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Mark Zuckerberg reportedly considered relocating out of California after a proposed wealth tax targeting billionaires raised concerns within Meta. The levy could have required him to sell a significant portion of his Meta shares, which he worried would threaten his controlling voting stake in the company.
Meta confirmed during its third-quarter earnings call that it will create a new class of non-voting capital stock, distributed to all existing shareholders as a stock dividend. CFO Susan Li said the shares are meant to support capital raising, employee compensation, acquisitions and other corporate needs while preserving the voting power of current Class A and B shareholders. The announcement came alongside strong quarterly results, with revenue up 26% year-over-year to $64 billion, though expenses rose 68%.
Meta announced in its third-quarter earnings report that it will create a new class of non-voting shares, with trading set to begin in 2027. The company said proceeds would support AI infrastructure investment, potential acquisitions, and employee compensation. Meta also raised its 2025 capital expenditure forecast to between $135 billion and $145 billion.
ProPublica reports that the Department of Homeland Security directed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to acquire a voting machine and test it for security flaws, citing two anonymous former officials. The same report says CISA staff were angered by the order, and that Elon Musk's DOGE initiative had already laid off CISA employees with the technical expertise to carry it out, leaving officials to tell the White House the task was not feasible.
According to two former administration officials, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security asked CISA to secretly acquire a voting machine, hack it and report findings to the White House without notifying the manufacturer. CISA staff pushed back, calling the request a departure from standard practice, and the plan was ultimately not carried out partly because staff capable of the task had been laid off under Elon Musk's DOGE initiative.
Hannah Fried, cofounder and CEO of the nonprofit All Voting Is Local, is calling on businesses to actively engage in defending democratic institutions rather than remain silent. She contends that strong democracies correlate with better economic performance, including GDP growth, while democratic backsliding tends to coincide with weaker economic indicators.
Estonia has released the source code for IVXV, its online voting platform, in a public repository for review. The maintainers say the repository mirrors the exact code used in legally binding elections, though it is not used for active development. Actual development is overseen by Estonia's State Electoral Office, which directs further inquiries to valimised.ee.
The Onion has launched its first video game, a satirical title centered on the act of voting. Players can navigate obstacles like poll watchers by double-jumping to cast a ballot, or choose an alternate path of staying home instead of voting.
The May Day Strong coalition is calling on major corporations, including Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Target, and Palantir, to take action defending voting rights as the 2026 midterm elections approach. The group has organized a series of events in October, with early voting already underway in some states, pressing companies seen as having ties to President Trump to respond.
White House officials attempted to persuade the U.S. Postal Service to adopt a policy requiring mail-in ballots to be sent via Certified Mail, a service that involves identity verification steps for postal workers handling the mail. The proposal would have added a new layer of processing to how mail-in votes are collected and delivered.
A voting format has been described in which each matchup between two entries is settled by the votes of everyone who has faced that specific pairing, with the winner determined by share of votes received. In cases of ties or pairings that have not yet been voted on, the entry with the stronger overall record advances instead.
Anthropic is asking shareholders to approve a share structure, reported within days by The Information, that would give CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders combined shares carrying 50.1% of voting power on most matters, contingent on at least three founders retaining a minimum stake. The plan would also expand founder board seats from two to three, keep board selection largely with the Long-Term Benefit Trust, and give employees stock to break ties on certain votes.