Podcasts Technology Voters Turned Away: How "Fair and Free" are U.S. Elections Really?

Voters Turned Away: How "Fair and Free" are U.S. Elections Really?

Published: Sept. 28, 2016, 4 a.m.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker is joined by Nantina Vgontzas, Sociology PhD student at New York University, and Cassandra Fairbanks, Sputnik News reporter, to discuss if elections in the United States are really as free and fair as the establishment would like to have us believe.
Although the U.S. regularly lectures other countries on the need for fair elections, there are serious flaws in the U.S. voting system that are compounded by inequality. This has serious implications for how people view democracy in the United States - or the lack thereof.

Google has released its new instant messaging app called Allo. The company says it is revolutionary, but Edward Snowden has warned people against using the app. Is Google Allo the perfect tool for the surveillance state? Becker is joined by Professor Bryan Ford, who leads the Decentralized/Distributed Systems lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

Israel has teamed up with Facebook to monitor what it says are comments on social media that incite violence. But as the arrest of seven journalists from the Shehab News Agency and Quds News Network this week shows, the relationship is really about undermining the Palestinian movement in general, and any kind of criticism of Israel’s apartheid policies.