[EL] ELB News and Commentary 1/8/20

[Daniel Tokaji]

House Hearing on Digital Manipulation and Deception
<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108847>
Posted on January 8, 2020 10:55 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108847>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

The Hill
<https://thehill.com/policy/technology/477358-lawmakers-voice-skepticism-over-facebooks-deepfake-ban>

<https://www.cnet.com/news/deepfakes-are-a-risk-to-2020-elections-experts-to-tell-congress/>
on today’s hearing
<https://energycommerce.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/hearing-on-americans-at-risk-manipulation-and-deception-in-the-digital>“Americans
at Risk: Manipulation and Deception in the Digital Age,” before the House
Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce:

Facebook’s global policy chief faced tough questions before a House panel
on Wednesday as lawmakers voiced skepticism over the company’s efforts to
crack down on manipulated videos — known as deepfakes — ahead of the 2020
election.

The social media platform unveiled plans to ban such videos late Monday
night, but critics quickly condemned the policy for not going far enough.

More coverage from CNET
<https://www.cnet.com/news/deepfakes-are-a-risk-to-2020-elections-experts-to-tell-congress/>
 and Reuters
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-deepfake-hearing/lawmakers-say-facebooks-steps-to-tackle-deepfake-videos-not-adequate-idUSKBN1Z72DZ>
.
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Posted in chicanery <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>
<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108847&action=edit>
Wisconsin Appeals Court Declines to Intervene in Purge Case
<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108845>
Posted on January 8, 2020 8:27 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108845>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

AP reports
<https://www.nbc15.com/content/news/Appeals-court-stays-out-of-voter-purge-case-in-Wisconsin-566810601.html>
on
the yesterday’s ruling:

A state appeals court will stay out of a closely watched Wisconsin case
over the purging of up to 209,000 registered voters in the battleground
state.

The District 4 appeals court in Madison said in a ruling Tuesday it won’t
take the case until the state Supreme Court decides whether it will handle
it.

A parallel case <https://www.fairelectionscenter.org/wisconsin-voter-purge> is
pending in federal court.
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Posted in voter registration <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=37>
<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108845&action=edit>
“Republicans ‘got greedy’ in drawing Pennsylvania congressional maps, new
documents say” <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108843>
Posted on January 8, 2020 8:10 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108843>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports
<https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-gerrymandering-thomas-hofeller-files-20200108.html?utm_medium=social&cid=Philly.com+Twitter&utm_campaign=Philly.com+Twitter+Account&utm_source=t.co&__twitter_impression=true#header>
on
documents from the trove  <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108741>released
by Thomas Hofeller’s daughter:

“GOP gerrymandering got greedy the last time and bad political climate
caused it to unravel,” one of the state-by-state analysis documents in the
files said of Pennsylvania. “Democrats will be concentrating on trying to
safe up their gains.”

That was presumably a reference to the congressional maps Republicans drew
in 2001, which created more districts that were only marginally GOP
friendly. Some of them were captured by Democrats in the 2006 election amid
unrest over the Iraq War.

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Posted in redistricting <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=6>
<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108843&action=edit>
Are Ballot Marking Devices Secure? <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108840>
Posted on January 8, 2020 6:39 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108840>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

WaPo
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-cybersecurity-202/2020/01/08/the-cybersecurity-202-voting-machines-touted-as-secure-option-are-actually-vulnerable-to-hacking-study-finds/5e14cc6e602ff125ce5bd747/>
 on a study  <https://jhalderm.com/pub/papers/bmd-verifiability-sp20.pdf>by
Alex Halderman and other researchers at the University of Michigan. Here’s
the abstract of the paper:

Ballot marking devices (BMDs) allow voters to select candidates on a
computer kiosk, which prints a paper ballot that the voter can review
before inserting it into a scanner to be tabulated. Unlike paperless voting
machines, BMDs provide voters an opportunity to verify an auditable
physical record of their choices, and a growing number of U.S.
jurisdictions are adopting them for all voters. However, the security of
BMDs depends on how reliably voters notice and correct any adversarially
induced errors on their printed ballots. In order to measure voters’ error
detection abilities, we conducted a large study (N = 241) in a realistic
polling place setting using real voting machines that we modified to
introduce an error into each printout. Without intervention, only 40% of
participants reviewed their printed ballots at all, and only 6.6% told a
poll worker something was wrong. We also find that carefully designed
interventions can improve verification performance. Verbally instructing
voters to review the printouts and providing a written slate of candidates
for whom to vote both significantly increased review and reporting rates—
although the improvements may not be large enough to provide strong
security in close elections, especially when BMDs are used by all voters.
Based on these findings, we make several evidence-based recommendations to
help better defend BMD-based elections.

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Posted in voting technology <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=40>
<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108840&action=edit>
<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108840&action=edit>
“Trump judicial adviser’s ‘dark money’ network hides Supreme Court spending”
<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108837>
Posted on January 8, 2020 6:29 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108837>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

>From the Center for Responsive Politics
<https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/01/supreme-court-wellspring-committee-stry-2020/>
:

A secretive network spending millions of dollars
<https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/>
to
confirm President Donald Trump
<https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00023864>’s
Supreme Court picks terminated multiple 501(c)(4) nonprofit nodes last year
while funneling money to an even more opaque limited-liability company,
further obscuring the network’s funding sources.

At the crux of that network
<https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/02/dark-money-group-led-by-trump-judicial-adviser-scotus-picks/>
is
Leonard Leo, Trump’s top outside judicial adviser and a longtime executive
at the Federalist Society who helped shepherd
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2018/08/03/heres-why-we-need-to-know-how-kavanaugh-got-on-trumps-supreme-court-list/>
Trump’s
Supreme Court picks through the confirmation process. Leo holds leadership
positions with multiple groups in the network.

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Posted in Supreme Court <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>
<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108837&action=edit>
“Ex-Tea Party lawmakers turn heads on K Street”
<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108835>
Posted on January 8, 2020 4:28 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108835>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

The Hill
<https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/477246-ex-tea-party-lawmakers-turn-heads-on-k-street>
:

A number of prominent former lawmakers associated with the Tea Party Caucus
have joined the ranks of K Street in the last year, bringing their small
government agendas to the lobbying world.

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Posted in lobbying <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=28>
<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108835&action=edit>
“Barbara Boxer joins D.C. lobbying firm”
<https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108833>
Posted on January 8, 2020 4:25 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108833>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

The door revolves
<https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/07/barbara-boxer-joins-dc-lobbying-firm-095196>.
>From Politico:

The California Democrat, who spent a decade in the House and 24 years in
the Senate, doesn’t plan to register as a lobbyist. Instead, she’ll advise
clients of Mercury Public Affairs, which represents corporate clients such
as Airbnb and AT&T, as well as foreign governments, including those of
Qatar and Turkey.

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Posted in lobbying <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=28>


<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108833&action=edit>*Galston
on Deepfakes* <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108830>
Posted on January 8, 2020 4:16 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108830>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

>From the Brookings report
<https://www.brookings.edu/research/is-seeing-still-believing-the-deepfake-challenge-to-truth-in-politics/>,
“Is seeing still believing? The deepfake challenge to truth in politics,”
with a nod to the Marx Brothers’ classic *Duck Soup*:

If AI is reaching the point where it will be virtually impossible to detect
audio and video representations of people saying things they never said
(and even doing things they never did), seeing will no longer be believing,
and we will have to decide for ourselves—without reliable evidence—whom or
what to believe. Worse, candidates will be able to dismiss accurate but
embarrassing representations of what they say are fakes, an evasion that
will be hard to disprove….

Faced with this epistemological anarchy, voters will be more likely than
ever before to remain within their partisan bubbles, believing only those
politicians and media figures who share their political orientation.
Evidence-based persuasion across partisan and ideological lines will be
even more difficult than it has been in recent decades, as the media has
bifurcated along partisan lines and political polarization has surged.

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Posted in chicanery <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12>, political
polarization <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=68>
<https://electionlawblog.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=108830&action=edit>
“California investor charged with obstructing probe of Trump inaugural
donation” <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108826>
Posted on January 8, 2020 4:03 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=108826>
by Dan Tokaji <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

Politico
<https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/01/07/california-investor-charged-with-obstructing-probe-of-trump-inaugural-donation-1246082>
:

A prolific California donor who pleaded guilty to campaign finance
violations now faces a fresh charge for allegedly trying to stymie an
investigation into the source of money he donated to the Trump inauguration
committee.

Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York unveiled an obstruction of
justice charge against Imaad Zuberi, an investor who last year pleaded
guilty
<https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2019/10/22/donor-who-gave-900k-to-trump-inaugural-to-plead-guilty-to-illegal-contributions-1225898>
to
making illegal campaign contributions and failing to disclose his lobbying
work on behalf of foreign clients. Zuberi has a long history of donating
millions of dollars to both Democrats and Republicans, including a $900,000
outlay for the Trump inaugural.

NYT’s coverage here
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/us/politics/imaad-zuberi-trump-inauguration.html>
.
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Posted in campaign finance <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>

Daniel P. Tokaji

Associate Dean for Faculty | Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law

The Ohio State University | Moritz College of Law

55 W. 12th Ave. | Columbus, OH 43210

614.292.6566 | tokaji.1 at osu.edu
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