University of California School of law. We are here because rick has written a terrific new book cheap speech how disinformation points as ouron politics and how to cure. Were going to ask rick a number of questions about the book. And then want to get your questions. Please be sure to send them into the youtube chat. Rick, i find the title of the book quite provocative. You call it cheap speech what you mean by cheap speech . Firstly think the Commonwealth Club for putting this form together. I would have helped by the samba could do it in person hopefully next time wet are together havig conversation will be able to do it facetoface with thank you irwin as always for agreeing to be here. The term cheap speech is not mine it originates with a student professor he wrote an article in the yield law journal back in 1995 where he was talking about the upcoming information revolution. And many ways it was a pressing discussion and that piece great talks about things like what would now see is the rise of netflix and spotify. He knew what was going to happen as we move from a trickle of speech to a flood of information. He knew this was going to make m intermediaries less important. He was very optimistic about it. What he meant by cheap speech cheap is that its inexpensive c to produce and disseminate. There certainly a lot of benefits. Yyou get thatsm knowledge in te palm of your hand with your smart phone. But i mean cheap speech and a second less positive way as well. I mean as we have eliminated intermediaries and made to move more easily moved to lower valued speech has an advantage over higher value to speech. What i mean by that is if you are a local newspaper today and you want to investigate what is happening in city hall or State Government it is very expensive to do thates work. You pay a lotfo of people it tas a lot of time and effort. You have to sell newspapers to get that out there. Because of the changing economics of the whole situation local newspapers have been decimated. That you have classified they dont its hard to get good information out there because people are not supporting these local newspapers. Whats happening and status its very easy to spread misinformation disinformation, opinions not backed by any facts. Lower valued speech which has an advantage in the market. Votersre the focus of my book ia voters and elections. Voters are trying to get information on elections and b politics are having a harderno time. They do not know if what they are saying is true or false. Just this week we saw stories about how there are false news sites that really propaganda outfit set up by the Democratic Party, the Republican Party or their allies. One set t up by the russia to look like global news but to get people propaganda and sometimes misinformation. We are in a world this speech is cheap that flows easily but its not necessarily what voters would value being access too. A significant part of the book is detailing you just alluded to some of them but could you elaborate more what you see the harms of cheap speech. Ive written a full draft of the book i had a draft which i warned the disinformation of alexian and how it could lead to violence we had the events of january 6, 2021 for the president of the United States egged people on to come to washington d. C. After perpetuating much of the instruction at the capitol as we all know the to the deaths of40 some people 140 Police Officers injured i think as the news comes out we came much closer to the loss of the transition of power in this country and people recognize. One of the claims i make with the samee colorized politics of today but the technology of the 1950s came perilously close to ending would be much harder to achieve a donald trump was able to go to twitter 400 times to directly speak to the American People andnd the world make his false claims about the election being stolen. If you have done that in the 1950s he would not of been put on tv 400 times his claims would have but been put in context he would not have had an open mic. Edit open mic we know this in documents released in criminal investigations people saw the message come to d. C. They use facebook groups to find each other and to organize for violent political action. One of then main problems this atmosphere can create disinformation about elections which undermines peopless confidence makes it more likely it might be more willing to accept violence. Those are some the very urgent kinds of problems that arose. The book talks about other ones as well. Re the fact you are going to have a much easier time raising money than if you are a moderate candidate. You do not to rely on your Political Party anymore is not just newspapers as political parties. Which makes room for demagogues. These are some of the issues i address at the beginning of the book very quickly play devils advocate for a moment in regard to generally six if you are not enblaming the messenger . Whether that medium is really responsible . Donald trump was going to claim he properly won the election even if there is not the internet and social media. Is he was going to file all of his lawsuits and even main stream media going to pick up that conservative Media Conservative talk radio would certainly have the message for him. I wonder if you can blame the medium for donald trump for those who wanted to follow him . The first thing i would say is my claim is not just about social media itself. Cable news plays a major role here. Cable news as part of the problem. We do not have a Walter Cronkite anymore who can tell us what the truth is and we can believe him because hes abiding by journalistic ethics. Its not just their social media. We have a partisan political media that i think is in a feedback loop with a social media amplify the false claims. It would have been a much for donald trump to have organize people and for those people to have found each other. Right now today there are millions of people in the United States ive been setting elections for more than two decades. I have looked very closely at the 2020 election for theres no reason to play this any credible evidence and yet its not only do vast majorities of republicans believe it was stolen in part because of trump was able to repeatedly spread these messages, but also cnn poll in september about 59 of Republican Voters say believe in the false claim the 2020 election is stolen is an important part of what it means to be a republican. I dont think those kinds of the messages went have been as likely to resignation without the ability to spread these kind of lies unchecked and unfiltered. Only play devils advocate in another way as well. Your book very much focuses on the harms of speech. These are things were just talking about what about all the benefits of cheap speech . In some ways in order to reach a mass audience out we have democratize the ability anyone with a smart phone or access to a modem can do it. As you alluded to earlier there is the ability to access limited information just from our phones. Wh believe the harms of cheap speech outweigh these benefits . I dont think you need to claim the harm outweighs theiz benefit. I do recognize their great benefits. He think about george floyd and the Racial Justice movement the ability to post videos of Police Acting in ways that are illegal and immoral. That helps to galvanize ael movement to it helps to organize. I amm not saying the bad outweighs the good overall. What has happened has created a challenge to our election. I know were going to turn to Solutions Later i think its important to pointk out now is the day after my book came out their headlines on both fox news and the daily mail sing professor calls for censorship. The only speech i argue in the book that should be limited our lives about when and how people vote which the Supreme Court is perfectly acceptable to limit and we can talk about that. In foreign spending the Supreme Court on elections. What i want to do is give voters tools to be able to get access to more valuable information. Dont have to accept their many problems without voters get information. We do not have to agree the bad outweighs the good we have to see their significant outcomes. I dont think any of us want to go back to a time you dont like what the New York Times prints your only option to get the word out to send a letter to the it amongd just hope other hundreds will be printed. Its great we can get additional conversations going. Double edge sword it also invites the dangers weve been talking about. I think it be good to transition to talking about your solution. As a beat look at that think argue right will make the situation better or might make it worse . For those watching great pleasure it was a great pleasure professor of law for university of california irvine but i specially like about the book how detailed you are with regarm to solutions. Change Election Administration the person you talked about in the book, what you mean . The first thing i should say to frame it is i believe there change in the law that would make it better. But changes in the law are not enough. It was a longshot and even if the Supreme Court accepted everythingen i said which is doubtful it still would not be enough. When i talk about solutions i recognize this is a multifaceted problem it requires Multifaceted Solutions theres not one magic bullet to deal with these problems but i do recognize its odd in a book focus on speech to talk about how elections are run. What i mean there one way to take the fuel out of the fire is to run elections in a fairway. There is some people are going to be convinced the 2020 election was stolen. As a large number people in the belts as if thats your claim show me your evidence. And so if you read this in the election and it read this into earlier books that points out when you have Election Administration and theres room to claim fraud and it becomes more plausible. You hear about people forgetting to count ballots those kinds of things. Sti think there its a really important first step to lease help those in the middle who want to look at the election and figure out was that run in a fairway or not . One very specific example to make thisu concrete. You may remember one of Donald Trumps claims was that the election was stolen from him ina georgia. He made a call to the secretary of state that he recorded and later released in which trump asked for him to find 11000 anda her votes of the snow and went to do that. And that was the end of the conversation. It did a full hand recount of every ballot in the state. And they were able to stay within a few hundred votes theres always some slack the results that were announced were correct. Biden had won the state. Imagine if george was still using Voting Machines are wholly electronic did not produce a piece of paper and all you had was software pretty push a button that says this is the vote total. Just imagine the kind of conspiracy theories about hacked. S being only to deal with election disinformation is used sound principles always have a piece of paper that a court or another body can count the toes but the truth is. Having a physical tangible piece of paper so we need for our elections because of the lack of trust even if the electronic Voting Machines work well for. Its a great point i want to focus on election for a moment. Theres been a lot of changes since november 2020 with regard to Election Administration. June to speak about those whether theyre going in the right a wrong direction . One concern is about voter suppression. Makes it hard for you to register or vote. The earlier books i mentioned talk about those issues im very concerned about them. Today i have an even greater concern about election subversion the winner of the election will not be declared the winner about a website tal about it minimize the risk of that. Thats kind of tangential to my project in speech. I very concerned not only about laws that make it hard for people to register and vote for no good reason but also laws make it easier to manipulate election results. One of the things im worried about he is in a primary election facing a member of Congress Republican congressman who had embraced the lie the 2020 election was stolen. Its a biden versus draw. Lets say he runs a completely Fair Election and announces trump has one. Our people on the left going to believe him . The kind of doubts about Election Integrity we see on the right are going to boomerang and are going to havet people on the left start having the same kind of doubts. Having fair rules having transparency having good Election Administration makes it harder for elections to be stolen but harder to lie about elections being stolen. Went to go through several of your other proposals. I went to remind everyone please put your questions intu the youtube chat will get to the questions pretty soon pray really, really look forward to getting your questions. Another proposal she not better than anyone efforts to impose greaterr disclosure on successfl disclose act never made it through congress. Wyatt believe the laws are any more likely to be adapted . Tell you why think disclosure is the solution. Election laws are outdated as you mentioned. So today if an ad it says joe biden is a true leader in its front close to the election you see that on tv come through your cable box or a satellite, like directv that is subject to certain Disclosure Rules watch the same tv addict comes in through hulu that is not subject to disclosure. The ad appears on facebook that is not subject to adi disclosure was a cause for the defeat of a candidate that is a nonsensical system. As more and more of our speech gets to us to the internet is what i mean im not for censorship. When i am calling for is voters getting more information. Voters know that person on facebook who claims to be an africanamerican voter and is trying to convince me not to vote for Hillary Clinton because she is not done enough of the black community that turns out to be a russian government agent or takes a case on the other side of the aisle supporters of doug jones who is running as the obama not jones himself had nothing to do with it. Telling them roy moore he might want to support banning of alcohol people opposing i think the africanamerican voters and the moderate republicans disclosures are important not only because it can prevent corruption and help enforce i other laws against foreign interference there are also important provide valuable information to voters. Theyre willing to uphold disclosure laws. Even was a big believer people should stand up for themselves. But now as you mentioned we have two problems. Number won this is become yet another partisan issue. And republicans no longer support campaignfinance disclosure like they used to. And so it is doubtful were goingg to get a disclosure law but this is something the democrats have tried to include in some their bills like the for the people act. Because of filibuster requirements in centers like joe manchin are more concerned democrats are not willing to change the filibuster requirements unlikely the laws will get through. But even if miraculously they do get through i am concerned because the Supreme Court and the most recent disclosure case called americans for prosperityy in july indicated theres much more skepticism about disclosure. Not just the danger of particular people disclosure laws as a whole and that is very concerning for. It is indeed many disclosure laws the campaign find are now being challenged in light of the prosperity case. Want to get to many of your proposals. Lets go to one. Im say and im quoting you in a narrow band on empirically verifiable false election speech, what you mean by that . Is takes a little explaining. Its not about how the election itself was run. I call that campaign speech. I do not believe the government has any business telling people that they cant say what they want. If it did become defamatory that can be taken care of after the election. They can commit and say dont say that. Theres a very narrow class of h cases when, where, how people vote. You need an id to vote and say you dont need an id. Democrats are out on tuesday republicans vote on wednesday but these are verifiably false o statements. You can go to the website or the office of the local election administrator and find out what day is election day. It is tuesday. Can people vote without an id yes or no . Until people lie about this as a Supreme Court explained in a 2018 case the government does have a compelling interest in limiting misinformation thathe interferes directly with the franchise. Write targeted messages to africanamerican voters telling them they can vote by text or by social media. And of course you could not vote this way. We know about 5000 people tried to cast their ballot in this way. Now he is being charged with a certain federal criminal prosecution. It is not clear if the statute actually covers that. But what i argue in the book is lies like that should be subject to federal law in such a federal law should be upheld as constitutional because it does not involve any government t discretion. Its not like the government has to figure out how many times of the person try to raise taxes or get them discussions about what you mean about raise taxes . We know it to y election day is. The good news is can pass such a law and it should be constitutional. It would not target most of the misinformation we see online. What if youon lie about the last election being stolen is donald trump has repeatedly done. Voters ability to about hes not telling people go to the wrong polling place. So you have to justify such a law by claiming you have a law like that we have election that is stolen or there is a reasonable que