No fewer than 34 distinct but collaborative actions by governments, technology companies, candidates, the media and the education system are required to successfully combat digital deceptions and protect the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, a pair of non-profit groups argues.
The groups, MapLight and the Institute for the Future, say the United States was collectively slow to comprehend – and remains far behind in combatting – the pervasive influence on public opinion of political bots, troll farms, fake social media accounts, networks of disinformation websites and deceptive digital advertising. And technology companies and the campaigners themselves are not acting nearly aggressively enough to prevent the specious practices that made headlines in 2016 and 2018 from being repeated and magnified in the future.
But the sprawling roster of proposals in their new report, unveiled today, includes almost two dozen that would require bipartisan collaboration at a sharply divided Capitol or assertive actions by a Trump administration that has so far seemed disinterested in playing a strong regulatory hand in politics.
Legislation is needed to stiffen disclosure requirements for online political ads, force more donors to reveal their identities, and create a new government authority to investigate the true source of funding for digital political activity, for example. None of those bills has much of a chance in the current Congress, and the groups' proposed new federal regulations on data usage, consumer privacy and online antitrust are similarly a longshot.
In addition, the more systemic changes the groups propose – such as making media literacy and civics more central to public education, and establishing more international cooperation in regulating online behavior – are many years away from fruition.
"Both the 2016 and 2018 elections have served as glaring reminders of the vulnerabilities in our democracy in the information age," said Ann Ravel , the co-author from MapLight and a member of the Federal Election Commission from 2013 to 2017. "We cannot respond to the challenges with paralysis and inaction. We must put in place protections now to safeguard our political process,"
"There's no magic-bullet policy that is going to automatically safeguard our elections and wind back the clock to the era before digital communication was a primary feature of political campaigning," said Samuel Woolley of the Institute for the Future. "We need our full society to be involved in responding to these problems."
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.