Author: PolitCens

Control of the U.S. Senate may come down to Nevada, where a slow ballot count entered its final act Saturday in the nail-biter contest between Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.

Saturday is the last day that mail ballots can arrive and be counted under the state’s new voting law. Election officials were hustling to get through a backlog of tens of thousands of ballots to determine the race’s winner.

The Nevada race took on added importance after Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was declared the winner of his reelection campaign in Arizona Friday night, giving his party 49 seats in the chamber. Republicans also have 49.

If Cortez Masto wins, Democrats would maintain their control of the Senate given Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. If Laxalt wins, the Georgia Senate runoff next month would determine which party has the single-vote Senate edge.

Cortez Masto was only a few hundred votes behind Laxalt, with most of the remaining uncounted ballots in heavily Democratic Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Democrats were confident those ballots would vault their candidate into the lead.

Laxalt has said he expects to maintain his advantage and be declared the victor. But on Saturday he acknowledged in a tweet that the calculus has changed because Cortez Masto had performed better than Republicans expected in Clark County ballots counted over the past few days.

“This has narrowed our victory window,” he tweeted, acknowledging the race comes down to the final Clark ballots.

“If they are GOP precincts or slightly DEM leaning then we can still win,” Laxalt tweeted. “If they continue to trend heavy DEM then she will overtake us.”

Thousands of ballots still uncounted

If the race remains too close to call after Saturday, a few thousand more ballots could be added to the totals early next week. Mail ballots with clerical errors can be “cured” by voters until the end of the day Monday, and then added to the totals. And a few thousand provisional ballots also remain, votes that election officials must double-check are legally countable by Tuesday before they can be tallied.

“We are doing everything in our power to move ballots forward just as quickly as we can,” Joe Gloria, the registrar in Clark County, said Friday.

An estimated 23,000 ballots remain to be counted in the county. Gloria said there were also 9,600 ballots being “cured” and 5,555 provisional ballots. Clark County accounts for three-quarters of Nevada’s population.

Results of other races

In another key race, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak lost his reelection bid to his Republican challenger, sheriff Joe Lombardo, on Friday night.

Nevada, a closely divided swing state, is one of the most racially diverse in the nation, a working-class state whose residents have been especially hard hit by inflation and other economic turmoil.

Roughly three-fourths of Nevada voters said the country is headed in the wrong direction, and about 5 in 10 called the economy the most important issue facing the country, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of 2,100 of the state’s voters.

Voters viewed the economy negatively, with VoteCast finding nearly 8 in 10 saying economic conditions are either not so good or poor. Only about 2 in 10 called the economy excellent or good. And about a third of voters said their families are falling behind financially.

But that didn’t necessarily translate into anger at President Joe Biden or his party. About half considered inflation the most important issue facing the U.S., but they were evenly split over whether they think higher prices are due to Biden’s policies or factors outside his control.

Nevada is also a famously live-and-let-live state, and Cortez Masto and other Democrats made preserving abortion rights a centerpiece of their campaigns. According to VoteCast, 7 in 10 wanted the procedure kept legal in all or most cases.

Republicans, however, relentlessly hammered the economic argument, contending it was time for a leadership change. They also sought to capitalize on lingering frustrations about pandemic shutdowns that devastated Las Vegas’ tourist-centric economy in 2020.

On Thursday morning, The Associated Press declared Republican Stavros Anthony the winner in the lieutenant governor race, while Republican Andy Mathews was elected state controller.

The state’s lone Republican congressman, Mark Amodei, easily won reelection in his mostly rural district in northern Nevada. The state’s three Las Vegas-area Democratic members of the House were also reelected.
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Control of the U.S. Senate was still undetermined late Friday, but incumbent Senator Mark Kelly’s win in Arizona tied the Republican and Democratic wins with 49 seats each.

Election officials in the Western state of Nevada said the race there tightened late Friday in favor of the Democratic candidate, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, against her Republican challenger, Adam Laxalt. If Cortez Masto wins, the Democrats will be in control of the Senate, regardless of the outcome of Georgia’s still-undecided vote, because Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tiebreaking votes in the 100-member Senate.

Days after Americans voted across the country Tuesday, control of both chambers of Congress — the Senate and the House of Representatives — is still in limbo as final vote tallies have yet to be posted in numerous districts, mostly in Western states.

The Georgia race will be decided in a December 6 runoff election between Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger, former football player Herschel Walker. With a third candidate in their contest winning 2% of the vote, neither Warnock nor Walker crossed the 50% threshold required to win the seat.

The latest results from Nevada on Friday evening showed the race getting close in a tight contest between Laxalt, a former state attorney general, and Cortez Masto.

Ballots mailed on Election Day can still be counted in Nevada if they are received by Saturday. Officials in that state have a Thursday deadline to finish counting all the ballots.

Both Nevada and Arizona were working to count a high number of mail-in ballots, which take longer to tally because election officials need to match signatures on mail-in ballots to voter registration rolls.

Election workers in Arizona are also still counting ballots to determine the outcome of the race for governor as well as three competitive House seats.

Kari Lake, the state’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, has accused election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, of deliberately delaying the vote counting to make it look like Democrats are doing better than they actually are.

The Republican chair of the county board of supervisors, Bill Gates, rebuffed the charge, saying staff are working 14-18 hours a day and will continue through the weekend.

“This is how things work in Arizona and have for decades,” he said, adding, “We are doing what we can and still maintaining accuracy.”

In the race for control of the House of Representatives, Republicans edged closer to winning control but have not yet reached a majority of seats.

As of Friday, Republicans appeared to have won 211 House contests in their quest to attain a 218-vote majority in the 435-member chamber. Democrats have won 200 seats, leaving 24 races undecided, according to The Associated Press, as vote counting continues.

In California, results in more than a dozen competitive House districts have yet to be announced.

Republicans say they are confident they will win the House majority even as they voice dismay that the size of their political advantage over Democrats is likely to be far smaller than pre-election predictions that forecast a “red wave” of Republican winners filling the House chamber come January, when the new Congress is sworn in.

If Republicans do take control of the House, it would give them veto power over President Joe Biden’s agenda and the ability to launch investigations into his administration.

Biden on Wednesday characterized his Democratic Party as having done better than expected against the Republicans and announced he will invite leaders of both parties to the White House after he returns from G-20 meetings in Indonesia to discuss how to work together on economic and national security priorities.

Whatever the eventual outcome, Biden said the election, carried out with only minor disputes across the country, was a good day for America.

“Our democracy has been tested in recent years, but with their votes, the American people have spoken and proven once again that democracy is who we are,” he said.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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U.S. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly won his bid for reelection Friday in the crucial swing state of Arizona, defeating Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters to put his party one victory away from clinching control of the chamber for the next two years of Joe Biden’s presidency.

With Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote, Democrats can retain control of the Senate by winning either the Nevada race, which remains too early to call, or next month’s runoff in the state of Georgia. Republicans now must win both those races to take the majority.

The Arizona race is one of a handful of contests that Republicans targeted in their bid to take control of the 50-50 Senate. It was a test of the inroads that Kelly and other Democrats have made in a state once reliably dominated by the GOP. Kelly’s victory suggests Democratic success in Arizona was not an aberration during Donald Trump’s presidency.

The closely watched race for governor between Democrat Katie Hobbs and Republican Kari Lake was too early to call Friday night. In the secretary of state’s race, Democrat Adrian Fontes defeated Republican Mark Finchem, a top 2020 election denier.

Kelly, a former NASA astronaut who’s flown in space four times, is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who inspired the nation with her recovery from a gunshot wound to the head during an assassination attempt in 2011 that killed six people and injured 13. Kelly and Giffords went on to co-found a gun safety advocacy group.

Kelly and Giffords were at an Elton John concert in Phoenix on Friday night when The Associated Press called the race, campaign spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer said. Maricopa County reported a large batch of results that increased Kelly’s lead and made clear Masters could not make up the difference with the remaining ballots.

“It’s been one of the great honors of my life to serve as Arizona’s senator,” Kelly said in a statement. “I’m humbled by the trust our state has placed in me to continue this work.”

Kelly’s victory in a 2020 special election spurred by the death of Republican Sen. John McCain gave Democrats both of Arizona’s Senate seats for the first time in 70 years. The shift was propelled by the state’s fast-changing demographics and the unpopularity of Trump.

Kelly’s 2022 campaign largely focused on his support for abortion rights, protecting Social Security, lowering drug prices and ensuring a stable water supply in the midst of a drought, which has curtailed Arizona’s cut of Colorado River water.

With President Joe Biden struggling with low approval ratings, Kelly distanced himself from the president, particularly on border security, and played down his Democratic affiliation amid angst about the state of the economy.

He also styled himself as an independent willing to buck his party, in the style of McCain.

Masters, an acolyte of billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, tried to penetrate Kelly’s independent image, aligning him with Biden’s failure to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and tamp down on rampant inflation.

Masters endeared himself to many GOP primary voters with his penchant for provocation and contrarian thinking. He called for privatizing Social Security, took a hard-line stance against abortion and promoted a racist theory popular with white nationalists that Democrats are seeking to use immigration to replace white people in America.

But after emerging bruised from a contentious primary, Masters struggled to raise money and was put on the defense over his controversial positions.

He earned Trump’s endorsement after claiming “Trump won in 2020,” but under pressure during a debate last month, he acknowledged he hasn’t seen evidence the election was rigged. He later doubled down on the false claim that Trump won.

After the primary, he scrubbed some of his more controversial positions from his website, but it wasn’t enough for the moderate swing voters who decided the election.
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Arizona and Nevada election workers were toiling on Friday to tally hundreds of thousands of ballots that could determine control of the U.S. Senate and the shape of President Joe Biden’s next two years in office, in a vote count that officials in the two battleground states warn could drag on for days.

Winning both contests would give either Democrats or Republicans a Senate majority, while a split would transform a December 6 runoff Senate election in Georgia into a proxy battle for the chamber.

Political analysts are anticipating a rush of campaign funds into Georgia as Republicans and Democrats gear up for the final battle of the 2022 midterm elections.

In Arizona, law enforcement officials remained on high alert for potential protests, with barricades and security fencing erected around the Maricopa County elections department, where dozens of officials are working 18-hour days to verify outstanding ballots and tabulate votes.

Kari Lake, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, has criticized election officials in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, as “incompetent” and “despicable,” accusing them of deliberately delaying the vote counting.

Bill Gates, chairperson of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and a Republican, bristled at Lake’s comments.

“Everybody needs to calm down a little bit and turn down the rhetoric,” he told reporters. “That’s the problem with what’s going on with our country right now.”

Control of House, Senate still in question

In the fight for control of the House of Representatives, Republicans were inching closer to becoming the majority and ending four years of rule by Biden’s Democrats. That would give Republicans veto power over Biden’s legislative agenda and allow them to launch potentially damaging investigations into his administration.

Republicans had secured at least 211 of the 218 House seats they need for a majority, Edison Research projected late on Thursday, while Democrats had won 199. Many of the races where winners have not yet been determined are in Arizona, California and Washington state.

Despite the real possibility that they may lose the House, Democrats have still cheered their success in curbing their predicted losses after they galvanized voters angry over the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

The Republican House leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy, has already announced his intention to run for speaker if Republicans take over, an outcome he has described as inevitable.

It is unclear whether a challenger to McCarthy will emerge, but some of the most conservative House Republicans have expressed doubts that he has enough votes yet to become speaker, the most powerful official in the House.

Meanwhile, Republican infighting in the Senate broke into the open on Friday as senators urged the postponement of a Wednesday leadership election so that they have time to discuss why the party did not fare better on Tuesday.

Senator Mitch McConnell is hoping to continue as Republican leader, despite sniping from former President Donald Trump and other conservatives.

Counting could take until next week

Officials overseeing vote counting in the Arizona and Nevada Senate races, where Democratic incumbents are trying to fend off Republican challengers, have said it could take until next week to tally some 520,000 uncounted mail-in ballots. Most of those were in Maricopa County, which encompasses Phoenix.

Their work is slowed by the need to match signatures on mail-in ballots to voter registration signatures after high numbers of such votes were dropped off on Election Day.

By midday on Friday, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly had extended his lead over Republican Blake Masters to 115,000 votes, with about 80% of the vote tallied, while Arizona Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs had extended her narrow lead over Trump-backed Republican Kari Lake to 27,000.

Some of Trump’s most high-profile endorsed candidates lost pivotal races on Tuesday, marring his status as Republican kingmaker and leading several Republicans to blame his divisive brand for the party’s disappointing performance.

While Trump has not officially launched a third White House campaign, the former president has strongly suggested he will do so and is planning a “special announcement” at his Florida club on Tuesday.
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Former President Donald Trump is suing the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block a subpoena requiring him to testify.

The suit contends that, while former presidents have voluntarily agreed to provide testimony or documents in response to congressional subpoenas in the past, “no president or former president has ever been compelled to do so.”

“Long-held precedent and practice maintain that separation of powers prohibits Congress from compelling a president to testify before it,” Trump attorney David A. Warrington said in a statement announcing Trump’s intentions.

He said Trump had “engaged with the committee in a good faith effort to resolve these concerns consistent with executive branch prerogatives and separation of powers,” but said the panel “insists on pursuing a political path, leaving President Trump with no choice but to involve the third branch, the judicial branch, in this dispute between the executive and legislative branches.”

The suit likely dooms the prospect of Trump ever having to testify, given that the committee is expected to disband at the end of the legislative session in January. The committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit.

The committee voted to subpoena Trump during its final televised hearing before the midterm elections and formally did so last month, demanding testimony from the former president. Committee members allege Trump “personally orchestrated” a multipart effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

They said Trump had to testify, either at the Capitol or by videoconference, “beginning on or about” November 14 and continuing for multiple days if necessary.

The letter also outlined a sweeping request for documents, including personal communications between Trump and members of Congress as well as extremist groups.

In his suit, Trump’s attorneys attack the subpoena as overly broad and frame it as an infringement of his First Amendment rights. They also argue other sources besides Trump could provide the same information they want from him.

The lawsuit comes as Trump is expected to launch a third campaign for president next week.

It was filed in the Southern District of Florida, where other Trump lawyers successfully sued to secure a special master who has been tasked with conducting an independent review of records seized by the FBI during an August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.
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The balance of power in the U.S. Congress following Tuesday’s midterm elections is still up in the air, with several key races yet to be called some 48 hours after many polls closed.

A cliffhanger-style multiday wait for results is far from unusual in the United States, where it is the media that generally first calls elections, based on votes tabulated by county clerks and other officials as well as statistical analysis.

While the long delays can exasperate American voters — and raise questions from curious international observers — there are several reasons why the process can stretch out.

Patchwork of rules

For starters, U.S. elections are largely decentralized, and each of the 50 states has its own rules.

Some Americans vote by machine; others, by paper ballot. Some vote in person; others, by mail.

Some vote on Election Day. Others vote in advance. Many citizens take advantage of ballot drop boxes.

As election officials in multiple states urged patience with the vote counting, Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida aired his complaints.

“If #Florida can count 7.5 million ballots in 5 hours how can it take days for some states to count less than 2 million?” Rubio tweeted Wednesday.

Ballots, on which Americans generally vote for a variety of candidates and initiatives, can take a while to tally.

With voting by mail widely popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic, things are taking even longer — the ballots can arrive at counting stations several days after the election. Ohio and Alaska count those that arrive up to 10 days later.

Compounding matters, in many states, election officials are not even allowed to begin counting mail-in votes in advance.

The extended time needed to carry out the process fuels conspiracy theories, especially after the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump falsely claimed was rigged against him.

That race between Trump and eventual winner Joe Biden was not known for four days.

Georgia nail-biter

The southeastern state of Georgia played a special role in 2020, as the balance of the U.S. Senate hung on a second-round election in the state.

This year is proving to be a case of déjà vu.

With no one candidate surpassing the 50% threshold Tuesday to prevent a second round, the two leading candidates, Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker are headed to a Dec. 6 runoff.

Organizing elections in a country of some 333 million citizens is in itself a logistical challenge.

The process rarely goes off without a few small hiccups. This year, for example, the electoral machines in one Arizona county encountered operational problems, disrupting the vote.

Some Republicans — including Trump himself — pointed to it as evidence of fraud, a claim immediately dismissed by authorities.

Even without technical incident, races can simply be extremely close, as several in Tuesday’s election are turning out to be.

Twenty states have laws mandating a recount if the margin between candidates is too thin.

In one standout case in 2000, the country held its breath for 36 days with the entire election hinging on delayed results from one state, Florida, as Texas governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore vied for the White House.

At the heart of the civic imbroglio was a razor-thin vote that prompted a highly contested hand recount. In the end, the battle wound its way to the Supreme Court, which issued a decision favoring Bush that December.
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A day after the polls closed for the United States’ midterm elections, the government agency charged with leading election security efforts expressed confidence that every vote cast was being counted accurately.

“We have seen no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was any way compromised in any race in the country,” said Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in a statement Wednesday.

“We can all have confidence in the safety, security, and integrity of our elections,” she added.

The assessment confirmed a sentiment expressed by multiple CISA officials while briefing reporters on Election Day: that they were seeing “no specific or credible threats to disrupt election infrastructure.”

The CISA confirmed that some states had been subjected to distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, in which servers are bombarded with multiple requests, causing the targeted websites to shut down.

But a second senior CISA official, who briefed reporters late Tuesday on the condition of anonymity, downplayed the attacks, noting that they did not affect any systems used by voters to cast ballots or have their ballots counted.

“Those websites that have been affected were restored relatively quickly,” the official said, adding, “We’ve not seen any evidence to suggest that these are part of a widespread coordinated campaign.”

One such attack, on public-facing websites for the state of Mississippi, including those with information about the election, was quickly claimed by a Russian hacking group, though state officials and the CISA said it was too early to determine attribution.

Learning from past elections

Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, there had been concerns that key U.S. adversaries might try to disrupt the election with a combination of cyber hacks and ransomware, mimicking tactics like those used by Russia and Iran ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

But U.S. officials expressed confidence that years of preparation and coordination with federal, state and local officials would pay off and prevent any attacks from interfering with the vote.

“We took what we learned in the 2018 and 2020 elections to apply to the 2022 midterm elections,” a spokesperson for the National Security Agency’s Election Security Group told VOA on the condition of anonymity to discuss foreign threats to the elections.

“Our partners have unclassified chatrooms with state and local entities,” the spokesperson said. “If they receive information that might be valuable for the whole-of-government defense, we are able to pivot on those tips in foreign space so we can provide information back to bolster resiliency and help them mitigate issues.”

And in the days before the election, cybersecurity companies such as Trellix told VOA that malicious cyber actors seemed to be more focused on technology and health care companies than on election infrastructure.

According to an initial count by the United States Election Project, approximately 115 million Americans cast ballots in Tuesday’s nationwide election, with some states accepting mail-in ballots for another week.

Equipment malfunctions

Some malfunctions with voting equipment Tuesday in Arizona and New Jersey also sparked rumors and allegations of efforts to rig or fix the election, but state officials and CISA rejected such talk as “just flat-out incorrect.”

“To be very clear, we have no indication of malfeasance or malicious activity,” the second senior CISA official said. “It is a technical issue … and they have resolved it.”

However, the fallout from the voting machine problems, which did not ultimately prevent voters from casting ballots, highlights the challenge facing election officials. With the battle to defend election systems from intrusion and meddling coming to an end, they now must win the fight against disinformation.

“We tend to think of election day as the peak event for disinformation. But for the past two election cycles, the most problematic narratives tend to take hold in the days after the election — especially if the vote counting stretches over a period of days/weeks,” Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy, told VOA via email.

Already, state election officials are trying to get word out that patience will be key.

“Do not fall victim to false information,” the National Association of State Election Directors said in a statement issued early Tuesday, emphasizing that it would take “days and weeks” to finish counting all the votes.

“While the media has called many winners and losers already, these results are not official,” the statement said. “The numbers and margins will change as election officials follow their state laws.”

While officials and experts say much of the election-related disinformation, to this point, has been generated by Americans, the CISA and the FBI warn it is likely that such narratives will be picked up and amplified by key adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran.

All three “will take advantage of sort of election integrity narratives that come up in the U.S. ecosystem,” a senior FBI official, briefing on the condition of anonymity, told reporters last month. “We’ve seen that already, specifically from Russia.”

Only it seems Russia and China have not been as active as anticipated.

“Our analysts are mostly surprised by how quiet things have been on the foreign adversary front — at least with what we can track in the overt space,” Schafer said. “But again, it’s early. If there are things that go sideways, we may see more from them.”

Other analysts caution that foreign adversaries may simply be biding their time.

“Foreign malign influence actors are likely evaluating the success of their influence attempts, measuring which narratives were more successful, and what (if any) impact their influence efforts had on the outcome of the election,” Brian Liston, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future’s Insikt Group, told VOA via email.

“This evaluation can then be used to support future influence operations,” he added.
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A string of too-early-to-call California races remains in play and might end up determining whether Republicans seize control of the U.S. House or Democrats hang on to power.

With millions of votes still uncounted Wednesday across the nation’s most populous state, uncertainty remained for about a dozen of the state’s 52 House contests. The most competitive of those races were in the Los Angeles region and the Central Valley farm belt.

In Southern California, Democratic Representatives Katie Porter and Mike Levin were locked in close races, despite President Joe Biden’s late-hour campaign swing on their behalf. East of Los Angeles, Republican Representative Ken Calvert was trailing Democrat Will Rollins by 12 points, but less than one-third of the anticipated votes had been tallied.

In the Central Valley, GOP Representative David Valadao, who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump, had 54% of the votes counted so far in his race against Democrat Rudy Salas, but most ballots had yet to be tabulated. Four years ago, Valadao lost a reelection bid after seeing a sizable lead on Election Day evaporate as late-arriving mail-in ballots were counted. He won back the seat in 2020.

Should Democrats defeat Calvert and prevail in other contests where they were leading or only slightly behind, the year would have echoes of 2018, when the party seized seven Republican-held California seats on the way to retaking the House.

But if Calvert hangs on and Republicans oust Porter and Levin and win an open seat in Central California, the scenario would look similar to 2020, when GOP House candidates flipped four seats in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1.

‘Political bellwether’ or ‘island’

With votes still being counted in key races “we don’t know whether California is a political bellwether or an island,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California-San Diego.

If Democrats can hold the Porter and Levin seats and oust Calvert, “this red ripple that went across the country becomes a blue counter-ripple,” he said.

More broadly, California hewed largely to its liberal leanings on Election Day. Governor Gavin Newsom and U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, both Democrats, were easily reelected, voters overwhelmingly endorsed enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution, and the Legislature remained firmly in Democratic hands.

Democrats also appeared in position to retain their grip on all statewide offices. A Republican hasn’t won one of those races in California since 2006 when Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-elected governor.

The potential for slight shifts mirrored the national political landscape, in which predictions for a Republican wave sweeping Congress into solid GOP control failed to materialize. Republicans were closing in on a slim House majority while Senate control will be decided by close races in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia.

A loss by Porter would be stunning, after she spent more than $24 million to win a third term. She is a star of the party’s progressive wing, a prolific fundraiser with a national following and is frequently mentioned as a future U.S. Senate candidate.

With about half the vote counted, she was virtually tied with Republican Scott Baugh, who had relentlessly criticized her over soaring gas and grocery prices in a closely divided coastal district with a conservative streak. Porter focused strongly on protecting reproductive rights, after the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision.

Calvert — the longest-serving Republican in the California congressional delegation — was first elected in 1992.

His support from Trump posed a challenge in a new, reshaped district about equally split between Democrats and Republicans, which included many transplanted Los Angeles residents and liberal Palm Springs, which has a large concentration of LGBTQ voters.

‘Pocketbook issues’ were top concern

In a district anchored in San Diego County, Levin was in a tight contest with Republican Brian Maryott, who also targeted pocketbook issues that were the top concern for voters nationally. Biden campaigned for him just days before Election Day.

California Republicans believed as many as five House districts in the state could swing their way — enough to very likely give the GOP the House gavel in a midterm-election year when voters typically punish the party that holds the White House. Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield would be in line to replace Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

Democrats hoped to claw back the four seats they surrendered in 2020 and pad their dominance in the state congressional delegation. Republicans hold only 11 of the state’s 53 seats, which drops to 52 seats next year because California’s once-soaring population growth has stalled.

One of the closest contests was for an open seat, the Central Valley’s 13th District, which has a prominent Democratic tilt and a large Latino population. But the most likely voters tend to be white, older, more affluent homeowners, while working-class voters, including many Latinos, are less consistent getting to the polls. Republican John Duarte and Democrat Adam Gray were nearly tied.

In a Democratic-leaning district north of Los Angeles, Republican Representative Mike Garcia was holding a 15-point edge over Democrat Christy Smith in their third consecutive race. Garcia won the previous two.
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Control of the U.S. Congress was still undecided Wednesday as vote counting continued in several key Senate and House races across the nation. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports on what’s next when neither party has a commanding majority.
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With control of Congress still undecided a day after the U.S. midterm elections, African leaders and political analysts are closely watching for signs of what impact the outcome could have on the continent.

African analysts say their biggest concern is how this contentious poll could affect U.S. standing around the world — especially in African nations that have seen democratic backsliding.

There are also economic concerns over how the U.S. responds to rising inflation around the world. Wednesday trading showed that African markets were closely watching the impact on the most popular U.S. export: the dollar.

On a more personal level, communities in the U.S. and in Africa celebrated wins by American candidates of African origin, and bid goodbye to two retiring senators who took a deep interest in the continent.

U.S. democracy matters abroad

African political analyst Ebenezer Obadare told VOA that policymakers on the continent were most focused on possible fallout that could affect Washington’s global standing.

“Political polarization in the U.S. — and the subsequent ripples — has deepened anxiety about the prospects of democracy globally,” said Obadare, an analyst from the Council on Foreign Relations. “For one thing, many African policymakers are worried that, depending on the outcome, the U.S. may not be in a situation to pursue the goals outlined in the recently launched U.S. strategy towards sub-Saharan Africa.”

In August, the Biden administration launched that strategy saying it “welcomes and affirms African agency and seeks to include and elevate African voices in the most consequential global conversations.”

Obadare says he’s more worried about the U.S. losing its own voice amid divisive political rhetoric or politically motivated unrest.

“Right now, much more than material support for transitioning countries, Africa needs the U.S. itself to remain democratic,” Obadare said. “There is genuine worry that if the elections get messy or are inconclusive, the U.S. might lose its gravitas and the moral authority to intervene in the political process in Africa and other developing regions.”

African wins

The midterms saw wins by multiple candidates of African origin, which were welcomed in both the diaspora community and on the continent.

Those include at least eight female Somali-American candidates who, along with one Somali-American man, won national and local-level races in Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio and Maine; at least eight Nigerian-American candidates who won in Georgia and the District of Columbia; and others with close ties to the continent, such as Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, who is the son of Eritrean immigrants.

The most prominent of those victors is Somalia-born Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who was handily re-elected to her seat in Minnesota’s 5th district.

Her success abroad stands in stark contrast to her counterparts in Somalia, such as Fawzia Yusuf Haji Adam, the only female presidential candidate who contested the nation’s May 15 election. She got only one vote — her own.

“This is a victory for Somali women in the diaspora,” Adam said. “I congratulate them, I encourage them, and we are proud of them.”

Goodbye to some Africa hands

The midterms also saw the departure of two retiring Republican senators who have taken an interest in Africa: Senators Jim Inhofe, of Oklahoma, and Rob Portman of Ohio.

Inhofe recently concluded his final congressional trip to the continent, in which he visited Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda. He said he was confident that the continent would continue to receive attention from U.S. lawmakers.

“It is bittersweet to visit Africa one last time before my departure from the U.S. Senate,”Inhofe said, urging continued U.S. military presence in East Africa.

“The presence of U.S. military across Africa, while small, means a great deal to our friends and is a worthwhile investment for the United States. In each country, it was clear that a strong and robust relationship with the United States has helped spur economic growth and regional stability across the continent. I have faith that my colleagues in the House and Senate will continue the U.S.-Africa friendship long after I have retired from the Senate.”

Overall, said Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, this election won’t negatively affect U.S. engagement. He cited what he described as “strong supporters of Africa” in the committees on Foreign Relations and Appropriations, such as Sens. Chris Coons, James Risch and Lindsey Graham.

“Overall, the midterms will not change much with regard to U.S. engagement with Africa,” he said. “Africa will continue to command a bipartisan engagement in the foreseeable future both in the lower chamber and the Senate.”

Harun Maruf contributed to this report.
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How did candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump fare in the U.S. midterm elections?  Mike O’Sullivan reports, the results were mixed as the votes were counted early Wednesday morning.
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The fate of U.S. President Joe Biden’s policy aspirations for the remainder of his first term hangs in the balance as the country awaits midterm election results that will determine which political party controls Congress for the next two years.

Several key Senate races were too close to call early Wednesday while incumbents are faring well in others. Election officials across the country have cautioned it could take days before the results of some contests are definitive.

Overall, an anticipated Republican red wave appears to be a trickle with the opposition party picking up fewer than expected seats in the House of Representatives although it could win enough to take control of the lower chamber.

All 435 seats in the House are at stake and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate are being contested. The Senate is currently evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to cast tie-breaking votes for the Democrats, so Republicans need to pick up only one seat to take the majority.

Typically, parties that control both the executive and legislative branches of government lose seats during midterm elections. Many Congressional district have boundaries that have been drawn to give an undue advantage to either Republicans or Democrats, making it difficult for opposition party challengers to unseat incumbents.

More than 45 million people cast their ballots in early, in-person or mail-in voting before Tuesday’s official Election Day. Some analysts suggest the total vote in contests across the country could top the record 115 million tally set in the 2018 midterm elections.

Voters in many states also had questions on their ballots, including the legal status of abortion, sports betting and marijuana. Voters in California, Michigan and Vermont approved initiatives enshrining abortion rights in the states’ constitutions. Maryland voters decided to make cannabis legal, but in several other states similar proposals appear headed for defeat.

History was made in two states. Maryland elected its first Black governor, Wes Moore, a Democrat. Massachusetts will have its first female governor and the country’s first openly lesbian chief executive of a state, Maura Healey, also a Democrat.

In Arkansas, former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, was elected governor as expected. Her father, Mike Huckabee, served as governor of the state for a decade.

In one key state contest for governor, Florida’s Ron DeSantis easily won reelection. Some Republicans are pushing DeSantis to oppose former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and he has not ruled out a possible run for the White House.

Trump, a Florida resident, said he voted for DeSantis on Tuesday in the state’s gubernatorial contest but has publicly been disparaging a possible DeSantis run for the White House. On the eve of the election, at a rally in Ohio, Trump said he would make a big announcement on November 15, which political analysts expect will be the launch of his 2024 presidential bid.

Officials in two Republican-controlled states, Missouri and Florida, refused to let federal Justice Department officials inside polling locations to monitor voting for possible voting rights violations. Top election officials for the two states questioned the Justice Department’s authority to have observers inside precincts.

Both Republican and Democratic parties monitored polls in many places across the United States to watch for any perceived irregularities, although actual fraud in U.S. elections is minuscule. The Justice Department is also monitoring compliance with federal voting rights laws in 24 states other than Missouri and Florida.

Economy, abortion on voters’ minds

In a recent Pew Research Center poll, more than three-quarters of U.S. voters said the economy was their top concern this election.

“The interest rates, the housing market, the price of gas, you know, you’re noticing in the grocery stores food is very, very expensive, and there’s items that you can’t even find anymore. It’s a huge, huge concern,” Amanda Douglas, a voter in the southeastern state of Georgia, told VOA.

After the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June ending the federal right to abortion, social issues have also motivated some voters.

“I think everybody should have access to health care [regardless of] what your personal views are on Roe v. Wade or abortion,” Georgia voter Theresa Allmend told VOA.

In Georgia, a very tight race between incumbent Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker could be headed for a runoff if neither candidate captures 50 percent of the votes. Senate races early Wednesday also remain too close to call in Arizona and Nevada.

‘Inflection point’

Predicting a Republican victory in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the odds-on favorite to become House speaker if Republicans hold a majority, has promised to look for spending cuts in government programs favored by Biden.

He told CNN that Republican lawmakers would also more closely scrutinize continued U.S. arms and financial aid for Ukraine to combat Russia’s invasion, now in its ninth month.

Since the war started, Biden, with little congressional debate, has sent more than $27 billion in munitions and humanitarian assistance to the Kyiv government. But McCarthy said Republicans are unwilling to fund a continuing “blank check” without more analysis of what Ukraine specifically needs most.

Other Republican lawmakers have promised to launch investigations of the Biden administration’s performance during the first two years of his term, especially the ongoing influx of thousands of undocumented migrants across the southern border with Mexico that Biden, like former President Donald Trump, has been unable to halt.

Some Republican legislators are calling for hearings on business activities conducted by the president’s son, Hunter Biden, in Ukraine and China. U.S. prosecutors have already been conducting an investigation of the younger Biden’s business operations but have not brought any charges.

Meanwhile, Democrats have accused Republicans of planning to cut popular health care and pension benefits for older Americans if they take control of Congress, or subject them to regular five-year funding reviews.

Both Biden and Trump campaigned respectively in recent weeks for Democratic and Republican candidates. Trump, who was ousted from office in 2020, still falsely claims he was cheated out of reelection by vote count irregularities.

The U.S. Department of Justice and a Georgia state prosecutor are conducting wide-ranging criminal investigations of his election-related actions before leaving office and during the aftermath of his presidency.

Biden, who termed Tuesday’s election an “inflection point” in U.S. democracy, also has said he plans to run for reelection in two years but has yet to make a formal declaration.

The president has attacked Republican “election denier” candidates who, adopting Trump’s refrain, have refused to accept the legitimacy of Biden’s victory two years ago.

The president has also contended that the economy remains strong, adding that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been added over the past year even as consumer prices have risen at the fastest pace in four decades. He has touted congressional passage of a massive infrastructure construction measure he proposed, although it has not proved to be an issue that voters have cared much about.

Katherine Gypson, Masood Farivar, and Ken Bredemeier contributed to this report. Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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U.S. voters headed to the polls Tuesday to decide control of the U.S. Congress. But with vote counting still ongoing, many races are still too close to call and it is still not clear if Democrats will retain their narrow majorities in the House and Senate – or if Republicans will take control. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports from Georgia. Videographer: Adam Greenbaum
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Election officials across the United States found themselves in a pitched battle Tuesday, trying to quash domestic and largely partisan efforts to take scattered voting malfunctions and cast them as evidence of a larger conspiracy targeting the 2022 midterm elections. 

Warnings about the potential for a rigged election have been circulating for weeks on websites and social media platforms favored by conservatives and supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump, many of whom continue to believe the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen despite a lack of evidence. 

Those claims gained new life early Tuesday after officials in New Jersey and in Arizona reported problems with some of their ballot scanners. 

“We’re trying to fix this problem,” Maricopa County, Arizona, Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said in a video posted on social media, adding that even though the issue was affecting about 20% of the county’s polling places, back-up measures would ensure all votes would be counted.  

Despite efforts by Gates and other Maricopa County officials to communicate with voters, allegations of wrongdoing spread quickly. 

“People need to be arrested for what is happening in Maricopa County. It’s criminal,” tweeted Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth activist organization Turning Point USA.    

The Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of researchers focused on election security, said it observed more than 40,000 tweets about the problems in Arizona within two hours of the first reported malfunction.  

Videos of long lines in Maricopa County and of election officials also popped up online, some showing voters voicing disgust with election workers as they tried to explain the delays. 

Within hours, Trump himself was adding to the growing chorus. 

“There’s a lot of bad things going on,” the former president said of Maricopa County in a video posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “They want to delay you out of voting. … It’s very, very unfair what’s going on.” 

In another post, Trump urged supporters to “Protest, Protest, Protest!” after claiming there were widespread problems in Detroit, Michigan.

Election officials in Maricopa County and elsewhere were quick to hit back. 

“This isn’t true,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, posted on her Twitter account. “Please don’t spread lies to foment or encourage political violence in our state. Or anywhere else.” 

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), charged with helping to oversee election security, also pushed back hard against the accusations, calling them “just flat out incorrect.” 

“To be very clear we have no indication of malfeasance or malicious activity,” a senior CISA official told reporters late Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules established by the agency.  

“It is a technical issue [in Maricopa County],” the official said. “And they have resolved it.” 

CISA also said as of late Tuesday that there were no indications of any significant or credible cyberattacks by foreign adversaries on systems that could have altered vote tallies.  

But the senior official lamented the ire directed at some of the election officials in Arizona and elsewhere, calling it, “really not acceptable.” 

“One of my concerns is, that’s going to incite violence” the official said. “We all need to work together to make sure that these election officials, these public servants are able to do their jobs without being harassed or being threatened with violence.” 

Officials and observers said, fortunately, there were few reports of violence Tuesday.  

Some watchdog groups said they had seen only isolated instances of voter intimidation by partisan actors or poll watchers, in Texas and Pennsylvania.   

Officials also determined that the motive behind a bomb threat in Louisiana that shut down one polling center was not election-related.

But in the weeks and months preceding Tuesday’s vote, U.S. Homeland Security officials warned domestic tensions and political grievances could make election infrastructure and election officials a target.

And officials with multiple U.S. security and law enforcement agencies cautioned that the threat of violence might grow after the election, as disinformation campaigns take aim at the results and political grievances grow. 

Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog and advocacy organization, said it flagged about a dozen of what it described as high-profile tweets pushing disinformation, but that Twitter did little to curb their spread. 

“After a delay of some hours, we’ve received notice that each of the tweets … was independently reviewed and most of them were found to not be violative,” said Common Cause disinformation analyst Emma Steiner. 

The wave of disinformation seen on Tuesday is likely to spike, as it often does, in the days to come, experts warn. 

Steiner said the disparate narratives are likely to coalesce into an overarching story about evidence of widespread fraud on election day. 

“Going forward the major narratives will likely be issues with voting machines and attempting to undermine confidence in the election,” she said. 

According to the Election Integrity Partnership, Trump’s posts about Arizona and Michigan migrated quickly to other platforms, translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese and Mandarin. 

The cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, which predicted a likely wave of disinformation surrounding voting technology starting with Election Day, said it is significant that much of the mis- and dis-information is coming from domestic actors. 

“High-profile individuals and companies can add a sense of legitimacy to the claims, which enables false information to more quickly spread, increasing the likelihood that individuals from the general public will accept such claims as true,” the company’s Insikt Group told VOA in an email.  

“It’s very likely that we’ll observe increases in false claims of election fraud on November 8 and in the days and weeks that follow the election,” the Insikt Group added. “And it’s very likely that the narrative will continue in the lead up to and during the 2024 U.S. election.” 

Already, the claims of fraud are playing into fears held by a substantial number of voters.    

“I would say I have concerns about the system,” an Arizona voter named Fred, who declined to share his last name, told VOA last week. “Who’s to say that they count all the votes properly?”

Dwight Wingo told VOA at a Sunday rally in Georgia for Republican Senate Candidate Herschel Walker that he was still concerned about the results of the 2020 election.  

“How did five key states all at the same time, almost stop, stop vote counting and where Trump was ahead, and then suddenly, he’s behind? You know five of them did that,” he said. “I just think it needs to be looked at more closely.” 

Others, though, have brushed aside such concerns. 

“I’ve voted in Georgia since 2006. I’ve never had a problem,” said Emmett Shead, a former Democrat who told VOA he now votes Republican. “I think it’s a lot of hype, a lot of fear mongering, especially in the black community to make it seem as if there’s some voter suppression going on.” 

However, if Tuesday is any indication, the doubts about the reliability of U.S. elections, prevalent among nearly one-third (32%) of Americans according to a YouGov poll from July, are not going to be easily swept away, and are likely to create an opening for U.S. adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran.

“Just given what we know about these foreign actors, it would not be surprising if many of them were taking advantage of uncertainty or these very normal issues that go on in every single election and trying to amplify them as something nefarious,” the senior CISA official said.    

VOA’s Anita Powell, Kathryn Gypson, Masood Farivar and Chris Simkins contributed to this report.   
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Inflation and abortion topped the list of issues motivating U.S. voters in Tuesday’s midterm elections, followed by crime, immigration and gun policy, an exit poll conducted by Edison Research showed.

Turnout for the midterms, which will determine control of Congress and a number of state governorships, was about evenly divided between men and women, according to the poll.

The following is a summary of some of the survey’s latest findings:

About 6 out of 10 voters said they were "dissatisfied or angry" about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade, and about the same percentage said abortion should be legal.
About 3 out of 10 voters said inflation was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 3 out of 10 voters said abortion was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 1 out of 10 voters said crime was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 1 out of 10 voters said immigration was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 1 out of 10 voters said gun policy was their top concern in deciding how to vote.
About 8 out of 10 voters said the economy was "not so good or poor" versus about 2 of 10 who said it was "excellent or good."
About 6 out of 10 voters said gasoline prices had caused them a financial hardship recently.
About 6 out of 10 voters said abortion should be legal vs. 4 of 10 who said it should be illegal.
About 5 out of 10 voters said their family's financial situation was worse than it was two years ago, while 3 of 10 said it was unchanged and 2 of 10 said it was better.
About 7 out of 10 voters said U.S. democracy was threatened.
About 7 out of 10 voters said they would not like to see President Joe Biden run for a second term.
About 6 out of 10 voters held an unfavorable opinion of Trump and 4 out 10 held a favorable opinion.
About half of voters approved of Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, roughly the same as those who disapproved.

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Millions of Americans cast their ballots in congressional elections that will determine the philosophical shape of Congress and set the tone for the Washington political debate during the second half of Democratic President Joe Biden’s four-year term.
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Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter comes as the U.S. holds midterm elections this week, with observers warning that online misinformation about the credibility of the electoral process can have real-world effects. Is Twitter, under Musk, ready? Tina Trinh reports. Michelle Quinn contributed.
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