Twitter plans clampdown on mail-in voting misinformation amid friction with Trump

Twitter said Wednesday it plans to expand its rules against misleading information about mail-in ballots and early voting, a move that could have major implications for the social media platform’s handling of tweets by President Donald Trump and his allies.

The company told POLITICO it’s exploring ways to broaden its policies against misinformation about mail-in voting to cover a wider array of posts, including those that contain more general mischaracterizations about the process. And the platform, which like other major social media companies has helped its users register to vote in past U.S. elections, said it plans to focus its registration efforts for 2020 on mail-in and early voting.

The planned policy change, the details for which are still being ironed out, comes as Republicans have clashed with Twitter over its handling of posts by the president containing unsubstantiated claims about mail-in voting. Trump and his allies have used the site to stoke fears that voting by mail will result in widespread voter fraud. Twitter has placed fact-checking labels on a number of the posts, which it said ran afoul of its rules on civic integrity.

“Twitter is working hard to increase informed participation in democratic processes around the world,” Twitter's vice president of public policy for the Americas, Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, said in a statement. “Ahead of the 2020 US Election, we're focused on empowering every eligible person to register and vote through partnerships, tools and new policies that emphasize accurate information about all available options to vote, including by mail and early voting."

Policies under fire: Twitter has drawn plaudits from Democrats and rebukes from Trump and other Republicans for adding labels to some of the president’s tweets in which he alleged that mail-in ballots for the upcoming elections are likely to be highly fraudulent. Independent fact-checkers have disputed those assertions, as have some top officials in the Trump administration.

But Twitter has declined to add labels to some other Trump tweets targeting mail-in voting, including a May 24 post in which the president wrote: “The United States cannot have all Mail In Ballots. It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history. People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries and ‘force’ people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use Covid for this Scam!”

The seeming discrepancies have sparked confusion and some criticism from the left over the company’s handling of election misinformation.

What’s next: Twitter said users can expect to see the platform roll out its new election-related policies, tools and resources over the next month.

The company said the planned focus on mail-in and early voting is aimed at addressing the challenges posed by holding an election during the historic Covid-19 pandemic. That push will also include expanding the voting tools and resources the company provides to its users.

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Biden raised $26 million in a day after picking Harris for VP

Joe Biden’s campaign raised $26 million in the 24 hours after he selected Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate — an eye-popping total that shows the campaign’s growing fundraising strength as the election draws nearer.

Biden announced the fundraising total during the ticket’s first virtual grassroots fundraiser on Wednesday evening, immediately following Biden and Harris’ first joint campaign event in Wilmington, Del..

The massive cash haul, which included 150,000 first-time donors, is a signal of Harris’ ability to generate enthusiasm for the campaign and the history-making moment of her selection, as the first woman of color named to a major party presidential ticket.

The 24-hour total caps a months-long vice presidential vetting process that included more than a dozen women, including several of Biden’s former 2020 primary rivals.

Biden announced his selection Tuesday afternoon in a text message to supporters, which was immediately followed by his best hour of fundraising in the entire 2020 campaign, a campaign aide confirmed.

“It’s really palpable, the excitement,” Biden said during the fundraiser, according to the pool report.

Biden and the Democratic National Committee have nearly closed the cash gap with President Donald Trump, who has maintained a financial advantage for months. It’s a sharp turnaround for Biden, who struggled to keep pace with his Democratic rivals in fundraising during the primary but quickly grew his finance operation to challenge Trump in the general election.

But after outraising Trump in back-to-back months, the president topped Biden in fundraising in July by $30 million.

Harris has already raised big money for Biden, while she was going through the vetting process. She brought in more than $5 million through headlining fundraisers and other events, including two Zoom events where she appeared alongside Biden.

Back in April, the former vice president raised some eyebrows when he told Harris, “I’m so lucky to have you as a part of this, this partnership going forward,” adding, “I’m coming for you, kid.”

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Opinion | The QAnon Rot in the GOP

QAnon is getting its first congresswoman.

Marjorie Taylor Greene won a runoff in a Republican primary Tuesday, all but assuring her victory in November in a heavily GOP district.

She is thus set to become the highest officeholder in the land who explicitly believes in the lunatic theories of QAnon, the anonymous internet poster who says, among other ludicrous and poisonous things, that there’s a global network of pedophiles about to be exposed and undone by President Donald Trump.

Greene’s ascension is the latest indication of the creeping influence of Q, who has fashioned a kind of free-floating John Birch Society for the digital age. The author’s adherents or fellow travelers are adept at spreading memes on social media, hold signs or wear paraphernalia touting Q at Trump rallies, and now are notching some victories in GOP primaries.

Jo Rae Perkins, a no-hoper who won the Republican Senate primary in Oregon, has associated herself with Q, and expressed disappointment when her sellout campaign team tried to hide her enthusiasm for the conspiracy theory. Lauren Boebert, the upset winner of a primary for a Republican House seat in Colorado, said of Q in a radio interview, “If this is real, then it could be really great for our country.”

The rise of Q shouldn’t be exaggerated. Surely, most Republicans aren’t even aware of this dreck from the far reaches of the Internet, and the Q caucus in the House might number around one or two in the next Congress. Almost every political movement has an outlandish fringe that marinates in paranoia and is prepared to believe—or invent—the worst about the other side.

Yet, the spread of QAnon shows that the Trump-era GOP has weakened antibodies against kookery. Trump himself sets the tone. He’s an indiscriminate tweeter of disreputable Twitter accounts, and he’s floated all sort of ridiculous conspiracy theories himself over the years—just ask Ted Cruz’s father, or Joe Scarborough. Trump fulsomely praised Marjorie Taylor Greene upon her primary victory as a Republican rising star.

In 2017, Greene posted a long, hilariously earnest, and completely bonkers explication of Q posts to YouTube. She had read them closely and spent time trying to figure out their import. The time and energy you’d hope an eventual congressional candidate would devote to understanding the federal budget or, say, how to reform military procurement, she’d poured into Q, and was clearly invigorated and alarmed by it.

And why not? A conspiracy theory has its pleasures. No matter how convoluted, a good conspiracy theory offers a relatively simple explanation of the world—namely, that it is controlled by a cabal.

A conspiracy theory lets its believers in on a secret not available to everyone else. It thus has the thrill of exclusivity; it bestows upon the initiated a knowledge ignored or dismissed by fools and the easily deceived, who don’t know what’s really going on.

A conspiracy theory offers the drama of a morality tale. Can the people with the discernment to understand and the willingness to fight back defeat the traitors who have been caught red-handed trying to carry out a dastardly plot against all that is good and true?

Q has a special draw for a segment of Trump supporters. The author’s lurid inventions involve people who are already villains of the populist right, the likes of George Soros, John Podesta and the late John McCain. Q promotes a radical distrust of traditional sources of information and makes Trump’s stumbles into master chess moves, both of which are pleasing to Trump super-fans.

The novelist Walter Kirn wrote a piece on Q for Harper’s arguing that the author, whose posts have gotten more obscure, offering clues to what’s afoot rather than making grand pronouncements, is a master internet storyteller. “The audience for internet narratives doesn’t want to read, it wants to write,” he writes. “It doesn’t want answers provided, it wants to search for them. It doesn’t want to sit and be amused, it wants to be sent on a mission. It wants to do.”

Be that as it may, all of this is an explanation, not an excuse. Q is deeply corrosive of the qualities necessary to live in and govern a republic. It invites its adherents to suspend reason—how else to credit all the prophecies that haven’t come to pass?—and believe that a swath of the American establishment isn’t just wrongheaded or incompetent, but engaged in monstrous secret crimes.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has already been criticized by Republican congressional leaders for her incendiary rantings about Muslims. She deserves, too, to be shunned her for adherence to Q, even if the president of the United States is unbothered by it.

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