Miles Parks

Pick any election truism, and 2021's elections earlier this month may have killed it.

Making voting easy is a death sentence for the Republican Party? Nope.

Mail voting is a slam-dunk for Democrats? Not so fast.

For anyone hoping that voting and elections post-2020 would become less polarized, the recent Take Back Virginia rally outside Richmond was not a good sign.

It opened with those in attendance pledging allegiance to a flag that was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the building to stop the official counting of Electoral College votes in the belief that they could prevent Joe Biden from becoming president.

By 2028, Bradley Tusk wants every American to be able to vote on their phones.

It's a lofty goal, and one that most cybersecurity experts scoff at. But it's a quest that the venture capitalist and former political insider continues to chip away at.

For years leading up to the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump was clear: If he lost, it would be because of voter fraud.

Ahead of California's recall election Tuesday, for which ballots were mailed to all 22 million registered voters in the state, he made a similar baseless declaration.

Voting officials nationwide are still grappling with a new reality after the 2020 election that includes death threats, conspiracy theories and legal penalties for making what were once regarded as minor mistakes, but on Wednesday, a bipartisan group of attorneys announced an organization aimed at helping them fight back.

The Election Official Legal Defense Network is the first organization of its kind aimed at providing pro-bono legal help and advice for election officials who up until a year ago did not really need it.

As Democrats maneuver to pass voting rights legislation through Congress, some high-profile members of the party have expressed an openness to one GOP-backed policy they have long opposed: voter ID requirements.

It's been more than nine months since Election Day 2020, but as the nation's top election officials met in Iowa over the weekend, it was clear the shadow of that race will stretch far into the future of American democracy.

In 2021, Ben Shapiro rules Facebook.

The conservative podcast host and author's personal Facebook page has more followers than The Washington Post, and he drives an engagement machine unparalleled by anything else on the world's biggest social networking site.

An NPR analysis of social media data found that over the past year, stories published by the site Shapiro founded, The Daily Wire, received more likes, shares and comments on Facebook than any other news publisher by a wide margin.

To Matt Masterson, the review of 2020 ballots from Maricopa County, Ariz., that's underway is "performance art" or "a clown show," and definitely "a waste of taxpayer money."

But it's not an audit.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers' biggest fear as a parent isn't gun violence, or drunk driving, or anything related to the pandemic.

It's social media.

And specifically, the new sense of "brokenness" she hears about in children in her district, and nationwide. Teen depression and suicide rates have been rising for over a decade, and she sees social apps as a major reason.

CNN. ABC News. The New York Times. Fox News.

Those are the publishers of four of the five most popular Facebook posts of articles about the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine this week. They're ranked 2 to 5 in total interactions, according to data from the tracking tool CrowdTangle.

The No. 1 posting, however, isn't from a news organization. Or a government official. Or a public health expert.

The odds of dying after getting a COVID-19 vaccine are virtually nonexistent.

According to recent data from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, you're three times more likely to get struck by lightning.

But you might not know that from looking at your social media feed.

Darren Linvill thought he was prepared for 2020 and the firehose of false information that would come flooding down on the United States during an election year in which the country was bitterly divided.

Linvill is a researcher at Clemson University in South Carolina and he tracks disinformation networks associated with Russia.