In the last six years, confidence in our fragile election system in the United States has been battered by a flood of election misinformation and disinformation spread on social media, cable television stations, podcasts, and videos. Headed into the 2022 elections, now is the time for Congress and states to pass meaningful reforms to shore up that confidence and help preserve American democracy. Although partisan gridlock and fights over the fairness of the 2020 election already make new legislation a longshot, the biggest impediment may well be a supermajority of conservative justices on the Supreme Court, whose part-time libertarian views of the First Amendment could doom meaningful reform.
As I argue in my new book, Cheap Speech, false claims about the fairness and integrity of the American election system pose a huge risk for American democracy. As millions of Trump supporters continue to believe the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and as false and incendiary election-related speech flows anonymously and virally across portions of social media, public confidence in the fairness of our election system has crumbled among Republicans. With purveyors of the Big Lie poised to take over the running of elections in some places before the 2024 elections, we can expect confidence on the left to take a similar beating. A democracy cannot function without fair elections and when losers do not accept election results as legitimate.
Although law is only part of the...
By Victor Ahiuma-Young The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has introduced stricter advertising rules for Pension Fund Administrators, PFAs, warning operators against false claims, misleading ...