War on Iran threatens global economy, but worse, rattles 'just world' ethic in places such as Malawi

Malawi, east of Lilongwe, looking toward Lake Malawi
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Americans are suffering an affordability crisis wrought in large part by the Middle East war. But the impact of the conflict is global. And the lasting message to the world's poorest places might be less about economic setback, and more about the unreliability of western capitalism.

Driven especially if not exclusively by the Iran war, record fuel prices in the United States make local and national news every day and are sending ripples through the economy, worsening the affordability crisis that the White House alternatively grapples with and declares "fake."

It's easy to be self-absorbed in this crisis. I've lately lamented the $65 tab to fill my gas tank. Traveling to join family for an upcoming weekend wedding will cost my wife, daughter, and me more than $3,000. 

We're blessed; for now, we can absorb these costs. But as we consider our retirement plan with airfare inflation topping 23%, I worry about an impending need to decide what family we want to be close to in the States, presumably a parent or child, and to move there, understanding that we will rarely see other family again. 

It's like going back in time to when Americans moved west knowing they might never see their loved ones again. Shouldn't that be a forgotten era with modern transportation technologies? Both political parties purport to support the American family, but neither takes responsibility for our geographic fragmentation in the national labor market. We have no long-distance, high-speed trains, and we treat air travel like a free-market luxury.

Many Americans are in that bind already, tethered to work, if they can find it, and isolated from family. As Americans talk on the news about increasingly having to choose between fuel and food, it can be hard to remember how much better off we are than people elsewhere in the world. 

In May this year, I visited Malawi, a small country in southern Africa. The Iran war was then only a couple months on, but it reverberated worldwide already. I traveled overland from the Zambian border to Lake Malawi and back with Colby Mughogho, an entrepreneur, developer, and tourism operator. 

Drivers await a fuel delivery at a station outside Lilongwe.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Open fuel stations were hard to find. A station might get one delivery per day, then dispense fuel until the tanks went dry. At any station, a glut of trucks and motorcycles waited for hours in anticipation of a delivery. Petrol usually was delivered a few times per week; some areas were deserts for diesel, which we needed.

Colby worked the phone to call ahead to friends, sometimes to nail down the delivery time for a fuel station, or if we were lucky, to enlist someone to set aside a couple of liters for us. Police patrolled the main streets and watched fuel stations closely, enforcing a purchase limit of 15 liters (3.96 gallons) per customer.

With that limit, a fill-up would not get us the whole way. A pickup on Malawi's rough roads might at best get 9.3 km/L (22 mpg), so 140 km (87 miles) on a legal-limit fill-up. The distance from Lilongwe to our destination, Chembe, on Lake Malawi, was 216 km (134 miles), each way.

Motorcyclists queue for petrol at a fuel station outside Lilongwe.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

At a fuel station, petrol cost about MK7,000 (Malawian kwacha) per liter (US$4.04/L). That's US$15.29 per gallon. Before the war, the fixed price had been about MK5,000/L (US$2.89/L), or US$10.92 per gallon.

If we were unlucky, we could leave the main road in search of scant and risky supplies of black-market fuel, sold curbside by men looking over their shoulders while they juggled ragtag containers. Black-market sellers commanded MK12,000/L, or US$26.20 per gallon.

The government blames black-market sellers, fairly, for amplifying scarcity and driving up prices. The quality of fuel also is suspect, possibly diluted, and tainted fuel can damage engines, a further drain on a fragile economy.

At the same time, black-market sellers disperse supply so that small-capacity users such as motorcycle taxis can continue to operate without losing productive hours in lines. A great deal of downstream commerce that depends on transportation is thereby protected, as well as beneficial noncommercial needs, such as health care, family connections, and schooling.

A billboard in Lilongwe touts the "Malawi 2063 National Vision."
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

For me, our fuel search was a "#FirstWorldProblem," a matter of convenience. I could have hitched a ride to the airport if I'd needed to. I was more worried about Colby making his way back to his wife and kids.

And I was more worried still about the impact of the shortage on people whose livelihoods depended on the fuel supply. No fuel meant no work for many, and no work meant nothing to eat. The food supply itself, for everyone, would be in jeopardy when fisherman and farmers could no longer fill the tanks of boats and tractors.

That was then. Now the war drags on and is expanding in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

The New York Times reported last week that rising fuel prices have touched off furious protests around the world, "from Indonesia to Guatemala to Syria." The Times reported on work stoppages with insufficient fuel for boats, tractors, and factory machinery, and people responding angrily with marches, horns, and burning tires.

Malawi managed to cut fuel prices later in the summer. With fixed government pricing, petrol has held steady at US$3.24/L, or $12.26 per gallon, and diesel has closed in toward that number, about 12% higher. That's still an increase for petrol of 122% over the price a year ago. And I know that the official price says nothing about availability on the ground. Authorities say demand is being met, though in "good times" in 2024, an NGO reported Malawi fuel retailers operating at only 30% of capacity.

Boys play football beside their school in Chembe.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The Iran war is not the only reason that fuel shortages hit hard in Malawi, where fuel already was expensive and in short supply. Part of the problem is simply geology and geography. Malawi has no oil reserves and no domestic fossil fuel production. The landlocked country depends on imported oil products, though finds some relief by blending in domestic ethanol.

Other key factors in Malawi's fuel pain, predating the war, are economic: a foreign currency deficit and stubborn price fixing (e.g., BBC). People I talked to in Malawi were quick to blame their government, observing that surrounding countries were better managing the latest crisis. 

There's truth to that. In the long term, Malawian politicians have been unwilling to make unpopular choices to get a grip on the economy. But in fairness to Malawi, its economic woes are less a result of misfeasance than of the seemingly insurmountable poverty cycle that plagues developing countries in the contemporary global economy. 

With reinvested revenues, hard-won grants, and a great deal of grit and hard labor, Colby and his brilliant better half, Violet, have been developing tourism infrastructure in Malawi, especially in the north, around Mzuzu, the capital of the northern region and the country's third-largest city. Mzuzu is superbly located as a base for Malawi tourism, because it affords ready access to the small country's stunning range of landscapes, from iconic Lake Malawi to wildlife safariing, and to trekking through plains, forests, and mountain ranges. Colby and Violet have built camps and miles of trails and employed hundreds of Malawians in the process. 

Near Lilongwe: Some modes of transportation require no petrol.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The problem now is getting people there. Besides fuel prices, the Iran war is tanking tourism in Africa. Airline routes have been reduced, and demand for travel services has fallen off. The retreat of U.S. foreign aid from Africa is destabilizing governments, spilling red ink across the continent on the travel advisory map, spooking travelers. Malawi and its neighbor Mozambique are hanging on to their "level 2" status (travel with caution), though neighboring Tanzania, home to Kilimanjaro, has slipped to "level 3" ("reconsider travel"). (Neighboring Zambia boasts a remarkable "level 1" ("normal precautions"), though the rating system seems suspiciously aligned with a U.S. appetite for African resources; read more.)

I had not intended to come home from Malawi to write about fuel woes and war effects; rather, I wanted to write about the Mughoghos' investments in "community tourism" through homegrown enterprise, admirably independent of the foreign quid pro quo that haunts so much of the African economy. The latter is still an important story. Tourism is the bellwether of foreign investment that will be essential to bolster the Malawian economy and give the people a fighting chance at socioeconomic mobility and a healthy, middle-class standard of living.

Right now, though, it's hard to see the road to that prosperity. Like many countries and many peoples in the developing world, Malawians are captive to an emerging geopolitical catastrophe that they had no hand in making. What for Americans is a crisis of affordability means, for people elsewhere in the world, development paralysis, and worse: a betrayal of the western economic promise, the "just world hypothesis," that hard work will pay off.

If you are inclined go to Malawi, please do. It is safe and open for business. Flights are available; Ethiopian Airlines hedges against economic downturn with a diversified fuel supply. Please consider planning your time in Malawi with Adventures with Colby; Colby and Violet reinvest proceeds in communities. They'll store fuel if they know you're coming. (Nothing received for this endorsement.)

Western dollars and a little bit of faith are needed to help Malawi, "the warm heart of Africa," to weather this storm, and to get back on its feet.

Let's hope that the current strategy in U.S. foreign relations has not completely undermined the just-world hypothesis in places such as Malawi. Because if it is has, there are other nations with less benevolent intentions waiting in the wings to export a very different worldview.

Tort, torte, 'Torteweizen' all please palates

RJ Peltz-Steele CC0 1.0 (no claim to product art)

"Torteweizen"?

Of course I had to try it. The "salted watermelon" creation of Moniker Brewing in Providence, R.I., near where I live, is a self-described "Berliner-Weisse-style" sour wheat (Hopgrail).

The label indicated strawberry flavoring, besides watermelon, with hints of salt and jalapeño. The strawberry flavoring came on stronger to me, hardly watermelon at all, and that was unexpected. But when I became accustomed to it, I liked it.

I don't think sour counts as savory, and the beer conjures torte, not tort, so the beer won't replace this page's banner. Still, it's just the thing to quench the thirst after a hard day at court.

Speaking of torte, "the plum torte" at The New York Times is the paper's "most requested recipe," favored across decades since its first 1983 publication and recently republished as "remixed." I've never made the Times plum torte, but we did just purchase to try the Canadian-made Trader Joe's plum torte ("limited time") before tariffs and seasons take their toll and it disappears into a pumpkin-spice sea.

And speaking of tort, it occurs to me that I have never quite shared here my textbook treatment of that word. From 1 Tortz (2025 ed.) ch. 1(D), pp. 5-6, here is an excerpt:

The origin of the word “tort” is hazy.  It probably comes from the Latin torquere, which meant principally to turn, twist, or wind.  The term was extended metaphorically in Medieval Latin to signify a “distortion” of justice, and then made its way to English via Old French.  The same Latin root gives us the related words torment and torture, signifying the infliction of injury.

The word torte, meaning an egg-rich cake, is unrelated.  Torte comes from Latin torta, for a kind of cake or bread, and yielded similar words in Germanic and Romance languages.  Torte is related to today’s tortilla and, probably, tart.

The adjective for a tort is tortious, meaning wrongful, or constituting a tort.  The word has been in use since Middle English, yet, to the great annoyance of a generation of law students, was excluded from spell-check software for decades and even designated for autocorrection to tortuous.  Tortuous conduct might indeed be tortious, but the words are not interchangeable.

There is no verb to describe the effectuation of a tort.  Informally, we may speak of committing a tort.  Formally, though, we prefer to reserve the term commit for the effectuation of a crime, rather than a civil wrong.  A person who “commits” a tort is a tortfeasor, the suffix -feasor also derived from Latin, facere, to do or make, via the French faire.  While a criminal defendant is found guilty, a tortfeasor is held responsible or liable.  Because a tort is a civil wrong and may result from an accident just as well as intentionality, the concept of guilt is implicated neither legally nor morally, as a general matter.

Cheers. 

Communities mourn teacher, writer, missionary; Chidzero modeled faith from Rhodesia to Rhode Island

Alice Chidzero
1963-2026
Tharp Funeral Home

A worship service at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., on Friday memorialized teacher, writer, and missionary Alice Chidzero.

Alice Rumbidzaishe Bwerinofa was born to the Shona people in the village of Gutu, Masvingo, in what is today Zimbabwe, Rhodesia in 1963, about 230 km south of Harare. As her friend Lesley Hamer of the Providence Classical School, Williamsburg, Va., shared at the service, what Alice regarded most important about her identity was that she was a follower of Jesus Christ.

Alice often visited Rhode Island, where she lived with her husband Felix Chidzero for their first years in America. They came as students and earned degrees at Rhode Island Bible College.

For some years in Rhode Island, Alice and family attended Barrington Baptist Church (BBC). She worked early in her teaching career at Barrington Christian Academy. Alice attended BBC before my family joined in 2012, but I came to know her through her return visits and legendary reputation.

Alice told the astounding story of her life in a memoir, When the Brook Runs Dry: My Journey from Africa to America ... And Back a Few Times (N.Y. Free Press 2018) (Amazon). As the narrative traces Alice's journey from Rhodesia to Rhode Island, Sierra Leone, and Virginia, the book demonstrates the beliefs that sustained Alice through life's hills and valleys, both the customary community ethos of hunhu and an abiding, foundational faith in God.

Valleys there were. At the service, Hamer told an anecdote, also recounted in the book, of when Alice was stuck in a catch-22 between an expiring visa and compulsion to leave the United States, on the one hand, and airline refusal to let her fly without a visa for transit, on the other hand. 

"Why is Alice's life so hard?," Hamer asked herself at the time, she said.

That was exactly what I asked myself, repeatedly, reading Alice's memoir. She lost a child, a spouse, and parents in too short order. She finished her higher education despite the strain of single-parenting in a foreign country. She navigated the long road to U.S. citizenship. She battled the lifelong effects of rheumatic fever, and later, cancer. All the while, she ministered tirelessly to others, persons in need physically and spiritually, from the U.S. east to West Africa.

Well deserved self-pity is the opposite of how Alice met every challenge in her life. Eschewing any self-indulgence, she carried on and trusted relentlessly in God (Ps. 91). And the memoir demonstrates time and again the endless expanse of his provision.

Alice left this world on September 7. She is survived by her children, Simbarashe and Shekinah, and her grandchildren, Avianna, Zenai, and Xavier. She was predeceased by her parents, Levi and Catherine, by her husband, Felix, and by her daughter, Vimbainashe.

The family welcomes contributions at GoFundMe to help honor Alice's wish that she be laid to rest in Zimbabwe.

Do I have to choose between Trump and communism?

Re-creation, RJ Peltz-Steele with Google Gemini CC0 1.0

A sign on my commute distracts me every time, and I find myself thinking about it way too much:

"TRUMP OR COMMUNISM."

So we're clear, that's not actually a choice anyone is being asked to make. 

For Slate, Alexander Sammon wrote today about the rhetoric of a new Red Scare:

"On the occasion of America’s 250th anniversary, President Donald Trump took time away from the birthday revelry to warn of a grave and imposing adversary. 

"'Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11,' he said on July Fourth weekend this year, in South Dakota...."

And in Georgia a few days earlier, "according to the Atlantic, Trump mentioned communism or communist 15 times ... 'starting less than a minute into his hour-plus speech.'"

My family, on one side, escaped communism in Ukraine. I have seen the aftermath of communism in central and eastern Europe since the wall fell. If "communism" is that communism, then I'll take the democratically elected leader every time, regardless of our policy agreements and disagreements.

But as I wrote about Vietnam last year, "communism" today looks more like capitalism run amuck; it's hard to tell from the street which side won that war. Even historically, behind the iron curtain, the authoritarian bureaucracy of red Russia hardly lived up to any Marxian ideal.

So if "communism" means making filthy profits from global cartels and bathing in the social largesse of murderous oligarchy— well, then, I'm not sure how the sign's two choices are different. 

If "communism" means a living wage for one's work, and healthcare for one's hefty taxes; breaking up anti-competitive trusts and leveling the field for a free marketplace; and access to education for those who are willing to put in the work— 

Well, then, I guess I have to think about it some more.

Law school seminars dive deep in FOI, free press, film

RJ Peltz-Steele with Google Gemini CC0 1.0

Students in my spring seminars, in Freedom of Information Law and in Free Press and Film, did outstanding work, and I am indebted both to them and to colleagues who joined my classes for teaching me and enriching my intellectual life.

Recently I spoke on the telephone to a long-time friend in academics, a professor at another university, many miles away. We shared strikingly similar stories of well paid administrators, whose numbers on campus seems to grow faster than the wealth gap, even while they lament cuts of not-nearly-as-well-paid staff and faculty positions to keep us within budget.

Well, the similarity would be striking if we were not accustomed to it. Universities in the United States combating financial exigency now seem to me like the nation of Oceania in George Orwell's 1984. They are forever locked in conflict with one or another enemy that is not in fact the greatest existential threat. Rather, the government itself perpetuates a state of emergency so that apparatchiks (administrators) can consume the fruits of labor while the masses (faculty and students) abide oppressive regulation and a diminishing standard of living.

My friend suggested that I propose and apply for a new university office, perhaps a Vice Chancellor of Financial Exigency. That sounds ironically lucrative. As they say, "when in Rome"; if the empire is falling, grab all the grapes you can.

Our conversation devolved, as it invariably does, into why we put up with it all. Coming in a very close second to paying the mortgage is an answer that I fear is both cliché and self-condemnatory: We are gratified when our students learn and excel.

Faculty Seminar Contributors

In the spring, I had the privilege to teach two seminars, one my recurring offering in freedom-of-information (FOI) law, the other a one-off, a course on free press and film. The FOI class coincided with the conclusion of my term on the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee, which service afforded me an opportunity to expose my students to leading-edge issues in the field.

The free-press-and-film class allowed me and the class to sink our teeth into the captivating book, featured at The Savory Tort in 2024, Filming the First: Cinematic Portrayals of Freedom of the Press (Lexington Books 2025), by my friend and colleague Helen J. Knowles-Gardner, formerly a political science professor and now research director at the Institute for Free Speech (IFS), and co-authors Professor Emeritus Bruce E. Altschuler, retired from political science at SUNY Oswego, and Professor Brandon T. Metroka, faculty in political science at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW). (Photos: Knowles-Gardner, from IFS; Altschuler, 2017, by Jim Russel, SUNY Oswego '83, Metroka, from UIW).

My classes were enriched by colleagues who gave generously of their time and energy. Professor Knowles-Gardner joined us in person in Free Press and Film to discuss the book's treatment of the films Denial (2016) and Deliberate Intent (2000) (and to give a campus lecture). Professor Altschuler joined us for three classes, discussing his first three chapters of the book and the films Citizen Kane (1941), RKO 281 (1999), All the President's Men (1976), The Post (2017), Network (1976), and The Social Network (2010). Attorney Dan Greenberg, of the Cato Institute, joined Free Press and Film to discuss his documentary film, American Libel (2025), featured at The Savory Tort last year. (Photo: Dan Greenberg, from Cato.)

My FOI class welcomed attorney and information practice Professor Jason Baron, University of Maryland (U. Md.), and a fellow member of the FOIA Advisory Committee; Arkansas investigative journalist Brandon Howard; independent filmmaker and journalism and mass communication Professor Natalie Pattillo, and a university student leader and student journalist; Professor Robert Steinbuch, featured recently here at The Savory Tort, Bowen Law School, University of Arkansas, Little Rock (UALR); attorney and adjunct professor Gregory V. Sullivan, president of Malloy & Sullivan and president of the New England First Amendment Coalition; and journalism and media studies Professor A.Jay Wagner, Diederich College of Communication, Marquette University, a past member of the FOIA Advisory Committee.

Professor Baron discussed the science of artificial intelligence and how advancements in the era will change the practice of FOI law for both requesters and record officers. Journalist Howard joined the class to talk about his past newspaper reporting and ongoing pro se FOI litigation to access a cold murder investigation case file in northwest Arkansas (see, e.g., The Weekly Vista; see also breaking news). Professor Steinbuch discussed his ongoing transparency advocacy in Arkansas and opinion writing for The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Attorney Sullivan discussed his remarkable record of high-profile access litigation and appellate argument on behalf of New England journalists. Professor Wagner discussed his recent work on statutory citizenship requirements to block state access to public records and the ongoing debate over the constitutionality of the laws.

Professor Pattillo and her student, whose identity I am protecting just in case, discussed contemporary challenges facing campus journalists, including recalcitrant administrators. Professor Pattillo's teaching contract at UMass Dartmouth was not renewed this academic year (e.g., LinkedIn, New Bedford Light, Boston Globe (paywall)). 

(Photos: Jason Baron, from U. Md.; Brandon Howard, from LinkedIn; Natalie Pattillo, from the Center for Independent Documentary; Robert Steinbuch, from UALR; Gregory V. Sullivan, from Malloy & Sullivan; A.Jay Wagner, from Marquette University.)

Student Seminar Contributors

Students in both seminars produced a range of thought-provoking papers built upon insightful research and analysis. I am here honored to share selected titles and abstract, with authors' permission. I thank these stars for their work and for their collaborative spirit in learning with and from each other, and I anticipate with great pleasure their shining future contributions to the legal profession.

—in Freedom of Information Law

Jeremy Aylward, Retaining Transparency in the Digital Age: Retention of Electronic Records Under Federal and State Freedom of Information Laws. The proliferation of electronic records and digital communications has fundamentally challenged the legal frameworks governing government transparency and public accountability. While the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Federal Records Act (FRA) establish baseline obligations for the retention and disclosure of electronic records, the enforceability of those obligations remains structurally compromised. This paper analyzes and synthesizes the legal frameworks governing the retention and disclosure of electronic records and messages under federal law and the open records statutes of California, Colorado, and Virginia, with particular attention to how those frameworks can be meaningfully enforced. Drawing on statutory text, agency guidance, and judicial interpretation, this paper examines how each jurisdiction defines "electronic records," what retention schedules apply, how personal device and third-party platform use by public officials is treated, and critically, what mechanisms exist to compel compliance, sanction violations, and remedy the destruction or concealment of covered records. The paper argues that across all four jurisdictions, electronic records retention law suffers from a common structural deficiency: obligations are broad in theory but weak in enforcement. This leaves agencies largely self-policing in an environment where the incentives to retain records often conflict with the incentives to delete them. While California's content-focused judicial approach offers the most expansive access framework, and Colorado and Virginia provide more structured but still under-enforced retention regimes, none of the examined frameworks provides a reliably enforceable mechanism for preventing loss of electronic records at the point of creation or ensuring accountability after the fact. The paper concludes by identifying the enforcement gaps that most critically undermine the transparency purposes of freedom of information law and by synthesizing lessons across jurisdictions for legislative and judicial reform. (Image: RJ Peltz-Steele with Google Gemini CC0 1.0.)

Davis Preston, The Public Records Law Battles with State University Athletic Programs. Universities have taken advantage of state public record exemptions to skirt disclosures of their spending. To combat the skirting of disclosures and to provide more transparency, the NCAA mandates budget disclosures. Public records law exemptions still apply to the schools, but the NCAA mandates force the schools to disclose certain financial information anyway. These mandatory budget disclosures have their own limitations that allow schools to avoid full disclosure. They open the door to what money goes where, but withhold important information, such as who donates, how much they donate, and how the fundraising is organized. There are different structures for how athletic departments operate, but most use private or semi-private entities. Schools use privatization to avoid full disclosure after they meet the NCAA mandate. Different states have different laws that allow universities to avoid full disclosure. The University of Arkansas utilizes a private foundation, multiple universities in Florida utilize direct support organizations, and the University of Georgia utilizes disclosure time extensions. The laws are used to circumvent the public records law, which was enacted to hold public bodies accountable and provide transparency. The universities argue that they should have privacy on financials, as this allows them to keep a competitive advantage over other universities. This argument is met with the public interest in how the government spends money and whether this is done with transparency. There should be statutory change to prevent this circumvention of disclosure. Statutory change would entail eliminating exemption for direct support organizations, standardization of the function equivalent test, and the elimination of time extensions. (Image: RJ Peltz-Steele with Google Gemini CC0 1.0.)

Tryon P. Woods, Prison Conditions and Public Access Or 1(st Am.) + 5(th Am.) + 8(th Am.) + 14(th Am.) < 0—Public Access Math. This paper examines the ongoing problem of prison conditions and the public’s access to information about what goes on inside prisons. I approach the topic as a twin problem in which access and conditions are opposite sides of the same coin. The correlation between access restrictions and the unconstitutional treatment of prisoners has a long history and nation-wide scope. Tracking the aftermath of the seminal case of the Attica Prison uprising in 1971 through several lawsuits arising from institutional failures in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and NYC, this paper argues that in a "total institution" such as a prison or jail, visibility is the leverage on which control hinges. This relationship between the public’s access to information about prison conditions and the constitutional violations suffered by prisoners is refracted in the Court’s First, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence on prisons since the passage of FOIA in 1966. Despite the Court’s best efforts, together with prison administrators, the relational reality of law remains undeniable: the undoing of legal personhood for people inside serves as the precondition for inventing the human outside. (When not appearing in class as a law student to sate his insatiable appetite for learning, Professor Woods also is a gifted faculty colleague in crime and justice studies at UMass Dartmouth.—RJPS) (Image: Attica Correctional Facility, 2007, by Bronayur via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.)

—in Free Press and Film

Bryce Mayo, "A Victim of the Modern Age": Soft Law, Private Suppression, and the Gap in First Amendment Theory. Film: A Clockwork Orange (1971). The First Amendment limits government suppression of speech but does not restrict decisions by private actors. Constitutional doctrine therefore provides little guidance when expression is constrained through private pressures, market incentives, or self-censorship. These forms of non-governmental suppression rarely enter the public consciousness until controversy surrounding particular works expose gaps in the protection of free expression. Stanley Kubrick’s decision to withdraw A Clockwork Orange from circulation in the United Kingdom illustrates this limitation. Although the film was not subject to a nationwide legal prohibition, public controversy, media criticism, and local regulatory pressures preceded Kubrick’s nearly three-decade self-removal. The film thus remained legally protected yet practically inaccessible within the United Kingdom. This incident provides an example of how expressive works may be limited without formal government censorship. This paper examines Kubrick’s withdrawal through a United States constitutional framework. It focuses on the distinction between state restriction and private control over distribution and argues that the quasi-ban of A Clockwork Orange reveals a structural gap in First Amendment theory: while speech is protected from government censorship, it may nonetheless be suppressed through "soft law" mechanisms that operate outside formal doctrine. By separating the concept of legal protection from the reality of circulation, the paper clarifies how expression may be constrained outside traditional censorship models. Recognizing this distinction clarifies the practical limits of First Amendment protections and refines how free speech is understood in modern media environments shaped by market forces, rating systems, and distribution controls.

Amanda McKim, Speech is Free, But Lies You (Should) Have to Pay For: Alex Jones as a Case Study for the Inefficacies of Defamation Remedies. Film: The Truth vs. Alex Jones (2024). The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects against government-imposed limitations on freedom of speech and the press. However, the First Amendment does not protect false, defamatory statements. The intersection of these two areas of law has been analyzed at length, but changes in the way society communicates raises new and more dangerous problems regarding the ways in which courts address the impacts of defamation. With the continually expanding use of smart phones, access to endless perspectives in media, and few ways to definitively “fact-check” sources, misinformation is rampant, and defamation remedies provide increasingly less meaningful relief to victims. Alex Jones, a prominent radio show host, was sued in two states and has three judgments against him for defaming victims’ families in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. The complaints were filed in 2018 and resulted in final judgements in 2022 of $1.5 billion dollars in damages. Jones has since filed for bankruptcy, has yet to pay the victims. He continues to disparage the proceedings to his audience of 30 million daily listeners. The plaintiffs’ inability to recover and Jones’s continuing perpetuation of harmful rhetoric exemplify the ineffectiveness of current remedies to meaningfully address serious speech-based harms. Despite legal scholars’ critiques of equitable remedies in defamation cases, equity might be the best way to address previous harm, prevent future harm, and provide victims with the most appropriate relief. (Image: Instagram post by WBRC-TV 6 News, 2025. With characteristic wisdom and compassion, Ms. McKim suggested that the visual element for this post might honor the victims of Sandy Hook, rather than draw further attention to Alex Jones, who doesn't need help with publicity. I could not agree more.—RJPS)

Sean Pillai, Embedded Reporting and Freedom of the Press in Contemporary U.S. Military Operations. Films: Restrepo (2010), Korengal (2014). Embedding journalists with U.S. military combat operations highlights the ongoing struggle to balance democratic transparency with the practical realities of fighting a war. The system of embed reporting was created to give the public a clearer view of what happens on the front lines, but it also has raised continuing legal and ethical questions about how independent reporters truly can be when the military controls their access and movement. This paper looks at those tensions through the perspectives offered in Restrepo (2010) and Korengal (2014), while examining the most recent policy behind U.S. military media policy. The embed system shows why some limits on access are required in combat zones and that journalists must continue to expose themselves to risk both in the legal realm and physically in combat to protect speech. 

Carson Powell, From Accessible Knowledge to Smoldering Ashes: How a 1953 Novel Reflects a Growing Current Reality. Film: Fahrenheit 451 (2018). A story created in 1953, in which books are outlawed, and "firemen" burn any that are found, illustrates the censorship of knowledge and literature. In Arkansas, on March 30, 2023, the legislature approved Act 372, which included new standards for individuals selling books, whether that be public libraries or small bookstores. Act 372 in theory was approved to protect minors from stumbling onto books and materials of mature topics, but many librarians disagreed with that sentiment. The librarians of Fayetteville Public Library, joined by many other librarians believed that the act forces libraries and bookstores to segregate novels with "mature subjects" into "adult only" areas, with a risk of criminal prosecution for failing to do so. The Fayetteville Public Library, American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, and others filed complaints alleging that Act 372, like outright book banning, violates the First Amendment as overbreadth, vague, and content based. The lawsuit further alleged that the Act was intended to limit access of books and media to individuals who have a constitutional right to the books in question. The Arkansas legislature follows a growing trend around the United States of State’s legislators introducing and implementing acts regarding content-based censorship. Increasing enactments of laws aimed at removing “obscene” materials to protect children effectively discriminates against people of color, underrepresented communities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The suppression of media, whether by segregating books in the library or bookstore, or by facilitating their removal smaller institutions having to take the books off the shelves at risk of prosecution, reflects the themes of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Jakob Resnik, Apocalypse When? Latent Power of 47 U.S.C. § 606. Film: Apocalypse Now (1979). 47 U.S.C. § 606 ("the Act"), "The War Powers of the President," is an unused emergency provision of the Telecommunications Act that threatens freedom of speech. Apocalypse Now contains a scene depicting a Time magazine article reporting inaccurately on the Vietnam War. The movie does not say whether Time published the article of its own volition or at the direction of the Government. In the "real world," the Act enables the President to seize and control certain media outlets during emergencies, possibly controlling public reception of the emergency. The Act lacks clear definitions or statutory guardrails, conferring power so broadly that it is easily abused. Apocalypse Now used a prop magazine article to illustrate dishonesty in the media without showing where the lie really came from. Under the Act, a censored message can easily be spread to deceive the public regardless of free speech objections that outlets may raise. This is a threat to free speech.

Corie Scott, Tried Inside a Story: Pretrial Narrative and the Fragility of the Presumption of Innocence. Film: When They See Us (2019). Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us documents what happens when narrative precedes adjudication. The prosecution of the Central Park Five—who now identify as the Exonerated Five—illustrates how media coverage, official statements, and public discourse can converge to construct a story of guilt before evidence is tested in court. That story proved more durable than the convictions it preceded and more resistant to correction than the exonerations that followed. The case is extraordinary in its consequences. The dynamic it reflects is not. This paper examines the tension between First Amendment press freedom and the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a fair trial through doctrinal analysis and a preliminary comparative study of contemporary criminal reporting. Drawing on a close reading of fifteen articles across local news outlets, national publications, tabloid media, and government press releases, the analysis examines patterns in headline labeling, suspect characterization, moral descriptor language, victim framing, contextual background, and the presence or absence of presumption-of-innocence language. The sample is illustrative rather than representative and is offered to surface patterns consistent with the doctrinal concerns the paper identifies. The findings identify patterns that warrant closer legal and empirical attention. Narrative intensity, humanizing context, and presumption-of-innocence framing vary consistently across source types – and, with regularity that raises due process and equal protection concerns, across defendants. White defendants were disproportionately introduced through professional identity and personal context. Black and Latino defendants were more frequently framed through criminal identity and categorical threat language, with government press releases producing the most authoritative and criminalized framing of any source category examined. These patterns point to a structural gap in existing doctrine. First Amendment protections permit the circulation of narratives that assign meaning to accusation. Sixth Amendment safeguards operate within the courtroom to mitigate identifiable prejudice. Neither framework fully addresses how pretrial narratives shape the ground on which guilt is adjudicated. This paper argues that the law’s current approach is incomplete—not because it fails on its own terms, but because it was not designed for an information environment in which narrative formation is rapid, self-reinforcing, and difficult to unwind. The presumption of innocence survives as a formal rule. Whether it survives as a lived condition of adjudication, for all defendants equally, is the question the paper raises—and the one it calls on doctrine and empirical scholarship to more fully answer.

Alayna Wageman, Accountability Gaps at The International Criminal Court: How States Get Away with Murder. Film: A Private War (2018). Women journalists operating in conflict zones are targeted not only because of their reporting, but because of their gender. Sexual violence, intimidation, and physical assault are deployed as deliberate tools to silence women in the press, yet international law has failed to translate its formal protections into meaningful, enforceable accountability. This paper investigates that failure through the legendary war correspondent Marie Colvin. In Colvin v. Syrian Arab Republic, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted a default judgment of $302,511,836.00 against Syria for the deliberate targeting and killing of Marie Colvin during her reporting in Homs in 2012. Syria has never paid. Additionally, the conduct that killed Colvin, a state-directed attack on civilian journalists in armed conflict, falls within the jurisdictional reach of the Rome Statute as a war crime under Article 8, yet no International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecution followed. Syria is not a signatory and the UN Security Council vetoed the referral. Thus, even when liability is established, the absence of enforceable international laws leaves victims without remedies and states without consequences. Colvin's case is not exceptional. It is representative of a systemic pattern in which gender-based violence suppresses journalistic work and states face no meaningful consequences. This paper highlights three structural deficiencies within the International Criminal Court framework revealed by the Colvin case. This paper contends that addressing these gaps necessitates structural reforms beyond the scope of the current system.

Rebecca Wood, A Relic of the Past: It’s Time To Deal With The Equal Time Rule. Film: Man of the Year (2006). This paper utilizes the 2006 film Man Of The Year to introduce and illustrate systemic inconsistencies in the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) enforcement of the equal time rule. The rule, Section 315(a) of the Communications Act of 1934, requires broadcast licensees providing airtime to a legally qualified candidate must also provide equal air time all opposing candidates. The rule is introduced by examining the absence of discussion and enforcement of it and its requirements throughout the film despite a talk-show host’s presidential campaign. This paper suggests that the omission is illustrative of the inconsistent and arbitrary application of the rule in the real world. Next, the history and origins of the rule are explored beginning with the rule’s origin in the Radio Act of 1927 through present day talk show challenges. Subsequently, the rule’s inconsistent implementation and the question of censorship are investigated with examples in media, case law, and FCC proceedings and notices from the rule’s beginning through present day. Finally, possible remedies such as further defining the rule, post-Chevron challenges, or repealing the rule are considered.

9/11 widow calling out U.S.-Saudi coziness highlights failure of liability regime to deliver justice

Flag from Ground Zero appears in September 11 commemoration
last week at American History Museum in Washington, D.C.
G. Edward Johnson via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0

"Tell the Saudis to stop lying," a September 11 widow told the 25th annual memorial gathering in New York City on Friday.

Terry Strada is the widow of Thomas S. Strada, a father of three and Cantor Fitzgerald bond broker killed in the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. She broke the tradition of exclusively apolitical statements at the annual memorial. But she drew applause from the crowd and shamed the assembly of every living former President and the current Vice President, who were there.

Here's more of what Strada had to say, from The Hill:

"For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families," she said. 

"They withheld evidence," Strada continued. "They vetoed JASTA [Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act]. They broke promises, both public and private. It has been one betrayal after another."

"Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have all been suffering through," Strada said.

The Guardian has further coverage. 

There's no disputing Strada's facts. Twenty-eight pages of the 2002 congressional report on 9/11 were redacted for 14 years and did show possible ties, though nothing definitive, between Saudi officials and 9/11 hijackers. Many 9/11 records, including parts of the 2002 report, remain classified and have dribbled out over the years, including daily presidential briefings released just last week. Tim Burke at the Freedom of the Press Foundation has more on the latest. The City of New York also dumped a document trove into sunlight last week, including revelations of especial interest to first responders showing what officials knew about dangerous air quality.

Both Bush and Obama administrations tried to protect the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from accusations of 9/11 responsibility. The United States is not dependent on Saudi oil. But the White House saw, and still sees, KSA as an essential diplomatic and military partner in Middle East security.

In 2016, President Obama did veto JASTA. Congress overrode the veto five days later. The law waives foreign sovereign immunity in civil claims against foreign governments that aid and abet terrorism, whether with action or with money. 

Legislators were not so noble as it might seem. They knew well that JASTA claims would be next to impossible to prove against KSA, especially while 9/11 intelligence remained classified. So JASTA was really symbolic, something to boast about back home in the district. September 11 families would be pacified for a time while preoccupied with the bureaucracy of civil litigation.

Even if JASTA plaintiffs could obtain evidence, they would have a hard time ever proving a causal chain from the Saudi state to the 9/11 attacks. KSA might have ignored warning signs—so did the United States—but was hardly looking to destabilize geopolitics and send energy demand into free fall.

Indeed, since 2016, no JASTA suit has gained serious traction. A much touted suit against Israel in 2017 has gone nowhere and certainly has not been a deterrent to Israeli warfare. Iran has not even defended against JASTA suits and has suffered default judgments. That just moves plaintiffs into enforcement actions in the United States, in which they've been profoundly unsuccessful. Administrations of both parties have intervened against the plaintiffs, preferring that the government control Iranian assets to use them for diplomatic leverage.

The determination of Strada and other JASTA plaintiffs despite long odds, dim enforcement prospects, and opposition of their own government is a stirring reminder of the manifold purposes of tort law, or civil dispute resolution more generally. The U.S. tort system tends to emphasize, usually to a fault, the aim of compensation. But most 9/11 plaintiffs have received some compensation already from the federal victim compensation find.

Rather, plaintiffs in many types of cases, and especially in wrongful death, are usually after something else entirely. No amount of money can bring back a loved one. But justice is a relentless motivator.

Nevertheless, the law never has favored compensation for plaintiffs in U.S. courts for matters implicating foreign affairs. The preference is partly structural. The Constitution provides roles for both the executive and legislature in foreign policy. Congress often has abdicated, justifiably and not. But foreign policy in any event was always to be policy, by design, a matter of distributive justice for the political branches, not a problem in corrective justice for the courts. 

The preference also is political and is less defensible in that vein. As money became the lingua franca of Washington especially in the post-World War 20th century, policymakers became reluctant to trust courts, much less civil complainants, with regulatory influence over powerful and wealthy actors. In other words, the grubby hands of the unwashed masses must not be allowed to derail the gravy trains of the elite. The distaste for civil complainants against states supporting terrorism is a cousin, and not even a distant one, of the reluctance to create private causes of action in civil rights and consumer protection. 

In an outcome under-reported by mass media amid the usual flurry of Supreme Court opinions late in the last term, in Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Doe, in June, the Court disallowed a lawsuit accusing a U.S. corporation of knowingly developing technology for the Chinese government to facilitate the identification, arrest, and torture of members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The Court ruled out both corporate liability under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and aiding-and-abetting liability under the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), appended to the ATS in 1991.

Both conclusions are debatable on the merits; the Court ruled 6-3. But more significant is the problem that remains: whether, or when and how, transnational actors can be held accountable in the United States for their complicity in human rights violations abroad.

As the United States has sought to eschew judicial involvement in foreign matters, other nations and the international legal system have been trying to step up. There is needed and dawning recognition around the world that transnational actors, public and private, have for too long been permitted to operate above the law. From Big Oil in South America, to Big Ag in Africa, to Russia in the former SSRs, the supposed rule of law has failed to stop bad actors from literally getting away with murder.

Which brings us back to KSA. To be fair to the past presidents, the United States always has been in a tough spot with the Saudis.

KSA seems to enjoy impunity in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, oppression of dissidents at home and abroad, dubious policies on gender and sexual orientation equality, religious freedom, and immigrant labor, and financing war in Syria and Yemen. I'm not saying all such Saudi policies are indefensible, and I'm not letting the United States off the hook for its own issues. I mean only that there seems to be no official inquiry at all; other nations fairly accuse the United States of a double standard. 

The pandering of Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump to Saudi royals is perennially stomach-churning. Western politicians will smile and abide when KSA hosts the 2034 FIFA World Cup, just as they abided Saudi acquisition of LIV Golf (until this year), Newcastle United, and Electronic Arts. And the United States is moving forward (probably) on an agreement to share nuclear technology with KSA for, one hopes, only civilian applications. 

And no wonder. The United States and KSA continue to rely mutually on strategic alliance for security interests in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Trump and allies, including son-in-law Jared Kushner, are profiting handsomely from Saudi investments.

One might wonder whether a time will come to pay the piper. Late last week, KSA grew frustrated as Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized from Saudi-financed government forces the entire Red Sea coast of Yemen. The Houthis thus gained control—this might sound familiar—of a vital strait and key islands in the transit of oil.

About the same time, KSA suffered a drone attack on its East-West oil pipeline. The massive conduit, stretching 1,200 km (746 miles), vital in the best of times, is a critical overland bypass to the Strait of Hormuz. The attack came from Iraqi territory, but almost certainly was the work of Iran-backed forces, and the timing dovetailed with the Houthi advance. The pipeline is shut down now for damage and risk assessment. I hope you filled your gas tank over the weekend.

In the wake of this one-two punch, reports say that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) himself—whom you might remember from such hits as the Khashoggi dismemberment and Biden fist bump—asked the White House to intervene militarily against the Houthis. Middle East commentator Professor James M. Dorsey observed analogously seven years ago: "The Saudis do not want an open conflict with Iran. The Saudis would like others to fight that war, and the others are reluctant."

Whether or not Trump personally felt inclined to oblige in Yemen, U.S. military resources happen to be running thin. And Republicans campaigning for midterm election would go into full meltdown if the country were to go to war on a second front.

So the President had to let down his Riyadh chum, but did pledge to send 200 military advisers to beef up intelligence sharing. Why does that also sound familiar (inflation since 128 in 1950)? Well, don't worry, the President said. He had a call with MBS, and "everything's going to work out fine and dandy. It's going to be very good."

A deepening Saudi alliance, a merely symbolic JASTA, and a neutered ATS: Seems to me that the United States is succumbing to sycophancy as its place in the new world oligarchy.

Rhode Island primaries open to independent voters, but parties still exert outsized influence over elections

Governor McKee presses the flesh at a Ghana-unity World Cup event

in Providence in June.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Yesterday I voted in a Rhode Island primary election for the first time in my 15 years here, because a new state law allows voting without party affiliation.

The Governor's Race and the Problem with Not-So-Open Primaries 

I wanted to signal my displeasure with Governor Dan McKee. I did not think McKee a worthy successor to Gina Raimondo in 2021, when she joined the Biden cabinet, and I did not support him when he won election in 2022. I thought him a political insider more interested in party politics than bettering life for Rhode Islanders, and I regard my view as exonerated. 

But before this election, my vote was near meaningless. Rhode Island is a solidly blue state. The Republican party does not even put up candidates for most state legislative offices and often puts up non-serious placeholders for executive offices. So many voters simply "pull the lever" for Democrats automatically that most elections are decided in the primaries. Though Rhode Island has had Republican and independent governors in the past, such an upset is highly unlikely when the Democrat candidate is a party insider with easy name recognition, such as McKee.

Heck, yeah, I want my sticker.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I'm an "independent," or what Rhode Island calls "unaffiliated" voter. I always have been. I believe that America's two major parties have locked up the political system by making it almost impossible for a third party to get traction as other than a spoiler. Parties can no longer shift as they once did at pivotal moments in American history. And as they are locked in, both major parties have become unresponsive to American voters, who by and large are moderate. The parties are advantaged instead by playing to extremes. The two-party lock thus exacerbates our political and social polarization. Power in Washington shifts left or right, but congressional paralysis and executive unaccountability remain constant. I won't sign on to that. (There is a longer and more complicated explanation of why I have not affiliated with a third party, for another day. It is a proposition I have considered carefully.)

Refusal to join a major party meant that my vote in each general election was usually "thrown away" on state and federal races, because those matters were already decided. Rhode Island had more-or-less closed primaries when I moved here in 2011; unaffiliated voters were not allowed to vote in party primaries. Technically, Rhode Island had, since 1978, "semi-open" primaries, because unaffiliated voters who turned up at the primary could choose either ballot and go ahead and vote. However, the voter would then be registered as a party member for the ballot the voter chose. The voter could then file paperwork to disaffiliate from the party, but the onus was on the voter to do so. I don't consider that "open," no matter how consistently the prefix "semi" is interjected.

I'm not a political scientist, though I play one in the classroom. I have many political science friends who explain things to me. One reminded me last week that one problem with the closed primary is a counter-majoritarian effect. Suppose that, in Rhode Island, a moderate Democrat—who might incidentally, be something else that resonates with voters, such as libertarian, but would be effectively excluded from politics if so identifying—would command the majority support of the people when all voters participate. Yet that candidate never reaches all voters. Rather, the Democrat party first prefers candidates for the primary ballot who articulate more extreme differentiation from Republicans. Then party loyalists, the most fervent primary voters, prefer the more extreme of the balloted extreme. Our moderate Democrat stands no chance in this process, and the candidate who would have commanded majority support in the state never reaches the general election: yet another, and more subtle, way that our party-driven political system exacerbates polarization.

Half of R.I. registered voters are not party members.

R.I. SoS public domain

Here's a remarkable fact: Despite decades of compulsory party registration if one dared vote in a dispositive primary, roughly half of Rhode Island voters are, still are, unaffiliated. Present state data peg the count at 52%. It's 50% in Barrington, R.I., where I live. Turnout for primaries, never great, was disincentivized by the threat of compulsory party registration. And data show vigorous trading in party membership, disaffiliation and affiliation, for a few thousand who still wanted to participate.

Whether or not there is any merit to the mythology, I cannot say, but Rhode Islanders are said to be famously independently minded owing to the founding of the state by Roger Williams as a haven for church-state separationist, religious dissidents.

In 2024, the Rhode Island legislature at last passed, and Governor McKee signed into law, a bill allowing unaffiliated voters to choose and cast a party ballot in the primary without joining the party. Or otherwise stated, disaffiliation is instant and automatic. As an election supervisor put it to me, if you go in an unaffiliated voter, you come out an unaffiliated voter.

McKee loses, about 1.7:1.
R.I. SoS public domain

It is somewhat ironic that McKee signed the 2024 bill. He lost in yesterday's primary, remarkably for an incumbent and insider in Rhode Island. Voters, including me, favored his opponent, more moderate on many issues and with a corporate-boardroom origin story, by about 1.7 to 1. In advance of the election, the conservative Rhode Island Current suggested that Rhode Island Republicans ought disaffiliate to take advantage of the new primary law to vote against the lefty McKee without, now, having to become Democrats.

While strategic voting is an arguably adverse result of opening primaries to the unaffiliated, the threat is minimal relative to the widely disenfranchising alternative of alienating the unaffiliated. Anyway, in truth, McKee's record was so poor, and voters are so angry, that polls disfavored him yesterday regardless of the 2024 change.

A sign at my polling place notifies independent voters
of the 2024 law allowing voting without affiliation.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC0 1.0

The Rhode Island voting system is improved by widening the "semi-open" primary with "automatic disaffiliation." For the first time since I moved here in 2011, I feel like I got my small say in the Governor's race. But the problem of locked-party choice still overshadows the system, just as it perpetuates dysfunction in American government writ large.

The Lieutenant Governor's Race and the Problem with Plurality Rule

What should Rhode Island's next innovation be? Another ill of party politics can be seen in the lieutenant governor's race and could be cured by rank-choice voting (RCV).

An advantage of the two-party lock is that general elections usually reduce the field to two choices. Majority rule works well when there are only two choices, because one of the candidates invariably wins more than 50% of the votes. But when there are more than two choices, "majority rule," in the United States at least, usually devolves into plurality rule. The election is "one and done," and the candidate with the most votes wins—even with less than 50% of votes.

Further complicating matters, because the party is the gatekeeper to the ballot, the outcome can be manipulated by allowing fewer or more candidates to be listed. For example, if the party favors an ideological position that the party fears a majority of voters, say 60%, will not support, the party can allow, say, three candidates with an opposing ideological position to reach the ballot. Opposition voters then split over those three candidates, 20% each, and the party favorite prevails, not with a majority of votes, but with a plurality of 40%.

Run-off elections avert this problem. But a conventional run-off requires voters to trudge back to the polls, so even poorer than poor turnout severely distorts representation. RCV effects a virtual run-off, using voters' second or third choices to calculate run-off results with one-time voter preference data and generating a candidate who enjoys majority support, at least in some sense. There are many, contested variations of RCV in the operational details, but overall, political scientists, they tell me, prefer it to plurality-rules for its obviously superior democratic methodology. Further explanation may be found at Ballotpedia, along with data from Alaska and Maine, which use RCV.

In the Rhode Island lieutenant governor's race, it's safe to presume that the party favored candidate Sabina Matos. She was the incumbent and another political insider, nominated initially for the job by Governor McKee. Naturally, her voter approval has faltered, same as McKee's. 

Matos wins by plurality.

R.I. SoS public domain

But unlike McKee, Matos was in a crowded field with four other candidates. I voted for the runner-up challenger, Xaykham Khamsyvoravong, who at the time of this writing won 26.4% of votes. The three other candidates collectively won 36.1% of votes. Matos is projected to win with only 37.4% of votes.

My wife aptly observed that Matos's share of the votes, 37.4%, is strikingly close to Governor McKee's losing share of 37.6% of votes. Given the political context, one might suppose that close to a two-thirds majority of voters in the Democrat primary wished, like me, to toss out the incumbency, both governor and lieutenant governor. But because messaging among the lieutenant-governor challengers was similar, and interest in the race is low anyway, no consensus emerged among a majority of voters on which challenger should unseat Matos. Anyone else, a majority of voters said. Yet Matos overwhelmingly likely will be reelected as lieutenant governor.

Again, the need for RCV is amplified by undemocratic party influence over the ballot to begin with. RCV will help, but will not solve the problem of democratically unaccountable party machinery making choices for us, much less the political polarization that results, amplified by the technologies of the information age. 

It is clear, though, that we should and can do better.