this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
153 points (93.2% liked)

News

23406 readers
3359 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

When Denisha Mitchell was asked why she filled out paperwork to serve as an Arizona elector for the independent presidential candidate Cornel West, her first response was “What?!” Her second: What’s an elector?

“I was shocked and surprised by it all. I didn’t even know what an elector was,” Mitchell told The Associated Press on Friday. “The crazy thing is it was all forged. None of it was my handwriting. It was definitely not my signature. My email was wrong, my address was wrong.”

Mitchell’s case is the latest example of dubious tactics used in an effort to qualify West, a left-wing academic, for the ballot in states across the U.S. It’s also among the more egregious. It’s an effort that West himself apparently knows nothing about. His campaign did not immediately respond for comment Friday evening.

But as the presidential election enters a critical three-month period, there are efforts around the country to subvert the integrity of the ballot, many of them coming from a collection of conservative activists and Republican-aligned operatives pushing West’s candidacy.

top 24 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I’m sorry, can you still call him left wing if he is fully funded by the right?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago

The right is funding him in an effort to split the vote on the left in an effort to boost Trump. They're especially desperate to split the Democrat and Independent votes since it's become very obvious that RFK Jr has been fragmenting the voter base on the right. The libertarian votes that Trump just assumed would be his have a very good chance of going to Master Brain Worm.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago

Yes, because if he WASN'T left wing, the right wouldn't be funding him

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

he is not fully funded by the right.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago (3 children)

It’s an effort that West himself apparently knows nothing about. His campaign did not immediately respond for comment Friday evening.

You'd think that, even if he knows nothing about it, his campaign would immediately respond to the Associated Press asking about it.

Seems more like an "I don't want to know about it" situation.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Or it could be his campaign wanted to look into it before giving a quote.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I never suggested it was a conspiracy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

True. It just seemed to me that wanting a quote right away wouldn't give the campaign time to research it themselves. Which is fair, especially in light of what the AP found.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

All I can say is that, in my experience, they give these places a good 4-6 hours at minimum to respond. In general it was a good 12.

For one thing, it takes time for these articles to pass from writer to editor to "print." Less time now that it's all digital, but we're not talking 10 minutes.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

How many hours is "immediately"?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I literally just told you.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Half a workday is "immediately"?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

In journalistic terms, yes.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's code for "we sent an email right before publishing and didn't instantly get a reply".

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Not in my experience working in TV journalism. And I doubt the AP is less professional than the local TV shitshows I worked for.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

They say 'Friday evening', presumably this Friday evening, after all businesses are closed. I'm assuming West hired some third party to get all this done, and there's no way they're going to get to the bottom of this over the weekend.

The West campaign has been a bit of a shitshow from the start, and while he's a brilliant academic, he's not an experienced politician and he hasn't exactly hired the best campaign managers (also partly because you get blacklisted by the big parties if you ever work on a third party campaign).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'd be more surprised if they had an answer ready to go. That's, like, proof they knew.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A denial would be a ready-to-go answer...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but you'd need to think in your campaign room "What if someone asks why we're certifying fake electors?" which, admittedly, in a sane world seems like an insane thing to worry about.

We're not in a sane world but "Well, we don't have a comment at this time but we're looking into the matter." could be construed as "didn't immediately respond to our question."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Generally when someone gives a response but an ambiguous one like that, it is reported as something like, "when contacted, we were told they did not have a comment at this time, but were looking into the matter."

Because in that case, claiming they did not respond would be a lie. They did respond, they just didn't give an answer. There's a difference.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Don’t let the details slow you down.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

What even is government? 🙄