Happy Friday, muggles. We want to highlight the U.S. women’s national baseball team. You read that correctly: baseball. The team doesn’t train regularly together, but does practice for a few weeks when there are big competitions. The Women’s Baseball World Cup had to be postponed this year due to the coronavirus, but they’re hoping for a full program in 2021, which includes the Olympics. Here’s more stories worth mentioning that might have been pitched outside your strike zone. 

Big data may be causing big problems in presidential campaigns

Thu Oct 22

While using big data in a presidential campaign may not be a novel concept, the way it’s being used just might. In 2012, the Obama campaign was revered for using big data to rally voters. Then in 2016, the Trump campaign used it, in their own words, to deter people from voting. This led to ~60,000 of those targeted in Florida not showing up to vote. 

How were these eligible voters deterred?

• The 2016 Trump campaign analyzed large sets of data from Facebook posts and credit card purchases, all received from Cambridge Analytica (the data firm that collapsed after being exposed for improperly obtaining personal data from Facebook)
• This data was used in a machine learning model to identify who, in the Miami-Dade county of Florida, could be deterred from voting (most often consisting of wavering Hillary Clinton supporters)
• The resulting target audience was shown advertisements, disinformation campaigns, and other shady messaging to confuse voters and increase indecision — for example, a video ad that made it seem like Michelle Obama was criticizing Clinton

Many marked for deterrence were Black. Is race a factor?

It’s unfortunately unclear without knowing if race was included in the algorithm itself. That said, the campaign selected more than 100,000 Black voters as prime “deterrence” candidates (which is about half of all the Black voters in the county) while non-Black voters were selected at half that rate. In the end, the increased White voter turnout and decreased Black voter turnout from the “deterrence” strategy made a real difference for Trump, who won in the state by 112,911 votes in 2016.

And Black voter turnout is still a big concern in 2020.

• In this same Miami-Dade county, Black voters’ mail-in ballots are twice as likely to be rejected compared to white voters'. 
• In September, a Florida court ruled that ex-felons must pay all fines and fees from their cases before being allowed to vote — and 70% of the prison population in Florida is Black.

SOURCES: Miami Herald, Sun Sentinel, Miami Herald, The Washington Post, The New York Times

Chilean voters decide to draft a whole new Constitution

Sun Oct 25

Imagine the U.S. deciding to scrap its 1787 constitution to script an all-new one. Well, that’s what the people of Chile have decided, with 80% of voters in favor of getting rid of the old Pinochet-era document.

The original constitution was approved in 1980 during a military dictatorship, and was mostly written by U.S.-educated neoliberal economists. The result meant that the private sector played a huge role in state affairs and services; schools, pensions, and healthcare were partially privatized. It worked in terms of economic growth, but while Chile’s GDP grew exponentially, people started to realize that power and money were becoming concentrated to the political and business elite, and income inequality was increasing in tandem. In fact, last year, about a quarter of total income in Chile went to one percent of the population.

What sparked this major vote?

The movement started small, with protests a year ago over a four-cent increase for subway prices. But these protests grew into a larger call to end social inequalities. 

What issues are likely to be addressed in the new constitution?

The first will be to elect a new body of representatives to draft the document — and there is a requirement for gender parity. 👏 Basic rights that have also been talked about include:

• Free higher education
• Healthcare 
• Expanding public welfare

Chileans are set to vote on the draft of their new constitution in 2022.

SOURCES: The New York Times, NPR, GZERO Media

• A court in Belarus has labeled the main source of opposition protest information as “extremist.” There have been violent protests in Belarus since the disputed election in August. Now, the court has ordered the government to take action and limit access to the resources on the Nexta Live message channel on the Telegram app. The government is also threatening to charge individuals who share information from the app.
• Since President Duda’s re-election in Poland this summer, his Law and Justice party has been trying to reshape the country’s private media landscape. The government claims just a few international groups hold too much power and want the media in Poland to be Polish. Critics say it’s an attempt to diminish independent journalism.