Author: PolitCens

Joe Biden has won Georgia, scoring a rare win in a Southern state that hadn’t backed a Democrat for president in nearly 30 years.The Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner of Georgia and its 16 Electoral College votes Thursday, after state election officials there said a hand tally of ballots cast in the presidential race confirmed the former vice president led President Donald Trump by roughly 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million counted.The AP declared Biden president-elect after he clinched the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Georgia raised the Democrat’s electoral vote total to 306.The AP did not call Biden the winner after election officials in Georgia initially completed and released results of the presidential election, because his margin over Trump in the state was 0.3 percentage point. It is AP’s practice not to call a race that is — or is likely to become — subject to a recount. While there is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, state law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage point.Vote chosen for reviewThe hand tally completed this week was not legally a recount under Georgia law. Rather, it was the race selected by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for review under a new state law that says one race in the general election must be audited by hand to check that machines counted ballots accurately. Raffensperger said the tight margin of the presidential race meant a full hand count of ballots was necessary to complete the audit.While not formally a recount under the letter of state law, the hand tally conducted to complete the audit was effectively a recount in practice.The second tally turned up a few thousand ballots that had previously been uncounted — enough to narrow Biden’s lead but not change the outcome.FILE – President Donald Trump arrives to speak at an event at the United Parcel Service airport facility in Atlanta, July 15, 2020.Trump and his allies claimed without evidence that Georgia’s election was tainted by widespread fraud, sparking infighting among Republicans as Raffensperger insisted the vote was fair and secure.Not since Bill Clinton first sought the White House in 1992 had Georgia sided with a Democratic presidential candidate.Despite Democrats’ long losing streak, many analysts predicted Georgia would prove to be a 2020 battleground. That’s largely because a growing number of nonwhite voters have loosened Republicans’ grip on the Atlanta suburbs.Georgia’s embrace of Biden marked a stark political reversal from 2016, when Trump carried the state by 5 percentage points.No stops for Trump in 2016Four years ago, Trump was able to coast to victory in Georgia over Democrat Hillary Clinton without having to campaign in the state. Not so in 2020, when the potential for a Democratic upset forced Trump to play defense in Georgia heading into the campaign’s final leg.Trump held a large rally in Rome, Georgia, the weekend before Election Day, making a return trip to the state not even three weeks after he campaigned in Macon.Biden traveled in the campaign’s final week to Warm Springs, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought treatment for polio. Former President Barack Obama stumped for Biden in Atlanta the day before Election Day.Both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats ended up on the ballot in 2020, further boosting the state’s political profile. Tight races forced both Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler into runoff elections with Democratic challengers that will be decided January 5.
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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden continues his transition to power, meeting virtually on Thursday with leading state governors even as President Donald Trump continues his long-shot legal efforts to overturn the election results and retain the presidency.Biden, two months ahead of his inauguration on January 20, is meeting with Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and other state leaders from his home city of Wilmington, Delaware.Their discussions are likely to center on Biden’s plans when he takes office to control the surging number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. and what can be done before he starts his four-year term in the White House.Hundreds of thousands of new infections are being recorded in the U.S., with the figure topping 180,000 on some recent days and the death toll now totaling more than a quarter million, the most in any country across the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University.Dozens of public health experts on Thursday urged the Trump administration to allow the presidential transition process to officially start to confront the pandemic, giving incoming Biden officials access to information the Trump administration has compiled about medical supplies and the vaccines that are being developed. Preventative shots may soon be available for the most vulnerable Americans.The health officials’ letter was written to Emily Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration, who has yet to sign paperwork declaring that Biden had won the election so the transition can officially start.“In light of the public health crisis facing the nation, it is imperative that you ascertain Joe Biden as President-elect immediately under the Presidential Transition Act,” they wrote, adding: “Doing so will enable the incoming Biden team to liaise with key health officials in the Trump Administration and prepare a robust, coordinated response to the pandemic.”But to date the country’s 45th president has refused to concede defeat to the prospective 46th chief executive after their bitter, months-long election campaign. As a result, Trump has kept Biden from seeing government intelligence about national security threats the U.S. might be facing or granted Biden aides access to a long list of government agencies.The Republican Trump is clinging to the hope that he yet can overturn the results in a handful of battleground states that Biden won and retain the presidency, even as national news media say that the Democrat won well more than the 270-majority in the 538-member Electoral College that is determinative in U.S. presidential elections, not the national popular vote, which Biden also won.Trump has lost numerous lawsuits claiming voting and vote-counting irregularities, and final vote tabulations are upholding Biden’s victories in key states.The southern state of Georgia has completed its recount, which cut Biden’s advantage from slightly more than 14,000 votes to 12,781 after it was discovered that some ballots in two Trump-leaning counties had not originally been counted. But Biden is still projected to win the state’s 16 electoral votes.Staying at the White House without venturing out for public appearances, Trump said on Twitter, “Thousands of uncounted votes discovered in Georgia counties. When the much more important signature match takes place, the State will flip Republican, and very quickly. Get it done!”Thousands of uncounted votes discovered in Georgia counties. When the much more important signature match takes place, the State will flip Republican, and very quickly. Get it done! @BrianKempGA— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2020He complained, “Almost ZERO ballots rejected in Georgia this election. In years past, close to 4%. Not possible. Must have signature check on envelopes now. Very easy to do. Dems fighting because they got caught. Far more votes than needed for flip. Republicans must get tough!Almost ZERO ballots rejected in Georgia this election. In years past, close to 4%. Not possible. Must have signature check on envelopes now. Very easy to do. Dems fighting because they got caught. Far more votes than needed for flip. Republicans must get tough! @BrianKempGA— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2020The Trump campaign withdrew a lawsuit against officials in the Midwestern state of Michigan that sought to stop the state from certifying its election results, which showed Biden winning by 155,000 votes. The lawsuit dealt with minor issues that would not have overturned the statewide result and did not provide proof of fraud. 
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Three U.S. senators said Wednesday that they would introduce legislation seeking to stop the Trump administration’s effort to sell more than $23 billion of drones and other weapons systems to the United Arab Emirates, setting up a showdown with the president just weeks before he is due to leave office.Democratic Senators Bob Menendez and Chris Murphy and Republican Senator Rand Paul will introduce four separate resolutions of disapproval of President Donald Trump’s plan to sell more than $23 billion worth of Reaper drones, F-35 fighter aircraft and air-to-air missiles, and other munitions to the UAE.The huge sale could alter the balance of power in the Middle East, and members of Congress have chafed at the administration’s attempt to rush it through, having sent a formal notice to Congress only last week.Many lawmakers also worry about whether the UAE would use the weapons in attacks that would harm civilians in Yemen, whose civil war is considered one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.When the deal was announced, Amnesty International warned that the weapons would be used for “attacks that violate international humanitarian law and kill, as well as injure, thousands of Yemeni civilians.”FILE – Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., speaks during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 24, 2020.The sale includes products from General Atomics, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon.While the resolutions bring attention to lawmakers’ questions about the massive sales, and could delay them, they are unlikely to stop them.U.S. law covering major arms deals lets senators force votes on resolutions of disapproval. However, to go into effect the resolutions must pass the Republican-led Senate, which rarely breaks from Trump. They also must pass the Democratic-led House of Representatives and survive Trump vetoes.But the incoming president, Joe Biden, could ultimately stop them for reasons of national security, making a prediction on the outcome difficult.The senators said the Trump administration, seeking to rush the sale as it brokered a peace deal between the UAE and Israel, circumvented the normal review process. They said the State Department and the Pentagon failed to respond to their inquiries.Weaponry involved includes the world’s most advanced fighter jet, more than 14,000 bombs and munitions, and the second-largest sale of U.S. drones to a single country.FILE – Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks on the Senate floor at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, March 18, 2020.The Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees have the right to review and attempt to block weapons sales.Past measures to block arms sales over concerns about Yemeni casualties passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support but failed to get enough Republican backing to override Trump’s vetoes.Lawmakers have also expressed concern about whether the UAE sales would violate a long-standing agreement with Israel that any U.S. weapons sold in the Middle East would not impair its “quantitative military edge” over neighboring states.Menendez is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Paul and Murphy are also members of the committee.
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In a virtual event with front-line health care workers Wednesday, President-elect Joe Biden warned that his team is going to be “behind by weeks or months” in the country’s pandemic planning unless the Trump administration stops blocking the transition process. White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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House Democrats nominated Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday as the speaker to lead them into Joe Biden’s presidency, but she’d be guiding a smaller and ideologically divided majority as she tries shepherding his agenda toward enactment.Democrats used a voice vote to make Pelosi, D-Calif., their choice to serve two more years in her post. Scattered around the country, it was the party’s first virtual leadership election, a response to the coronavirus pandemic.House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and No. 3 party leader Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., Congress’ highest ranking Black member, were reelected to their positions, like Pelosi without opposition. Clyburn revived Biden’s faltering bid for the Democratic presidential nomination this year by helping him win the South Carolina primary, a turnaround moment in Biden’s campaign.”Let us all be advocates for unity in the Democratic party, where our values are opportunity and community,” Pelosi, the first female speaker, wrote to Democrats this week.Underscoring Pelosi’s emphasis on inclusiveness, five of the seven Democrats who’d planned to deliver speeches backing her candidacy were women. They included congresswoman-elect Nikema Williams, who won the Atlanta-area district represented by Democratic Rep. John Lewis, the civil rights champion, until his death in July.The full House will formally elect the new speaker when the new Congress convenes in early January, shortly before Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Hoyer’s and Clyburn’s jobs are party positions that don’t need House approval.Pelosi has won wide acclaim among Democrats as a leading foe of outgoing President Donald Trump in battles over impeachment, immigration and health care. She’s given as good as she’s gotten from the insult-prone Republican president, sometimes directly to his face, prompting him to call her “Crazy Nancy” and supporters to create memes and action figures honoring her.But with some votes still being tallied in this month’s elections, 10 incumbent House Democrats have been defeated, dashing expectations of adding seats and damaging party morale. Democrats were on track to have perhaps a 222-213 majority, one of the smallest in decades.This has sparked finger-pointing, with progressives saying the party failed to adequately win over minority and young liberal voters. Moderates say that they were hurt by far-left initiatives like defunding the police and that Pelosi should have struck a preelection stimulus deal with the White House.Besides bitterness over their election setback, many Democrats continue calling for fresh leadership. Pelosi and Hoyer have been No. 1 and 2 House Democrats since 2003, while Clyburn rose to the No. 3 ranks in 2007. Pelosi and Clyburn are 80, Hoyer is 81.Pelosi’s reelection by the House would give her a seventh and eight year as speaker. She served the first four during the 2000s until Republicans recaptured the House majority in the tea party election of 2010, a conservative uprising that presaged the rise of Trump.In one indication of her strength, one conservative Democrat who’s opposed Pelosi before said he expected her to be reelected and said he might support her this time.”I think she gets it,” Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., who said he’s spoken to Pelosi about the need for a moderate agenda, said in an interview. “She may be the bulwark against the extreme far-left.”Schrader said far-left progressives have been “toxic to our brand” by favoring policies he said cost jobs. “We can’t continue to talk down to people and only talk about identity politics,” he said.House Democrats were also voting Wednesday and Thursday on lesser leadership posts.When the House elects its new speaker, Pelosi will need the majority of votes cast by both parties. Since nearly all Republicans are expected to back their leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Pelosi can afford to lose only a few Democrats.When Pelosi nailed down the support she needed to become speaker in 2018, she said she’d agreed to a proposal limiting her to serving in the job only through 2022. Several lawmakers and aides said memories of that commitment could lessen her opposition this time.Also potentially helping Pelosi is the decision by Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., to step aside as chair of House Democrats’ political arm.Some Democrats have faulted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for insufficiently protecting moderate Democratic incumbents from swing districts. They’re also unhappy that the committee did not detect the huge numbers of GOP voters Trump drew to the polls — which was missed by Republican and independent pollsters alike.”Having Trump on the ticket in ’20 was very different from not having him on the ticket in ’18,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., another Pelosi supporter.When Democrats won back the House in 2018, 32 of them voted against Pelosi’s nomination as speaker. But that was a larger majority than this one, giving her more margin for error then.By the time the full House elected her in January 2019, she’d whittled down her opposition and just 13 Democrats voted against her or voted “present.”Of the 13 Democrats who opposed Pelosi in 2019, two have been defeated and one, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, became a Republican. That leaves 10 Democrats who voted against her, though another, New York’s Anthony Brindisi, may still lose his election.Pelosi has pushed bills through the House — they died in the GOP-run Senate — embodying Democratic priorities overhauling ethics and campaign finance laws, lowering health care costs and rebuilding infrastructure. She’s also been a prodigious fundraiser for candidates.To prevent lawmakers from crowding unsafely into one room, Democrats’ leadership candidates were delivering remarks to scattered lawmakers using Zoom, the online meeting platform. Republicans met in a crowded hotel ballroom Tuesday and reelected their current leadership team.Democrats’ votes were being cast on a new app designed to keep the process secure by using encryption.In a test run Tuesday, Democrats voted on their favorite all-time musician. Their choice by a wide margin: the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. 
 
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Election officials across Georgia are staring down a Wednesday deadline to complete a hand tally of the presidential race in the state.The hand recount of nearly 5 million votes stems from an audit required by a new state law and wasn’t in response to any suspected problems with the state’s results or an official recount request. The law requires the audit to be done before the counties’ certified results can be certified by the state.The deadline for the counties to complete the audit is 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, ahead of the Friday deadline for state certification.Georgia Hand Tally of Presidential Vote Gets Underway County election staffers will work with the paper ballots in batches, dividing them into piles for each candidateThe hand count is meant to ensure that the state’s new election machines accurately tabulated the votes and isn’t expected to change the overall outcome, state election officials have repeatedly said.Going into the count, Democrat Joe Biden led Republican President Donald Trump by a margin of about 14,000 votes. Previously uncounted ballots discovered in two counties during the hand count will reduce that margin to about 13,000, said Gabriel Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system for the secretary of state’s office.Once the results are certified, if the margin between the candidates remains within 0.5%, the losing campaign can request a recount. That would be done using scanners that read and tally the votes and would be paid for by the state, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said.A law passed last year requires the audit but leaves it up to the secretary of state to select the race to be audited. Raffensperger said he chose the presidential race because of its significance and tight margin. Because of the close results, he said, a full hand recount would be needed to complete the audit.Over the two weeks since the election, Raffensperger has been under attack from fellow Republicans, from the president on down.Georgia’s two U.S. senators, who both face stiff competition from Democrats in Jan. 5 runoff elections, last week called for Raffensperger’s resignation.”The secretary of state has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections,” Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler wrote in a letter.U.S. Rep Doug Collins, who is running Trump’s Georgia recount effort, has traded barbs on social media with the secretary of state. And over the weekend, the president tweeted that Raffensperger — whom he endorsed in a runoff election two years ago — is “a so-called Republican (RINO),” using the acronym for “Republican in name only.”Raffensperger has steadfastly defended the state’s handling of the election and the subsequent hand tally. He has said his office has seen no evidence of widespread voting fraud or irregularities and he was confident the audit would affirm the election results.The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the presidential race in Georgia, where Biden led Trump by 0.3 percentage points. There is no mandatory recount law in Georgia, but state law provides that option to a trailing candidate if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points. It is AP’s practice not to call a race that is – or is likely to become – subject to a recount.
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Facing charges of censorship, the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook appeared before a hearing of U.S. lawmakers Tuesday to defend actions taken during the recent U.S. elections. Tina Trinh reports.Produced by: Matt Dibble   
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Michigan’s largest county reversed course and unanimously certified its presidential election results Tuesday night after Republicans first blocked the move in a party-line vote that threatened to temporarily stall official approval of Democrat Joe Biden’s win in the state.The Wayne County Board of Canvassers acted after the 2-2 tie was condemned by Democrats and election experts as a dangerous attempt to overthrow the will of voters.The board met after days of unsuccessful litigation filed by Republican poll challengers and President Donald Trump’s allies. They claimed fraud during absentee ballot counting at a Detroit convention center, but two judges found no evidence and refused to stop the canvassing process.Biden crushed Trump in Wayne County, a Democratic stronghold, by more than a 2-1 margin and won the state by 146,000 votes, according to unofficial results.The canvassers first rejected certification of the Detroit-area vote with a tie. Monica Palmer, a Republican on the board, said poll books in certain Detroit precincts were out of balance. In response, Jonathan Kinloch, a Democrat, said it was “reckless and irresponsible” to not certify the results.”It’s not based upon fraud. It’s absolutely human error,” Kinloch said of any discrepancies. “Votes that are cast are tabulated.”The board then listened to a parade of spectators blasting Palmer and fellow Republican William Hartmann during the meeting’s public comment period over Zoom.The Rev. Wendell Anthony, a well-known pastor and head of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, called the Republican county canvassers a “disgrace.””You have extracted a Black city out of a county and said the only ones that are at fault is the city of Detroit, where 80% of the people who reside here are African Americans. Shame on you!” Anthony said on Zoom, his voice rising during a public comment period.Certification of the Nov. 3 election results in each of Michigan’s 83 counties is a step toward statewide certification by the Michigan Board of State Canvassers.
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President-elect Joe Biden warned that outgoing President Donald Trump’s refusal to recognize the transition prior to the January 20 inauguration could have dire consequences amid the coronavirus pandemic.  “More people may die if we don’t coordinate,” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question Monday in Wilmington, Delaware.Biden, again warning of a “very dark winter” ahead, called for immediate congressional passage of the HEROES Act — a proposed $3 trillion stimulus package in response to the economic devastation wrought by COVID-19.  “The idea the president is still playing golf and not doing anything about it is beyond my comprehension,” Biden said, adding, “At least you’d think he’d want to go off on a positive note.”  The president-elect said people are running out of unemployment insurance, 20 million people are on the verge of losing their homes because they cannot make mortgage payments, and “you have a larger number being kicked out and that will be kicked out on the street because they can’t pay their rent.” 
 
Biden made the remarks following a briefing he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris held on the state of the U.S. economy, which faces new headwinds with the surge in coronavirus cases. The spike in cases and hospitalizations has prompted some state governors and municipal officials to reimpose limits on business operations to try to curb the spread of COVID-19.   President-elect Joe Biden listens as Vice President-elect Kamala Harris speaks about economic recovery at The Queen theater, in Wilmington, Delaware, Nov. 16, 2020.”To state the obvious, we are currently in a pretty dark hole right now, at least in regards to where we’re headed with COVID,” Biden said during a discussion with business and labor leaders.   Trump, who remained in the White House on Monday and made no public appearances, had the stock market on his mind in the morning, touting an announcement about a second coronavirus vaccine for causing a rise in share prices as the trading week began.The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 470 points on Monday, a rise of 1.6%.  “Please remember that these great discoveries, which will end the China Plague, all took place on my watch!” the president said on Twitter, referring to the efficacies of COVID-19 vaccines announced by Pfizer a week ago and Moderna on Monday.   “They appear to be ready for prime time — ready to be used,” Biden said of the vaccines. He has criticized Trump for making statements that he said might make people hesitant to get inoculated.  Mass vaccinations across America may still be months away, while the number of coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are increasing to record numbers. A researcher works in a lab run by Moderna Inc, in an undated still image from video.The United States has now recorded more than 246,000 coronavirus deaths and 11.1 million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University. Both figures are the highest of any country.  The U.S. economy has recovered millions of the jobs lost in the first weeks of the pandemic in March and April when the unemployment rate hit 14.7%. The jobless rate improved to 6.9% in October, still nearly double the five-decade low figure of 3.5% recorded before the virus swept into the United States from China and Europe. Still, millions of jobs disappeared in the pandemic and may not be recovered, as new coronavirus infections surge throughout the country.  Election resultsBiden’s ability to shape the economic recovery is to a large degree contingent on the outcome of two runoff elections in the southern state of Georgia on January 5.   Republicans have already won 50 of the 100 seats in the Senate that takes office in early January. Democrats have 48. If incumbent Republicans win either or both of the Georgia elections, Republicans will continue to control the Senate for the next two years and limit the new president’s options to advance his legislative agenda, including economic assistance to financially hard-pressed families.  If Democrats win the two elections in Georgia, Biden could gain leverage in a politically divided Senate, with Harris, as vice president, breaking tie votes in favor of his initiatives.  Trump has refused to concede his defeat while he pursues legal claims that the November 3 vote was rigged against him. He also cites what he calls irregularities in several states. State election officials have reported no serious irregularities with the vote that would impact the outcome of the race.   “I won,” Trump tweeted on Monday.  “No, Biden won the election,” The Associated Press stated in a fact-check story issued following the president’s declaration on Twitter, noting the former vice president achieved victory in key states, topping the 270-electoral-vote threshold, with room to spare, to clinch the presidency.  A coalition of state election officials and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security declared in a joint statement that the election was the most secure in history and there is “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”  
 
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign on Sunday dropped a major part of a lawsuit it brought seeking to halt Pennsylvania from certifying its results in the presidential election, narrowing the case to a small number of ballots. In an amended complaint filed in federal court, the Trump campaign dropped a claim that election officials unlawfully blocked observers from watching the counting of mail-in ballots in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The pared-down lawsuit now focuses on a claim that Democratic-leaning counties unlawfully allowed voters to fix errors in their mail-in ballots in violation of state law. Officials have said the dispute affects a small number of ballots in the state, where Democrat Joe Biden is projected to win by more than 60,000 votes. Pennsylvania officials had asked a judge to toss Trump’s lawsuit, saying the election observers were allowed to assess the processing of mail-in ballots and that all the state’s counties were permitted to inform residents if their mailed-in ballots were deficient, even if it was not mandatory for them to do so. In Pennsylvania’s populous Montgomery County, fewer than 100 voters fixed ballots with technical errors, a county official testified at a court hearing on Nov. 4. The Trump campaign continues to seek a court order blocking the Pennsylvania secretary of state from ratifying the result. Biden clinched the election after news media and Edison Research called him as the winner in Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win.  Trump on Sunday briefly appeared to acknowledge that Biden’s victory, but then recanted and claimed he would soon file fresh challenges. His campaign has filed a string of long-shot lawsuits in several battleground states. On Twitter on Sunday, Trump said many cases being filed were not from his campaign. Legal experts say the lawsuits have little chance of changing the outcome of the election. A senior Biden legal adviser has dismissed the litigation as “theatrics, not really lawsuits.” Pennsylvania is scheduled to certify its election results on Nov. 23. 
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Joe Biden, the projected winner of the U.S. presidential election, will inherit a pandemic-ravaged economy that shows signs of recovery. As Keith Kocinski reports, Biden’s ambitious economic agenda would face hurdles in a politically divided Congress.
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Frank Luntz is a noted Republican political pollster. In the days before the Nov. 3 election, he said if the 2020 pre-election polls were wrong again, “my profession is done.”In the days after the election, Luntz said the results are “devastating for my industry.”“The polls were really bad this time and really misleading, and I’m not sure why,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.In 2016, the pre-election polls of individual states were off quite a bit, showing Democrat Hillary Clinton ahead of Republican Donald Trump in key states that Trump eventually won. Pollsters failed to adequately account for education levels and underestimated Trump’s support among whites without a college education.Undercounting Trump’s supportPollsters acknowledged the shortcomings and said they adjusted how they weigh education levels for the 2020 election. But there appears to have been a similar undercount of Trump supporters during the run-up to the latest election.“We are missing some small set of Trump supporters, who are not necessarily Republicans, but who are declining to take part in the survey systematically,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll in Wisconsin.In 2016, the Marquette Poll had Clinton up 6 percentage points in Wisconsin. Trump won by 1 percentage point. “This time we have the right winner, and we’re off by 3 or 4 depending on turnout,” Franklin explained.Biden won Wisconsin by 20,000 votes, a 0.63 percentage point lead over Trump. The Marquette Poll showed Biden 5 percentage points up on Trump a week before the election.Key states that were off the pre-election polling averages by 5 or more percentage points were Wisconsin (7 percentage points), Iowa (7), Florida (6), Michigan (5), Ohio (5) and Texas (5). Trump won four of those states – all but Michigan.Unrealistic expectations?Nate Silver, editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight, a website that analyzes polling data, pushes back on the notion that the polls were wrong, writing that polls accurately called 48 of the 50 states along with the winner of the Electoral College and popular vote, Joe Biden.There is an underlying possibility of error in any poll. Most of the polls used in the presidential polling averages allowed for a polling error of 3 to 4 percentage points either way. Silver says polling’s 3 to 4 percentage point underestimate of Trump’s vote is within historical standards, and the public has to adjust expectations that “demand(ed) an unrealistic level of precision” of polling.“The polls set expectations too high for Democrats,” said Bill Schneider, professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Schneider, a longtime political analyst for CNN, said Democrats “ended up doing worse than expected.”Many experts point to declining response rates to telephone polling as a problem in getting it right. They are also finding that Democrats are likelier to respond to polling inquiries than Republicans.For campaigns that depend on polling to make decisions about resource allocation, “they have to go back to an old-fashioned way before we had polling,” said Kamarck, who is also a member of the Democratic National Committee. She said having people on the ground to canvass “precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state” may be the way voter research is conducted in the future.“The state-by-state polls that they did this time in order to make up for the problems they had four years ago really have been wildly off,” Kamarck said.And regarding Frank Luntz’s prediction about his profession if there was a repeat of 2016? “Frankie may be out of business,” Kamarck remarked.
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U.S. government policy toward South Sudan isn’t expected to change regardless of the new presidential administration, according to Jon Danilowicz, the new U.S. charge d’affaires to South Sudan.He said the top priority will remain restoring peace and stability in the country. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has been declared the winner, but President Donald Trump has so far refused to concede. Some mail ballots are still being counted.This week at his first news conference at the U.S. Embassy since arriving in Juba nearly two months ago, Danilowicz said there has been bipartisan consensus between Democrats and Republicans on U.S. policy toward South Sudan.“If I look at the current U.S. policy and engagement on South Sudan and if I look at the future, I don’t see significant differences regarding how the United States will engage in South Sudan depending on which political party may be in power in the executive branch or legislature,” Danilowicz told reporters.Danilowicz said Washington’s main objective in South Sudan is to ensure its political leaders restore stability across the country and to promote democracy which ensures delivery of services to vulnerable South Sudanese people.“A priority for my government both bilaterally and as partners of the Troika … our colleagues from the United Kingdom and Norway — is to do all what we can to support the peace process,” said Danilowicz.After months of haggling, mediators for South Sudan President Salva Kiir’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Party and opposition parties signed a revitalized peace agreement in 2018 and formed a transitional government the following year.Danilowicz said the U.S. government is discussing plans to construct a new embassy compound in Juba, which he said is symbolic of Washington’s long-term commitment to South Sudan.In 2014 the United States scaled back funding to South Sudan after the country’s civil war erupted in late 2013.Washington reduced funding for development projects and shifted much of its financial assistance to humanitarian aid. The U.S. also imposed targeted sanctions on senior South Sudanese politicians and military commanders accused of spoiling peace efforts in the country.Asked whether the U.S. would continue to sanction South Sudanese individuals accused of obstructing peace efforts, Danilowicz explained that sanctions are a tool “that not just the United States but other bilateral countries use” in their relationships with South Sudan and other countries.He said while the U.S. considers steering part of its funding to community resilience projects, such as job creation programs and sustainable development projects, much of the funding will continue to go toward humanitarian assistance.The U.S. diplomat noted the United States is still concerned about the slow pace of implementing two key provisions of the revitalized peace deal: security arrangements and power sharing.“We look forward to engaging conversation recognizing that these chapters of the peace agreement are absolutely essential if we are to see the rest of the processes move forward and if we are to see improvement in the security situation, which will enable further development in economic growth,” said Danilowicz.It’s been two years since South Sudan’s former warring parties signed the peace agreement, but government and rebel forces have yet to form one unified army, a core provision of the peace deal, and many state and local governments have yet to be set up.
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Kamala Harris made history as the first woman projected to become vice president-elect. That means her husband, Doug Emhoff, is set to become America’s first-ever “second gentleman” in the White House. VOA’s Mariama Diallo has more.
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U.S. news outlets on Friday called the Southeastern U.S. state of North Carolina for President Donald Trump, a day after projecting that President-elect Joe Biden would win the Southwestern state of Arizona.The latest calls in the presidential race gave Biden a projected 290 votes in the Electoral College to Trump’s 232 votes.Biden had previously cleared the 270-vote threshold needed to win the White House, paving the way for his inauguration on January 20. Trump has refused to acknowledge defeat in the presidential race and has leveled unproven claims of widespread voter fraud.FILE – Poll workers assist voters on a brisk fall morning at the Efland Ruritan Club polling site in Efland, N.C., Nov. 3, 2020.Edison Research, along with major U.S. news outlets, projected Trump the winner in North Carolina, giving him 15 more electoral votes. North Carolina was one of the last states to report its vote tally because it allowed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received through November 12. With more than 98% of ballots counted in the state, Trump led by more than 73,000 votes.FILE – Arizona election officials count ballots for the general election inside the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, Nov. 6, 2020, in Phoenix.On Thursday, major U.S. news outlets projected Biden the winner in the Arizona. With more than 99% of the votes counted in that state, Biden led Trump by about 11,000 votes.The New York Times, CNN, NBC News and The Washington Post were among the news organizations that projected Biden the winner in Arizona, historically a Republican stronghold. Fox News and The Associated Press called Arizona for Biden last week.The only state that has not yet been called by all major media outlets is Georgia, with its 16 electoral votes. The state is conducting a statewide, hand recount of the presidential votes because Biden is leading in that state by only about 14,100 votes.Trump, a Republican, has repeatedly made unfounded claims that he was defeated by widespread election fraud. But a statement released Thursday by the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, established by Trump in 2018, said the November 3 election was the most secure in U.S. history. The agency’s declaration was the most direct rejection to date of Trump’s assertions about the fairness of the election.State election officials also report no serious irregularities, while Trump’s legal challenges have failed in court.While Biden is the projected winner of the presidential election, results are subject to legal challenges and recounts.States are required to meet a December 8 deadline to certify their vote counts and pick electors for the Electoral College, which will officially select the new president on December 14.
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Only a few of America’s CEOs have made public statements about President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his election loss, but in private, many are alarmed and talking about what collective action would be necessary if they see an imminent threat to democracy.
On Nov. 6, more than two dozen CEOs of major U.S. corporations took part in a video conference to discuss what to do if Trump refuses to leave office or takes other steps to stay in power beyond the scheduled Jan. 20 inauguration of former Vice President Joe Biden. On Saturday, Biden was declared the election winner by The Associated Press and other news organizations.  
During the conference, which lasted more than an hour, the CEOs agreed that Trump had the right to pursue legal challenges alleging voter fraud.  
But if Trump tries to undo the legal process or disrupts a peaceful transition to Biden, the CEOs discussed making public statements and pressuring GOP legislators in their states who may try to redirect Electoral College votes from Biden to Trump, said Yale Management Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who convened the meeting.
“They’re all fine with him taking an appeal to the court, to a judicial process. They didn’t want to deny him that. But that doesn’t stop the transition,” said Sonnenfeld. “They said if that makes people feel better, it doesn’t hurt anything to let that grind through.”
On Saturday, the day after the video meeting, the Business Roundtable, a group that represents the most powerful companies in America, including Walmart, Apple, Starbucks and General Electric, put out a statement congratulating Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris. It largely reflected the conversation from Friday’s video meeting, saying the group respects Trump’s right to seek recounts and call for investigations where evidence exists.
“There is no indication that any of these would change the outcome,” the group’s statement said.
The executives who participated in the video conference are from Fortune 500 finance, retail, media and manufacturing companies, Sonnenfeld said. But he wouldn’t identify them because they attended the meeting with the condition that their names be kept confidential. Sonnenfeld frequently speaks with CEOs and sets up meetings for them to discuss pressing issues.
Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University who spoke at the video meeting, confirmed Sonnenfeld’s account, as did an executive who attended but didn’t want to be identified because he didn’t want to violate the meeting’s ground rules.
The CEOs agreed that they had seen no evidence of widespread election fraud as Trump has contended. Sonnenfeld invited Yale University historian Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny,” to address the group. After hearing Snyder discuss the history of democracies dying after elections and the possibility of GOP legislators changing the Electoral College outcome, many expressed alarm about the president’s conduct, Sonnenfeld said.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In fact, election officials from both political parties have stated publicly that the election went well and international observers confirmed there were no serious irregularities.
The issues Trump’s campaign and its allies have pointed to are typical in every election: problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost. With Biden leading Trump by wide margins in key battleground states, none of those issues would affect the outcome of the election.
Trump’s campaign has also launched legal challenges complaining that poll watchers were unable to scrutinize the voting process. Many of those challenges have been tossed out by judges.
Trump has portrayed as illegitimate mailed votes received and counted after Election Day — even though that is explicitly allowed in about 20 states. He has falsely charged that campaign observers were blocked from watching the vote count as Biden overtook him in Pennsylvania.  
The CEOs decided to wait for the Nov. 20 certification of votes in Georgia before meeting to decide their next moves. Action could include threats to stop donations to political action committees or even corporate relocations, Sonnenfeld said.
He spoke with six or seven CEOs on Wednesday who said that if there were “seditious riots” at Trump rallies or more mass firings like Trump’s ouster of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and other Pentagon officials, they want to reconvene to talk about acting faster as individuals, Sonnenfeld said.
“They thought it could have a very devastating effect upon on markets, on public trust in the process,” and they would act “to make sure that the Republican elected officials do their jobs and and then be patriots and respect the process,” Sonnenfeld said.
The CEOs weren’t worried about reprisals against their businesses but emphasized acting together. They referred to a Benjamin Franklin quote at the signing of the Declaration of Independence: “Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,” according to Sonnenfeld.
But individual CEOs have been mostly silent on Trump’s conduct. Juleanna Glover, CEO of media strategy firm RidgelyWalsh, said no CEO speaking out at this point could stop Trump’s legal challenges.
 “They’re trying to be moral and effective leaders,” Glover said. “It’s a calculation of whether saying anything now can be an effective tool to making a situation better.”
The time may come for CEOs to speak out, but most are assuming that Trump’s legal challenges and threats are just theater and the change in power will take place uneventfully, Glover said.  
Still, several CEOs have urged Trump to acknowledge that he’s lost, concede to Biden and end any political uncertainty.  
“The votes have been counted, and the president needs to honor the result,” said Ryan Gellert, CEO of the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, which has been outspoken on behalf of progressive causes such as protecting the environment.  
Economist Eswar Prasad of Cornell University, a former International Monetary Fund official, said Trump’s recalcitrance creates risks for the economy by “whipping up an extraordinary degree of uncertainty that, if prolonged much further, will act as a drag on what is at best a nascent and fickle economic recovery.” 
 
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President Donald Trump persisted Friday in claiming the U.S. presidential election was rigged despite assurances from federal and state officials, and private industry partners, that the November 3 vote was the “most secure” in the nation’s history.Heartwarming to see all of the tremendous support out there, especially the organic Rallies that are springing up all over the Country, including a big one on Saturday in D.C. I may even try to stop by and say hello. This Election was Rigged, from Dominion all the way up & down!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Christopher Krebs speaks to reporters at CISA’s Election Day Operation Center on Super Tuesday in Arlington, Va., March 3, 2020.The Reuters news agency on Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the matter, reported that CISA Director Christopher Krebs had told associates that he expected the White House to fire him, in part for refusing to remove or change information on the Rumor Control website.Neither CISA nor the White House responded to VOA requests for comment. But word that Krebs could be on the way out sparked an outcry from state election officials, lawmakers and former officials.“Director Krebs and the many other CISA staffers we interact with have been invaluable partners in further securing election infrastructure and sharing vital information,” said Maria Benson, speaking for the National Association of Secretaries of State, in an email to VOA.MORE reaction to the reports that @CISAKrebs will be fired – this from the fomer #2 at @ODNIgov@suemgordon22https://t.co/TxCHrckVvu— Jeff Seldin (@jseldin) November 12, 2020Democrat Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was even more direct.“Chris Krebs has done a great job protecting our elections. He is one of the few people in this administration respected by everyone on both sides of the aisle,” Warner posted on Twitter. “There is no possible justification to remove him from office. None.”Krebs himself has been active on social media, pushing back against what CISA has labeled disinformation, urging Americans, “Don’t fall for it.”To be crystal clear on ⬇️, I’m specifically referring to the Hammer and Scorecard nonsense. It’s just that – nonsense. This is not a real thing, don’t fall for it and think 2x before you share. #Protect2020https://t.co/f2FpSbRXKy— Chris Krebs #Protect2020 (@CISAKrebs) November 7, 2020 
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