Jon Stewart took shots at Trump’s pressure to push through a voter ID bill that “The Daily Show” host says ironically misses the real threat to the system.
On Wednesday’s episode of “The Weekly Show,” Stewart lamented that the president’s pressure to push the SAVE America Act through legislation was ignoring the more prominent threat to the voting public – the rise of misinformation through social media.
“It’s very clear that the irony of this is that the larger threat to our electoral system, and our American democracy, is the manner in which social media can spread these tropes and these inaccuracies to a really much wider group of people and light these fires,” Stewart said. “We’re utterly ignoring the actual threat.”
The SAVE America Act is a strict new voter registration plan backed by right-wing members of the House and Senate. The bill would require citizens to show and display photo ID before voting in federal elections. They would also need to show proof of citizenship to register to vote.
On Wednesday, the Senate voted 51-48 to open up discussions about the bill.
Platformer editor Casey Newton explained to Stewart on the show how social media misinformation can snowball – and how the elites in power work to use it to curry favor on various issues. The example they touched on was Georgia voting and how the narrative of them pulling ballots out of nowhere spiraled into movements like Stop the Steal.
“There’s something really emotional about seeing something like that on social media – somebody’s just pulled a bucket of votes and seems like something nefarious is happening,” Newton said. “Depending on what caption the aggrieved user might put underneath it, all of the sudden it’s going to start getting that engagement. The algorithm is going to say ‘hey this seems pretty interesting, we’re going to show this to a lot more people.’”
He added: “Over time, the elites of the Republican party, whoever can sort of use this to their advantage, is going to say ‘ah ha! This is something that I can sort of use to make my case.’ The algorithms and the elites are kind of working hand-in-hand to spread whatever kind of emotional rumor might serve their cause.”
