Author: PolitCens

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WASHINGTON — A pair of unwelcome and destructive guests named Helene and Milton have stormed their way into this year’s U.S. presidential election.

The back-to-back hurricanes have jumbled the schedules of Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump, both of whom devoted part of their recent days to tackling questions about the storm recovery effort.

The two hurricanes are forcing basic questions about who as president would best respond to deadly natural disasters, a once-overlooked issue that has become an increasingly routine part of the job. And just weeks before the November 5 election, the storms have disrupted the mechanics of voting in several key counties.

Vice President Harris is trying to use this as an opportunity to project leadership, appearing alongside President Joe Biden at briefings and calling for bipartisan cooperation. Former President Trump is trying to use the moment to attack the administration’s competence and question whether it is withholding help from Republican areas, despite no evidence of such behavior.

Adding to the pressure is the need to provide more money for the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would require House Republicans to work with the Democratic administration. Biden said Thursday that lawmakers should address the situation immediately.

Timothy Kneeland, a professor at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York, who has studied the issue, said, “Dealing with back-to-back crises will put FEMA under more scrutiny and, therefore, the Biden administration will be under a microscope in the days leading up to the election.

“Vice President Harris must empathize with the victims without altering the campaign schedule and provide consistent messaging on the widespread devastation that makes FEMA’s work even more challenging than normal,” Kneeland said.

Already, Trump and Harris have separately gone to Georgia to assess hurricane damage and pledge support, and Harris has visited North Carolina, requiring the candidates to cancel campaign events elsewhere and use up time that is a precious resource in the final weeks before any election. Georgia and North Carolina are political battlegrounds, raising the stakes.

Campaign language altered

The hurricane fallout is evident in the candidates’ campaign events as well.

On Thursday, the first question Harris got at a Univision town hall in Las Vegas came from a construction worker and undecided voter from Tampa, Florida. Ramiro Gonzalez asked about talk that the administration has not done enough to support people after Helene, and whether the people in Milton’s path would have access to aid — a sign that Trump’s messaging is breaking through with some potential voters.

Harris has called out the level of misinformation being circulated by Republicans, but her fuller answer revealed the dynamics at play just a few weeks before an election.

“I have to stress that this is not a time for people to play politics,” she said.

On the same day, Trump opened his speech at the Detroit Economic Club by praising Republican governors in the affected states and blasting the Biden-Harris administration.

“They’ve let those people suffer unjustly,” he said about those affected by Helene in North Carolina.

Voting systems affected

The storms have also scrambled the voting process in places. North Carolina’s State Board of Elections has passed a resolution to help people in the state’s affected counties vote. Florida will allow some counties greater flexibility in distributing mail-in ballots and changing polling sites for in-person voting. But a federal judge in Georgia said Thursday the state doesn’t need to reopen voter registration despite the disruptions by Helene.

Tension and controversy have begun to override the disaster response, with Biden on Wednesday and Thursday saying that Trump has spread falsehoods that are “un-American.”

Candace Bright Hall-Wurst, a sociology professor at East Tennessee State University, said that natural disasters have become increasingly politicized, often putting more of the focus on the politicians instead of the people in need.

“Disasters are politicized when they have political value to the candidate,” she said. “This does not mean that the politicization is beneficial to victims.”

As the Democratic nominee, Harris has suddenly been a major part of the response to hurricanes, a role that traditionally has not involved vice presidents in prior administrations.

On Thursday, she participated virtually at a Situation Room briefing on Milton while she was in Nevada for campaign activities. She has huddled in meetings about response plans and on Wednesday phoned into CNN live to discuss the administration’s efforts.

At a Wednesday appearance with Biden to discuss Milton ahead of it making landfall, Harris subtly tied back the issues into her campaign policies to stop price gouging on food and other products.

“To any company that — or individual that — might use this crisis to exploit people who are desperate for help through illegal fraud or price gouging — whether it be at the gas pump, the airport or the hotel counter — know that we are monitoring these behaviors and the situation on the ground very closely and anyone taking advantage of consumers will be held accountable,” she said.

Harris warned that Milton “poses extreme danger.” It made landfall in Florida late Wednesday and left more than 3 million without power. But the storm surge never reached the same levels as Helene, which led to roughly 230 fatalities and for a prolonged period left mountainous parts of North Carolina without access to electricity, cell service and roads.

Misinformation about Helene

Trump and his allies have seized on the aftermath of Helene to spread misinformation about the administration’s response. Their debunked claims include statements that victims can only receive $750 in aid, as well as false charges that emergency response funds were diverted to immigrants.

The former president said the administration’s response to Helene was worse than the George W. Bush administration’s widely panned handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which led to nearly 1,400 deaths.

“This hurricane has been a bad one; Kamala Harris has left them stranded,” Trump said at a recent rally in Juneau, Wisconsin. “This is the worst response to a storm or a catastrophe or a hurricane that we’ve ever seen ever. Probably worse than Katrina, and that’s hard to beat, right?”

Asked about the Trump campaign’s strategic thinking on emphasizing the hurricane response, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it reflects a pattern of “failed leadership” by the Biden administration that also includes the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and security at the U.S. southern border.

John Gasper, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who has researched government responses to natural disasters, said storm victims generally want to ensure foremost that they get the aid they need.

“These disasters essentially end up being good tests of leadership for local, state and federal officials in how they respond,” he said.

But Gasper noted that U.S. politics have gotten so polarized and other issues such as the economy are shaping the election, such that the debate currently generating so much heat between Trump and the Biden administration might not matter that much on Election Day.
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VIENTIANE, LAOS — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken Friday warned China against military provocations toward Taiwan, following Beijing’s strong reaction to an annual speech by the leader of the self-ruled democracy.

“I can tell you that with regard to the so-called Ten Ten speech, which is a regular exercise, China should not use it in any fashion as a pretext for provocative actions,” Blinken told reporters during a press conference in Vientiane, Laos. 

He was referring to October 10, known as Double Ten Day, when Taiwan celebrates the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, just months after an uprising that began on October 10, 1911.

The People’s Republic of China celebrates its national day on October 1, marking the founding of the country in 1949. 

China has continued to ramp up its military threats against Taiwan, following President Lai Ching-te’s Thursday speech, which rejected China’s claim of sovereignty over the island.

Blinken was in Vientiane for meetings with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and participated in the East Asia Summit. 

He said there is a strong desire among all ASEAN countries, along with others present, to maintain peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, with neither side taking actions that undermine the status quo.

Earlier on Friday, Taiwan detected 20 Chinese military aircraft and 10 naval vessels around Taiwan. Thirteen of the aircraft crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s northern and southwestern Air Defense Identification Zone, according to a posting on social media platform X by Taiwan’s defense ministry.

Between Wednesday and Thursday, Taiwan also detected 27 Chinese military aircraft, nine naval vessels, and five official ships.

In Beijing, Chinese officials said Taiwan “has no so-called sovereignty.”

Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, slammed Lai, accusing him of having “the ill intention of heightening tensions in the Taiwan Strait for his selfish political interest.”

Taiwan has been self-ruled since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s communists took power in Beijing after defeating Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang nationalists in a civil war, prompting the nationalists’ relocation to the island.

Washington switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing to counter the then-Soviet Union in 1979.  

Since then, relations between the U.S. and Taiwan have been governed by the Taiwan Relations Act that Congress passed in April 1979, under which the U.S. provides defense equipment to Taiwan.

In September, Taiwan President Lai said if China’s claims over Taiwan are truly based on concerns about territorial integrity, it should also seek to reclaim the 600,000 square kilometers of land it ceded to Russia in the 19th century — an area almost the size of Ukraine.
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VIENTIANE, Laos — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Southeast Asian leaders Friday that the U.S. is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea during an annual summit meeting and pledged the U.S. will continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the vital sea trade route.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ meeting with Blinken followed a series of violent confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam, which have fueled concerns that China’s increasingly assertive actions in the waterways could spiral into a full-scale conflict.

China, which claims almost the entire sea, has overlapping claims with ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan. About a third of global trade transits through the sea, which is also rich in fishing stocks, gas and oil.

Beijing has refused to recognize a 2016 international arbitration ruling by a U.N.-affiliated court in the Hague that invalidated its expansive claims and has built up and militarized islands it controls.

“We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who is filling in for President Joe Biden, in his opening speech at the U.S.-ASEAN summit. “The United States will continue to support freedom of navigation, and freedom of overflight in the Indo Pacific.”

The United States has no claims in the South China Sea but has deployed navy ships and fighter jets to patrol the waters in a challenge to China’s claims.

Chinese and Philippine vessels have clashed repeatedly this year, and Vietnam said last week that Chinese forces assaulted its fishermen in the disputed sea. China has also sent patrol vessels to areas that Indonesia and Malaysia claim as exclusive economic zones.

The United States has warned repeatedly that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines — its oldest treaty ally in Asia — if Filipino forces, ships or aircraft come under armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. complained to summit leaders on Thursday that his country “continues to be subject to harassment and intimidation” by China. He said it was “regrettable that the overall situation in the South China Sea remains tense and unchanged” due to China’s actions, which he said violated international law. He has called for more urgency in ASEAN-China negotiations on a code of conduct to govern the South China Sea.

Singaporean leader Lawrence Wong earlier this week warned of “real risks of an accident spiraling into conflict” if the sea dispute isn’t addressed.

Malaysia, who takes over the rotating ASEAN chair next year, is expected to push to accelerate talks on the code of conduct. Officials have agreed to try and complete the code by 2026, but talks have been hampered by sticky issues including disagreements over whether the pact should be binding.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang was defiant during talks on Thursday. He called South China Sea a “shared home” but repeated China’s assertion that it was merely protecting its sovereign rights, officials said. Li also blamed meddling by “external forces” who sought to “introduce bloc confrontation and geopolitical conflicts into Asia.” Li didn’t name the foreign forces, but China has previously warned the U.S. not to meddle in the region’s territorial disputes.

In another firm message to China, Blinken said the United States believed “it is also important to maintain our shared commitment to protect stability across the Taiwan Strait.” China claims the self-ruled island of Taiwan as its own territory and bristles at other countries’ patrolling the body of water separating it from the island.

Blinken also attended an 18-nation East Asia Summit, along with the Chinese premier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and leaders from Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

ASEAN has treaded carefully on the sea dispute with China, which is the bloc’s largest trading partner and its third largest investor. It hasn’t marred trade relations, with the two sides focusing on expanding a free trade area covering a market of 2 billion people.

Blinken said the annual ASEAN summit talks were a platform to address other shared challenges including the civil war in Myanmar, North Korea’s “destabilizing behavior” and Russia’s war aggression in Ukraine. He said the U.S. remained the top foreign investor in the region and aims to strengthen its partnership with ASEAN.
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WASHINGTON — The United States still believes that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon despite Tehran’s recent strategic setbacks, including Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leaders and two largely unsuccessful attempts to attack Israel, two U.S. officials told Reuters.

The comments from a senior Biden administration official and a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) added to public remarks earlier this week by CIA Director William Burns, who said the United States had not seen any evidence Iran’s leader had reversed his 2003 decision to suspend the weaponization program.

“We assess that the Supreme Leader has not made a decision to resume the nuclear weapons program that Iran suspended in 2003,” said the ODNI spokesperson, referring to Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The intelligence assessment could help explain U.S. opposition to any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack that Tehran carried out last week.

U.S. President Joe Biden said after that attack he would not support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites, but did not explain why he had reached that conclusion. His remarks drew fierce criticism from Republicans, including former President Donald Trump.

U.S. officials have long acknowledged that an attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program might only delay the country’s efforts to develop a nuclear bomb and could even strengthen Tehran’s resolve to do so.

“We’re all watching this space very carefully,” the Biden administration official said.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment but Tehran has repeatedly denied ever having had a nuclear weapons program.

Key Iran ally weakened

In the past weeks, Israel’s military has inflicted heavy losses on Hezbollah, the most powerful member of the Iran-backed network known as the Axis of Resistance. The group’s setbacks have included the killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike last month.

The weakening of a key Iranian ally has prompted some experts to speculate that Tehran may restart its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb to protect itself.

Beth Sanner, a former U.S deputy director of national intelligence, said the risk of Khamenei reversing his 2003 religious dictum against nuclear weapons is “higher now than it has been” and that if Israel were to strike nuclear facilities Tehran would likely move ahead with building a nuclear weapon.

That would still take time, however.

“They can’t get a weapon in a day. It will take months and months and months,” said Sanner, now a fellow with the German Marshall Fund.

Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% fissile purity, close to the 90% of weapons grade, at two sites, and in theory it has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for almost four bombs, according to a yardstick of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. watchdog.

The expansion in Iran’s enrichment program has reduced the so-called breakout time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb to “a week or a little more,” according to Burns, from more than a year under a 2015 accord that Trump pulled out of when president. Actually making a bomb with that material would take longer. How long is less clear and the subject of debate.

Possible Israeli attack

Israel has not yet disclosed what it will target in retaliation for Iran’s attack last week with more than 180 ballistic missiles, which largely failed thanks to interceptions by Israeli air defenses as well as by the U.S. military.

The United States has been privately urging Israel to calibrate its response to avoid triggering a broader war in the Middle East, officials say, with Biden publicly voicing his opposition to a nuclear attack and concerns about a strike on Iran’s energy infrastructure.

Israel, however, views Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat.

The conflicts in the Middle East between Israel and Iran and Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen have become campaign issues ahead of the November 5 presidential election, with Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, positioning themselves as pro-Israel.

Speaking at a campaign event last week, Trump mocked Biden for opposing an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, saying: “That’s the thing you wanna hit, right?”

Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence officer and government official, said Iran still had space to compensate for setbacks dealt to its proxies and missile force without having to resort to developing a nuclear warhead.

“The Iranians have to recalculate what’s next. I don’t think at this point they will rush to either develop or boost the (nuclear) program toward military capacity,” he said.

“They will look around to find what maneuvering space they can move around in.”
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denver — Twelve people were rescued Thursday night after being trapped for about six hours at the bottom of a former Colorado gold mine when an elevator malfunctioned at the tourist site, authorities said. One person died in the accident.

The elevator was descending into the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near the town of Cripple Creek when it had a mechanical problem around 150 meters beneath the surface, creating a “severe danger for the participants,” and one person was killed, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said.

The 12 adults who were trapped were about 305 meters below ground, but they had access to water and the atmosphere was considered good. They were safe and in communication with authorities with radios while waiting, Mikesell said.

They were in good spirits after they were rescued, and authorities gave them pizza once they were out and told them everything that had happened, he said. While at the bottom, authorities had told them only that there was an elevator issue.

Mikesell said during a nighttime briefing that authorities do not know yet what caused the malfunction and an investigation is underway. Engineers worked to make sure the elevator was working safely again before bringing the stranded visitors back up on it. They had been prepared to bring them up by rope if necessary, had they not been able to get the elevator fixed.

Mikesell declined to reveal the identification of the victim.

The incident, which was reported to authorities at about noon, happened during the final week of the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine season before it shuts down for the winter, Mikesell said.

Earlier in the afternoon — while the 12 were stuck at the bottom — 11 other people who were riding the elevator were rescued. Four had minor injuries. The sheriff did not elaborate on how they were injured.

The elevator ride typically takes about two minutes, travelling about 152 meters per minute, according to the mine’s website.

Mikesell said the last time there was an incident was in the 1980s when a couple of people were trapped on the elevator. Nobody died in that incident.

Mines that operate as tourist attractions in Colorado must designate someone to inspect the mines and the transportation systems daily, according to the state Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. Mikesell said he didn’t know the date of the last inspection. Records of the inspections weren’t immediately available online.

Gov. Jared Polis sent state resources including a mine rescue team.

Cripple Creek is a town of about 1,100 in the Rocky Mountains southwest of Colorado Springs.

The mine opened in the 1800s and closed in 1961, but still operates tours. Its website describes a one-hour tour in which visitors descend 304 meters. It says they can see veins of gold in the rock and ride an underground tram.

A woman named Mollie Kathleen Gortner discovered the site of the mine in 1891 when she saw quartz laced with gold, according to the company’s website.
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When major disasters like hurricanes and floods hit the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, coordinates major rescue efforts that would overwhelm local officials. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports on how the agency works. 
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WASHINGTON — Disinformation and conspiracy theories have spread quickly in response to natural disasters in the southeastern United States, creating distrust in the government response, according to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It is absolutely the worst I have ever seen,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters on a Tuesday call.

The spread of lies surrounding the natural disasters comes at a time when social media infrastructure will allow “virtually any claim” to amplify and spread, experts say.

Hurricane Helene left more than 200 people dead and many more injured or without power, and Hurricane Milton has left at least four dead after ravaging Florida, according to the Associated Press.

Some frequently spread falsehoods include accusations that FEMA prevented Florida evacuations and claims that funding for storm victims was instead given to undocumented migrants.

Such misinformation is “demoralizing” to first responders, Criswell said in the press call.

Additionally, the fabrications could put first responders and residents of impacted areas in even more danger, according to Matthew Baum, a Harvard University professor who focuses on fake news and misinformation.

“When you’re talking about life-and-death situations, [misinformation] can cause people not to take advantage of help that’s available to them, and it can also be dangerous for first responders who are being accused of all sorts of badness,” Baum told VOA. “And if first responders start to worry about their own safety, that’s going to undermine how they do their jobs.”

Many of the other falsehoods stem from former President Donald Trump’s campaign and allies.

In an October 3 rally, the former president falsely claimed that the Biden-Harris administration was diverting FEMA funding to house illegal migrants.

Last week, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, claimed that “they control the weather” in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. She did not specify who “they” are.

To combat popular conspiracies surrounding hurricane relief efforts, FEMA launched a “Hurricane Rumor Response” webpage to “help correct rumors and provide accurate information,” according to a press release.

Baum, however, told VOA that those who believe the false claims may not be swayed by the government-funded website, as they are already “deep down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking.”

“I don’t think the website will have a significant effect, but it’s still worth doing because journalists read it and having that information out there gets it into the news ecosystem,” Baum said. “But fundamentally, it’s not likely to reach many of the people that are at risk of being harmed by this disinformation.”

FEMA put up a similar rumor response webpage during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

On social media platforms such as X, misinformation tends to spread faster than true stories, a 2018 MIT study found. False news stories are 70% more likely to be reposted than true ones are.

Media scholar Matt Jordan told VOA the vast amount of disinformation circulating is part of a “firehose of falsehood” strategy, in which bad actors publish so much “garbage” that people don’t know what to believe.

“It’s a way of eliminating the capacity for the press to help generate democratic consensus by just putting so much garbage into the zone,” the Penn State professor said.

U.S. President Joe Biden said during a Tuesday morning briefing that this misinformation “misleads” the public.

“It’s un-American, it really is,” he said in his remarks. “People are scared to death; people know their lives are at stake.”
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Hurricane Milton left behind widespread destruction as it hit Florida on Wednesday as a dangerous Category 3 storm – the second time in two weeks the southeastern state was hit by a powerful hurricane. VOA’s Richard Green has the latest.
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The vibrant world of yellow-skinned giants, surreal landscapes and a massive mechanical zoetrope have taken over the Hirshhorn Museum in the largest U.S. showcase of work by Brazilian twin brothers OSGEMEOS. It’s the most comprehensive display of the siblings’ art ever presented in the United States. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.
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NEW YORK — You’ve heard the horror stories: Someone casting multiple ballots, people voting in the name of dead relatives, mail-in ballots being intercepted. 

Voter fraud does happen occasionally. When it does, we tend to hear a lot about it. It also gets caught and prosecuted. 

The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, according to current and former election administrators of both parties. 

America’s elections are decentralized, with thousands of independent voting jurisdictions. That makes it virtually impossible to pull off a large-scale vote-rigging operation that could tip a presidential race — or almost any other race. 

“You’re probably not going to have a perfect election system,” said Republican Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state and the advisory board chair of the Secure Elections Project. “But if you’re looking for one that you should have confidence in, you should feel good about that here in America.” 

What’s stopping people from committing voter fraud? 

Voting more than once, tampering with ballots, lying about your residence to vote somewhere else, or casting someone else’s ballot are crimes that can be punished with hefty fines and prison time. Non-U.S. citizens who break election laws can be deported. 

For anyone still motivated to cheat, election systems in the United States are designed with multiple layers of protection and transparency intended to stand in the way. 

For in-person voting, most states either require or request voters provide some sort of ID at the polls. Others require voters to verify who they are in another way, such as stating their name and address, signing a poll book or signing an affidavit. 

People who try to vote in the name of a recently deceased friend or family member can be caught when election officials update voter lists with death records and obituaries, said Gail Pellerin, a Democratic in the California Assembly who ran elections in Santa Cruz County for more than 27 years. 

Those who try to impersonate someone else run the risk that someone at the polls knows that person or that the person will later try to cast their own ballot, she said. 

What protections exist for absentee voting? 

For absentee voting, different states have different ballot verification protocols. All states require a voter’s signature. Many states have further precautions, such as having bipartisan teams compare the signature with other signatures on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign. 

That means even if a ballot is erroneously sent to someone’s past address and the current resident mails it in, there are checks to alert election workers to the foul play. 

A growing number of states offer online or text-based ballot tracking tools as an extra layer of protection, allowing voters to see when their ballot has been sent out, returned and counted. 

Federal law requires voter list maintenance, and election officials do that through a variety of methods, from checking state and federal databases to collaborating with other states to track voters who have moved. 

Ballot drop boxes have security protocols, too, said Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. 

She explained the boxes are often designed to stop hands from stealing ballots and are surveilled by camera, bolted to the ground and constructed with fire-retardant chambers, so if someone threw in a lit match, it wouldn’t destroy the ballots inside. 

Sometimes, alleged voter fraud isn’t what it seems 

After the 2020 election, social media surged with claims of dead people casting ballots, double voting or destroyed piles of ballots on the side of the road. 

Former President Donald Trump promoted and has continued to amplify these claims. But the vast majority of them were found to be untrue. 

An Associated Press investigation that explored every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found there were fewer than 475 out of millions of votes cast. That was not nearly enough to tip the outcome. Democrat Joe Biden won the six states by a combined 311,257 votes. 

The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the voting. Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots. In one case, a man mistakenly thought he could vote while on parole. In another, a woman was suspected of sending in a ballot for her dead mother. 

Former election officials say that even more often, allegations of voter fraud turn out to result from a clerical error or a misunderstanding. 

Pellerin said she remembered when a political candidate in her county raised suspicion about many people being registered to vote at the same address. It turned out the voters were nuns who all lived in the same home. 

Patrick said that when she worked in elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, mismatched signatures were sometimes explained by a broken arm or a recent stroke. In other cases, an elderly person tried to vote twice because they forgot they had already submitted a mail ballot. 

“You really have to think about the intent of the voter,” Patrick said. “It isn’t always intuitive.” 

Why voter fraud is unlikely to affect the presidential race 

It would be wrong to suggest that voter fraud never happens. 

With millions of votes cast in an election year, it’s almost guaranteed there will be a few cases of someone trying to game the system. There also have been more insidious efforts, such as a vote-buying scheme in 2006 in Kentucky. 

In that case, Grayson said, voters complained, and an investigation ensued. Then participants admitted what they had done. 

He said the example shows how important it is for election officials to stay vigilant and constantly improve security in order to help voters feel confident. 

But, he said, it would be hard to make any such scheme work on a larger scale. Fraudsters would have to navigate onerous nuances in each county’s election system. They also would have to keep a large number of people quiet about a crime that could be caught at any moment by officials or observers. 

“This decentralized nature of the elections is itself a deterrent,” Grayson said. 
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One county in the battleground U.S. state of Wisconsin plays a disproportionate role in deciding whether Democrats or Republicans win the White House in November, analysts say. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias takes us to Dane County, where the fight to sway votes is getting hotter as the election draws near.
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LAS VEGAS — Sin City blew a kiss goodbye to the Tropicana before first light Wednesday in an elaborate implosion that reduced to rubble the last true mob building on the Las Vegas Strip. 

The Tropicana’s hotel towers tumbled in a celebration that included a fireworks display. It was the first implosion in nearly a decade for a city that loves fresh starts and that has made casino implosions as much a part of its identity as gambling itself. 

“What Las Vegas has done, in classic Las Vegas style, they’ve turned many of these implosions into spectacles,” said Geoff Schumacher, historian and vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum. 

Former casino mogul Steve Wynn changed the way Las Vegas blows up casinos in 1993 with the implosion of the Dunes to make room for the Bellagio. Wynn thought not only to televise the event but created a fantastical story for the implosion that made it look like pirate ships at his other casino across the street were firing at the Dunes. 

From then on, Schumacher said, there was a sense in Las Vegas that destruction at that magnitude was worth witnessing. 

The city hasn’t blown up a Strip casino since 2016, when the final tower of the Riviera was leveled for a convention center expansion. 

This time, the implosion cleared land for a $1.5 billion baseball stadium for the relocating Oakland Athletics, part of the city’s latest rebrand into a sports hub. 

That will leave only the Flamingo from the city’s mob era on the Strip. But, Schumacher said, the Flamingo’s original structures are long gone. The casino was completely rebuilt in the 1990s. 

The Tropicana, the third-oldest casino on the Strip, closed in April after welcoming guests for 67 years. 

Once known as the “Tiffany of the Strip” for its opulence, it was a frequent haunt of the legendary Rat Pack, while its past under the mob has long cemented its place in Las Vegas lore. 

It opened in 1957 with three stories and 300 hotel rooms split into two wings. 

As Las Vegas rapidly evolved in the following decades, including a building boom of Strip megaresorts in the 1990s, the Tropicana also underwent major changes. Two hotel towers were added in later years. In 1979, the casino’s beloved $1 million green-and-amber stained glass ceiling was installed above the casino floor. 

The Tropicana’s original low-rise hotel wings survived the many renovations, however, making it the last true mob structure on the Strip. 

Behind the scenes of the casino’s grand opening, the Tropicana had ties to organized crime, largely through reputed mobster Frank Costello. 

Costello was shot in the head in New York weeks after the Tropicana’s debut. He survived, but the investigation led police to a piece of paper in his coat pocket with the Tropicana’s exact earnings figure, revealing the mob’s stake in the casino. 

By the 1970s, federal authorities investigating mobsters in Kansas City charged more than a dozen operatives with conspiring to skim $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. Charges connected to the Tropicana alone resulted in five convictions. 

There were no public viewing areas for the event, but fans of the Tropicana did have a chance in April to bid farewell to the vintage Vegas relic. 

“Old Vegas, it’s going,” Joe Zappulla, a teary-eyed New Jersey resident, said at the time as he exited the casino, shortly before the locks went on the doors.
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Washington — Hurricane Helene’s torrential rain and powerful winds were made about 10% more intense due to climate change, according to a study published Wednesday by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group.  

Although a 10% increase “might seem relatively small… that small change in the hazard really leads to big change in impacts and damage,” said climate scientist Friederike Otto, who heads the research organization.  

The study also found that fossil fuels — the primary cause of climate change — have made hurricanes like Helene 2.5 times more likely to occur.  

In other words, storms of Helene’s magnitude were formerly anticipated once every 130 years, but now the probability is closer to once every 53 years, on average.  

To conduct the study, researchers focused on three aspects of Hurricane Helene: precipitation, winds and the water temperature of the Gulf of Mexico — a key factor in its formation.  

“All aspects of this event were amplified by climate change to different degrees,” Ben Clarke, a co-author of the study and researcher at Imperial College London, told a press conference.  

“And we’ll see more of the same as the world continues to warm,” he continued.  

The research by WWA, an international group of scientists and meteorologists who study the role of climate change in extreme weather events, comes as the southeastern US state of Florida prepares for the arrival of another major hurricane, Milton, just 10 days after it was hit by Helene.   

Destruction

Helene made landfall in northwestern Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 140 mph (225 kph).  

The storm then moved north, causing heavy rain and devastating floods in several states, including North Carolina, where it claimed the highest death toll.  

The authors of the study emphasized that the risk posed by hurricanes has increased in scope beyond coastal areas.  

Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at NGO Climate Central, said Helene “had so much intensity” that it would take time for it to lose strength, but the “storm was moving fast… so it could go farther inland pretty quickly.”  

This study utilized three methodologies to examine the three aspects of the storm, and was conducted by researchers from the US, the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands.  

To study its rainfall, researchers used an approach based on both observation and climate models, depending on the two regions involved: one for coastal areas like Florida, and another for inland areas like the Appalachian mountains.  

In both cases, the study found precipitation had increased by 10 percent because of global warming, which is currently at 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  

To study Helene’s winds, scientists looked at hurricane data dating back as far as 1900.  

They determined Helene’s winds were 11 percent stronger, or 13 mph (21 kph), as a result of climate change.  

Lastly, the researchers examined the water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, where Helene formed, finding it was around 2 degrees Celsius above normal.  

This record temperature was made 200 to 500 times more likely due to climate change, the study asserts.  

Warmer oceans release more water vapor, providing more energy for storms as they form.  

“If humans continue to burn fossil fuels, the US will face even more destructive hurricanes,” Clarke warned in a statement. 
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