With less than two months to go until Election Day, and with former President Donald Trump continuing to repeat baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen, the issue of election integrity will likely remain at the forefront of many voters’ minds.

Election officials from seven battleground states convened in Atlanta last week to compare notes and prepare for Election Day. Four of them — one Democrat and three Republicans — spoke with CBS News about the stress and anxiety of their jobs, and also their conviction that elections are conducted freely and fairly.

Asked what emotion this year’s election fills him with, Republican Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for Georgia’s office of secretary of state, said, “I feel like it should be joy, but there’s some angst.”

New Polling Leader, The Hill
Trump overtook Harris in the Decision Desk HQ/The Hill forecast, now at 52% to Harris’s 42%, following swing state gains, though PA still leans Harris, but the race remains a toss-up.

60 Minutes Responds to Trump, CBS News
60 Minutes rejected Trump’s accusation of deceitful editing in the 10/7 Harris interview, saying different parts of her response were used across programs and again inviting Trump to appear.

Shapiro Questions Musk’s Legality, NBC News
Gov. Josh Shapiro urged law enforcement to investigate Elon Musk’s daily $1M payments to registered Pennsylvania voters, calling the scheme “deeply concerning” and potentially illegal.

U.S. Investigates Intel Leak, USA Today
House Speaker Johnson announced a probe into leaked U.S. intel on Israel’s planned strike on Iran, as Israel warned Lebanese civilians to evacuate ahead of Hezbollah-targeted attacks.

Palmer’s Daughter Reacts to Trump, Palm Beach Post
Peg Palmer, daughter of golf legend Arnold Palmer, said her father, a conservative, was “appalled” by Trump’s lack of civility and character, recalling that he cringed at Trump’s behavior in 2016.

Israel Decimates Opposition Leadership, Axios
Israel conducted a three-month decapitation campaign, eliminating key Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, including Sinwar and Nasrallah, dealing a major blow to Iran’s “axis of resistance.”

Election officials are the everyday Americans who administer our elections, keeping our democracy safe and secure. They undergo extensive training to make sure the necessary rules and laws are followed as they impartially conduct elections.

Election officials regularly test voting machines and election equipment, often in view of the public, to ensure that the final results will be accurate. They also follow existing protocols that are in place to verify voter eligibility before an individual is registered to vote and to keep voter rolls up to date by removing those who have died, moved out of state or otherwise become ineligible.

At the county level, elections can be managed by a single individual, a board or commission, or shared between multiple entities.

What Musk doesn’t often address is why humanity should do this in the first place. His most commonly articulated reason is that it’s a hedge against existential risks on Earth, but the lack of a more affirmative case (aside from “we want Starfleet to be real,” as he added Saturday) reflects the core of his and some tech-world brethren’s increasing mind-meld with the former president: their belief that a kind of restless change, absent any inherent quality, goal or direction, is a virtue in its own right.

But you don’t have to take Postman’s dark view of technology to acknowledge that Musk and his foes have a radically different view of its role in society. Musk believes that technological advancements are the catalyst to lead humanity into a glorious future, while their critics, including Democrats and many tech nonprofits (as well as some of the biggest tech firms), believe that without strong democratic control, they might create a self-justifying doom loop that serves only the interest of tech developers and their business partners.

Progress studies began in earnest with a 2019 Atlantic essay called “We Need a New Science of Progress,” written by Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison and Marginal Revolution author Tyler Cowen (n.b.: Tyler is also Chairman of the Mercatus Center, where I work). The essay argued that there needed to be a new intellectual movement that studied the causes of material and civilizational progress. By understanding progress as a phenomenon, Collison and Cowen reasoned, we might be able to improve the organizations and institutions that facilitate progress, and thereby put an end to the “Great Stagnation,” or the period of technological and economic slowdown that Cowen argues have persisted since the 1970s.

None of this is news to most people who attended the Root’s of Progress Institute’s Progress Conference, which I attended this past weekend as part of my participation in the Institute’s Blog-Building Intensive (which I strongly recommend if you are a newish writer interested in progress-related issues). Indeed, part of what made it such an exceptional event was the palpable sense of urgency in every panel, every keynote, and every impromptu debate.

But another reason that AI is the source of the largest disagreements within progress studies is that AI is, to put it simply, “the big one.” Many people within progress studies believe it will be an epochal technology, ushering in not just an industrial revolution but a new era in human affairs. I suspect those who do not will change their minds soon. And when you are facing a new epoch, all sorts of bad outcomes are on the table. I view “getting AI right” as a grand challenge for both our society in general and for progress studies in particular.