In the News
The Museum of the Albemarle, on the eastern shore of North Carolina, is a spacious building the color of sand and sea glass. It’s in Elizabeth City, about as far from the Research Triangle as Baltimore is from New York City, but you can get there and back in the same day if you know how to drive fast without getting pulled over. “There are a hundred counties in this state, and I’ve spent time in every one,” Sailor Jones, a democracy activist, told me this past fall, on his way to speak at the museum.
In recent days, the district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County has asked both firms to provide research and data as investigators intensify their probe into Trump’s attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Not only has the office asked for information and data about Georgia, three people familiar with the inquiries said, but it also is seeking other communications with Trump officials and detailed information about the campaign’s activities in other states.
While platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube use forms of AI to get users to spend more time on their sites, Clogger’s AI would have a different objective: to change people’s voting behavior. As a political scientist and a legal scholar who study the intersection of technology and dem
An Atlanta-area investigation of alleged election interference by President Donald Trump and his allies has broadened to include activities in D.C. and several states, according to two people with knowledge of the probe — a fresh sign that prosecutors may be building a sprawling case under Georgia’s racketeering laws. Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) launched an investigation more than two years ago to examine efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his narrow 2020 defeat in Georgia.
After facing an onslaught of harassment and violent threats for certifying the results of the 2020 election, a Republican on the governing board of Arizona’s largest county will not seek reelection during the 2024 cycle. Bill Gates, a longtime conservative and Harvard-educated attorney, told The Washington Post that he intends to serve his term through the end of 2024 and carry out the election-related duties that come with it. In an interview and prepared statement, he said he was proud of his time in office and thanked county workers.
Federal races have become increasingly expensive in recent years, and the most competitive contests tend to attract astronomical fundraising hauls. In 2000, victorious Senate candidates raised an average of $7.3 million – over three and a half times less than the $26.5 million raised by the average Senate victor in 2022. The average U.S. House winner spent nearly $2.8 million during the 2022 election cycle, nearly three and a half times the $840,300 the average winner spent in 2000.
The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.
A week ago, Justice Elena Kagan became the first member of the court to explain herself, indicating that her previous employment in President Barack Obama’s administration kept her out of an appeal, rejected by the court, from a death row inmate in Florida. But on Tuesday, when the court turned away an appeal from energy companies, Justice Samuel Alito said nothing about why he was not involved. Alito did not immediately respond to a request from The Associated Press for comment, sent through the court’s public information office.
Depending on whom you ask in politics, the sudden advances in artificial intelligence will either transform American democracy for the better or bring about its ruin. At the moment, the doomsayers are louder. Voice-impersonation technology and deep-fake videos are scaring campaign strategists, who fear that their deployment in the days before the 2024 election could decide the winner. Even some AI developers are worried about what they’ve unleashed: Last week the CEO of the company behind ChatGPT practically begged Congress to regulate his industry.
Voter confidence is ticking back up after the 2022 midterms, even as a deep partisan divide remains, according to a new survey released this week. Overall, 69 percent of registered voters said they were either very or somewhat confident that votes at a nationwide level were counted as intended, a prominent measure of voter trust in election integrity. The results come from a new survey from the MIT Election Data + Science Lab, a nonpartisan research group at the eponymous college. That is up from 61 percent in MIT’s 2020 version of the same survey.