vox--2020-09-24--The most dangerous conspiracy theory in 2020 isn’t about blood-sucking pedophiles

As the 2020 election enters its final phases , it feels like a lot could go wrong in the United States .
Reports warn that hackers from Russia and China are targeting both parties , while the fringe conspiracy movement QAnon slips into the mainstream and possibly influences voters .
And millions of people are talking about a different conspiracy theory , one that posits that the election has already been stolen .
Believers say this still-unfolding scandal goes all the way to the top .
It gets weird , too .
According to some , a sinister millionaire is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they can ’ t properly process mail-in ballots .
Others say foreign governments are printing millions of fraudulent mail-in ballots and that “ deep state ” goons are raiding nursing homes to tamper with senior citizens ’ mail-in ballots .
One way or another , President Trump is almost always supposedly involved in these plots — either orchestrating the conspiracy or fighting the America-hating intruders .
And at the end of the day , this conspiracy theory boils down to one very bad but also mundane thing : voter fraud .
Let that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s catching on — the one to really worry about as the country gears up to elect its future leaders — is not QAnon , which claims that Satan-worshipping , liberal pedophiles are running the country .
It ’ s the one hiding in plain sight , the one that supporters of both parties are pushing , and the one that ’ s at the center of the most dangerous misinformation campaigns .
The voter fraud conspiracy theory , including related theories about voter suppression , is also what stands to undermine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , both by suppressing voter turnout and by sowing doubt among voters about the election ’ s results .
That gets even more worrisome when you consider that President Trump continues to suggest that he won ’ t leave office , regardless of the election ’ s outcome .
When asked on Wednesday if he ’ d commit to a peaceful transfer of power , Trump said , “ We ’ ll have to see what happens.
” He added , “ The ballots are a disaster.
” Up to 80 million people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most in American history — which is leading to concern about the process .
According to data from Zignal Labs , online and social media mentions of mail-in voting , including good old-fashioned voter fraud , are more prevalent than conspiratorial buzzwords like George Soros , the Clintons , or vaccines , including one for the coronavirus .
Zignal Labs also calculates that , when looking at online discussions of these topics that are likely to be misinformation , vote-by-mail mentions still outnumber those about these other topics .
That said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any election season — it ’ s just not usually this unhinged .
In most elections , one side thinks the other side is somehow going to steal the election by ballot-harvesting , double voting , machine-rigging , voter suppression , or any other number of methods , and those fears will either be realized by questions raised after a loss or forgotten in the sweet security of victory .
But the pandemic and all the uncertainty it ’ s created have exaggerated these fears .
Just a small number of Americans — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not yet a widespread practice — have previous experience voting by mail , according to Pew .
An intelligence bulletin posted by the Department of Homeland Security has also warned that Russia is likely amplifying misinformation that casts doubts on the integrity of voting by mail .
The incumbent president isn ’ t helping , either .
Trump , who has said “ mail-In Ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 Election , ” continues to find new ways to discredit the process , as have his lieutenants , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tells us that the voter fraud conspiracy theory is a bipartisan issue .
For decades , competing and even converging theories about voter fraud have come from Democrats as well as Republicans .
And according to research , no matter who loses , about a quarter of those on the losing side will likely believe the election was rigged for one reason or another .
Believing in a conspiracy theory like this — or any conspiracy theory , for that matter — can be a useful coping mechanism for some .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and there ’ s intentionality behind things that happen in the world , and conspiracy theories help with all of that because they impose some structure on a messy , uncertain , random kind of world , ” Adam Enders , a political scientist at the University of Louisville who studies conspiracy theories , told Recode .
“ They tell a story : There ’ s a winner , there ’ s a loser , and there ’ s a bad guy.
” So while it ’ s tempting to fixate on QAnon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that conspiracy theory might matter in November , that risks missing something even bigger .
The conspiracy theory about how voter fraud of some kind will rig the election might not seem so exciting .
That might also be why it ’ s so dangerous .
QAnon is wild and scary , which is why it ’ s getting so much attention right now .
The term QAnon refers to a set of far-fetched conspiracy theories about how a cabal of elites — pedophiles who suck the blood of babies to gain special @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If you strip out the more salacious words of that description , you ’ re left with the idea that elites are plotting against the president .
The thing is , there ’ s little concrete evidence that QAnon is attracting huge numbers of believers , though awareness of it is growing .
From March to September , the number of Americans who had heard or read “ a lot or a little ” about QAnon doubled from 23 percent to 47 percent , according to a Pew survey .
( The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same question twice stands to skew the results . )
Regardless , there ’ s a big difference between knowing about a conspiracy theory and believing in it .
Beyond the sheer number of its followers , the QAnon movement presents a different kind of danger .
The growth of QAnon , which the FBI has identified as a potential domestic terrorism threat , coincides with a rise in right-wing extremist attacks and plots , and QAnon specifically has been linked to multiple acts of violence .
There ’ s also overlap @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like the “ boogaloo ” movement .
This is all deeply concerning and a threat to our democracy , too .
And QAnon is , in fact , finding some legitimacy in politics .
Around the same time that QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene won her House primary runoff in Georgia , the social media research company Storyful released data showing that membership in 10 large QAnon Facebook groups increased 600 percent from March to July , and the Instagram followings on top QAnon Instagram accounts quadrupled .
On top of that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggested that a third of Republicans believe the QAnon conspiracy theory is “ mostly true.
” All of this led to a flurry of reports about how QAnon had gone mainstream .
Some conspiracy theory experts , however , have doubts about how the movement factors into the upcoming presidential election .
“ We ’ re not finding a movement that ’ s either big or growing , or well-known , ” said Joe Uscinski , a University of Miami political science who has been conducting polling on conspiracy theories for a decade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be nothing more than a case of a media public , of journalists getting trapped in their own media bubble and just repeating over and over again that this is big and getting bigger and going mainstream.
” Some of the most recent polls , Uscinski has pointed out , ask people broadly if they believe in things like QAnon and the “ deep state , ” and then conflate the results to mean that belief in QAnon is on the rise .
In fact , this broad category of conspiracy theories about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Knights Templar , long-standing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories , and beyond .
So it seems possible that people aren ’ t expressing familiarity with QAnon specifically but rather other long-standing conspiracy theories about a deep state .
“ Conspiracy theories have always played a role in American politics , as far back as when the Anti-Masonic Party rose to power in the Northeast in the early 19th century , ” said Travis View , who co-hosts the QAnon Anonymous podcast .
“ But even if conspiracy theory belief hasn ’ t increased @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s notable that the conspiracy theory community are gathering under the banner of ‘ Q.
’ ” So while QAnon certainly isn ’ t harmless — and may well pose a growing , if not violent threat if it continues to spread — its existence should not distract from the more popular , more imminent , and more dangerous conspiracy theories around voter fraud that are taking hold in the US .
While QAnon supporters certainly have their own theories about how this year ’ s election is rigged , voter fraud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prominent people like Trump , promoting it .
That leaves both Republicans and Democrats questioning the integrity of American democracy .
As a result , discourse about voter fraud and other voting-related anxieties is finding a huge audience across the political spectrum .
According to data from the intelligence firm NewsWhip , links shared on social media about voter fraud , mail-in voting , or vote-by-mail gathered nearly 99 million interactions over the past three months , compared to about 74 million interactions for stories about QAnon-adjacent topics like child trafficking .
Meanwhile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ QAnon , wwg1wga ( shorthand for the QAnon rallying cry , “ where we go one , we go all ” ) , and # SaveTheChildren ( a hashtag QAnon followers recently hijacked ) had just over 15.5 million interactions over the past three months .
Data from Zignal Labs also shows that mentions of misinformation related to voting have continued to spike , again and again , this election cycle .
Voter fraud exists , but its prevalence is overexaggerated , particularly in modern US elections .
As long as Americans have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instances of voter fraud , including some sensational ones that have been proven true .
The conservative Heritage Foundation keeps a running tally of these that can be found on the White House website .
Many of the cases reported therein are linked to absentee ballots , which provides rhetorical ammunition for President Trump , who has falsely claimed that mail-in voting will lead to a “ rigged election ” and similarly spent much of his 2016 campaign warning of voter fraud .
Trump also keeps encouraging people to vote twice , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because voter fraud has happened in the past , it ’ s opening the doors for Democrats to steal this year ’ s election , when the pandemic is upending many voting norms .
Despite Trump ’ s persistent warnings to the contrary , there were just four documented cases of voter fraud reported in the weeks after the 2016 election .
“ We know from decades upon decades of data that while there is voting fraud in the United States , it is incredibly rare , ” Sam Rhodes , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ studies fake news , told Recode .
“ It ’ s very difficult to swing an election by stealing a couple votes , especially when you consider the decentralized nature of the American federal election system.
” Meanwhile , there ’ s little evidence that higher levels of voting by mail will lead to more cheating .
In the five states where mail-in voting is the norm — Colorado , Hawaii , Oregon , Utah , and Washington — there have been virtually no cases of documented voter fraud .
What ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more absentee ballots than Democrats , which complicates Trump ’ s claim in August that mail-in ballots “ are dangerous for this country because of cheaters.
” The president ’ s rhetoric around voter fraud seems to be resonating within the party .
A September Pew survey showed that 43 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe voter fraud associated with mail-in voting is a “ major problem ” in the election .
The voter fraud conspiracy theories conservatives are sharing online are evolving well beyond the president ’ s statements about mail-in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Natural News , which has been banned on Facebook after spreading conspiracy theories , has been pushing the baseless claim on its expansive network of sites that Democrats are using mail-in voting to skew the election in their favor .
Some of the voter fraud narratives can get pretty wild .
One conspiracy theory making the rounds online is that arsonists set the recent West Coast wildfires in an attempt to shut down highways and prevent mail-in votes from being delivered and to suppress Republican turnout , according to research from the web @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wisconsin Gov .
Scott Walker claimed in a Facebook post that Democrats were spreading a “ fake postal controversy in hopes that worried people will vote by mail before the first debate.
” Democrats aren ’ t immune to voter fraud conspiracy theories , though they tend to worry more about the voter suppression side of things .
The “ fake postal controversy ” Walker mentioned is a reference to the disruptions in the US Postal Service that followed the appointment of Louis DeJoy , a top Trump donor , as postmaster general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 711 mail-sorting machines from postal facilities and widespread mail delays .
Meanwhile , misleading images of collection boxes being removed from street corners went viral on social media .
All of this led to allegations that the Trump administration was sabotaging the election by dismantling the Postal Service , claims that were swiftly framed by conservatives as a false conspiracy theory about a far-fetched form of voter suppression .
Yet , just as Republicans could claim that voter fraud has actually happened in the past , there was no denying the fact that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Postal Service mere months before an election that could be decided by mail-in voting .
Trump even admitted to blocking USPS funding because he didn ’ t want universal mail-in voting .
Conspiratorial thinking of this nature has been a bipartisan issue for decades on both sides , according to a 2017 paper published in Political Research Quarterly .
Notably , the authors report , “ Republicans are especially prone to believing that people are casting ballots they should not , whereas Democrats are more concerned that they are not able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conspiracy theories that flirt with the facts are more harmful than those that seem more outrageous .
Conspiracy theories about QAnon are not nearly as dangerous to elections as those about voter fraud and voter suppression because they ’ re so much more believable and embraced by a much larger share of the population .
Even if they ’ re not true — and even if they ’ re not completely believed — these conspiracy theories can seed doubt in the minds of millions of American voters about the democratic process , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these theories , those doubts become much more severe .
“ The long-term impact of those kinds of stories is that a few weeks after the fact , we know we heard something , and we have a question in our mind , ” said Kris Shaffer , technical director of Yonder .
“ Even if the truth was really clearly laid out , we ’ ll still have a question in our mind as to what actually happened.
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As the 2020 election enters its final phases, it feels like a lot could go wrong in the United States. Reports warn that hackers from Russia and China are targeting both parties, while the fringe conspiracy movement QAnon slips into the mainstream and possibly influences voters. And millions of people are talking about a different conspiracy theory, one that posits that the election has already been stolen.
Believers say this still-unfolding scandal goes all the way to the top. It gets weird, too. According to some, a sinister millionaire is ripping equipment out of post offices so they can’t properly process mail-in ballots. Others say foreign governments are printing millions of fraudulent mail-in ballots and that “deep state” goons are raiding nursing homes to tamper with senior citizens’ mail-in ballots. One way or another, President Trump is almost always supposedly involved in these plots — either orchestrating the conspiracy or fighting the America-hating intruders. And at the end of the day, this conspiracy theory boils down to one very bad but also mundane thing: voter fraud.
Let that sink in. The conspiracy theory that’s catching on — the one to really worry about as the country gears up to elect its future leaders — is not QAnon, which claims that Satan-worshipping, liberal pedophiles are running the country. It’s the one hiding in plain sight, the one that supporters of both parties are pushing, and the one that’s at the center of the most dangerous misinformation campaigns.
The voter fraud conspiracy theory, including related theories about voter suppression, is also what stands to undermine American democracy in a very immediate way, both by suppressing voter turnout and by sowing doubt among voters about the election’s results. That gets even more worrisome when you consider that President Trump continues to suggest that he won’t leave office, regardless of the election’s outcome. When asked on Wednesday if he’d commit to a peaceful transfer of power, Trump said, “We’ll have to see what happens.” He added, “The ballots are a disaster.”
Up to 80 million people are expected to vote by mail — the most in American history — which is leading to concern about the process. According to data from Zignal Labs, online and social media mentions of mail-in voting, including good old-fashioned voter fraud, are more prevalent than conspiratorial buzzwords like George Soros, the Clintons, or vaccines, including one for the coronavirus. Zignal Labs also calculates that, when looking at online discussions of these topics that are likely to be misinformation, vote-by-mail mentions still outnumber those about these other topics.
That said, anxiety about voter fraud is common during any election season — it’s just not usually this unhinged. In most elections, one side thinks the other side is somehow going to steal the election by ballot-harvesting, double voting, machine-rigging, voter suppression, or any other number of methods, and those fears will either be realized by questions raised after a loss or forgotten in the sweet security of victory.
But the pandemic and all the uncertainty it’s created have exaggerated these fears. Just a small number of Americans — especially in states where it’s not yet a widespread practice — have previous experience voting by mail, according to Pew. An intelligence bulletin posted by the Department of Homeland Security has also warned that Russia is likely amplifying misinformation that casts doubts on the integrity of voting by mail. The incumbent president isn’t helping, either. Trump, who has said “mail-In Ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 Election,” continues to find new ways to discredit the process, as have his lieutenants, like Attorney General Bill Barr.
History tells us that the voter fraud conspiracy theory is a bipartisan issue. For decades, competing and even converging theories about voter fraud have come from Democrats as well as Republicans. And according to research, no matter who loses, about a quarter of those on the losing side will likely believe the election was rigged for one reason or another. Believing in a conspiracy theory like this — or any conspiracy theory, for that matter — can be a useful coping mechanism for some.
“We like knowing that there are causes, and there’s intentionality behind things that happen in the world, and conspiracy theories help with all of that because they impose some structure on a messy, uncertain, random kind of world,” Adam Enders, a political scientist at the University of Louisville who studies conspiracy theories, told Recode. “They tell a story: There’s a winner, there’s a loser, and there’s a bad guy.”
So while it’s tempting to fixate on QAnon and how the many sordid elements of that conspiracy theory might matter in November, that risks missing something even bigger. The conspiracy theory about how voter fraud of some kind will rig the election might not seem so exciting. That might also be why it’s so dangerous.
Calm down about QAnon
QAnon is wild and scary, which is why it’s getting so much attention right now.
The term QAnon refers to a set of far-fetched conspiracy theories about how a cabal of elites — pedophiles who suck the blood of babies to gain special powers — is plotting against President Trump. If you strip out the more salacious words of that description, you’re left with the idea that elites are plotting against the president.
The thing is, there’s little concrete evidence that QAnon is attracting huge numbers of believers, though awareness of it is growing. From March to September, the number of Americans who had heard or read “a lot or a little” about QAnon doubled from 23 percent to 47 percent, according to a Pew survey. (The organization acknowledged that asking the same people the same question twice stands to skew the results.) Regardless, there’s a big difference between knowing about a conspiracy theory and believing in it.
Beyond the sheer number of its followers, the QAnon movement presents a different kind of danger. The growth of QAnon, which the FBI has identified as a potential domestic terrorism threat, coincides with a rise in right-wing extremist attacks and plots, and QAnon specifically has been linked to multiple acts of violence. There’s also overlap between QAnon believers and violent militia groups like the “boogaloo” movement. This is all deeply concerning and a threat to our democracy, too.
And QAnon is, in fact, finding some legitimacy in politics. Around the same time that QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene won her House primary runoff in Georgia, the social media research company Storyful released data showing that membership in 10 large QAnon Facebook groups increased 600 percent from March to July, and the Instagram followings on top QAnon Instagram accounts quadrupled. On top of that, a Civiqs/Daily Kos poll in early September suggested that a third of Republicans believe the QAnon conspiracy theory is “mostly true.” All of this led to a flurry of reports about how QAnon had gone mainstream. Some conspiracy theory experts, however, have doubts about how the movement factors into the upcoming presidential election.
“We’re not finding a movement that’s either big or growing, or well-known,” said Joe Uscinski, a University of Miami political science professor who has been conducting polling on conspiracy theories for a decade. “This seems to me to be nothing more than a case of a media public, of journalists getting trapped in their own media bubble and just repeating over and over again that this is big and getting bigger and going mainstream.”
Some of the most recent polls, Uscinski has pointed out, ask people broadly if they believe in things like QAnon and the “deep state,” and then conflate the results to mean that belief in QAnon is on the rise. In fact, this broad category of conspiracy theories about shadowy elites dates back to the Masons, the Knights Templar, long-standing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and beyond. So it seems possible that people aren’t expressing familiarity with QAnon specifically but rather other long-standing conspiracy theories about a deep state.
“Conspiracy theories have always played a role in American politics, as far back as when the Anti-Masonic Party rose to power in the Northeast in the early 19th century,” said Travis View, who co-hosts the QAnon Anonymous podcast. “But even if conspiracy theory belief hasn’t increased generally in the United States, it’s notable that the conspiracy theory community are gathering under the banner of ‘Q.’”
Beware the boring conspiracy theory
So while QAnon certainly isn’t harmless — and may well pose a growing, if not violent threat if it continues to spread — its existence should not distract from the more popular, more imminent, and more dangerous conspiracy theories around voter fraud that are taking hold in the US. While QAnon supporters certainly have their own theories about how this year’s election is rigged, voter fraud misinformation has more people, and more prominent people like Trump, promoting it. That leaves both Republicans and Democrats questioning the integrity of American democracy.
As a result, discourse about voter fraud and other voting-related anxieties is finding a huge audience across the political spectrum. According to data from the intelligence firm NewsWhip, links shared on social media about voter fraud, mail-in voting, or vote-by-mail gathered nearly 99 million interactions over the past three months, compared to about 74 million interactions for stories about QAnon-adjacent topics like child trafficking. Meanwhile, stories that explicitly mentioned the terms QAnon, wwg1wga (shorthand for the QAnon rallying cry, “where we go one, we go all”), and #SaveTheChildren (a hashtag QAnon followers recently hijacked) had just over 15.5 million interactions over the past three months.
Data from Zignal Labs also shows that mentions of misinformation related to voting have continued to spike, again and again, this election cycle.
Voter fraud exists, but its prevalence is overexaggerated, particularly in modern US elections. As long as Americans have been voting, there have been reported instances of voter fraud, including some sensational ones that have been proven true. The conservative Heritage Foundation keeps a running tally of these that can be found on the White House website. Many of the cases reported therein are linked to absentee ballots, which provides rhetorical ammunition for President Trump, who has falsely claimed that mail-in voting will lead to a “rigged election” and similarly spent much of his 2016 campaign warning of voter fraud. Trump also keeps encouraging people to vote twice, which is illegal.
Republicans nevertheless maintain that, because voter fraud has happened in the past, it’s opening the doors for Democrats to steal this year’s election, when the pandemic is upending many voting norms. Despite Trump’s persistent warnings to the contrary, there were just four documented cases of voter fraud reported in the weeks after the 2016 election.
“We know from decades upon decades of data that while there is voting fraud in the United States, it is incredibly rare,” Sam Rhodes, a political scientist at Utah Valley University who studies fake news, told Recode. “It’s very difficult to swing an election by stealing a couple votes, especially when you consider the decentralized nature of the American federal election system.”
Meanwhile, there’s little evidence that higher levels of voting by mail will lead to more cheating. In the five states where mail-in voting is the norm — Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington — there have been virtually no cases of documented voter fraud. What’s ironic is that Republicans historically have cast more absentee ballots than Democrats, which complicates Trump’s claim in August that mail-in ballots “are dangerous for this country because of cheaters.” The president’s rhetoric around voter fraud seems to be resonating within the party. A September Pew survey showed that 43 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe voter fraud associated with mail-in voting is a “major problem” in the election.
The voter fraud conspiracy theories conservatives are sharing online are evolving well beyond the president’s statements about mail-in voting, too. The right-wing site Natural News, which has been banned on Facebook after spreading conspiracy theories, has been pushing the baseless claim on its expansive network of sites that Democrats are using mail-in voting to skew the election in their favor.
Some of the voter fraud narratives can get pretty wild. One conspiracy theory making the rounds online is that arsonists set the recent West Coast wildfires in an attempt to shut down highways and prevent mail-in votes from being delivered and to suppress Republican turnout, according to research from the web intelligence firm Yonder. Meanwhile, former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker claimed in a Facebook post that Democrats were spreading a “fake postal controversy in hopes that worried people will vote by mail before the first debate.”
Democrats aren’t immune to voter fraud conspiracy theories, though they tend to worry more about the voter suppression side of things. The “fake postal controversy” Walker mentioned is a reference to the disruptions in the US Postal Service that followed the appointment of Louis DeJoy, a top Trump donor, as postmaster general. Those disruptions included the removal of 711 mail-sorting machines from postal facilities and widespread mail delays. Meanwhile, misleading images of collection boxes being removed from street corners went viral on social media.
All of this led to allegations that the Trump administration was sabotaging the election by dismantling the Postal Service, claims that were swiftly framed by conservatives as a false conspiracy theory about a far-fetched form of voter suppression. Yet, just as Republicans could claim that voter fraud has actually happened in the past, there was no denying the fact that actions taken by the president had disrupted the Postal Service mere months before an election that could be decided by mail-in voting. Trump even admitted to blocking USPS funding because he didn’t want universal mail-in voting.
Conspiratorial thinking of this nature has been a bipartisan issue for decades on both sides, according to a 2017 paper published in Political Research Quarterly. Notably, the authors report, “Republicans are especially prone to believing that people are casting ballots they should not, whereas Democrats are more concerned that they are not able to cast ballots.”
In many ways, conspiracy theories that flirt with the facts are more harmful than those that seem more outrageous. Conspiracy theories about QAnon are not nearly as dangerous to elections as those about voter fraud and voter suppression because they’re so much more believable and embraced by a much larger share of the population. Even if they’re not true — and even if they’re not completely believed — these conspiracy theories can seed doubt in the minds of millions of American voters about the democratic process, and when the media or the president amplifies these theories, those doubts become much more severe.
“The long-term impact of those kinds of stories is that a few weeks after the fact, we know we heard something, and we have a question in our mind,” said Kris Shaffer, technical director of Yonder. “Even if the truth was really clearly laid out, we’ll still have a question in our mind as to what actually happened.”
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vox--2020-09-24--Critical race theory, and Trump’s war on it, explained

The Trump administration kicked off September by launching an assault on critical race theory and diversity training — and is now capping off the month by doubling down on its promises .
After a string of related tweets Tuesday , Trump issued an executive order banning federal contractors from conducting racial sensitivity training , emphasizing his desire to stop “ efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex- and race-based ideologies.
” The administration ’ s war against “ race-based ideologies ” — code for theories and practices that examine the racism in American history and institutions — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Management and Budget ( OMB ) director Russell Vought , at Trump ’ s behest , released a memo instructing federal agencies to identify any critical race theory and white privilege training within their departmental training plans .
According to the memo , the administration ’ s mission is to stop funding any and all programming that suggests the “ United States is an inherently racist or evil country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.
” Now , with Trump ’ s newly expanded ban on such training @ @ @ @ @ @ @ divisive , un-American propaganda , ” the administration is signaling that Americans , and even those who run the government , don ’ t need to understand the country ’ s racist founding — from the genocide of Native Americans to the enslavement of Africans — and the role the past plays in how racism persists today .
On September 17 , as part of the White House Conference on American History , Trump went all-in on “ defend [ ing ] the legacy of America ’ s founding , the virtue of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nobility of the American character , ” taking time to denounce the New York Times ’ s 1619 project that focused on the lasting impact of slavery in America ; historian Howard Zinn , who penned the influential A People ’ s History of the United States , about America ’ s story from the perspective of the oppressed ; and critical race theory .
“ They ’ ve lumped everything together : critical race theory , the 1619 project , whiteness studies , talking about white privilege , ” Kimberlé Crenshaw , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Columbia University law professor , told Vox .
“ What they have in common is they are discourses that refuse to participate in the lie that America has triumphantly overcome its racist history , that everything is behind us .
None of these projects accept that it ’ s all behind us.
” As to why the Trump administration is suddenly up in arms about racial bias training and critical race theory — a framework that ’ s existed for about 40 years — the OMB memo cites press reports as factors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ July , Fox News began airing segments featuring conservative activist Christopher F. Rufo , who in mid-August told Tucker Carlson that he was “ declaring a one-man war against critical race theory in the federal government , and I ’ m not going to stop these investigations until we can abolish it within our public institutions.
” He tweeted on August 20 , “ My goal is simple : to persuade the President of the United States to issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory in the federal government.
” Rufo appeared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on September 2 , just two days before the memo ’ s release .
Conservative media celebrated the document as a win ; in response to a Breitbart article about the memo , Trump tweeted on September 5 : “ This is a sickness that can not be allowed to continue .
Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish !
” While it might be tempting to brush off the administration ’ s latest crusade as inconsequential amid a flurry of other happenings — like his intentionally misleading the American public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat — Trump ’ s directive had already taken effect even before the executive order .
A scheduled unconscious bias training , programming meant to help workers recognize and tackle discriminatory behavior , at the Department of Justice ’ s Antitrust Division has been postponed , according to MarketWatch .
Meanwhile , Sen. Cory Booker ( D-NJ ) has urged a Senate Judiciary hearing on Trump ’ s push to roll back anti-racial bias training for federal government employees .
However , as much as Trump would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it won ’ t be so easy ; the framework is rooted in how a large body of scholars and thinkers see the world .
In fact , in a time when systemic injustice has been brought to the fore , the broader public is only just beginning to look at America through such a critical lens .
Critical race theory is a framework for grappling with racial power and white supremacy in America Critical race theory grew out of a generational response to the ebb and flow of the civil rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book on the theory , Words That Wound : Critical Race Theory , Assaultive Speech , and the First Amendment .
Though the authors — Mari Matsuda , Charles R. Lawrence III , Richard Delgado , and Kimberlé Crenshaw — don ’ t pinpoint an exact date for when critical race theory first entered the collective consciousness , the book notes the late 1970s as a time when “ the civil rights movement of the 1960s had stalled , and many of its gains were being rolled back.
” That ’ s when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that while segregation had been modestly repealed , there was still inequality to be addressed .
America wanted to frame itself as a society that was committed to equality , but fewer legal battles were being won by civil rights advocates and white people began claiming that remedies for racial discrimination were violating their civil rights .
“ Individual law teachers and students committed to racial justice began to meet , to talk , to write , and to engage in political action in an effort to confront and oppose dominant societal and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racism while professing the goal of dismantling racial discrimination , ” the authors wrote .
Matsuda , Lawrence , Delgado , and Crenshaw — who identified themselves as a collective of African American , Chicano , and Asian American “ outsider law teachers ” — defined critical race theory as a movement and framework that recognizes how racism is “ endemic ” to American life .
In other words , critical race theory rejects the belief that “ what ’ s in the past is in the past ” and that the best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stop talking about it .
Instead , America must reckon with how its values and institutions feed into racism .
Critical race theory was also a lens through which these legal scholars could analyze policies and the law , accepting that “ racism has contributed to all contemporary manifestations of group advantage and disadvantage along racial lines , ” like differences in income , incarceration rates , health outcomes , housing , educational opportunities , political representation , and military service .
The ultimate goal was to eliminate racial oppression as part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of oppression — including that based on class or sexual orientation .
According to the authors , it ’ s not enough to just make adjustments within established hierarchies ; it ’ s necessary to challenge the hierarchies themselves .
The framework is also skeptical of the belief that colorblindness — not seeing race — is a solution to racism .
This stems from the belief that race itself is not biological but socially constructed .
In other words , race isn ’ t inherent or natural .
“ So if race is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a solution to the problem of racism ?
” Crenshaw told Vox .
As critical race theory brewed in academic circles for years , its first moment of social action can be traced back to 1981 , when students boycotted Harvard Law School to persuade the administration to increase the number of tenured professors of color at the school .
When professor Derrick Bell left the law school at the time , there was no one to teach his groundbreaking course “ Race , Racism , and American Law.
” To fill the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and invited guest lecturers to teach from Bell ’ s book by the same name .
This course was just one catalyst that developed critical race theory as a movement — and as a community that served as refuge from a largely white legal field .
Critical race theorists would come to adopt ideas from a number of schools of thought — liberalism , Marxism , critical legal studies , feminism , postmodernism — to establish itself .
There have been previous efforts to eliminate critical race theory prior to Trump , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left and the right .
Critics on the left questioned how scholars could theorize something that is a social construction .
“ We had significant debate with folks who see class as the singular axis of subordination , ” Crenshaw told Vox .
“ But class is not natural .
It ’ s also a construction that has legal ramifications .
If you can analyze law and other systems to show how class relations are reproduced , and you call that critical legal theory , then why can ’ t we pay attention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reproduced through law ?
” Conservatives , on the other hand , claimed that remedying problems like segregation and affirmative action was reverse discrimination , and that race-based remedies were overcorrecting and creating new victims — mostly white men who were made to feel that they had lost what they have long had a right to .
Over time , critical race theory has spread to countless disciplines ( from education to political science to sociology ) , looked at race in relation to other constructs ( gender , class , and sexuality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ borders .
Critical race theory is vast , established , and simply can not be canceled .
Critical race theory is a decades-long response from people who have been historically shut out in all corners of American society .
“ To think that you ’ re going to just go and round it all up is like trying to put your hands around water .
It just shows you know nothing about water , to think that all you can do is just round it all up with your arms , ” Crenshaw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ critical race theory shouldn ’ t be ignored The Trump administration ’ s attempt to clamp down on critical race theory and unconscious bias training , which are related but in no way the same things , is part of his larger push to convince Americans that there is a conspiracy on the part of academics , activists , and journalists on the left to rewrite history .
“ Let ’ s face it , so many people believe in conspiracy theories now .
So now that [ Trump ] has ginned up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away people ’ s rights , he ’ s really scaling it up , ” Crenshaw said .
According to Crenshaw , at the foundation of many of these theories is a psychological insecurity on the part of white people who fear their racial status is being threatened .
Historically , the tendency has been for white people to align with whiteness , even across class lines , Crenshaw noted .
“ What remains to be seen is whether the resistance to it is nearly as powerful as the tendency toward it.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ address at the White House Conference on American History , acknowledging that he plans to take this fight beyond federal contractors and into America ’ s schools with an executive order that bolsters “ patriotic education.
” “ Critical race theory is being forced into our children ’ s schools , it ’ s being imposed into workplace trainings , and it ’ s being deployed to rip apart friends , neighbors , and families , ” Trump said .
“ Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words.
” Trump wants his critics to accept the status quo — that we already live in a fair and just America — Crenshaw said .
Yet critical race theory remains relevant as people in cities and small towns across the country lead ongoing protests for Black lives following the death of George Floyd in late May .
Americans and organizations have pledged to become anti-racist , to actively recognize how silence or inaction amounts to complicity .
Activists are also pushing for anti-racist education in schools and anti-racism trainings in workplaces , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not stop the larger moving tide .
“ Our failure to cease and desist from linking this present to a problematic past is un-American .
It is propaganda [ according to Trump ] , ” Crenshaw told Vox .
“ The best propaganda is something that calls the truth propaganda.
” Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

The Trump administration kicked off September by launching an assault on critical race theory and diversity training — and is now capping off the month by doubling down on its promises.
After a string of related tweets Tuesday, Trump issued an executive order banning federal contractors from conducting racial sensitivity training, emphasizing his desire to stop “efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex- and race-based ideologies.”
The administration’s war against “race-based ideologies” — code for theories and practices that examine the racism in American history and institutions — started on September 4 when Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russell Vought, at Trump’s behest, released a memo instructing federal agencies to identify any critical race theory and white privilege training within their departmental training plans. According to the memo, the administration’s mission is to stop funding any and all programming that suggests the “United States is an inherently racist or evil country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.”
Now, with Trump’s newly expanded ban on such training sessions, which he has called “divisive, un-American propaganda,” the administration is signaling that Americans, and even those who run the government, don’t need to understand the country’s racist founding — from the genocide of Native Americans to the enslavement of Africans — and the role the past plays in how racism persists today.
On September 17, as part of the White House Conference on American History, Trump went all-in on “defend[ing] the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character,” taking time to denounce the New York Times’s 1619 project that focused on the lasting impact of slavery in America; historian Howard Zinn, who penned the influential A People’s History of the United States, about America’s story from the perspective of the oppressed; and critical race theory.
“They’ve lumped everything together: critical race theory, the 1619 project, whiteness studies, talking about white privilege,” Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and UCLA and Columbia University law professor, told Vox. “What they have in common is they are discourses that refuse to participate in the lie that America has triumphantly overcome its racist history, that everything is behind us. None of these projects accept that it’s all behind us.”
As to why the Trump administration is suddenly up in arms about racial bias training and critical race theory — a framework that’s existed for about 40 years — the OMB memo cites press reports as factors in Trump’s decision. In July, Fox News began airing segments featuring conservative activist Christopher F. Rufo, who in mid-August told Tucker Carlson that he was “declaring a one-man war against critical race theory in the federal government, and I’m not going to stop these investigations until we can abolish it within our public institutions.” He tweeted on August 20, “My goal is simple: to persuade the President of the United States to issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory in the federal government.”
Rufo appeared on Carlson’s show once more on September 2, just two days before the memo’s release. Conservative media celebrated the document as a win; in response to a Breitbart article about the memo, Trump tweeted on September 5: “This is a sickness that cannot be allowed to continue. Please report any sightings so we can quickly extinguish!”
While it might be tempting to brush off the administration’s latest crusade as inconsequential amid a flurry of other happenings — like his intentionally misleading the American public on the Covid-19 pandemic or the rush to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat — Trump’s directive had already taken effect even before the executive order. A scheduled unconscious bias training, programming meant to help workers recognize and tackle discriminatory behavior, at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division has been postponed, according to MarketWatch. Meanwhile, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has urged a Senate Judiciary hearing on Trump’s push to roll back anti-racial bias training for federal government employees.
However, as much as Trump would like to systematically ban critical race theory, it won’t be so easy; the framework is rooted in how a large body of scholars and thinkers see the world. In fact, in a time when systemic injustice has been brought to the fore, the broader public is only just beginning to look at America through such a critical lens.
Critical race theory is a framework for grappling with racial power and white supremacy in America
Critical race theory grew out of a generational response to the ebb and flow of the civil rights movement, according to a seminal 1993 book on the theory, Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment. Though the authors — Mari Matsuda, Charles R. Lawrence III, Richard Delgado, and Kimberlé Crenshaw — don’t pinpoint an exact date for when critical race theory first entered the collective consciousness, the book notes the late 1970s as a time when “the civil rights movement of the 1960s had stalled, and many of its gains were being rolled back.”
That’s when a post-civil rights generation of scholars recognized that while segregation had been modestly repealed, there was still inequality to be addressed. America wanted to frame itself as a society that was committed to equality, but fewer legal battles were being won by civil rights advocates and white people began claiming that remedies for racial discrimination were violating their civil rights.
“Individual law teachers and students committed to racial justice began to meet, to talk, to write, and to engage in political action in an effort to confront and oppose dominant societal and institutional forces that maintained the structures of racism while professing the goal of dismantling racial discrimination,” the authors wrote.
Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, and Crenshaw — who identified themselves as a collective of African American, Chicano, and Asian American “outsider law teachers” — defined critical race theory as a movement and framework that recognizes how racism is “endemic” to American life. In other words, critical race theory rejects the belief that “what’s in the past is in the past” and that the best way to get beyond race is to stop talking about it. Instead, America must reckon with how its values and institutions feed into racism.
Critical race theory was also a lens through which these legal scholars could analyze policies and the law, accepting that “racism has contributed to all contemporary manifestations of group advantage and disadvantage along racial lines,” like differences in income, incarceration rates, health outcomes, housing, educational opportunities, political representation, and military service. The ultimate goal was to eliminate racial oppression as part of the broader mission of ending all kinds of oppression — including that based on class or sexual orientation. According to the authors, it’s not enough to just make adjustments within established hierarchies; it’s necessary to challenge the hierarchies themselves.
The framework is also skeptical of the belief that colorblindness — not seeing race — is a solution to racism. This stems from the belief that race itself is not biological but socially constructed. In other words, race isn’t inherent or natural. “So if race is not biological, how is being colorblind a solution to the problem of racism?” Crenshaw told Vox.
As critical race theory brewed in academic circles for years, its first moment of social action can be traced back to 1981, when students boycotted Harvard Law School to persuade the administration to increase the number of tenured professors of color at the school. When professor Derrick Bell left the law school at the time, there was no one to teach his groundbreaking course “Race, Racism, and American Law.” To fill the gap, students organized an alternative course and invited guest lecturers to teach from Bell’s book by the same name.
This course was just one catalyst that developed critical race theory as a movement — and as a community that served as refuge from a largely white legal field. Critical race theorists would come to adopt ideas from a number of schools of thought — liberalism, Marxism, critical legal studies, feminism, postmodernism — to establish itself.
There have been previous efforts to eliminate critical race theory prior to Trump, with criticism coming from thinkers on both the left and the right. Critics on the left questioned how scholars could theorize something that is a social construction. “We had significant debate with folks who see class as the singular axis of subordination,” Crenshaw told Vox. “But class is not natural. It’s also a construction that has legal ramifications. If you can analyze law and other systems to show how class relations are reproduced, and you call that critical legal theory, then why can’t we pay attention to the way that racial power is reproduced through law?” Conservatives, on the other hand, claimed that remedying problems like segregation and affirmative action was reverse discrimination, and that race-based remedies were overcorrecting and creating new victims — mostly white men who were made to feel that they had lost what they have long had a right to.
Over time, critical race theory has spread to countless disciplines (from education to political science to sociology), looked at race in relation to other constructs (gender, class, and sexuality), and has long crossed international borders. Critical race theory is vast, established, and simply cannot be canceled. Critical race theory is a decades-long response from people who have been historically shut out in all corners of American society.
“To think that you’re going to just go and round it all up is like trying to put your hands around water. It just shows you know nothing about water, to think that all you can do is just round it all up with your arms,” Crenshaw said.
Trump’s assault on critical race theory shouldn’t be ignored
The Trump administration’s attempt to clamp down on critical race theory and unconscious bias training, which are related but in no way the same things, is part of his larger push to convince Americans that there is a conspiracy on the part of academics, activists, and journalists on the left to rewrite history.
“Let’s face it, so many people believe in conspiracy theories now. So now that [Trump] has ginned up all this angst over conspiracies to take away people’s rights, he’s really scaling it up,” Crenshaw said.
According to Crenshaw, at the foundation of many of these theories is a psychological insecurity on the part of white people who fear their racial status is being threatened. Historically, the tendency has been for white people to align with whiteness, even across class lines, Crenshaw noted. “What remains to be seen is whether the resistance to it is nearly as powerful as the tendency toward it.”
Trump drove the tendency home in his address at the White House Conference on American History, acknowledging that he plans to take this fight beyond federal contractors and into America’s schools with an executive order that bolsters “patriotic education.”
“Critical race theory is being forced into our children’s schools, it’s being imposed into workplace trainings, and it’s being deployed to rip apart friends, neighbors, and families,” Trump said. “Teaching this horrible doctrine to our children is a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words.”
Trump wants his critics to accept the status quo — that we already live in a fair and just America — Crenshaw said. Yet critical race theory remains relevant as people in cities and small towns across the country lead ongoing protests for Black lives following the death of George Floyd in late May. Americans and organizations have pledged to become anti-racist, to actively recognize how silence or inaction amounts to complicity. Activists are also pushing for anti-racist education in schools and anti-racism trainings in workplaces, and many would argue that Trump cannot stop the larger moving tide.
“Our failure to cease and desist from linking this present to a problematic past is un-American. It is propaganda [according to Trump],” Crenshaw told Vox. “The best propaganda is something that calls the truth propaganda.”


vox--2020-09-24--Pennsylvania’s naked ballot problem, explained

If you ’ re voting by mail in Pennsylvania this year , and you want your vote to actually count , you need to remember one crucial thing : the secrecy envelope .
Once you fill out the ballot itself , you must place it inside the provided secrecy envelope , which contains no information about your identity .
Then you put the sealed secrecy envelope inside a different postage-paid addressed return envelope , on which you have to sign your name and write your address .
If you forget the secrecy envelope — simply dropping your ballot in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be deemed a “ naked ballot.
” And , according to a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling , election officials will have to throw it out .
The reason for the secrecy envelope , in theory , is to preserve the secret ballot and to prevent potential fraud .
That is : once election officials receive the mail-in ballot , they use the outer envelope to verify that the person voting is registered and hasn ’ t already voted , without being able to see who the vote is for .
Only later @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and counted .
But the risk is that if the rule is implemented very strictly , many voters ’ non-fraudulent ballots will be thrown out on what ’ s essentially a technicality , simply because they misunderstood the rules .
So in the wake of the state Supreme Court ruling on the topic last week , Democrats are calling on the Republican-controlled state legislature to change the law to allow naked ballots to be counted .
Yet GOP legislators do not seem eager to take any such step .
( Both sides suspect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than Republicans , since more Biden supporters have told pollsters they are interested in voting by mail . )
And this could potentially be very consequential .
A Philadelphia official recently raised concerns that as many as 100,000 “ naked ballots ” could be thrown out — and pointed out that Donald Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by just 44,000 votes .
This time around , polls and models show Pennsylvania has a relatively high chance of being the “ tipping point ” state likely to put Trump or Biden over 270 electoral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections expert for the Cook Political Report , asserted that we “ know ” that Pennsylvania ’ s “ rejected ballots will be *heavily* pro-Biden.
” Current polls suggest Biden ’ s lead is probably big enough in enough states that he can overcome this problem — but if polls are underestimating Trump ’ s support or if the race tightens , the fate of naked ballots very well could decide the presidency .
How to properly send back your mail ballot in Pennsylvania As you can see in the image below , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Pennsylvania , they ’ ll receive the ballot itself , and two envelopes .
The simple unaddressed envelope at the top here is the secrecy envelope .
It contains no address , and all it says is “ Official Election Ballot.
” The ballot must be filled out , placed in the secrecy envelope , and sealed .
Then the sealed secrecy envelope must be placed in the addressed , postage-paid envelope seen at the bottom of this image .
On the back of this envelope , the voter must write their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and date their signature , before sealing it and dropping it in the mail .
How Pennsylvania got here Last year , well before the Covid-19 pandemic , Pennsylvania Republicans and Democrats came to an agreement on a bipartisan election reform bill that Gov .
Tom Wolf ( D ) called “ the biggest change to our elections in generations.
” The centerpiece of this new law was a major expansion of mail-in voting .
Previously , Pennsylvania only allowed absentee voting by mail for people who could provide some reason for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vote in-person .
With the new law , no-excuse vote-by-mail was permitted .
The new law stated that mail-in voters “ shall , in secret ... enclose and securely seal ” their ballot in the secrecy envelope , “ which shall be placed in the second ” addressed and signed envelope for mailing .
The call for some sort of “ secrecy sleeve ” isn ’ t unique — 15 other states also require it for absentee or mail voters , according to the National Conference of State Legislatures , including blue states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Washington .
And it wasn ’ t particularly controversial when Gov .
Wolf signed it into law .
Since then , the pandemic has thrown the safety of in-person voting into question , meaning there were far more requests for mail voting than had been expected ( the state anticipated 80,000 to 100,000 requests during the primary , but there were more than 1.8 million ) .
Also , President Trump launched a barrage of criticism against mail voting , saying he doesn ’ t trust it and calling it “ dangerous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a historically unusual amount of partisan polarization around mail voting , as CNN ’ s Harry Enten has written — Democrats are now far more likely to say they intend to vote by mail , and Republicans now saying they ’ re less likely , a new phenomenon .
The natural conclusion here is that counting more marginal mail votes will advantage Democrats , while discarding more marginal mail votes could help Trump and Republicans .
And the parties are responding accordingly .
The naked ballot issue was quickly consumed by legal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the new system was for the state ’ s primary on June 2 .
And with an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots pouring in , local elections boards had to decide what to do with the many naked ballots lacking secrecy envelopes .
Now , the 2019 state law says that if the secrecy envelope contains any “ text , mark , or symbol ” revealing the voter ’ s identity , the ballot should be “ set aside and declared void.
” However , it does not explicitly say that mail-in ballots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out .
There was some vagueness there .
Different election boards handled the situation differently .
The Philadelphia Board of Elections decided it would count naked ballots ( as it had done in previous years when the issue arise with absentee ballots ) , and other counties decided they wouldn ’ t .
This was a primary , so the partisan stakes for the outcome weren ’ t that high .
But both parties were watching closely , in preparation for the general election .
In late June , the legal wrangling started @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican National Committee filed a suit in federal court challenging several policies and practices used in Pennsylvania ’ s primary — among them , the counting of ballots lacking secrecy envelopes .
Trump ’ s federal suit was then put on hold after the Pennsylvania Democratic Party filed their own lawsuit in state court .
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has a Democratic majority , so Democrats likely expected favorable rulings there .
For the most part , they got them , when the justices ruled last week that mail-in ballots can be returned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ postmarked by Election Day and received up to three days later will count .
On the naked ballot issue , though , Republicans triumphed .
In an opinion written by Democratic justice Max Baer , the court decreed that ballots that aren ’ t enclosed in secrecy envelopes will not count .
“ Whatever the wisdom of the requirement , the command that the mail-in elector utilize the secrecy envelope and leave it unblemished by identifying information is neither ambiguous nor unreasonable , ” Baer wrote .
Critics worry that too many legitimate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a minor technicality ” The problem , according to critics , is that in practice , many well-meaning voters will mess this up .
So the main impact of this policy might not be to prevent fraud at all — it might be to throw out tens of thousands of legitimately cast votes .
Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley ( D ) sounded the alarm in a letter to state legislative leaders on Monday .
“ It is the naked ballot ruling that is going to cause electoral chaos , ” Deeley wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of ballots are going to “ not be counted , all because of a minor technicality.
” Estimating how many Pennsylvania ballots will be sent in naked is challenging — the state has never had no-excuse vote-by-mail for a general election before , the pandemic is an added unprecedented situation , and many counties ( including Philadelphia ) didn ’ t keep track of how many naked ballots there were in the primary .
However , Jonathan Lai of the Philadelphia Inquirer , who ’ s been doing excellent coverage of this issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state — Mercer and Lawrence — did keep track , and both found that about 5 percent of total submitted mail ballots lacked a secrecy envelope .
Deeley ’ s letter makes the eyebrow-raising claim that over 100,000 ballots could be thrown out statewide .
This is based on taking the percent of naked ballots Philadelphia received for absentee votes ( before the vote-by-mail reforms ) in the city ’ s 2019 election — 6.4 percent — and extrapolating it statewide .
She also points out that there “ will be many thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very first time ” in the general election .
Deeley and other Democrats have called on state legislative leaders to change the law to let those ballots count .
But Republicans control the state legislature , and so far , they seem unmoved .
So Democrats ’ best hope at this point is an education campaign — to remind mail-in voters that , as the narrator in a new Democratic digital ad says , “ You must place the ballot in the secrecy envelope first for your vote to count.
” Will you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes .
It ’ s essential that all Americans are able to access clear , concise information on what the outcome of the election could mean for their lives , and the lives of their families and communities .
That is our mission at Vox .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone understand this presidential election : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

If you’re voting by mail in Pennsylvania this year, and you want your vote to actually count, you need to remember one crucial thing: the secrecy envelope.
Once you fill out the ballot itself, you must place it inside the provided secrecy envelope, which contains no information about your identity. Then you put the sealed secrecy envelope inside a different postage-paid addressed return envelope, on which you have to sign your name and write your address.
If you forget the secrecy envelope — simply dropping your ballot in the ordinary return envelope — your ballot will be deemed a “naked ballot.” And, according to a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, election officials will have to throw it out.
The reason for the secrecy envelope, in theory, is to preserve the secret ballot and to prevent potential fraud. That is: once election officials receive the mail-in ballot, they use the outer envelope to verify that the person voting is registered and hasn’t already voted, without being able to see who the vote is for. Only later will the secrecy envelope actually be opened and counted.
But the risk is that if the rule is implemented very strictly, many voters’ non-fraudulent ballots will be thrown out on what’s essentially a technicality, simply because they misunderstood the rules.
So in the wake of the state Supreme Court ruling on the topic last week, Democrats are calling on the Republican-controlled state legislature to change the law to allow naked ballots to be counted. Yet GOP legislators do not seem eager to take any such step. (Both sides suspect discarding naked ballots will disadvantage Democrats more than Republicans, since more Biden supporters have told pollsters they are interested in voting by mail.)
And this could potentially be very consequential. A Philadelphia official recently raised concerns that as many as 100,000 “naked ballots” could be thrown out — and pointed out that Donald Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by just 44,000 votes.
This time around, polls and models show Pennsylvania has a relatively high chance of being the “tipping point” state likely to put Trump or Biden over 270 electoral votes. And Dave Wasserman, an elections expert for the Cook Political Report, asserted that we “know” that Pennsylvania’s “rejected ballots will be *heavily* pro-Biden.”
Current polls suggest Biden’s lead is probably big enough in enough states that he can overcome this problem — but if polls are underestimating Trump’s support or if the race tightens, the fate of naked ballots very well could decide the presidency.
How to properly send back your mail ballot in Pennsylvania
As you can see in the image below, when a voter receives a mail-in ballot in Pennsylvania, they’ll receive the ballot itself, and two envelopes.
The simple unaddressed envelope at the top here is the secrecy envelope. It contains no address, and all it says is “Official Election Ballot.” The ballot must be filled out, placed in the secrecy envelope, and sealed.
Then the sealed secrecy envelope must be placed in the addressed, postage-paid envelope seen at the bottom of this image. On the back of this envelope, the voter must write their address, print and sign their name, and date their signature, before sealing it and dropping it in the mail.
How Pennsylvania got here
Last year, well before the Covid-19 pandemic, Pennsylvania Republicans and Democrats came to an agreement on a bipartisan election reform bill that Gov. Tom Wolf (D) called “the biggest change to our elections in generations.”
The centerpiece of this new law was a major expansion of mail-in voting. Previously, Pennsylvania only allowed absentee voting by mail for people who could provide some reason for why they couldn’t appear to vote in-person. With the new law, no-excuse vote-by-mail was permitted.
The new law stated that mail-in voters “shall, in secret ... enclose and securely seal” their ballot in the secrecy envelope, “which shall be placed in the second” addressed and signed envelope for mailing.
The call for some sort of “secrecy sleeve” isn’t unique — 15 other states also require it for absentee or mail voters, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, including blue states like New Jersey, New York, and Washington (though it’s not necessarily the case that votes in these states without a secrecy envelope won’t be counted). And it wasn’t particularly controversial when Gov. Wolf signed it into law.
Since then, the pandemic has thrown the safety of in-person voting into question, meaning there were far more requests for mail voting than had been expected (the state anticipated 80,000 to 100,000 requests during the primary, but there were more than 1.8 million). Also, President Trump launched a barrage of criticism against mail voting, saying he doesn’t trust it and calling it “dangerous for this country.”
This has led to a historically unusual amount of partisan polarization around mail voting, as CNN’s Harry Enten has written — Democrats are now far more likely to say they intend to vote by mail, and Republicans now saying they’re less likely, a new phenomenon.
The natural conclusion here is that counting more marginal mail votes will advantage Democrats, while discarding more marginal mail votes could help Trump and Republicans. And the parties are responding accordingly.
The naked ballot issue was quickly consumed by legal wrangling
Pennsylvania’s first attempt with the new system was for the state’s primary on June 2. And with an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots pouring in, local elections boards had to decide what to do with the many naked ballots lacking secrecy envelopes.
Now, the 2019 state law says that if the secrecy envelope contains any “text, mark, or symbol” revealing the voter’s identity, the ballot should be “set aside and declared void.” However, it does not explicitly say that mail-in ballots lacking a secrecy envelope should be thrown out. There was some vagueness there.
Different election boards handled the situation differently. The Philadelphia Board of Elections decided it would count naked ballots (as it had done in previous years when the issue arise with absentee ballots), and other counties decided they wouldn’t. This was a primary, so the partisan stakes for the outcome weren’t that high. But both parties were watching closely, in preparation for the general election.
In late June, the legal wrangling started. Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee filed a suit in federal court challenging several policies and practices used in Pennsylvania’s primary — among them, the counting of ballots lacking secrecy envelopes. Trump’s federal suit was then put on hold after the Pennsylvania Democratic Party filed their own lawsuit in state court.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has a Democratic majority, so Democrats likely expected favorable rulings there. For the most part, they got them, when the justices ruled last week that mail-in ballots can be returned in drop boxes, and that ballots postmarked by Election Day and received up to three days later will count.
On the naked ballot issue, though, Republicans triumphed. In an opinion written by Democratic justice Max Baer, the court decreed that ballots that aren’t enclosed in secrecy envelopes will not count. “Whatever the wisdom of the requirement, the command that the mail-in elector utilize the secrecy envelope and leave it unblemished by identifying information is neither ambiguous nor unreasonable,” Baer wrote.
Critics worry that too many legitimate votes will be thrown out on “a minor technicality”
The problem, according to critics, is that in practice, many well-meaning voters will mess this up. So the main impact of this policy might not be to prevent fraud at all — it might be to throw out tens of thousands of legitimately cast votes.
Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley (D) sounded the alarm in a letter to state legislative leaders on Monday. “It is the naked ballot ruling that is going to cause electoral chaos,” Deeley wrote. She argues that tens of thousands of ballots are going to “not be counted, all because of a minor technicality.”
Estimating how many Pennsylvania ballots will be sent in naked is challenging — the state has never had no-excuse vote-by-mail for a general election before, the pandemic is an added unprecedented situation, and many counties (including Philadelphia) didn’t keep track of how many naked ballots there were in the primary.
However, Jonathan Lai of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who’s been doing excellent coverage of this issue, reports that two counties in the state — Mercer and Lawrence — did keep track, and both found that about 5 percent of total submitted mail ballots lacked a secrecy envelope.
Deeley’s letter makes the eyebrow-raising claim that over 100,000 ballots could be thrown out statewide. This is based on taking the percent of naked ballots Philadelphia received for absentee votes (before the vote-by-mail reforms) in the city’s 2019 election — 6.4 percent — and extrapolating it statewide. She also points out that there “will be many thousands more voting through the mail for the very first time” in the general election.
Deeley and other Democrats have called on state legislative leaders to change the law to let those ballots count. But Republicans control the state legislature, and so far, they seem unmoved. So Democrats’ best hope at this point is an education campaign — to remind mail-in voters that, as the narrator in a new Democratic digital ad says, “You must place the ballot in the secrecy envelope first for your vote to count.”