The McCain Institute played host to several “disinformation experts” in Phoenix last week, where they discussed how best to control free speech online.
These experts, Bret Schafer and Rachael Dean Wilson, hail from Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund.
Schafer created and manages Hamilton 2.0, an online open-source dashboard tracking the outputs of Russia, Chinese, and Iranian state media outlets, diplomats, and government officials. Wilson was the communications director and advisor to the late John McCain.
Schafer’s Hamilton 2.0 is a continuation of his original project within Alliance For Securing Democracy, Hamilton 68, which culled data from major social media companies to identify content similarities between foreign adversaries and Americans — X when it was “Twitter” prior to Elon Musk’s buyout, Facebook, and Instagram — shortly after Donald Trump assumed the presidency in 2017. Musk paywalled X’s application programming interface, stymieing Schafer’s data stream.
Schafer was part of investigations into practices by social media companies that were weaponizing the government against right-wing citizens.
During last Thursday’s panel, Schafer said that an individual from Meta (Facebook) told him that they began to implement more “guardrails” following the Christchurch shooting, since the shooter used the company’s live-stream function, “Facebook Live,” to film and publish the attack. Schafer said that artificial intelligence (AI) was the “reverse” of efforts to implement guardrails, and expressed concern that there should be greater limitations on “problematic” online speech.
“I think the concern is this pollution in the information space, so if somebody has a narrative that’s particularly problematic it now seems as if it’s coming from 50, 100, 200,000 different sources and it can kind of drown out competing voices who are not using manipulated information to get their message out,” said Schafer.
Schafer advocated for social media companies to reduce the spread of content not originating from certain officials or media outlets. He recalled how those technology companies did some of this during the 2020 election. Schafer lamented that public perception of social media companies controlling content reach and visibility became “politicized” and controversial.
“The only way to make sure the people who genuinely want to actually access accurate information […] is for [social media companies] to make some decisions about what is and is not quality information,” said Schafer. “That has become politicized in ways that I think are really problematic so I think we do need to pressure the companies to the various mechanisms we can: advertisers, everything else to ensure at least around elections that they are taking an active role in making decisions about what should be prioritized because if it’s just left up to the algorithms we’re not going to see the good information surface at the top.”
Wilson agreed. She added that officials could rely on online influencers to spread their information. Combined with Schafer’s proposal of increasing and prioritizing reach for certain information from certain officials and experts, that may mean influencers would be incentivized to spread certain information in order to increase their visibility, engagement, and monetization.
“I think getting the influencers to encourage referencing experts is really important,” said Wilson.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes also participated in the panel discussions.
Like the Hamilton initiative, the Alliance for Securing Democracy was founded after Trump took the White House. The organization is led by Laura Thornton, whom the McCain Institute hired in August to serve as senior director of global democracy programs.
Among its team members are David Salvo, former Obama administration foreign service officer within the State Department, and Shanthi Kalathil, former deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for democracy and human rights at the National Security Council under President Joe Biden.
Alliance for Securing Democracy used to publicize its list of advisory members until some time late last year or earlier this year.
Mike Cherthoff, formerly the W. Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary;
Toomas Ilves, formerly the Estonia president and a World Economic Forum co-chair;
David Kramer, formerly a McCain Institute senior director and W. Bush administration State Department official;
Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and former staffer for the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations;
Rick Ledgett, formerly the Obama administration NSA deputy director;
Mike McFaul, formerly the Obama administration ambassador to Russia;
Michael Morelll, formerly the Obama administration CIA acting director;
Ana Palacio, lawyer and formerly European Parliament member;
John Podesta, formerly Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair and an official for both the Clinton and Obama administrations.
Mike Rogers, CNN commentator and formerly a GOP congressman, army officer, FBI special agent;
Marietje Schaake, formerly a European Parliament member;
Kori Schake, American Enterprise Institute director and formerly employed by the State Department, Defense Department, and White House National Security Council; and,
Nicole Wong, formerly the Obama administration deputy chief technology officer, Google vice president and deputy general counsel, and Twitter legal director for products.
This week, the McCain Institute announced it had been accepted to be featured in the competitive annual event, South by Southwest.
Last week’s full panel is available here:
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The financier of the ballot initiative seeking to reform Arizona’s elections with open primaries and ranked-choice voting has the impact of flipping states blue — much like its primary funder did in Colorado.
That financier, Unite America, is listed as the single biggest funder on the campaign media spending report for the entity behind Proposition 140, the Make Elections Fair PAC. Unite America gave over $1.7 million to boost the political action committee earlier this month.
Unite America’s primary funder is one of its board co-chairs, Kent Thiry, who was behind several election reforms that shifted Colorado to a blue state. Thiry acquired his wealth being the chairman and CEO of the national dialysis provider DaVita from 1999 to 2019, a role that resulted in him facing a 2021 federal indictment for violating antitrust law. A jury acquitted Thiry of the conspiracy charges in 2022.
Additionally, DaVita agreed to pay out a $34.5 million settlement earlier this year over whistleblower allegations of anti-kickback laws. The millions were a portion of the nearly $1 billion in whistleblower settlements: $450 million in 2015 over allegations of defrauding Medicare by billing the government for trashed dialysis drugs, and $350 million in 2014 for other alleged kickbacks to doctors.
Rather than reform his dialysis business over those years, Thiry trained his sights on elections.
Through his investments and organizational efforts, Thiry has taken credit for several major reforms in Colorado. Those reforms include allowing unaffiliated voters into party primaries (2016), establishing a public vote and nixing in-person presidential caucuses (2016), and thwarting gerrymandering through the establishment of an independent commission (2018).
This year, Thiry has spent millions to achieve the ultimate goal in Colorado and all other states, including Arizona: establishing open primaries and ranked-choice voting. Thiry believes that America won’t survive without those two major reforms.
“There aren’t that many great democracies that have survived more than a couple hundred years. And in order to survive, you have to modernize and modify and reflect society,” said Thiry in an interview with CPR News.
Those three gradual reforms contributed to the state’s shift from purple to blue over the years.
With Thiry’s help, Unite America has spent over $70 million since 2019 on getting states to similarly reform their elections with open primaries and ranked-choice voting.
Unite America (formerly the Centrist Project) gained more momentum in Colorado following Republican firebrand Lauren Boebert’s surprise congressional victory in 2020.
That year, Unite America successfully spent over $3 million to enact open primaries and ranked-choice voting in Alaska. In the first election cycle after those reforms, Republican House candidate Sarah Palin lost the House race, and Republican moderate Lisa Murkowski defended her Senate seat against a more conservative challenger.
In addition to Arizona, the organization has invested in state campaigns for the major election reforms that have benefited centrists and Democrats in Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Per Unite America’s research arm, Unite America Institute, their goals for election reforms include top-four nonpartisan primaries, full voting from home, ranked-choice voting used for all offices, and an independent redistricting commission.
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GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake’s team again rebuffed efforts by her Democratic opponent, Ruben Gallego, to blame her for public interest over the unsealing of his divorce records.
The Washington Free Beaconfiled the lawsuit to make Gallego’s divorce records public earlier this year. The media outlet succeeded in spite of several appeals. Over 400 pages of records were released on Thursday in what many expected to be an “October surprise.”
Lake capitalized on The Washington Free Beacon’s lawsuit to unseal her opponent’s divorce records. The GOP candidate speculated that the records would contain damning details about Gallego’s character. Following the unsealing of their divorce records, Ruben and his ex-wife, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, issued a joint statement demanding that Lake apologize for putting a spotlight on their past divorce.
“We demand an apology from Kari Lake for lying about our family and the circumstances of our divorce,” said the Gallegos. “She will stop at nothing to score a cheap political point — even if it means endangering the privacy and well-being of our young son.”
The privacy of Gallego’s daughter with his new wife may be another matter. Gallego posted, and then deleted, a tweet on Thursday using a picture of his toddler daughter to advocate for abortion.
“I’m a dad running for Senate to give my kids and yours the best future possible,” wrote Gallego in the deleted tweet. “That means a world where our daughters have abortion rights.”
Says someone who uses his daughter to promote abortion, divorced his 9-month pregnant wife and even asked her to pay his attorney's fees. Why did you delete this tweet, twice? pic.twitter.com/N5IHWuErH2
In a statement on behalf of the campaign, Lake’s senior advisor, Caroline Wren, called Gallego’s behavior and demand of an apology “bizarre” since Lake had “nothing to do” with the lawsuit. Lake’s team called the divorce records “shocking” given his heavy campaigning as an advocate for women on the issue of abortion. The Lake campaign based their assessment on the timing of Gallego’s filing for divorce, as well as his request for attorney’s fees from his pregnant wife.
“We do find the revelations from the divorce records to be shocking, especially considering Ruben Gallego is spending millions on advertising claiming to want to protect women, yet he served his unsuspecting wife with divorce papers when she was days away from giving birth, and even demanded she pay his attorney’s fees!” stated the Lake campaign.
The Lake campaign also argued that Gallego’s lack of reliability with his ex-wife made him unfit to serve in the Senate.
“If Ruben Gallego will turn his back on his pregnant wife days before she gives birth, he will turn his back on Arizona,” stated the Lake campaign.
A little over a week before Christmas 2016, Gallego filed for divorce from Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego, who was well into her ninth month of pregnancy and still a Phoenix councilwoman at the time.
Apart from Gallego’s timing of his divorce filing and his request for attorney’s fees, many believe the court records failed to deliver the anticipated “October surprise.”
Yavapai Superior Court Judge John Napper, who ruled for the unsealing of the documents, said in a video obtained by 12 News that the Gallego records were “one of the most garden-variety divorce files” he’d ever come across. Napper predicted that few, if any, would be impressed by the records.
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A new report concluded that Proposition 140 — which seeks to establish ranked-choice voting and replace Arizona’s partisan primaries with open primaries — would empower the secretary of state more than voters in elections.
The Reason Foundation issued the report last week by its director of criminal justice policy, Vittorio Nastasi, several days after early voting began. (Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act voters (UOCAVA) were mailed their ballots near the end of September).
“Prop. 140 grants far too much power to the legislature or secretary of state by allowing them to determine how many candidates can compete in general elections,” said the organization. “The impact of Prop. 140 is, therefore, uncertain and could generate substantial conflict without any clear benefit.”
Arizona’s current primary elections restrict voters to voting within the primary election of their registered party; unaffiliated voters may change their registration leading up to the primaries in order to cast a ballot for their preferred primary election.
Ranked-choice voting would do away with majority vote winners in general elections with more than two candidates in most races (and more than four candidates in Arizona House races). Instead, victors would be determined by voter rankings of preferred candidates. Without any majority winner, the ranking system determines the winner(s) by eliminating the lowest vote-getter and redistributing those votes to the other candidates based on those voters’ rankings.
The report noted that Prop 140 doesn’t specify the number of candidates that would move on to the general election from the proposed open primaries, allowing either lawmakers to decide by November 1 (or the secretary of state thereafter) how many candidates move on to the general election.
The Reason Foundation’s report assessed that open primaries would violate the First Amendment.
“Political parties are fundamentally private organizations with the right to set their own rules for nominating candidates,” said the organization. “To infringe on that right is to violate the freedom of association. No matter how large or powerful the two major parties may be, the government has no role in determining the process for their primary elections.”
The organization proposed that there were “better alternatives” to meet the problem of the exclusion of nonpartisan voters: allowing minor party candidates to participate in debates and redrawing gerrymandered districts.
The Reason Foundation did side with ranked-choice voting, however. The organization said that the proposed voting method would remedy voter concerns of “wasted votes and spoiler effects” while improving opportunity for minor party candidates.
The Arizona Joint Legislative Budget Committee also issued an official fiscal impact analysis for Prop 140. The committee concluded that the proposition’s overall fiscal impact couldn’t be determined in advance due to necessary further action by state and local governments. In their review of the fiscal impact analysis, the Reason Foundation emphasized that administering elections would likely become more costly under Prop 140 by increasing the number of candidates on the general election ballot, changing the length of both sample and election ballots, and increasing the number of voters receiving a primary ballot.
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Democrat Nicholas Gonzales, a House candidate for legislative district 13, was convicted for filing a false report to law enforcement.
Gonzales falsely reported his son as missing to police in 2021 during a planned custody swap, according to court records obtained by the Arizona Republic. That false report occurred about a month after Gonzales was found to be in contempt of court.
Gonzales claimed to police that his son was not at the designated meeting point for parenting time and that he didn’t know his son’s location. However, text messages obtained by officers revealed that Gonzales had arranged for the grandmother to pick up his son. Gonzales later admitted in court that he knew this to be the truth.
For filing a false claim about his son being missing, Gonzales was convicted of false reporting to law enforcement and received a suspended sentence.
The 2021 false report was part of a struggle with his ex-wife, Kurstie Ortiz, over their son dating back to 2012. Court records indicated that Gonzales would make threats to Ortiz, and that Gonzales’ son expressed fears over Gonzales finding out about his communication with his mother while spending time with Gonzales.
For years, Gonzales owed thousands in child support as well. Ortiz’s attorney told the Arizona Republic that he still has yet to pay the over $12,000 in lawyers’ fees he was ordered to pay her in 2021. Gonzales did reportedly pay a portion of the $6,500 in unpaid child support.
In that court order, the Maricopa County Superior Court found Gonzales in contempt for refusing to follow the parenting plan as well as failing to pay child support.
Gonzales’ past clearly doesn’t outweigh the Arizona Democratic Party’s need to secure a Democratic majority in the legislature.
Governor Katie Hobbs held an event over the weekend encouraging turnout for Gonzales and other candidates. Hobbs’ campaign manager denied that Hobbs had any knowledge of the troubles with Gonzales’ custody dispute.
Gonzales issued the following statement after details of his divorce records went public:
“When I became a father at 18 years old, I made a promise to my child that I would be a present and active part of his life. Though my relationship with his mother ultimately ended, I remained committed to being a part of his life and upbringing. I have always been transparent about the challenges I faced as a young parent and while navigating the family court system was at times frustrating, I am proud of the progress made and that his mother and I are amicably co-parenting. Our first priority is the safety and well-being of our child, which includes raising him in a healthy and respectful environment. I am saddened that this difficult period of my family’s life is being used in an attempt to discredit my campaign but these tactics are typical from the Republican Party, which holds no standards or boundaries. I am proud of the father and man I am today and know that voters will see through this clear attempt to undermine my ability to lead in office.”
Ortiz denied Gonzales’ claim that the two are “amicably co-parenting” their son, saying that it wasn’t true.
Gonzales and Brandy Reese are the two Democratic candidates in the race, looking to fill the seat vacated by Jennifer Pawlik and unseat Republican Julie Willoughby (the named replacement for Liz Harris, who was expelled last year). Another Republican candidate, Jeff Weninger, is also running.
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