republican districts in the actual plan than in any simulation.
[http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/pic6-300x212.png]
Third, one can be agnostic as to whether Jowei’s simulated maps are drawn randomly from the universe of lawful Assembly maps, and yet still find the simulations highly probative. If the simulations are unrepresentative, one would not want to assign too much weight to their precise distribution: their median, say, or the shares of maps that fall on each side of 0%. Nevertheless, one could conclude that there exist hundreds of lawful alternatives to the enacted plan, all superior in terms of both compliance with traditional criteria and partisan fairness. The very existence of these alternatives is relevant to whether the enacted plan’s asymmetry can be justified—even if one is unsure about the alternatives’ representativeness.
And fourth, the growing availability of district map simulations (by both Jowei and other scholars) makes possible an appealing two-stage sequence for quantitatively evaluating plans. In the first stage, a plan would be assessed relative to a benchmark of perfect neutrality, using measures like partisan bias, the efficiency gap, and the mean-median difference. In the second stage, a plan would be compared to a large number of simulated maps, all at least matching the plan in terms of traditional criteria but designed without any reliance on electoral data. Liability would follow only if a plan was asymmetric both absolutely (compared to a zero baseline) and relatively (compared to the simulations). This approach, of course, is exactly what the Whitford plaintiffs have proposed.
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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

Fairvote Event Sept. 28 on Lack of Competition in Congressional Elections<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95047>
Posted on September 27, 2017 9:36 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95047> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
This<http://www.fairvote.org/fairvote_calls_the_2018_house_elections_and_forecasts_2022> looks good:
FairVote Calls the 2018 House Elections… and Forecasts 2022
 Date: Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017
Time: 9:15am – 10:30 am
Location: Stewart R. Mott House,
122 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002<https://maps.google.com/?q=122+Maryland+Avenue+NE,+Washington,+DC+20002&entry=gmail&source=g>
Analysts include three leading experts: Anita Earls, Norm Ornstein and David Daley
RSVP: Myeisha Boyd, mboyd at fairvote.org<mailto:mboyd at fairvote.org>, (301) 270-4616
Coffee and light refreshments available. RSVP by noon on Sept. 27
FairVote, a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms and developer of the “partisan index,” presents its bi-annual report, “Monopoly Politics<http://www.fairvote.org/monopoly_politics?e=cc034e501221e53c9355b02eed319a15&utm_source=fairvote&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mot_masept26&n=1&test_email=1#overview>,” an in-depth analysis of U.S. House elections and the structural origins of the polarization, partisan bias, and striking lack of competition that plague Congressional politics. The report projects winners in every 2018 U.S. House race; it includes what it believes are safe projections in more than 85 percent of seats using a model that has missed a single race in 2012-2016.
FairVote will also review its new report on a simulation of congressional plans that would be established by H.R. 3057, The Fair Representation Act<http://www.fairvote.org/r?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffairrepresentation.com%2F&e=cc034e501221e53c9355b02eed319a15&utm_source=fairvote&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mot_masept26&n=2&test_email=1>. H.R. 3057 would establish a combination of independent commissions, ranked choice voting, and larger districts that elect more than one seat. The simulations show it would: 1) create a level playing field for the major parties; 2) provide shared representation of both parties in nearly every district; 3) increase electoral opportunities for women and people of color.
Join us live on our Facebook page<https://www.facebook.com/FairVoteReform/>.

Speakers
Rob Richie
Executive Director, FairVote
Anita Earls
Executive Director, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and litigator in several of
the biggest voting rights cases of the past decade
Norm Ornstein
Co-Director, Election Reform Project, American Enterprise Institute Fellow and
co-author of the new book, “One Nation After Trump”
David Daley
Communications Director, FairVote and author of
“Rat F**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count”  on the 2011-2 redistricting cycle
RSVP HERE<mailto:mboyd at fairvote.org>

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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

“Facebook Campaign Spending Draws FEC Complaints from Common Cause”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95045>
Posted on September 27, 2017 7:40 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95045> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
Release:<http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/facebook-campaign-spending-draws-fec-complaints-from-common-cause.html>
Today Common Cause filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that Michael Waddell, the host of the hunting show “Bone Collector”, and a Wisconsin businessman made illegal undisclosed independent expenditures in connection with the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns of Donald Trump. Additionally, Waddell appears to have made excessive in-kind contributions during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The apparent violations were brought to light by a Vice News report<https://news.vice.com/story/facebook-political-ads>on illegal political advertising on Facebook and the complete lack of disclosure on the social media platform.
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

“Some Conservatives See PAC’s Tax Reform Ads As Potential Warning Shot”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95043>
Posted on September 27, 2017 7:34 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=95043> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
HuffPost:<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/conservatives-aan-ads-paul-ryan_us_59cad929e4b02aef6cd5ff25>
As House Republicans get ready to release the details of their tax reform proposal on Wednesday, rank-and-file GOP members spent Tuesday morning learning what consequences might befall them if they don’t get onboard.
During a closed-door meeting with House GOP members on Tuesday, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) let American Action Network’s executive director, Corry Bliss, present members with three different ads that the tax-exempt, 501(c)4 organization has been running in some districts ― and might run in their districts, with a slightly different tone, depending on how upcoming legislative battles go.
All three ads were supportive of tax reform ― and none of them were explicitly negative against members ― but they showed different endings depending on whose district the ad was running in, according to members in attendance. As one example, an ad made a pitch to overhaul the tax code and then urged viewers to call the office of Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.) to tell him to support the reform.
In the words of one member present, the ad “kind of left a strange taste in my mouth.”
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Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org<http://electionlawblog.org/>
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