In a recent interview with Axios on HBO, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg urged the media to assure the public that there was “nothing illegitimate” about waiting days or even weeks to tabulate the results of the upcoming presidential election.
“You said on election day it’s over, but it well might not be, right?” Axios asked Zuckerberg who replied: “I think the dynamic that you’re talking about is really important, which is that we may not know the final result on election night.”
Zuckerberg went on to add: “One of the things that I think we and other media need to start doing is preparing the American people that there’s nothing illegitimate about this election taking additional days, or even weeks to make sure that all of the votes are counted. In fact, that might be important to make sure that this is a legitimate and fair election.”
Zuckerberg discussed how Facebook plans to facilitate that stating: “So, we’re going to do a bunch of different messaging around that, just to make sure that people know that that’s normal. So if one of the candidates in any of the races claims victory before there’s a consensus result, then we’re going to add some informational context to that post directly saying that there’s no consensus result yet.”
Zuckerberg discussed fears of civil unrest surrounding the election stating: “I think that this is important because there is, unfortunately, I think, a heightened risk of civil unrest in the period, you know, between voting and a result being called or after that. And I just think that we need to be doing everything that we can to reduce the chances of violence or civil unrest in the wake of this election.”
The full interview is set to be aired on Axios on HBO on Tuesday. The video clip is below:
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