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lot of in-person outreach, from knocking on doors
to rallies to town halls,” she says. “All that’s disap-
peared. Instead we’re consuming more social media,
and it’s more full of misinformation.”
Ground Zero for the dissemination of political
disinformation is Facebook. In spite of growing out-
rage over the platform’s unwillingness to remove
or label false political claims and an ongoing
advertising boycott by more than 500 companies,
CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists that policies won’t
change—the result, some have argued, of a pact
forged during a meeting with Trump and Kush-
ner earlier this year. That all but ensures Facebook
will reprise its 2016 role as the channel of choice
for U.S. political disinformation hawkers, reaching
200 million Americans. Twitter is now doing more
to restrict posts that misinform or spread poten-
tially dangerous claims, to which conservatives have
responded with accusations of censorship.
Whichever side loses is sure to level the charge
that social media tilted the playing field in the
other side’s favor, helping to undermine acceptance
of the results, and feeding the fury that could ulti-
mately lead to chaos in the streets.Block That Vote
the 2020 primaries have already featured a
number of voting disasters: The software melt-
down in Iowa’s caucuses; the hours-long lines at
polling places in Georgia, California and Texas;
the mail-in ballot glitches in Wisconsin and New
Jersey and, most recently, the vote-counting delays
in New York. In many states, voter turnout in
November is expected to be three times larger than
it was during the primaries, raising concerns of
blocks-long lines and waits of half-dozen hours or
more—all while fears of a spreading coronavirus
hang over the crowds.
Although Trump’s numbers are near record lows
and seem to shrink almost daily, polls also suggest
he maintains a big edge over Joe Biden when it
comes to enthusiasm among likely voters. That
means Trump’s best chances lie with an election
that presents daunting hurdles to voting, so that
less-enthusiastic voters—presumably dispropor-
tionately Democratic—won’t succeed in getting
their vote in, or won’t try hard enough.
That may explain why many Republicans seem
*E to see anything that suppresses voter turnout as a
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