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Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ensured the military would play "no role" in post-election disputes.
The top 6 reasons why democracy's guardrails held after the election
Dec 01 2020
The certification of election results on Monday in Arizona and Wisconsin, the last of the six states where President Trump challenged his defeat, is a bittersweet victory for advocates of rule by the people. The nation's brush with autocracy was troublingly close, and the damage to public confidence in elections could be lasting.
Still, it's worth acknowledging the guardrails that have held fast against the nation's severe democracy stress test, and against Trump's specious and ongoing fraud allegations. There's no guarantee these railings would hold against a more sophisticated adversary, and the need to shore up voting rights and election administration remains urgent.
But the fundamentals of American democracy appear to have prevailed, thanks to key institutions that upheld the law and relied on the facts. These are the six most important:
<p><strong>The military: </strong>As early as August, Congress received assurances from Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the military would play "no role" in any post-election disputes.</p>
<p>And after Trump raised fresh alarms with his post-election firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and some of his top Pentagon aides, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-and-his-supporters-are-discovering-how-hard-it-is-to-sabotage-election-results/2020/11/17/96d37bbe-290e-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Milley declared</a> pointedly on Veterans Day: "We are unique among militaries. We do not take an oath to a king, or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. ... We take an oath to the Constitution."</p>
<p><strong>The courts: </strong>The long list of judges who rejected Trump's election challenges include several conservatives nominated by Trump and his GOP predecessors, who debunked the president's legal claims as baseless in the extreme. </p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>As attorney Mark Aronchick, who represented Philadelphia in several Trump campaign cases, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/us/politics/trump-republicans-election-results.html?searchResultPosition=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">told The New York Times</a><em>, </em>the president's legal challenges were "very much a stress test on what I will shout from the rooftops is the best legal system the world has ever seen, in terms of independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. And at both the state and federal level, the system has come through with flying colors."</p>
<p><strong>The states: </strong>Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Republican secretary of state, has drawn justifiable notice for withstanding personal threats and calls for his resignation to certify his state's election results, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/us/politics/trump-republicans-election-results.html?searchResultPosition=1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">stating memorably</a>: "Numbers don't lie." </p>
<p>But Raffensperger is only one of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/trump-is-testing-democracy-nine-out-10-senior-elected-republicans-are-failing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">more than two dozen</a> GOP secretaries of state who rejected Trump's false fraud allegations. Rank-and-file election administrators, poll workers and even volunteers, who managed to run an election that generated record turnout amid a pandemic with few significant problems, also carried democracy on their shoulders. State legislators, too, refused to step in and overrule voters, sensing public backlash but also in some cases resisting White House pressure.</p>
<p><strong>The media: </strong>Mainstream news outlets, and even in some instances conservative Fox News, have choked the Trump campaign's <a href="https://www.persuasion.community/p/trumps-firehose-of-falsehood" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Russia-style firehose</a> of campaign disinformation with relentless fact checks and around-the-clock reporting. </p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>The misrepresentations continue, and the president's fabrications of voter fraud have been swallowed whole by millions of Republican voters. But fact-based reporting has made it harder for the Trump campaign to advance its false claims in court, and helped mobilize voters to hold public officials accountable.</p>
<p><strong>The hardware: </strong>An estimated 95 percent of votes this year were cast either using a mail-in paper ballot or a voting machine that produced a verifiable and auditable paper trail — equipment installed thanks to decades of lobbying by voting rights advocates and election security experts. </p>
<p>Voter-verifiable paper trails are considered an essential backstop against voting machine breakdowns, the best possible guard against hacking and as a crucial tool for audits and recounts. Existing <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voting-system-paper-trail-requirements.aspx" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">state requirements vary</a>, and counties in some states still use paperless voting machines despite the risk, pointing to the need for federal guidelines. But in Georgia, where a new system this year allowed voters to cast ballots with a verifiable paper trail statewide for the first time, paper records proved crucial in facilitating not one but two watertight recounts, and in debunking on its face Trump's unfounded claim that Dominion Voting Systems had somehow altered the state tally.</p>
<p><strong>The voters: </strong>Almost <a href="http://www.electproject.org/2020g" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">160 million</a> voters turned out in this election, at almost 67 percent the highest percentage of the eligible population since the first presidential election of the 20th century.</p>
<p>Thousands of public and private players helped turn out voters, from business leaders to campus organizers. High turnout is at least one reason why President-elect Joe Biden's win over Trump — a margin of 4 percentage points, or 6.2 million nationwide, translating to 306 electoral votes — was sufficiently solid to withstand almost three dozen legal challenges in the past month. A closer margin could have made it much easier for Trump to manipulate the outcome. Voters have also remained engaged, exerting public pressure on GOP legislators to refrain from intervening in election certifications.</p>
<p>The success of these and other democracy guardrails may be small consolation, given the extent of Trump's assault on the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power and the basic right to vote. Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/24/this-unnerving-election-does-not-bode-well-next-one/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">has created a playbook</a> for some future would-be autocrat to follow, election law experts warn, and recent Supreme Court rulings <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/opinion/trump-election-courts.html?referringSource=articleShare" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">may also jeopardize</a> voting rights by giving state legislatures new powers to restrict access to the polls. </p>
<p>In the minds of good-governance advocates, all this points to the need to shore up democracy's guardrails still further in plenty of time for the 2022 midterm election. </p>
<p>The likeliest place to start is with the revival of HR 1, the House's catchall democracy reform package. That bill proposes automatic voter registration nationwide, expanded early and absentee voting, and funding to modernize election systems, among other changes. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has signaled she'll move it to the front burner early in the new Congress, but even if her narrowed House Democratic majority passes it again the measure would still face stiff opposition in a Senate where the GOP will hold at least 50 seats.</p>
<p>Many other policy changes will be needed as well -- including the sort of new executive branch ethics rules that Biden advocated during the campaign — in the wake of Trump's destructive presidency. But for the moment, at least, the system's guardrails have held.</p>
<div></div><p><em>Carney is a contributing writer.</em></p>
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The media needs to show patience on election night, writes Amherst's Austin Sarat.
Why the news media shouldn't declare a winner on election night
Oct 20 2020
Sarat is associate provost, associate dean of the faculty and a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
<p>The reporting done on election night 2018 offers a cautionary tale for the news media as we approach Nov. 3. </p><p>Because more than a quarter <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/19/18103110/2018-midterm-elections-turnout" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">of that year's 116 million votes </a>were mailed, initial projections of the midterm results turned out to be <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/26/worst-predictions-of-2018-politics-223514" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wildly inaccurate</a>. They showed Democrats making only modest gains in the House, far less than the historical average for the party not in the White House. As Jake Tapper <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6FQmy-1Cfc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">announced</a> on CNN that night, "This is not a blue wave." </p><p>Only when all the votes were counted, three weeks later, did Americans learn precisely how wrong that was. The Democrats <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/07/us/politics/how-democrats-took-the-house.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">prevailed</a> by unprecedented margins and picked up many more seats (40 of them) than usual for the out party.</p><p>Now, with some 80 million mail-in ballots <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/11/us/politics/vote-by-mail-us-states.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expected</a>, accurately predicting winners before the count is complete looks to be even more perilous than two years ago. This is because millions of those envelopes will not even have <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/When_states_can_begin_processing_and_counting_absentee/mail-in_ballots,_2020" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">been opened </a>— let alone the contents tabulated — when the news anchors sign off the morning after Election Day. </p><p>Absent the sort of landslide that polling doesn't now foresee, it may be many days before enough votes have been counted to make clear whether the winner is President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>As a result, we need <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e70e52c7c72720ed714313f/t/5f693edf5dc7787d75d22b4e/1600732906159/Task+Force+Media+Guide.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">new norms</a> to govern what the media does two weeks from now. </p><p>All news media, especially cable and broadcast TV, must exercise restraint and avoid the customary scramble to be first to declare a victor. Such caution <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/public-editor/getting-it-first-or-getting-it-right.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">does not come naturally</a> to many journalists or the organizations where they work. And it runs against the grain of a culture increasingly <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2012/12/17/newtown-teaches-us-once-again-to-discount-early-reports/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">attuned</a> to receiving instant information, even if it later turns out to be inaccurate. </p><p>Yet, for the country to have any chance of avoiding <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/20/politics/disputed-election-crisis-trump/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">post-election chaos</a>, it is crucial for the media to resist premature declarations. </p><p>The race to announce the result, and the dangers of doing so, are not new. In 1948, because of an impending printers' strike, The Chicago Tribune went <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/chi-chicagodays-deweydefeats-story-story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> to press before all the votes were in</a> to get out their morning edition. Editors relied on polls favoring Republican Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York over President Harry Truman and went with the infamous headline, "Dewey Beats Truman."</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Four years later TV coverage of election night <a href="https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2012/11/election-night-live-on-tv-new-york-city.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">began</a> in earnest. Right from the start, ABC, CBS, and NBC competed to see which of them would be the first to project the winner.</p><p>Each network used new technology to produce what one commentator has <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=ylpr" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">called</a> "the illusion of simultaneity," namely the sense that viewers were watching returns tallied in real time. </p><p>CBS anchor Walter Cronkite <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/163951263" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">proudly informed</a> viewers that his network would rely on UNIVAC, one of the world's first commercial computers, to determine who won. And, early in the evening, with just over 3 million votes counted, the machine calculated that there was a 99 percent chance that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower would defeat Sen. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. (It ended up a rout.)</p><p>During those early years, networks made such projections <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Air-Time-Inside-Story-News/dp/0060114770" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">based</a> on early returns from "key precincts." By 1980, they had come to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2748928?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rely</a> more on surveys of voters who had just cast ballots. While using key precincts meant projections could not be made until polls closed and some results were tabulated, exit polling could be <a href="https://qz.com/829710/how-do-networks-call-the-election-before-all-the-votes-are-counted/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">completed</a> long before all the votes were in.</p>
<p>That year, in fact, the networks <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EFF4ZCnQEh0C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Early+Election+Returns+and+Projections+Affecting+the+Electoral+Process:+Hearings+Held+Jointly+Before+the+Committee+on+House+Administration+and+the+Subcommittee+on+Telecommunications,+Consumer+Protection,+and+Finance+of+the+House+Committee+on+Energy+and+Commerce,&source=bl&ots=LJ8qEsPiWy&sig=ACfU3U1KAgm_vKANcDIC05TnRUZ7vl3xow&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQx8Piia3sAhViTd8KHZEoARUQ6AEwAHoECAoQAg#v=onepage&q=Early%20Election%20Returns%20and%20Projections%20Affecting%20the%20Electoral%20Process%3A%20Hearings%20Held%20Jointly%20Before%20the%20Committee%20on%20House%20Administration%20and%20the%20Subcommittee%20on%20Telecommunications%2C%20Consumer%2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">knew</a> early on Election Day that Republican Ronald Reagan would win in a landslide. But NBC waited until 8:15 p.m. on the East Coast to announce the results. That was still rush hour on the West Coast, before millions cast their ballots for or against President Jimmy Carter. </p><p>One result was that, four years later, the networks <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-assets/47512_book_item_47512.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">agreed</a> to wait until polls closed before projecting a winner. And, since then, some states have tried <a href="https://www.rcfp.org/journals/the-news-media-and-the-law-winter-2001/states-enact-polling-laws-a/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">to discourage</a> the use of exit polling by regulating where and when the necessary surveys could be conducted. </p><p><a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/tv-election-coverage-technology-evolution.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Reliance</a> on polls and computers has remained a staple of what is broadcast on election night. Even the notoriously <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/02/cnn.report/cnn.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fumbling, error-filled coverage</a> on election night 2000 did little to change the media's approach. </p><p>And now, the night has been made more compelling by computer graphics which offer both a visually appealing spectacle and minute-by-minute updates on the results. </p><p>This year, surveys <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/06/politics/ballot-returns-early-voting-2020-election/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">suggest</a> that those preferring Trump are more likely to cast their votes on Election Day while Biden backers will cast their ballots by mail. And so 2020, like 2018, is likely to see a massive "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/brace-blue-shift/615097/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">blue switch</a>" as the mail gets opened.</p><p>Knowing this, news executives should marshal their self-discipline. They need to refrain from offering viewers the illusion of simultaneity, even if it means that they <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/slate-and-votecastr-why-were-breaking-the-election-day-information-embargo.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">do not project</a> a presidential victor on Nov. 3. At the very least, they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/07/us-media-election-night-apsa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">should only declare a winner</a> of a state once there are fewer outstanding votes than the official margin separating Trump and Biden.</p><p>Such restraint, particularly after the mistakes of two years ago, might be warranted by simple prudence. But there is a political argument to be made here. Some commentators <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/13/election-2020-mail-voting-shouldnt-delay-results-several-key-states/3623320001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">suggest</a> election night projections will favor Biden. It is more likely that projections of state-by-state winners — if based too much on the in-person tallies — will play into Trump's hands. They will allow him <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/democrats-fear-trump-may-declare-victory-on-election-night-before-all-the-votes-are-counted" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">to prematurely claim victory</a> and insist that any further counting of ballots would be fraudulent and illegitimate. </p><p>American democracy will not be well served if the media does business as usual, which would make it complicit in a president's unprecedented effort to discredit the election. </p><p>As the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics <a href="https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">notes</a>, journalists in a democracy should never sacrifice accuracy for speed. They have a duty to "gather, update, and correct information throughout the life of a news story." That will never be more important, for our democracy, than in the weeks ahead.</p>
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Civic Ed
True
Frederick Bass/Getty Images
A new, unifying form of news can help fix a broken democracy
Oct 15 2020
Coan is a depolarization strategist who volunteers for Braver Angels, which encourages people to befriend and understand those with differing political opinions.
<p>Can news be unifying? Will Americans want to watch or read unifying news?</p><p>The emphatic answer is "Yes" to both questions. </p><p>A new concept, unifying news can reduce the divides that so many Americans desire to to be rid of. This is especially true of unifying news to help bridge our political chasm, which seem most pronounced this election season. </p><p>Unifying news would provide informative and newsworthy content, but also other data or context that facilitates greater social cohesion. It can include a focus on hot-button political issues; articles that highlight useful research or unifying activities; and human-interest stories that show examples of good character, collaboration, and relationships across political divides. Finally, unifying news can potentially focus on aspects of society that are contributing to disunity, with the goals of reducing their influence or changing their behavior. </p><p>Since news is constantly happening, unifying news can create a drumbeat of unifying content. As the old marketing adage says, it can be necessary to reach people <a href="https://www.b2bmarketing.net/en/resources/blog/marketing-rule-7-and-why-its-still-relevant-b2b" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">seven times</a> to get a message across. </p>
<p>Politically unifying news will often depolarize, but it's helpful to understand the several meanings of this. The most common form of polarization is the increasing <a href="https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charts-americas-political-divide-1994-2017/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ideological</a> divide, but many researchers are more concerned about other types. One is <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">affective</a> polarization, which in the American context has essentially translated into increasingly negative emotions and attitudes toward those in the other political party. Another is how Americans have overly monolithic and extreme <a href="https://perceptiongap.us/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">misperceptions</a> of the other side. </p>
<p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>These are frequently more concerning because of their potential to spiral into catastrophic outcomes. Increasing affective polarization can lead to viewing the other side tribally, as "the enemy," and being willing to do nearly anything to defeat them — even if that <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329825963_Toward_a_Theory_of_Pernicious_Polarization_and_How_It_Harms_Democracies_Comparative_Evidence_and_Possible_Remedies" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">damages the democratic republic</a> or leads to <a href="https://www.dannyhayes.org/uploads/6/9/8/5/69858539/kalmoe___mason_ncapsa_2019_-_lethal_partisanship_-_final_lmedit.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">physical violence</a>. </p><p>And misperceptions can act as a catalyst for increased division: Behavioral responses <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/d6bpe/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">are tied to </a>assumptions about the other side, and overly aggressive behaviors based on misperceptions lead to increasingly dramatic emotional and behavioral responses. These types of polarization can create a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154620301078" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">vicious cycle</a> and continue to worsen. </p><p>Yet the situation is not hopeless. It is <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10584609.2020.1760406" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">possible to address </a>affective polarization, and <a href="https://pcnl.asc.upenn.edu/?page_id=677" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">especially misperceptions</a>. Those would be main targets of unifying news. Ideological depolarization would tend to follow, when readers feel more comfortable having overlaps with others across the political spectrum.</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Americans are familiar with highly divisive news, so it may be difficult to imagine what unifying news would look like or understand how it can work. The ideas may evolve as research progresses. </p><p>For actual news, it can highlight survey data <a href="https://vop.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Common_Ground_Brochure.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">showing overlaps</a> across political divides, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/our-hierarchy-needs" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">shared needs and goals</a>, and <a href="https://moralfoundations.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">shared morality</a>. It is still possible to explain disagreements, especially across a spectrum instead of between two binary categories. This approach should reduce misperceptions and build on <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/similarityattraction-theory" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the theory</a> that people with similar attitudes tend to like one another.</p>
<p>Other stories can highlight people whose actions may be considered respectable or admirable by those on the other political side. This type of story relies on many social psychological principles including <a href="https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/processes/n57.xml" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">decategorization</a> (highlighting unique individuals rather than stereotypes), <a href="https://cmsw.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/The-Parasocial-Contact-Hypothesis.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">parasocial contact</a> (seeing positive portrayals of the other side) and a <a href="https://www.overcominghateportal.org/uploads/5/4/1/5/5415260/the_moral_emotions.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">"moral emotion" of elevation</a> (induced by seeing exemplary examples from the other side).</p>
<p>Stories of collaboration, friendship and close relationships should reduce polarization, using concepts such as having shared <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/superordinate-goals" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">superordinate goals</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1368430210390533?journalCode=gpia" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">vicarious contact</a> (people knowing others in their group having positive interactions with the other group), and <a href="http://sk.sagepub.com/reference/processes/n51.xml#:~:text=Cross%2Dcategorization%20(or%20crossed%20categorization,for%20example%2C%20age%20and%20race." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">cross-categorization</a> (shared identity categories). </p>
<p>Finally, unifying media can provide coverage that reduces the influence — or changes the behavior — of institutions contributing to disunity. </p><p>This must be deft, not simply criticizing unwanted behavior. Journalist Ezra Klein has documented the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/28/21077888/why-were-polarized-media-book-ezra-news" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">shifts in journalism's business model </a>that have led to a "polarized media" that "weaponizes differences." Shaming institutions may not work when polarization is a business model. However, individuals may be influenced to change consumption behavior — as evidenced by research showing how leaving Facebook for a month can leave people <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/health/facebook-psychology-health.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">happier and less polarized</a>, if somewhat less informed. </p><p>Approaches for unifying media may be academically sound, but they can only work if people want to read or watch it. There are clear reasons to believe many would.</p>
<p>First, surveys show widespread dissatisfaction with current offerings. A <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2019/stress-america-2019.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">poll last year</a> found 54 percent saying they want to stay informed about the news but following it causes them stress." Another <a href="https://www.publicagenda.org/reports/divisiveness-and-collaboration-in-american-public-life-a-hidden-common-ground-report/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">survey found</a> 59 percent believing journalism and news media promotes mostly destructive public discussion and debate — and only 16 percent believing it promotes constructive discussion and debate.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, unifying news can be designed to be "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Contagious-Things-Catch-Jonah-Berger/dp/1451686587#:~:text=give%20our%20children.-,In%20Contagious%2C%20Berger%20reveals%20the%20secret%20science%20behind%20word,of%2Dmouth%20and%20social%20transmission.&text=is%3A%20a%20blender.-,Contagious%20provides%20specific%2C%20actionable%20techniques%20for%20helping%20information%20spread%E2%80%94for,content%20that%20people%20will%20share." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">contagious</a>." Perhaps most importantly, it can use stories and target arousing emotions including surprise, joy, awe, hope and even love. Potentially, anger or fear could be used strategically and carefully, likely against institutions that promote divisive content. </p>
<p>In other words, unifying news does not have to be the broccoli to polarizing candy bars. Audiences can genuinely come to want the more unifying content. </p>
<p>While there is not a clear example of unifying news in use, it can draw inspiration from concepts such as <a href="https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">solutions journalism</a>, <a href="https://www.constructivejournalism.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">constructive journalism</a>, and <a href="https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">positive or "good" news</a>. </p>
<p>Unifying news would likely need to be created away from existing media outlets, at least initially. Newsrooms under <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">intense financial pressure</a> may want to stick with what works, though this often involves more divisiveness and polarization. However, some training of journalists is possible, following in the footsteps of organizations such as <a href="https://spaceshipmedia.org/?home=true" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Spaceship Media</a> or <a href="https://www.resettingthetable.org/calendar/event/1678563" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Resetting the Table</a>. </p>
<p>The audience unifying news needs to reach directly, if it hopes to be effective, may be relatively narrow. Each of the cable news networks, which often rely on divisive content, reach <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-ratings-most-watched-channel-summer-2020-primetime-2020-9" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">1 percent or less</a> of the total American public each evening. </p>
<p>Research suggests unifying news can reduce polarization and should attract at least a core audience. Let's give it a shot. </p>
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Budrul Chukrut/Getty Images
Facebook won't allow Trump or Biden to declare victory online — unless it's true
Oct 08 2020
Preemptive and premature declarations of presidential victory won't be possible on Facebook anymore.
The company announced Wednesday that it will start blocking issue advocacy, electoral and political advertisements as soon as the polls close on Election Day "to reduce opportunities for confusion and abuse." It also said that, until a victor is declared by news outlets, it will have banners atop its News Feed alerting viewers that no winner has been decided.
It's the latest move by the social media giant to be more assertive in repelling those, both foreign adversaries and American candidates, who might seek to spread disinformation online in hopes of manipulating the national election outcome and its aftermath.
<p>Facebook signaled the ad ban will stay in effect until either President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden has emerged decisively as the winner. Unless their contest ends up in an Electoral College rout, that could be days or weeks after the last vote is cast — because of the time needed to tabulate an unprecedented number of absentee ballots thanks to the coronavirus pandemic. </p>
<p>Several of the biggest tossup states have rules against counting while the mail flows in, but in favor of counting envelopes delayed in the mail and arriving days late.</p><p>Trump says he expects to declare victory the night of Nov. 3 based on the mostly in-person vote totals — baselessly claiming that states changing color from red to blue after that will have been caused by election fraud. But polling shows most Democrats plan to vote by mail and most Republicans in person, so the later numbers are likely to favor Biden.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Facebook's latest move builds on several others this fall designed to protect its platform from electoral abuse. Last month it introduced measures to reduce election misinformation and interference, and also banned political ads the week leading up to Election Day. Google has also decided to block election ads after Nov. 3. The companies say these efforts will help protect the integrity of the election by combating the spread of misinformation.</p>
<p>In addition to ad cutoff, Facebook says it will be monitoring content from candidates and regular users to keep people up to date on the election and prevent the spread of false or misleading information.</p>
<p>When polls close, Facebook will send notifications to users and add labels to candidates' posts to share information about the counting process. If Biden or Trump, or the Democratic or Republican parties, declares victory before major media outlets says that's justified, Facebook will go a step further and alert users that counting is still in progress and a winner has not yet been determined.</p>
<p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Once a victor has been declared by major media outlets, Facebook will display the winner's name at the top of Facebook and Instagram and add a label to relevant posts.</p>
<p>Since Trump's call to his supporters "to go into the polls and watch very carefully," voting rights groups have <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/voting/poll-watchers" target="_self">raised concerns about voter intimidation</a>. Facebook said it will remove content that encourages poll watching "when those calls use militarized language or suggest that the goal is to intimidate, exert control or display power over election officials or voters."</p>
<p>The company said it will continue to work with federal and state law enforcement and election officials to fight against voter intimidation and interference.</p>
<div></div><p>"These are important steps for Facebook to take to combat disinformation and the premature calling of election results before every vote is counted," said Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. She added that her organization "will continue to press Facebook and other social media platforms to take every possible step to protect a free and fair election and our imperiled democracy."</p>
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