Month: July 2020

It’s going to be a record year for voting by mail in the U.S. election and that has raised security concerns about each step of the process.  
 
But election officials say they have systems in place to make voting by mail a success even as health concerns about voting during the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing states to expand their current vote-by-mail options.
 
“Somewhere between 90 million and 105 million ballots might come through the mail,” said Eddie Perez, global director of technology development at the OSET Institute, a nonprofit election technology organization. “If what we’re seeing in other primary elections is any guide, it’s probably safe to estimate that somewhere between 65% and 75% of all ballots cast in the November election might come by mail.”
“That’s a very, very significant volume of mail,” he added.
 
To get an idea of how significant, the share of voters who cast ballots via mail-in methods increased nearly threefold between 1996 and 2016 – from 7.8% to nearly 21%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the Census Bureau’s voter supplement data. Of course, the total number of voters in each election wasn’t the same, and isn’t known for 2020, so the comparison is imprecise. But the leap from nearly 21% to 75% or even 65% of all votes coming by mail is significant.
 
Numerous logistical and security challenges must be met to make sure voting by mail goes smoothly. Of particular concern is the security of states’ voter registration databases, which could be a rich target for hackers.  
 
Still, election experts say that the mail-in voting process has checks throughout, enhanced by technology and election software, starting with the ballot sent to the voter.  
 
“Sometimes you hear talk as if blank ballots are simply being sent out into the world almost willy-nilly without control,” Perez said. “And that’s simply not the case. There’s always a tight association between a voter whose eligibility has already been verified and the step of actually sending that voter a ballot.”  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 7 MB480p | 11 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 28 MB1080p | 50 MBOriginal | 67 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioRunning digital traps
 
Once the voter mails in or drops off the ballot, the county’s voting software system goes to work. Digital scanners take images of the ballot envelope to make sure the voter’s signature on the outside matches the one the county has on file. Barcoded information on the ballots is scanned and cross-referenced with the voter registration record.  
 
“The county always knows who has been issued a ballot, is that indeed an eligible voter, is every single ballot received coming from an eligible voter,” Perez said. “Once those traps have been run, there’s a critical process verifying that the ballot and the voter’s name on the ballot actually came from the voter.”  
 
A digital scanner scans the ballots and counting begins. Any anomaly – a missing or wrong signature, a stray mark – is sent to a team to review.   
 
Neal Kelley is the registrar of voters for Orange County, California. He expects to start processing mailed-in ballots 30 days before the official election day.  
 
“There’s multiple times those ballots run through that automation because it’s like a factory floor,” he said. “It’s quality control standards, because we have to look at the signature more closely.”  
 
Voters can track their ballot’s progress, much like the way they can track a package being delivered – via text messages or a ballot tracking app, Kelley said.  
 
“It actually gives you more data than your Amazon package,” he said. FILE – Mail-in ballots for the 2016 U.S. general election are seen at the Salt Lake County Government Center, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Nov. 1, 2016.Uncounted mail-in ballots
 
But voting by mail isn’t a panacea. Not all who vote get their ballots counted. In California’s March 2020 primary, about 100,000 mail-in ballots – about 1.5% of the 7 million turned in – did not get counted, according to the Associated Press.
 
Common problems with mail-in ballots include those mailed too late, voters failing to sign ballot envelopes and voters’ signatures not matching the ones the county has on file.  
 
Reforms around the country have addressed these problems. This year, California has extended the window for when mail ballots need to arrive to be counted: 17 days after Election Day. If there is a problem with a ballot, such as problem matching the ballot’s signature with the one on file, counties must contact voters to see if they can fix the problem.  
 
But even with those reforms, Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, said she worries about one group – young and new voters.  
 
“They have three strikes against them,” she said. “They are unfamiliar with voting. They are not very familiar with how the U.S. Postal Service works. And they’re not used to making a signature. They don’t write checks. They don’t sign checks. So you put all those three together, and it means we have a lot of outreach and education work.”
 
That’s what election officials are doing now, racing the clock, checking voter registrations, sending mailers to get the word out about how to vote by mail.  
 
Not everything will go smoothly, they say, and the public may have to be patient. Election results may not be known for weeks, perhaps not until early December.  
 
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 Kenya’s Ministry of Health says the number of mental health cases have jumped dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the country’s mental health taskforce, 25% of coronavirus outpatients and 40% of in-hospital patients suffer from mental health issues such as depression. But more Kenyans are seeking help and speaking up about it. Mohammed Yusuf reports.Camera: Mohammed Yusuf   
Producer:  Rod James 
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The World Health Organization warns COVID-19 is continuing to accelerate globally at breathtaking speed but says basic public health measures – if followed — can control its spread and turn the pandemic around.The number of coronavirus cases globally has roughly doubled in the past six weeks.  More than 16 million cases of the virus have been reported to the World Health Organization, including more than 640,000 deaths.The Americas is the most seriously affected region, with the United States topping the number of infections at more than four million cases and over 143,000 deaths.WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said many lessons have been learned since the pandemic was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30.The most important, he says, is that those countries that have applied basic health measures are containing the virus.  He said finding, isolating, testing and tracing contacts as well as social distancing and wearing masks can suppress transmission and save lives.“Where these measures are followed, cases go down. Where they are not, cases go up.  Countries and communities that have followed this advice carefully and consistently have done well,” he said.Tedros said countries such as Cambodia, New Zealand, Rwanda and Thailand have succeeded in preventing large-scale outbreaks by following this advice.  He said other countries, including Canada, China, and Germany have brought large outbreaks under control by applying these basic measures.Executive Director of WHO Health Emergencies Mike Ryan said countries that have implemented control measures have suppressed the virus but when those measures are lifted, the virus returns.“What is clear is that pressure on the virus successfully pushes the numbers down, release pressure on the virus and the numbers can creep back up…Every single country where pressure has been lifted on the virus, where the virus is still at the community level, there has been a jump back in cases,” he said.WHO officials agree that continuing transmission of COVID-19 and its resurgence in countries where it had been controlled is worrying.  However, they say countries can turn the pandemic around by maintaining pressure on the virus.
 
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Social media has become the target of a dueling attack ad campaign being waged online by the sitting president and his election rival. They’re shooting the messenger while giving it lots of money.
President Donald Trump has bought hundreds of messages on Facebook to accuse its competitor, Twitter, of trying to stifle his voice and influence the November election.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden has spent thousands of dollars advertising on Facebook with a message of his own: In dozens of ads on the platform, he’s asked supporters to sign a petition calling on Facebook to remove inaccurate statements, specifically those from Trump.  
The major social media companies are navigating a political minefield as they try to minimize domestic misinformation and rein in foreign actors from manipulating their sites as they did in the last U.S. presidential election. Their new actions — or in some cases, lack of action — have triggered explosive, partisan responses, ending their glory days as self-described neutral platforms.  
Even as the two presidential campaigns dump millions of dollars every week into Facebook and Google ads that boost their exposure, both are also using online ads to criticize the tech platforms for their policies. Trump is accusing Twitter and Snapchat of interfering in this year’s election. Biden has sent multiple letters to Facebook and attacked the company for policies that allow politicians, Trump specifically, to freely make false claims on its site. Biden is paying Facebook handsomely to show ads that accuse Facebook of posing a “threat” to democracy.
Meantime Trump is paying Facebook to run ads trashing the medium he uses like none other, Twitter.
“Twitter is interfering in the 2020 Election by attempting to SILENCE your President,” claimed one of nearly 600 ads Trump’s campaign placed on Facebook.
It’s “a huge departure from 2016,” said Emerson Brooking, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a Washington think-tank. “If you were leading the Trump or Clinton campaign, you weren’t writing letters to Facebook all day long. It wasn’t so much a central campaign issue. Now it seems like it very much is.”  
Americans, after all, are on high alert about the platforms’ policies after discovering that Russian trolls posted divisive messages, created fake political events and even used rubles to buy Facebook ads intended for U.S. audiences in the 2016 election. Research already shows the Kremlin is at it again.  
Since the last presidential election, Facebook and Twitter  have banned voting-related misinformation and vowed to identify and shut down inauthentic networks of accounts run by domestic or foreign troublemakers. Before this year’s election, Twitter banned political ads altogether, a decision a company spokesman told the AP it stands behind. And Facebook, along with Google, began disclosing campaign ad spending while banning non-Americans from buying U.S. political ads.  
Facebook didn’t comment for this story.  
But calls to deflate Big Tech’s ballooning power have only grown louder from both Democrats and Republicans, even though the two parties are targeting different companies for different reasons to rally supporters.  
Those politics will no doubt be on full display Wednesday, when four big tech CEOs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook, testify to a House Judiciary Committee panel as part of a congressional investigation into the tech industry’s dominance.
Biden has focused on Facebook, with a #MoveFastFixIt campaign that admonishes Facebook for not doing enough to protect users from foreign meddling or being duped by falsehoods, particularly those spread by Trump about mail-in voting.
His campaign just last month spent nearly $10,000 to run ads scolding the company on its own platform.  
“We could lie to you, but we won’t,” says one of Biden’s ads. “Donald Trump and his Republican allies, on the other hand, spend MILLIONS on Facebook ads like this one that spread dangerous misinformation about everything from how to vote to the legitimacy of our democratic process.”
Despite criticizing Facebook, Biden’s campaign said it’s still purchasing millions of dollars in Facebook ads because it’s one of the few ways to counter Trump’s false posts — since Facebook won’t fact check him.  
The ads are also a cheap and effective way for the campaigns to rally supporters who are unhappy with the platforms, said Kathleen Searles, a Louisiana State University political communications professor.
“We do know that anger can be very motivating — it motivates them to get their name on an email list, or donate $20,” Searles said. “What better way to get people angry than a faceless platform?”
While Biden has focused on Facebook, Trump has honed in on Twitter, and occasionally Snapchat, with his campaign running online ads that accuse both companies of “interfering” in the election.
 
Twitter became a Trump campaign target after the company rolled out its first fact check of his inaccurate tweet about voting in late May. Twitter has since applied similar labels to five other Trump tweets, including two that called mail-in ballots “fraudulent” and predicted that “mail boxes will be robbed” if voting doesn’t take place in person.
Trump responded by signing a largely symbolic executive order challenging Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides protections from lawsuits for internet companies that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech online.
“It’s preposterous that Silicon Valley, the bastion of diversity and liberalism, is terrified of intellectual diversity and conservative voices,” Trump deputy national press secretary Ken Farnaso said in a statement.  
Republican leaders have since joined in railing against Twitter.  
This month, Rep. Jim Jordan, a firebrand conservative from Ohio, demanded Twitter hand over a full accounting, including emails, of how it decided to fact check the president. Saying “big tech is out of control,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz joined dozens of conservative media outlets, Trump staffers and politicians who waged a two-day campaign last month urging their Twitter followers to ditch the platform and join Parler, a social media app that does not moderate its content as closely.  
Facebook could be next for a face-off with the president and his allies now that the company has vowed to label any posts — Trump’s included — that violate its rules against voting misinformation or hate speech. Facebook has yet to take such action, though.
“Social media censorship is going to be a very potent campaign issue,” Brooking said. “And there’s going to be incentive from a number of folks running for office in 2020 to push the envelope still further, to try to invite more and more social media moderation because they see it as a potent political stunt.” 
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The world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccine study got underway Monday with the first of 30,000 planned volunteers helping to test shots created by the U.S. government — one of several candidates in the final stretch of the global vaccine race.
There’s still no guarantee that the experimental vaccine, developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna Inc., will really protect.  
The needed proof: Volunteers won’t know if they’re getting the real shot or a dummy version. After two doses, scientists will closely track which group experiences more infections as they go about their daily routines, especially in areas where the virus still is spreading unchecked.
 
“Unfortunately for the United States of America, we have plenty of infections right now” to get that answer, NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci recently told The Associated Press.
Moderna said the vaccination was done in Savannah, Georgia, the first site to get underway among more than seven dozen trial sites scattered around the country.
Several other vaccines made by China and by Britain’s Oxford University earlier this month began smaller final-stage tests in Brazil and other hard-hit countries.  
But the U.S. requires its own tests of any vaccine that might be used in the country and has set a high bar: Every month through fall, the government-funded COVID-19 Prevention Network will roll out a new study of a leading candidate — each one with 30,000 newly recruited volunteers.  
The massive studies aren’t just to test if the shots work — they’re needed to check each potential vaccine’s safety. And following the same study rules will let scientists eventually compare all the shots.
Next up in August, the final study of the Oxford shot begins, followed by plans to test a candidate from Johnson & Johnson in September and Novavax in October — if all goes according to schedule. Pfizer Inc. plans its own 30,000-person study this summer.
That’s a stunning number of people needed to roll up their sleeves for science. But in recent weeks, more than 150,000 Americans filled out an online registry  signaling interest, said Dr. Larry Corey, a virologist with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle, who helps oversee the study sites.
“These trials need to be multigenerational, they need to be multiethnic, they need to reflect the diversity of the United States population,” Corey told a vaccine meeting last week. He stressed that it’s especially important to ensure enough Black and Hispanic participants as those populations are hard-hit by COVID-19.
It normally takes years to create a new vaccine from scratch, but scientists are setting speed records this time around, spurred by knowledge that vaccination is the world’s best hope against the pandemic. The coronavirus wasn’t even known to exist before late December, and vaccine makers sprang into action Jan. 10 when China shared the virus’ genetic sequence.
Just 65 days later in March, the NIH-made vaccine was tested in people. The first recipient is encouraging others to volunteer now.
“We all feel so helpless right now. There’s very little that we can do to combat this virus. And being able to participate in this trial has given me a sense of, that I’m doing something,” Jennifer Haller of Seattle told the AP. “Be prepared for a lot of questions from your friends and family about how it’s going, and a lot of thank-you’s.”
That first-stage study that included Haller and 44 others showed the shots revved up volunteers’ immune systems in ways scientists expect will be protective, with some minor side effects such as a brief fever, chills and pain at the injection site. Early testing of other leading candidates have had similarly encouraging results.
If everything goes right with the final studies, it still will take months for the first data to trickle in from the Moderna test, followed by the Oxford one.  
Governments around the world are trying to stockpile millions of doses of those leading candidates so if and when regulators approve one or more vaccines, immunizations can begin immediately. But the first available doses will be rationed, presumably reserved for people at highest risk from the virus.  
“We’re optimistic, cautiously optimistic” that the vaccine will work and that “toward the end of the year” there will be data to prove it, Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of Massachusetts-based Moderna, told a House subcommittee last week.
Until then, Haller, the volunteer vaccinated back in March, wears a mask in public and takes the same distancing precautions advised for everyone — while hoping that one of the shots in the pipeline pans out.
“I don’t know what the chances are that this is the exact right vaccine. But thank goodness that there are so many others out there battling this right now,” she said.
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More than one million people in Phnom Penh face the risk of increased flooding and loss of livelihoods as wetlands in the Cambodian capital are destroyed to build apartments and industries, human rights groups warned on Monday. Developments – including the ING City township – will reduce the Tompoun wetlands to less than a tenth of its 1,500 hectares (5.8 sq miles), and lead to the eviction of more than 1,000 families who live on its edge, activists said in a report. It would also impoverish thousands of families who farm and fish in the wetlands in the city of 1.5 million people. “The wetlands sustain local communities and play a vital role in Phnom Penh’s waste management and flood prevention,” said the report from Equitable Cambodia, LICADHO, the Cambodian Youth Network and land rights group Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT). “Millions of Cambodians will likely be affected by the potentially devastating impacts of destroying the wetlands.” Phnom Penh, situated on the banks of the Tonle Sap, Mekong and Bassac rivers, is already highly vulnerable to floods, particularly in the rainy season from June to October. Lakes and wetlands such as floodplains, mangroves and marshes regulate water flow, minimize flooding, purify water and replenish groundwater, said Diane Archer, a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Bangkok. “City authorities should recognize wetlands as an important resource to be protected and integrated into the urban environment,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Yet in many cities, expansion takes place without the necessary enforcement of urban planning or in-depth environmental impact assessments,” she said. Across rapidly expanding Asian cities, demand for land for housing and office blocks has put greater pressure over land. Cambodia has endorsed the international convention on wetlands protection, yet about half its wetlands have disappeared over the last 15 years, according to conservation group Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT). In Phnom Penh, 15 of 25 lakes have been infilled, with about a third of the Tompoun wetland infilled so far, STT said. Dredging the more than 100 million tons of sand needed for infilling poses added risks to communities and the environment, said Eang Vuthy, executive director of Equitable Cambodia. “Given that millions will be affected, in-depth studies and public consultations are needed,” he said. A spokesman for the government said the reclamation was necessary for the city’s development, and that an environment impact assessment had been done. “A canal is being built to divert excess water, and there is a wastewater treatment plant. Some relocations are necessary, but they have been given ample time to move,” said Phay Siphan. In Phnom Penh, nearly 4,000 families were evicted in 2007-08 from their homes around Boeung Kak – “boeung” is lake in Khmer – as it was filled in for a business district. Authorities must now prioritize public interest, said Vuthy. “A balanced model that protects the rights of people and the environment with urban development is possible, but only with meaningful consultation and research,” he said. 
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Australia’s competition regulator has launched court proceedings against Alphabet’s Google for allegedly misleading consumers about the expanded use of personal data for targeted advertising.The case by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in Federal Court said Google did not explicitly get consent nor properly inform consumers about a 2016 move to combine personal information in Google accounts with activities on non-Google websites that use its technology.The regulator said this practice allowed the Alphabet Inc unit to link the names and other ways to identify consumers with their behavior elsewhere on the internet.Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The move by the ACCC comes amid heightened attention in much of the world on data privacy. U.S. and European lawmakers have recently stepped up their focus on how tech companies treat user data because of privacy concerns.”We are taking this action because we consider Google misled Australian consumers about what it planned to do with large amounts of their personal information, including internet activity on websites not connected to Google,” ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement.The regulator alleges Google used the combined data to boost targeted advertising – a key source of income – and that it did not make clear to consumers about changes in its privacy policy.The regulator did not say what it wanted the court to do, adding that it has filed the claim on a “confidential basis pending claims by Google.”
 
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