“The Nov. 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” state and federal election officials said in a statement Thursday. “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” Bloomberg reports: The statement acknowledged the “many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections” and…
Tag: voting
How Ex-Facebook Data Experts Spent $75 Million On Targeted Anti-Trump Ads
The night before America’s election, Fast Company reported: On the internet, we’re subject to hidden A/B tests all the time, but this one was also part of a political weapon: a multimillion-dollar tool kit built by a team of Facebook vets, data nerds, and computational social scientists determined to defeat Donald Trump. The goal is to use microtargeted ads, follow-up surveys,…
Trump Attacks Legitimate Vote-Counting Efforts and Claims Fraud Without Basis
President Trump attacked legitimate vote-counting efforts in remarks from the White House early Wednesday, suggesting attempts to tally all ballots amounted to disenfranchising his supporters, CNN reports. From the report: “Millions and millions of people voted for us,” Trump said in the East Room. “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people.” His remarks were…
JPMorgan, Goldman Order Software ‘Code Freezes’ Around Election
Top banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, are battening down their technology hatches for next week’s presidential election. From a report (paywalled): Around next Tuesday, the final day of voting, JPMorgan and Goldman will both halt software updates to the retail and investment banking systems their customers use to manage accounts, The Information has learned. It’s a precaution intended to…
Facebook Approves Trump Ads That Violate Its Pre-Election Rules
Judd Legum, reporting at Popular Information: In September, Facebook announced that it would stop accepting new political ads starting October 27. From October 27 through Election Day on November 3, political groups are permitted to run, subject to limitations, Facebook ads approved and running before October 27. In October, Facebook announced that after the polls close, it would ban all political…
Expensify’s CEO Emailed Users To Encourage Them To ‘Vote For Biden’
Expensify CEO David Barrett blasted all of his customers with a message to vote for Biden to “protect democracy.” From a report: In the email, which the company has said was sent to all users, Expensify’s founder said that “anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy” and urged his customer base to vote for the Democratic…
EU Parliament Votes For 60% Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cut By 2030
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: EU capitals have been put under pressure to agree to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2030 compared with 1990, after the European parliament voted in favor of an “ambitious” climate law that would also oblige each member state to be carbon neutral by 2050. The vote, which sets the chamber’s…
Facebook Widens Ban On Political Ads As Alarm Rises Over Election
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: On Wednesday, Facebook said it would take more preventive measures to keep political candidates from using it to manipulate the election’s outcome and its aftermath. The company now plans to prohibit all political and issue-based advertising after the polls close on Nov. 3 for an undetermined length of time. And…
‘I’m a Software Engineer at Uber and I’m Voting Against Prop 22’
Kurt Nelson, a software engineer at Uber, writes an op-ed at TechCrunch: I’ve been a software engineer at Uber for two years, and I’ve also been a ride-hail driver. I regularly drove for Lyft in college, and while my day job involves writing code for the Uber Android app, I still make deliveries for app-based companies on my bike to understand…
NASA Reveals How Astronauts Will Vote From Space
AmiMoJo writes: Americans exercise their right to vote from all over the world, and for November’s election, few ballots will have traveled as far as those cast by NASA astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station. During earlier days of human spaceflight, astronauts would only visit space for days, or maybe weeks, at a time. Today, astronauts typically stay…