"Poland has a law called “election silence”. It makes it illegal for anyone currently residing within Poland to do any kind of political campaigning on Election Day or the day before. This includes making speeches, putting up posters, airing political commercials, even public posts on social media, though not private conversations or messages in non-public groups. If there's also a referendum that is only valid when a big enough quorum of voters is present, you're not even allowed to encourage people to vote, as that can impact the referendum results. This law supposedly exists to give voters a chance to make their decisions in peace, without constantly being bombarded with propaganda from all sides. Many people (often from opposing political factions) claim that the law is outdated and should be repealed, but it doesn't seem to favor one particular side over any other, so nothing has been done about it so far."
Many countries (such as, say, France) have similar laws. Sounds okay to me. So what's the issue here?
FWIW, as a Briton-turned-American, it’s always struck me as very bizarre how they start announcing results on the east coast here, while people on the west coast (not to mention Hawaii and Alaska!) are still voting. Surely it affects results?
The practice of the media predicting results based on exit polls and then everyone just treating them as if they're authoritative is equally bizarre.
IMHO there's a lot of little and big things that feel quite bizarre about US democracy when compared to most others. A consequence of being both the first-ish and never having a government change.
That’s just a variation of the effects of mass market elections.
If you only vote for president? There’s no reason to go to the polls in the majority of states.
The problems even worse in Australia where voting is mandatory with a fine but if you’re in Western Australia you could be “forced” to vote in an already concluded election.
Western Australians are voting for completely different MPs and Senators to people in other states/electorates, and even if they weren't it's a small price to pay compared to having half the country not turn up on voting day.
The argument I've heard from some US-Americans supporting the practice is that it's not the same election - i.e. you aren't electing Joe Biden, you are electing members of the electoral college for state XXX.
I think it's mostly "Look at this weird Polish thing". It's funny, it's local and it pops out during last few election, so probably someone decided to share this cultural phenomena, because of the timing.
In Spain it's called "jornada de reflexión" (deliberation day), and there also are Twitter accounts sneakily announcing surveys and provisional results.
It seems an inevitable collision of the election silence laws which were intended for broadcast media and party campaigns being applied to Internet social media.
> Many countries (such as, say, France) have similar laws.
The Indian version is called the Model Code of Conduct and it is enforced by the Election Commission of India.[1] The ECI even takes control of the bureaucratic and law and order machinery in the period leading up to the elections.
> So what's the issue here?
Typical left wing complaints about anything and everything in countries where they don't see a chance of returning to power by electoral means. If the people are not voting for them, it is obviously because the ruling party and their supporters are fascists. There can be no other reason.
These narratives are built and spread using their control of media. Their friends in the Global Left help amplify the message.
Saying that media outlets are in the hands of "the global Left" borders on the delirious.
Especially when one of the chief complaints about the democratic backsliding in Poland and Hungary is precisely the encroachment on freedom of press (together with the erosion of the separation of powers).
> You don't have a damn clue what you're talking about when it comes to Polish politics.
Only what I read in the Western press. But given what I know about their reporting about India, it is hard to give them the benefit of the doubt when they attack right-wing governments running other countries.
>Most influential media outlets in the West lean left-to-far-left. There can be no serious dispute about it.
As someone who actually designed a database with media affiliations in the past, I can seriously dispute this statement. AFAIK right-leaning Western media have enough influence to boost conservative agenda nearly everywhere. Remember, just recently Trump was a president of the USA, not least thanks to Fox Corp. In Germany we have Axel Springer, in UK there's Daily Mail etc.
When you make such confident claims, it makes sense to bring some data on the table.
When I speak of influence, I am not speaking about the influence tabloids have on people and their voting patterns. Instead, I am referring to "newspaper of record" type influence; news sources that will be used by academics and historians of the future to write the history of this era.
To expand on this a bit, the problem with right-wing media is that it is not taken seriously and a lot of it has to do with a lack of serious reporting. I find it very funny when right-wing media of one country refers to left-wing media of another country in their articles and programs because they are either unaware of local right-wing sources or simply do not trust them.
All those newspapers will indeed be used as sources by historians, there's absolutely no reason to assume otherwise. Modern historians do quote Soviet "Pravda" or Nazi propaganda in their works because the are part of the portrait of the time. But that is just a side remark. More importantly, you just made up a new definition of media influence to support your claims, when you were confronted by the facts. This is not a good way to participate in discussion here.
Definitions are contextual. Your definition of influence is local, mine is global. That does not make your definition factual and mine non-factual/"new."
All the biased reporting about India comes from outlets like the NYT/WP/FT/Economist/BBC etc which is then picked up by local media from both sides. So, when I refer to influential Western media outlets, those are the ones.
(I am surprised as to why you would expect someone from India to follow Fox or Daily Mail or whatever your local RW outlet is. Can you name a single "influential" RW media outlet from India?)
Many countries (such as, say, France) have similar laws. Sounds okay to me. So what's the issue here?