Tag: elections

Facebook & Cambridge Analytica

~ cafebedouin

“A whistleblower—a former Cambridge Analytica employee—presented a dossier of evidence to reporters that, according to the Observer, “includes emails, invoices, contracts and bank transfers that reveal more than 50 million profiles – mostly belonging to registered US voters – were harvested from the site in the largest ever breach of Facebook data.” The story is surprising on a number of levels. It suggests that Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, intentionally made misrepresentations in recent testimony to the British Parliament. It implicates the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, who together played a major role in the Trump campaign. But more than anything, it calls into question Facebook’s handling of what is clearly a massive breach of user privacy. ”

—Justin Hendrix, “Follow-Up Questions For Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Trump Campaign on Massive Breach.” Just Security. March 17, 2018.

It makes as much sense to leave Facebook today, as it did a year ago. Except, today, we know that many of our worse suspicions were true.

Fair Representation Act

~ cafebedouin

“Virginia Democratic Rep. Don Beyer authored and introduced the Fair Representation Act, which would enact a series of reforms designed to make our elections more competitive and open them up to more parties. Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Jamie Raskin of Maryland have co-sponsored the legislation.

The bill would do three things: require all congressional districts to be drawn by independent redistricting commissions, establish multi-member districts, and have all districts use what’s known as ranked-choice voting (RCV).”

—Jilani, Zaid. “New House Bill Would Kill Gerrymandering and Could Move America Away From Two-Party Dominance.” The Intercept. July 5, 2017.

Sounds like a good idea, except invariably democratic reforms of this sort always have unintended consequences. For example, it’s not too hard to imagine that this might break up the major parties leaving small, radical blocks with decisive votes on the Congressional level or multi-member districts where even members cancel themselves out and odd number groups have a microcosm of tyranny of the majority and the problems of faction outlined in Federalist Paper No. 10.