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Sitting in my eighth-grade classroom, I stealthily check my email, hoping for news updates from The New York Times or CNN about the heightened COVID-19 crisis in India, my country of origin.

Before I can even read a word on the page, a boy in my class asks, Why are you reading the news?

Yeah, my friend adds. Shreyas a boomer.

The whole class erupts into laughter and my face heats as I slowly close my email tab.

If you dont know what a boomer is, Ill keep it simple: I was called the equivalent of a grandma simply because I read the news.

Although this memory feels distant during these summer months, I cant help but wonder what this simple statement says about Generation Z (people between the ages of 6 and 24).

Much to my astonishment, only 5% of U.S. citizens aged 9-24 are regular consumers of news from newspapers or digital publications. Meanwhile, 54% of Generation Z members get their daily news from social media sites such as TikTok, Instagram, and the like.

For informed young readers, this means that it has become even harder to get our perspectives and opinions to be taken seriously.

With the spike of social media usage, the average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds in 2013. This is a result of social media sites condensing and simplifying information into bite-sized videos that are usually less than three minutes.

How can we be sure that teenagers are grasping whats going on in the news if their only news intake is a short video that can be made by anyone, not even a qualified reporter or journalist?

Moreover, there have been numerous reported false rumors circulating on sites like TikTok in recent months, like those suggesting that certain celebrities are involved in sex-trafficking. This affects not just the reputation of the celebrities but also taints public perception on the credibility of all news shared and discussed on social media platforms.

One of the bigger issues clouding this topic is whether Gen Z is getting a sufficient amount of knowledge about current events if the majority of them are scrolling through posts that can be biased or leave out certain information. This is especially important when it comes to the impact that young voters can have on election outcomes when they show up at the ballot box and the repercussions that follow.

As the journal Foreign Policy put it, Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated, low-information white people.

The emphasis here should be on low-information, because without education and a factual understanding of current events, voters can elect unqualified candidates into office.

Gen Z-ers must recognize that voting is a highly important right that many other nations dont have. We must take it seriously.

Older members of Gen Z will have an opportunity to vote in upcoming elections, but with this freedom comes responsibility; they must ensure that they will make an informed choice by consistently reading the news from unbiased, factual sources.

Although social media is a great tool in itself, when it becomes the primary vehicle of informing the general public, many of the stories circulating must be taken with a grain of salt.

Reading the news on social media is not enough. So, please, pick up the paper.

Shreya Prabhu will be a freshman this fall at Greenwich High School,Connecticut. This column was produced for The Progressive magazine.

Continue reading here:
Can democracy survive a generation that doesn't care to be informed? - theday.com

When Justice Louis Brandeis referred to the states as laboratories of democracy almost a century ago, he was looking at the way reforms can be tested in individual states, and the effective ones can spread throughout the country state-by-state. Unfortunately, when bad ideas spread in this fashion, they can be used to undercut democracy itself.

Take, for example, the so-called election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona. While this partisan review of election results drags on, the effort to unearth nonexistent evidence of widespread voter fraud is spreading to other parts of the country. Under the guise of ensuring election integrity, Republican activists doggedly pursue new evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. They continue to contort science and logic on the taxpayers dime, even as we approach the Biden administrations seventh month in office. This is madness. And it must stop.

Yet recently, Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) announced plans to conduct a Maricopa-style election review of his states 2020 election results, requesting access to ballots and election equipment from three counties, including Philadelphia. In fact, this would be the Senators second such partisan review this year. Just after the election, Mastriano hired Wake TSI, a company with no verifiable elections auditing experience, to review the ballots of Fulton County, Pennsylvania. Rather than proving election fraud, the investigation funded by a group led by notorious Trump-affiliate Sidney Powell found that the election was well run. Further, the so-called auditors mishandled the election equipment and taxpayers may now need to pay for new voting machines.

Similar efforts are underway in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia. As the report weve just released with Protect Democracy details, these attempts are each at different stages, but they have a common origin: all are the handiwork of people who claim that Donald TrumpDonald TrumpOn The Money: Schumer pressured from all sides on spending strategy | GOP hammers HUD chief over sluggish rental aid | Democrat proposes taxes on commercial space flights Overnight Health Care: Fauci clashes with Paul - again | New York reaches .1B settlement with opioid distributors | Delta variant accounts for 83 percent of US COVID-19 cases Overnight Defense: Military justice overhaul included in defense bill | Pentagon watchdog to review security of 'nuclear football' | Pentagon carries out first air strike in Somalia under Biden MORE won the 2020 election.

In Wisconsin, the state assembly has tapped Michael Gableman a former state Supreme Court justice and Trump supporter who has falsely claimed errors in the presidential election process may have affected the final results to lead its partisan investigation of the 2020 election results.

In Michigan, a firm called Allied Security Operations Group, which has a history of spreading false claims about the election, was given access to Antrim County voting machines. The resulting report was riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods.

And in Georgia, VoterGA Founder Garland Favorito is seeking access to all mail ballots in Fulton County. He is proposing to have them inspected under the same premise and using the same untested methods deployed in Maricopa County, which purports to detect fraud by examining folds in the ballots under ultraviolet light. Dubbed kinematic artifact detection technology and invented by self-proclaimed treasure hunter Jovan Pulitzer, this practice not only has no scientific support, but the ultraviolet light can damage paper and any markings on it.

These politically motivated fiascos mark a radical departure from legitimate election validation and auditing procedures routinely used by election officials to count votes and check results.

During every election cycle, election officials use processes designed to be transparent, objective, and secure with safeguards in place to guard against human error and bias. In the instances when an external process audit is warranted, generally accepted auditing guidelines provide clear standards for ensuring objectivity and avoiding conflicts of interest.

The efforts being undertaken in these states fail to meet these basic standards. They are not designed to maintain ballot or equipment security or obtain accurate results. They are designed to stoke mistrust in the 2020 election and in elections to come.

Election administration experts have declared the 2020 election the most secure in American history. The facts overwhelmingly show that the results were fair and legitimate. Our democracy can only survive so long as the voters whose candidate didnt win can trust our elections. These sham audits are meant to destroy that trust.

Matthew Germer and Gowri Ramachandran coauthored the report, Partisan Review Efforts in Five States, along with other election administration experts at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, the R Street Institute, and Protect Democracy. Germer is an elections fellow at the R Street Institute, and Ramachandran is counsel in the Brennan Centers Election Reform Program.

Continued here:
Bad-faith election audits are sabotaging democracy across the nation | TheHill - The Hill

From widespread protests in Cuba to the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Mose, recent unrest across Latin America has brought new attention to political and economic issues in the region and created diplomatic challenges for the Biden administration. To discuss how the United States should engage with Latin America, David Dollar is joined by Santiago Levy, a nonresident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings and senior advisor to the United Nations Development Program.

Levy describes the negative effects of U.S. policy toward Cuba, his concerns about sovereign debt in the region, and how the U.S. could work with Latin American governments to rethink development strategies in order to achieve socially inclusive growth. Then, the conversation turns to Progresa-Oportunidades, a conditional cash transfer program Levy helped design during his career in public service in Mexico, and what lessons it could provide for similar economic programs proposed by the Biden administration.

Read more:

Poverty in Latin America: Where do we come from, where are we going?

How should the G-7 respond to Chinas BRI?

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How can the US support democracy and development in Latin America? - Brookings Institution

The 2021 legislative session is continuing to prove that Jim Crow is alive and well. As of June 21, according to the latest Brennan Center research, 17 states have enacted 28 new laws that restrict voting access. Though other states yet in session may follow, Georgia, Texas, and Arizona have risen to the top as critical inflection points.

The voter suppression wrought by Georgias massive new law has garnered not only national media attention but that of Congress. On July 19, the U.S. Senate Rules Committee traveled to Georgia for a field hearing on SB 202 and the case it makes for passing the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, as well as U.S. Senator Rev. Raphael Warnocks Preventing Election Subversion Act.

Sen. Rev. Warnock:

But if we passed federal voting rights protections, we can reverse these restrictions. We can pass legislation that would create uniform national standards so that your right to vote wouldnt depend on where you live in. We can protect the freedom of voters to decide how they want to votewhether its on Election Day, during early voting, or by mail. And we can strengthen election security by providing new funding for states to replace old voting machines and enhance training for election administrators.

Texas legislators recently traveled to Washington to make a similar case. At the end of May, with SB 7 on the brink of passage and adjournment looming, House Democrats denied the quorum needed to hold a vote by leaving the chamber. Governor Greg Abbott called a special session for July, and voter suppression returned as HB3 and SB1. This time, House Democrats left the state to block these bills and demand federal reform.

People For the American Way President Ben Jealous:

Gov. Abbott and Republican Senate leaders have threatened lawmakers with arrest to try to force them to attend the session. And he has said he will keep calling special sessions until he gets his way. Thats why the Texas legislators came to Washington, D.C. They brought an urgent message to members of Congress: the only way to protect voters from voter suppression at the state level is to pass national voting rights legislation.

The twists and turns of Arizonas story further lay bare the politics of voter suppression and its grave consequences. Governor Doug Ducey cleared the way for a new voter purge when he signed SB 1485, which punishes permanent early voters who miss two elections by forcing them to confirm in writing that they still want to vote by mail or theyll stop receiving ballots. Gov. Ducey also signed a state budget that includes anti-voter provisions. While the legislature attempted to move a massive voter suppression package nearing adjournment in an already extended session, an ongoing feud between Sen. Townsend and Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita flared up again and killed it.

All Voting Is Local Arizona:

As we plan for the next election and begin to experience the effects of new anti-voter laws, our votes and our voices will be more necessary than ever. Arizona voters will not be silenced. The Arizona Legislatures rush to push through cruel election-related policies was designed not only to create deliberate barriers between voters and the ballot, but also to avoid public scrutiny of these measures. The real opportunity for change lies in how these bills are implemented.

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Fighting for Democracy as Attacks Continue in the States - People For the American Way

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we assess the state of American democracy with the help of a new survey from Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists who monitor threats to our democratic systems.

Former President Donald Trumps false message that American elections are fraudulent has permeated much of the Republican Party, particularly at the state level, where candidates are running on those ideas and lawmakers are passing laws they say are designed to prevent fraud.

On Monday, dozens of Texas House Democrats left the state to try to prevent the passage of voting restrictions there. And on Tuesday, President Biden gave a speech urging the U.S. Congress to pass bills designed to protect and expand voting rights. Activists have called on Senate Democrats to end the filibuster to do so.

Bright Line Watch has surveyed Americans and experts alike on what they think about Republican and Democratic efforts. One of the organizations co-founders, Dartmouth College professor of government Brendan Nyhan, discusses the results with Galen Druke.

Originally posted here:
Politics Podcast: Americans And Experts Agree That Democracy Is Struggling - FiveThirtyEight