The conventional wisdom has been that the GOP was punished for running bad candidates in key elections.
Facebook-turned-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent in excess of $400 million on "COVID election grants." Naturally, those grants were distributed in a highly disproportionate way such that a) the largest grants went to areas of swing states with a high concentration of Democratic voters and b) the money came with strings attached, such that Democratic Party activists were allowed to run "Get out the vote" operations directly from ostensibly nonpartisan local election offices.
Since 2020, at least 17 states have passed laws making private funding of elections illegal.
You will be unsurprised to learn that, aside from his previous history working for radical left-wing groups such as People for the American Way, the founder of ERIC was also the founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, one of two groups responsible for distributing Zuckerberg's dubious election grants.
It's also worth noting that international observers who police elections in inchoate democracies have long considered elections neither free nor fair if they take place in a propaganda-laden news environment.
Regardless, the disinformation industrial complex is literally an existential threat-not just to fair elections but to the country itself.
The Republican Party, if it wants to survive and help restore both sanity and a balance of power in this country, has to enlist ordinary voters in campaigns to effect policy changes at the local level as well as federal that ensure fair elections and open debate.
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