Also worthy of note is Cambridge Analytica's trolling of Nigeria's 2015 presidential election:<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/04/cambridge-analytica-used-violent-video-to-try-to-influence-nigerian-election" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/04/cambridge-an...</a><p>Amoral doesn't begin to describe these people.
<i>"SCL/CA has never undertaken voter suppression and there is no evidence to the contrary."</i><p>Hilarious - like the guilty parties in 50 years of cop/detective/courtroom/true-crime shows, he doesn't just stop with "we didn't do it" but feels compelled to tack on the part about "...and you don't have any evidence we did it!"
> They talked about ‘honey traps’ that used Ukrainian prostitutes and boasted of secret teams who “ghosted in, did the work, ghosted out” of countries, and “put information into the bloodstream of the internet… with no branding, so it’s unattributable, untrackable”<p>You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and write lies?<p><a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/just-go-on-the-internet-and-tell-lies" rel="nofollow">https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/just-go-on-the-internet-and-t...</a>
This was a bit of an eye opener on how much information Robert Mueller's team has and could be an indication of what is in the many sealed indictments in the DC citcuit given he flipped Sam Patton.<p>On the Brexit side it's probably time to stop and step back to investigate whether the vote was unduly influenced with foreign cash or interferance.
The story is written in long form, so it's difficult to figure out what methods of "voter suppression" were used. I hesitate to cry "fake news" here, but only barely.<p>Typically, in my experience, "voter suppression" refers to techniques designed to prevent certain targeted groups from voting -- things like voter ID laws are often accused of having this motive, or closing polling stations, or limiting polling hours, or refusing to protect workers from discipline for taking the time to vote. These are almost always structural in nature; creating barriers that prevent people from voting.<p>It appears that the voter suppression they are referring to is a completely different beast -- they reference this [1] Bloomberg article, which says:<p>> “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.<p>These are not "voter suppression" in the sense used above; this is just dirty campaigning; or arguably even just campaigning. For a long time the fact of the matter is that a campaign, especially a presidential campaign, is trying to increase the turnout of your supporters, and decrease the turnout of your opponent's supporters -- nobody is convincing anybody to change sides; everyone is just trying to convince people to not vote. As long as it is done through non-structural means, convincing people not to vote is a perfectly reasonable persuasion technique, and it pains me to see the marketing hacks at Cambridge Analytica elevated to some sort of gurus that can magically hypnotize people.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-th...</a>
> Nix ... engineered a highly successful grassroots campaign to "increase apathy" so that young Afro-Caribbeans would not vote.<p>1. He did this via speech. Free speech is a good thing even when the speech is bad, even when spoken by foreigners, even when it's illegal.<p>2. To the extent that this campaign succeeds it will tend to remove voters that are a) more suggestive, b) more prone to apathy. That would seem to improve the overall quality of the voting pool.<p>The drive to get everyone to vote seems to be more about justifying the result than improving it.