Author: PolitCens

With Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election upon us, it is far from certain that either President Donald Trump or his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, will emerge as the clear winner on election night.While Biden is leading Trump by a cumulative average of 8 percentage points in national polling, the Democrat’s lead shrinks to just a few points in a number of battleground states crucial to determining the winner in America’s unique system of indirect presidential election.This has raised the odds that the election results could be delayed until all the ballots are officially tallied and certified. To be sure, a winner could well be declared if either Trump or Biden comes out on top with a large margin of votes.But if the results are too close to call in some states, the ballots there could be subject to a recount and potential legal challenges, a process that could take weeks, if not longer, to sort out.“There’s nothing magical about Election Day or election night in terms of the legal requirements of finding out who won,” said James Gardner, a law professor and election law expert at the University of Buffalo. “What you have to do is go through the complete electoral process and count all the votes. And (if) that takes a few days or more, then we just wait.”Tom Spencer, a veteran Republican election lawyer and vice president of the Lawyers Defense Fund, agrees that the impending electoral contest won’t be over until all the ballots are counted.“I think that experienced election lawyers know that results change predicated upon when the ballots come in,” said Spencer, who served as co-counsel for the George W. Bush presidential ticket during the 2000 vote recount in Florida.Hundreds of lawsuitsFor American voters, this has been a year of confusion as Republican and Democratic lawyers have filed hundreds of lawsuits over voting by mail and other rules during the pandemic, making this election cycle the most litigated in history.With the looming possibility that the presidential election outcome could be decided in the courts rather than at the ballot box, both the Trump and Biden campaigns have enlisted high-powered lawyers who have already begun running through various post-election scenarios.“We have been planning for any post-election litigation and recounts for well over a year and are extraordinarily well-positioned,” Justin Riemer, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement to VOA. “With the help of our national network of attorneys, the RNC has been beating the Democrats in court for the last several months and that will continue should they attempt to sue their way to victory in November.”A Biden campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. In an Oct. 9 tweet, Democratic lawyer Marc Elias wrote, “Republicans are spending $20 million to make voting more difficult in the middle of a pandemic that has cost over 200,000 lives.”If any of the election results for president, members of Congress or state offices are close, losing candidates have two “remedies” available to them, Gardner said.The first is a vote recount. Currently, 21 states allow for automatic recounts if the margin between the two opposing candidates is less than 1%, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In other states, a losing candidate can request a recount.A recount “simply repeats, with greater care, the counting of ballots that were in the initial pool of ballots,” Gardner said.If a recount does not change the results – they rarely do – the losing candidate can launch what is known as an election contest, essentially filing a legal challenge, Gardner said. This is the phase where the losing candidate can dispute the validity of ballots or practices used in counting the votes, triggering court battles that could take weeks and potentially end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.State and federal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court have been busy for months dealing with more than 300 cases stemming from the primary and general election campaign – many of them having to do with mail-in voting and changes in procedures at polling places in response to the coronavirus pandemic.This week, the Supreme Court allowed election officials in the battleground states of  Pennsylvania and North Carolina to accept mail-in ballots that arrive three to six days after the election, respectively, after refusing to affirm Wisconsin’s six-day ballot receipt extension.“You could very well have a situation like we had in 2000 with ballot examination and counting teams going through thousands of ballots with observers from both parties looking over their shoulders,” Gardner said.Late-arriving ballotsOne potential area of post-election dispute will likely involve mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a citizen advocacy organization.As of Friday, there were still many millions of outstanding mail-in ballots. That means ballots that arrive after Election Day may not count in some states.In Pennsylvania and Minnesota, two battleground states that accept mail-in ballots after Election Day, election officials will segregate late-arriving paper votes. How to dispose of those ballots could become the main issue in subsequent court cases. North Carolina, another key state, may do the same, Albert said.“I think there will be an attempt to segregate those ballots to possibly have them thrown out,” Albert said.Rejected mail-in ballotsRejected mail-in ballots could become another focus of any post-election litigation.During every U.S. presidential election, hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots are discarded by election officials for a variety of reasons, from arriving after the deadline to missing a proper signature on the outer envelope.But this year, because of the ramp-up in absentee voting, a lot more ballots face rejection, with minority and first-time voters disproportionately affected, according to experts. In North Carolina and Florida, respectively, more than 10,000 and 15,000 ballots face rejection.Although voters in 30 states including Florida are given an opportunity to “cure” or correct problems with their ballots, voters in 20 other states are not afforded that opportunity. That means election officials can toss ballots without informing voters about the defects.“I think there will be large disagreements and lots of wrangling over which of those ballots should count and which of the absentee voters should be able to correct any errors in their ballots,” Albert said.Ballot drop boxesBallots placed in drop boxes across the country are another category of voting facing potential litigation.While some states have long used free-standing boxes to collect ballots, this year 40 states will use them, according to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.The expanded use of drop boxes has become a major flashpoint in the debate over voting access during the pandemic and a focus of litigation in at least three states: Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.While Democrats and voting rights advocates say drop boxes make it easier for voters to cast their ballots without exposing themselves to the virus, President Trump and Republicans have railed against them, describing them as a potential ballot security risks and trying to limit their number. In Texas, for example, Gov. Greg Abbott has limited the number of drop boxes to one per county.While election officials have sought to reassure voters regarding the security of drop boxes, Republicans continue to argue that they pose problems. In Texas, litigation continues over whether ballots dropped in a collection box were secure enough to be counted, Albert, of Common Cause, said.“I think there are going be arguments that drop boxes were not secure and therefore none of the ballots should count,” she said.   
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Some of the data Iran used to unleash a deluge of emails designed to intimidate U.S. voters just weeks before the country’s presidential election came directly from one state’s voter registration database.U.S. officials confirmed the finding late Friday in an alert issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has been coordinating U.S. election security efforts.The alert said Iranian hackers targeting websites belonging to various U.S. states, including state election websites, “successfully obtained voter registration data in at least one state” by exploiting what it described as website misconfigurations.That data was then used as part of an Iranian campaign last week to intimidate voters in at least four states, including Arizona, Alaska, Pennsylvania and Florida.The “spoofed” emails were designed to make it look as though they had come from the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has rallied behind President Donald Trump.The text of the emails warned voters, “You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you.”According to the latest alert, the hacked voter registration information was also featured in a video disseminated by Iran implying that some voters might be prone to casting fraudulent ballots.Just 27 hoursIran’s foreign ministry last week rejected the U.S. accusations as “baseless,” and summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Iran because the two countries do not have diplomatic relations.However, Cyberscoop, a publication that focuses on cybersecurity, cited U.S. officials Friday as saying the Iranian hackers targeted websites in 10 different states.Despite Iran’s initial success in penetrating a key database, it took U.S. intelligence officials just 27 hours to trace the emails and the video back to Tehran, sharing the information with U.S. states ahead of a public announcement featuring Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray.Ratcliffe described the Iranian operation as a “desperate” attempt to sow chaos and confusion, adding that when it came to the video, “any claims about such allegedly fraudulent ballots are not true.”U.S. security and intelligence officials Friday said they remain confident that the upcoming election, set for November 3, will be the most secure in modern history. Officials said that despite the data breach, voting infrastructure in all 50 states remains resilient, with up to 95% of states now having systems in place to ensure there is a paper record of every vote cast.Still, they expressed concern that the U.S. could see a surge in attacks on election-related systems as the nation gets closer to Tuesday’s vote, noting Tehran has been aggressively flexing new capabilities.”We wouldn’t be surprised to see more website defacements,” CISA Director Christopher Krebs told reporters earlier Friday, calling it, “a tried-and-true tactic of the Iranians.”He said Iran has also been known to use distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), which block access to websites by overwhelming the server hosting the site with internet traffic.’Iran’s capabilities are growing’Researchers, though, caution against overplaying Iran’s cyber capabilities just based on the intimidation emails and the video.“It was a combination of the kinds of tools that spammers use to get out lots of messages, along with a pretty ham-fisted attempt at trying to get some of the narrative around this traction on social media,” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher with The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, told VOA after the initial salvo.“What it felt like was a group that could do certain things well but didn’t necessarily have a great idea about how to do some of the more nuanced, sort of culturally sensitive things that go into doing a disinformation campaign,” he said.But Scott-Railton also said that could change.“Iran’s capabilities are growing and they’re learning. And each tango with this kind of thing results in an evolution and maybe an improvement for the next time around,” he said.In the meantime, U.S. officials are bracing for more, whether from Iran or from Russia, which also has managed to access voter registration databases, though intelligence and election officials now describe what the Russians got as products based on the data, and not the data itself.Other U.S. adversaries might also try to build on what they perceive as a sense of vulnerability.“I would expect claims from any number of actors that maybe they’ve been able to manipulate [data or websites],” Krebs said, though he warned in many cases the claims will far exceed their actual capabilities.
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While student debt and the affordability of a college education as a youth voter issue has been overshadowed by COVID and race events, it remains a top concern for many.“I’ve been paying whatever the minimum is for well over a decade,” said Victor Varadi, senior program manager at Disney/ABC, to VOA. Now 47, he has been paying down more than $50,000 in student loans for his undergraduate and master’s degree studies since 2006. The interest rate on those loans have been between 5% and 7%, he said.Varadi is among the student debtors who owe $1.5 trillion to lending institutions, more than all credit card debt in the U.S., according to Brookings Institution in an October report.A third of that debt is owned by only 6% of borrowers. On the other end, 18% of borrowers owe less than $5,000 in student debt, according to the Brookings Institution last November.“Clearly, solving the college debt problem involves not only making higher education more affordable, but also ensuring that students are on a sustainable path to pay off their debts,” stated McKinsey and Company, a management consulting firm, on its website.In the spring, before the COVID-19 pandemic caused a widespread closure of college campuses, 85% percent of young Americans — 94% Democrat and 76% Republican — favored student debt loan reforms, according to the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.American colleges and universities are significantly more expensive today than when earlier generations attended. Between 1980 and 2014, the average annual increase in college tuition grew by nearly 260%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”There was a time when a small amount of savings and a part-time job could get students through college with little or no debt,” wrote Mary Clare Anselem, policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, as reported by VOA at the time. “But today, more students than ever are turning to federal loans to finance their college education.”President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate former Vice president Joe Biden have included the high cost of education and student debt into their platforms, offering different plans to resolve what has been a big issue for millennials. While paying off student loans, debtors are limited in buying homes and having children.Below are the candidates’ platforms for higher education and student debt.In “A Budget for America’s Future” for fiscal year 2021, Trump proposes:Loan limitsLoan forgivenessSimplifying financial aidIncreasing Pell grantsReducing unnecessary school costsProviding expedited loan forgivenessSafeguarding students from fake institutionsContinued limits on programs for international studentsThe president’s budget would expedite “loan forgiveness for undergraduate borrowers who make 15 years of responsible payments,” it stated, and proposes “sensible annual and lifetime loan limits.” Undergraduate students can borrow from $5,500 to $12,500 a year, according to the Federal Student Aid website.International students are not eligible for federal loans, and more than 60% pay out of pocket, according to the Institute for International Education (IIE). But they can borrow from private lenders who charge higher interest rates but offer larger loans.Trump proposes o eliminating international educational programs since “a number of other federal agencies offer programs that are similar and potentially duplicative.” The budget proposal did not specify which programs or agencies.In September, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule fixing student visas to four-year terms for international students and requiring them to apply for extensions. The rule would limit international student visas to a fixed two-year term for students from countries with a visa overstay rate above 10% or a country on the U.S. State Department’s State Sponsor of Terrorism list.According to Biden’s website, joebiden.com, he proposes:Reducing student debtInvesting in community collegeIncreasing Pell grantsStrengthening education as a pathway to the middle classMaking financial aid available to DACA studentsIncreasing quality and affordabilityMore assistance for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU)Biden’s plan states he wants to invest in community colleges to give more students access to higher education. Community colleges are more flexible, less competitive and far less expensive than other schools. Some will accept and teach English to students who don’t have a command of the language yet, which is appealing to many international students.Biden’s wife, Jill, holds a doctorate in education and teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College in Alexandria, Virginia.The federal government would cover 75%, with states paying 25%, the candidate’s plan states. Students from American Indian tribes would receive additional assistance.The two plans have some similarities. Biden and Trump say they want to help more students get Pell grants, which helped more than 7 million students with aid during the 2017-18 school year.Pell grants were introduced in 1972. Named after Sen. Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, they award undergraduate students aid based on financial need, and, unlike loans, do not have to be repaid.Trump says he wants to expand the use of Pell grants to make them available to “certain incarcerated students to improve employment outcomes, reduce recidivism, and facilitate their successful reentry to society.” He did not specify which kind of incarcerated students would be given Pell grants.Biden says he wants to see the program applied more broadly, proposing to “double the maximum value of the Pell grant, a level of investment experts say is necessary to close the gap between the rich and poor so that everyone has the opportunity to receive an education beyond high school,” his website asserts.
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos planned a “Moms for Trump” rally in her home state of Michigan. The Department of Homeland Security’s top official was in Texas to celebrate completion of a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency headed to North Carolina after visiting Georgia the day before.
That was just Thursday.
Members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet are logging extra miles as mostly unofficial campaign surrogates in crucial states in the final days before Tuesday’s election, blending politics and policy in ways that critics say skirt established norms and may even violate the law.
It’s long been one of the benefits of incumbency that a president can enlist his Cabinet to promote administration accomplishments. But only to a point, with a law on the books since 1939 requiring a division between political and official activities for all federal employees except the president and vice president.  
“The Trump administration has completely obliterated that line,” said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, which describes itself as a nonpartisan watchdog organization. “The White House is now the seat of government, where the president lives, and one of his chief campaign props. And that erosion of norms has spread throughout the entire administration.”
This criticism isn’t new, but it’s intensified in recent months. The administration, which came under fire for using the White House as a backdrop for the president’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, insists it is adhering to the law known as the Hatch Act.  
“The Trump administration takes the Hatch Act seriously and all events are conducted in compliance with the law,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said.
But already, at least one member of the administration has run afoul of the decades-old law in recent weeks.
The Office of Special Counsel, led by a Trump appointee, concluded this month that Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue violated the law at a North Carolina event in August where his remarks in support of the president devolved into crowd chants of “four more years.” Perdue was ordered to reimburse the government for costs associated with the trip. 
“He turned an official event into a campaign one,” by tying aid to farmers to reelecting Trump, said Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which filed complaint with that federal office over Perdue’s appearance.U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks by video feed from Jerusalem during the largely virtual 2020 Republican National Convention broadcast from Washington, Aug. 25, 2020.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo could be next.  
Two New York Democrats, Reps. Eliot L. Engel and Rep. Nita Lowey, said this week that the same office was investigating the speech that America’s top diplomat made to the GOP convention from Israel. The office declined comment and the State Department noted that a previous Hatch Act complaint against Pompeo was dismissed.
That Pompeo speech was among a number of appearances, including one in September in Wisconsin, that appeared to many observers to cast aside a long tradition of avoiding partisan politics by secretaries of state. But he’s hardly alone, and the examples have proliferated in recent days.
 
Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette this week was visiting southwestern Pennsylvania — a swing area in one of the most important battleground states — for at least the third time since August. In an area closely tied to fracking, Brouillette didn’t mention Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by name but warned that efforts to develop renewable energy to address climate change could threaten “every form of energy besides renewables.”  
Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler has made repeated trips to closely contested Michigan, including one to announce $2 million in grant funding, where he criticized the Obama administration’s response to the lead contamination crisis in Flint.
DeVos has made frequent visits to pivotal states such as Florida, Texas and Wisconsin, for discussions of efforts to reopen schools closed by the coronavirus pandemic and to promote school choice, an issue that Trump has focused on in hopes of appealing to Black voters. The announcement of her appearance at Thursday’s “Moms for Trump” rally in Detroit referred to her as the “Honorable Betsy DeVos,” not as education secretary for a clearly political event.Acting-Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, center, arrives to join President Donald Trump at Andrews Air Force Base in Md., Aug. 18, 2020.Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf was in South Texas to mark completion of 400 miles of border wall, one of the central themes of the Trump 2016 campaign. Wolf also has drawn scrutiny by holding news conferences in Pennsylvania and elsewhere to announce relatively minor immigration operations. American Oversight, in a letter Thursday, urged the Office of Special Counsel to investigate Wolf and other DHS officials.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie has traveled to a host of presidential and Senate battleground states in recent months, mixing in dedication ceremonies and other official business with a “fireside chat” and praise of vulnerable GOP incumbents. His activity has received criticism from congressional Democrats.
Other examples include national security adviser Robert O’Brien traveling to Minnesota and Wisconsin this month to discuss trade; senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller holding a conference call Wednesday with reporters and speaking “in his personal capacity” to discuss immigration policy; and Kayleigh McEnany doing double duty as White House press secretary and “Trump 2020 campaign adviser,” as she was described in an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Thursday.
Hatch Act violations can be referred to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation, but more typically result in administrative penalties. Evers, a former litigator and government lawyer, said lower-level staff should be concerned about the possible legal consequences of working on barely concealed political missions.
There could be electoral consequences as well. “The political calculations that go into these decisions could be very wrong,” he said. “It should matter to the public that their apolitical government is being used for purely partisan ends. So, it may not have the payoff they expect.” 
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Voters in California are deciding on an initiative that would keep people who work in the so-called gig economy as independent contractors, not employees. Michelle Quinn reports.
Camera: Matt Dibble and Deana Mitchell      Producer: Matt Dibble
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Walmart Inc removed firearms and ammunition from U.S. store floors this week to protect customers and employees as tensions across the country have been rising, the world’s largest retailer said on Thursday.The move comes days before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, with many worried that the result could be contested or spark violence.”We have seen some isolated civil unrest and as we have done on several occasions over the last few years, we have moved our firearms and ammunition off the sales floor as a precaution for the safety of our associates and customers,” a Walmart spokesperson said. The company does not have a date for when it will place the guns and ammunition back on the shelves, he added.The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer, which sells firearms in approximately half of its more than 5,000 U.S. stores, will still sell the items upon request, it said.Retailers have been on edge after people earlier this year smashed windows, stole merchandise and, at times, set stores ablaze in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Portland and other U.S. cities. In an another trend that has fed concern, gun sales in the United States this year have reached record highs, and more first-time buyers have purchased firearms recent months.In June, Walmart pulled firearms and ammunition from some U.S. sales stores amid nationwide protests over the death of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, while in police custody in late May.Last year, the retailer stopped selling ammunition for handguns and some assault-style rifles in all its U.S. stores.It has also in the past called for a strengthening of background checks for gun buyers and action to take guns out of the hands of those who pose a risk of violence.Shares of the retailer were trading roughly flat after the bell.
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North Carolina, yes. Pennsylvania, yes. Wisconsin, no. That is how the Supreme Court has answered questions in recent days about an extended timeline for receiving and counting ballots in those states. In each case, Democrats backed the extensions and Republicans opposed them. All three states have Democratic governors and legislatures controlled by the GOP. At first blush, the difference in the outcomes seems odd because the Supreme Court typically takes up issues to harmonize the rules across the country. But elections are largely governed by states, and the rules differ from one state to the next. These cases are being dealt with on an emergency basis in which the court issues orders that either block or keep in place a lower court ruling. But there is almost never an explanation of the majority’s rationale, though individual justices sometimes write opinions that partially explain the matter.  FILE – A worker prepares tabulators for the upcoming election at the Wake County Board of Elections in Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 3, 2020.There also is a difference in how the justices act based on whether they are ruling on a lawsuit that began in state or federal court. Conservative justices who hold a majority on the Supreme Court object to what they see as intrusions by federal judges who order last-minute changes to state election rules, even in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The power to alter absentee ballot deadlines and other voting issues rests with state legislatures, not federal courts, according to the conservative justices. The court also is divided, but so far has been willing to allow state courts interpreting their own state constitutions to play more of a role than their federal counterparts.  The justices did not finally resolve the legal issues involved, but they could do so after the election. A more thorough examination could come either in a post-election challenge that could determine the presidential winner if, for example, Pennsylvania proves critical to the national outcome, or in a less tense setting that might not affect the 2020 vote but would apply in the future. Even a decision that only looked ahead to future elections would be “concerning given that state courts have often been more protective of the right to vote under state constitutions than the federal courts have under the U.S. Constitution,” University of Kentucky law professor Joshua Douglas said. Also, new Justice Amy Coney Barrett has not taken part in any of these last-minute orders but could participate going forward. Here are some state-specific explanations of what has taken place over the past 10 days. Pennsylvania Last week, before Barrett had been confirmed, the justices divided 4-4, a tie vote that allowed the three-day extension ordered by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to remain in effect. On Wednesday, the court said it would not grant a quick, pre-election review to a new Republican appeal to exclude absentee ballots received after Election Day in the battleground state.  FILE – Media members photograph and record a sorting machine at Philadelphia’s mail-in ballot sorting and counting center in preparation for the 2020 U.S. general election in Philadelphia, Oct. 26, 2020.But it remained unclear whether those ballots will ultimately be counted. The court’s order left open the possibility that the justices could take up and decide after the election whether a three-day extension to receive and count absentee ballots ordered by Pennsylvania’s high court was proper. The issue would take on enormous importance if Pennsylvania turns out to be the crucial state in next week’s election, and the votes received between November 3 and November 6 are potentially decisive. The Supreme Court ruled hours after Pennsylvania’s Department of State agreed to segregate ballots received in the mail after polls close on Tuesday and before 5 p.m. on November 6. Without keeping those ballots separate, Pennsylvania might have risked having the state’s overall vote count called into question. Three conservative justices signaled their interest in the court’s eventual review of the case. North Carolina The court on Wednesday refused to block an extra six days to receive and count absentee ballots in North Carolina. The State Board of Elections lengthened the period from three to nine days because of the coronavirus pandemic, pushing back the deadline to November 12. The board’s decision was part of a legal settlement with a union-affiliated group. The extension was approved by a state judge. Lawmakers had previously set November 6 as the deadline for mailed ballots because of the pandemic.  There is no order or recommendation in North Carolina that ballots received after November 6 be kept apart. Justice Neil Gorsuch said courts should not be second-guessing the legislature. The election board and the state judge “worked together to override a carefully tailored legislative response to COVID,” Gorsuch wrote.  Wisconsin In Wisconsin, ballots must arrive by Election Day, November 3, to be counted.  The Supreme Court on Monday refused to reinstate a lower-court order that would have added six days to the deadline, identical to the extension granted primary voters in April. A federal appeals court already had blocked the additional days. FILE – A person drops off their absentee ballot at a drop box at City Hall as early voting for the upcoming presidential election begins in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Oct. 20, 2020.This time, it was the court’s liberals who objected. “As the COVID pandemic rages, the court has failed to adequately protect the nation’s voters,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent. Again, there was nothing from the court explaining its order, but Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch all wrote separate opinions. “Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin,” Roberts wrote, before the court had acted in the North Carolina case. Kavanaugh’s opinion drew outsized attention because he invoked the court’s Bush v. Gore case that effectively resolved the 2000 presidential election in favor of Republican George W. Bush.  The Supreme Court has never cited Bush v. Gore in an opinion of the court. In 2000, in its unsigned majority opinion, the court wrote, “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances.” But three lawyers who worked for Bush’s cause in 2000 — Roberts, Kavanaugh and now Barrett — sit on the court.
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A former Trump administration official who penned a scathing anti-Trump op-ed and book under the pen name “Anonymous” revealed himself Wednesday as a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security.
The official, Miles Taylor, came forward six days before Election Day to criticize  President Donald Trump as “a man without character.” He said he hoped other former administration officials will “find their conscience when they wake up tomorrow” and speak up, too.
Taylor has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s in recent months and had repeatedly denied he was the author of the column and subsequent book — even to colleagues at CNN, where he has a contributor contract. He left the Trump administration in June 2019 and endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president this summer.
Trump and White House officials moved quickly to describe Taylor as someone with little standing and clout.
“This guy is a low-level lowlife that I don’t know. I have no idea who he is, other than I got to see him a little while ago on television,” Trump told a campaign rally crowd in Arizona. As he belittled Taylor as a “sleazebag” and called for his prosecution, the crowd broke into cheers of “drain that swamp.”
But as DHS chief of staff, Taylor was in many White House meetings with the president on his border policy and other major Homeland Security issues. During Taylor’s time as chief of staff, Trump threatened to shut down the border and his administration developed the policy to force asylum seekers to wait across the U.S.-Mexico border.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows called Taylor’s revelation “a monumental embarrassment,” tweeting, “I’ve seen more exciting reveals in Scooby-Doo episodes.”
During a CNN appearance with Chris Cuomo Wednesday night, Taylor said he didn’t unmask himself earlier because the story would have disappeared within 48 hours.
“No one would pay attention and they wouldn’t care,” he said. “Right now, Americans are reviewing the president’s resume, his record and his character and it is mission critical that people like me, but others, come out now when the voters are listening and tell them who this man really is.”
Taylor’s anonymous essay was published in September 2018 by The New York Times, infuriating the president and setting off a frantic White House leak investigation to try to unmask the author.
In the essay, the person, who identified themselves only as a senior administration official, said they were part of a secret “resistance” force out to counter Trump’s “misguided impulses” and undermine parts of his agenda.
The author wrote, “Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
The Times identified the author as a “senior official” in the administration and received some criticism online Wednesday for inflating Taylor’s credentials. The newspaper, which said it had granted Taylor anonymity because his job would be jeopardized if his identity was revealed, on Wednesday confirmed Taylor was the author because he has waived his right to confidentiality, and had no other comment.
The allegations incensed the president, bolstering his allegations about a “deep state” operating within his government and conspiring against him. The president, who had long complained about leaks in the White House, also ordered aides to unmask the writer, citing “national security” concerns to justify a possible Justice Department investigation.
Instead, the author pressed forward, penning a follow-up book published last November called “A Warning” that continued to paint a disturbing picture of the president, describing him as volatile, incompetent and unfit to be commander in chief.
To a certain extent, he’s since been overshadowed by other former government officials, both during the impeachment hearings and after, who went public condemning Trump’s behavior with their names attached.
Taylor’s behavior also leaves questions for CNN. He was asked directly by the network’s Anderson Cooper in August whether he was “Anonymous” and answered: “I wear a mask for two things, Anderson, Halloween and pandemics. So, no.”
Josh Campbell, a national security correspondent for CNN, tweeted that he had also asked Taylor if he was “Anonymous” and was told no.
Taylor said Wednesday that he owed Cooper a beer and a mea culpa. He said he wrote in his book that he would deny being “Anonymous” if asked, because he wanted to keep the focus on his arguments, instead of who was writing them.
“You know what the problem is with having lied is: Now you’re a liar, and people will be slow to believe you,” Cuomo said.
But he continued with a half-hour interview where Taylor denounced Trump. CNN said Taylor would remain a network contributor.
Taylor said he believed Trump would double down on damaging policies, particularly the separation of families at the southern border, if he won a second term.
“They want to turn this country into fortress America rather than a shining city on the hill,” he said.
He said he considered resigning from the Trump administration a year before he did and wishes now that he had.
Former GOP consultant Reed Galen, one of the founders of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, tweeted that Taylor “isn’t a hero.” He added: “He sat in those rooms, in those councils of power and allowed the banality of evil to work. … Heroism isn’t silence until it’s convenient and personally advantageous to stand up.”
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With days until voters cast the last ballots in the U.S. presidential election, the top candidates are focusing their campaign efforts Thursday in the southeastern state of Florida.In every election since 1996, the winner of Florida has won the presidency.  The winner there earns 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the election.President Donald Trump begins his campaigning day with a rally in the city of Tampa before traveling for an evening rally in the state of North Carolina.Former Vice President Joe Biden is set to speak to supporters in Broward County in the afternoon and then head to his own event in Tampa in the evening.According to anAbout two-thirds of America’s early voters have mailed in their ballots, and the rest voted in person at polling places throughout the country.  Biden voted Wednesday in Wilmington, Delaware, while Trump cast his ballot on Saturday at a library in West Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago resort.  Voting experts say voter turnout for the contest between Republican Trump and Democratic challenger Biden could be the highest percentage of the electorate since 1908, when 65% of the country’s eligible voters cast ballots.
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U.S. military veterans tend to vote Republican in presidential elections, and a majority will likely do so again this year. But VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb talked to some veterans who are reconsidering their political leanings and voting on the issues that matter most to them.
Camera: Adam Greenbaum and Mike Burke 
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The CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter testified before a Senate committee hearing Wednesday, just days before the U.S. election. Tina Trinh reports.
Producer: Matt Dibble
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Days before the November 3 election, the campaigns of President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden are making their last pitch to voters, sending high-profile surrogates including former President Barack Obama and the Trump family children. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
Produced by: Bakhtiyar Zamanov 
 
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The nation’s top technology leaders urged U.S. lawmakers Wednesday to keep content moderation protections in place, despite growing calls from Republicans to address perceived bias in the way social media companies handle free speech online.  Online companies are shielded from liability for content on their sites under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.  Those protections apply to companies of all sizes operating online that use third-party content. But some Republicans contend Section 230 is a “carve-out” for larger companies such as Facebook and Twitter, allowing them to censor content based on political viewpoints and use their considerable reach to influence public discourse.  U.S. President Donald Trump called for an end to Section 230 in a Tweet Wednesday, saying “The USA doesn’t have Freedom of the Press, we have Suppression of the Story, or just plain Fake News. So much has been learned in the last two weeks about how corrupt our Media is, and now Big Tech, maybe even worse. Repeal Section 230!”  President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at MotorSports Management Company, in West Salem, Wis., Oct. 27, 2020.At issue is whether or not a company that moderates content is a publisher instead of a platform and if the reach of companies such Facebook, Google and Twitter constitutes a monopoly.  “Companies are actively blocking and throttling the distribution of content on their own platforms and are using protections under Section 230 to do it. Is it any surprise that voices on the right are complaining about hypocrisy, or even worse?” Senate Commerce Chairman Roger Wicker said Wednesday.  Section 230 has received renewed attention during the 2020 presidential election cycle due to online companies’ new approaches to content moderation in response to foreign interference on online platforms during the 2016 elections cycle.  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey pushed back against that in prepared testimony Wednesday, saying, “We should remember that Section 230 has enabled new companies—small ones seeded with an idea—to build and compete with established companies globally. Eroding the foundation of Section 230 could collapse how we communicate on the Internet, leaving only a small number of giant and well-funded technology companies.”  Dorsey told lawmakers one possible approach that is “within reach” would allow users to choose between Twitter’s own algorithm that determines what content is viewable, and algorithms developed by third parties.Wicker said his staff had collected “dozens and dozens” of examples of conservative content that he says has been censored and suppressed over the past four years by Twitter. He alleged the social media company had allowed Chinese Communist propaganda about COVID-19 to remain up for two months while President Donald Trump’s claims about mail-in ballots were immediately taken down.  Earlier this month, Twitter blocked users from sharing a link to a news story on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Twitter also locked the accounts of President Trump and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the story, citing its policies for how hacked materials are shared on its website. Based on these actions, Republican Senator Ted Cruz accused Twitter of attempting to influence U.S. elections.  “Your position is that that you can sit in Silicon Valley and demand of the media that you can tell them what stories they can publish; you can tell the American people what reporting they can hear,” Cruz said to Dorsey Wednesday.  The Twitter CEO has apologized for the decision, tweeting, “Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities to do that.”  Facebook also restricted sharing of the Hunter Biden story, saying it would first need a third-party fact check.  The social media company had allowed Russian disinformation to flood the site during the 2016 election, but Facebook instituted new policies this election cycle. According to its website, Facebook’s response includes the removal of 6.5 billion fake accounts in 2019, adding third-party factcheckers to go over content posted on the site as well as removing 30 networks engaged in coordinated, inauthentic behavior.  “Without Section 230, platforms could potentially be held liable for everything people say. Platforms would likely censor more content to avoid legal risk and would be less likely to invest in technologies that enable people to express themselves in new ways,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers Wednesday.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears on a screen as he speaks remotely during a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee on Capitol Hill, Oct. 28, 2020, in Washington.Congressional Democrats expressed concern about the growth of extremist groups online as well as continuing attempts at foreign election interference on social media platforms, questioning the timing of the hearing.“I am appalled that my Republican colleagues are holding this hearing literally days before an election, when they seem to want to bully and browbeat the platforms here to try to tilt toward President Trump’s favor. The timing seems inexplicable except to game the referee,” said Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal. “President Trump has broken all the norms. And he has put on your platforms, potentially dangerous and lethal misinformation and disinformation.”  In an earlier line of questioning, Dorsey told lawmakers Twitter does not maintain lists of accounts to watch, but bases content moderation based on algorithms and service user requests.   Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer at Google, also stated the company’s commitment toward independence, telling lawmakers, “We approach our work without political bias, full stop. To do otherwise would be contrary to both our business interests and our mission, which compels us to make information accessible to every type of person, no matter where they live or what they believe.” 
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Americans are voting early for next Tuesday’s presidential election in unprecedented numbers, a product of strong feelings for or against the two main candidates and a desire to avoid large crowds at Election Day polling stations amid the coronavirus pandemic. More than 71 million people have already voted six days ahead of the official election day, totaling more than half of the overall 2016 vote count, which was 138.8 million. FILE – Returned ballots are shown at elections management center at the Salt Lake County Government Center Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, in Salt Lake City.About two-thirds of the early voters have mailed in their ballots, and the rest voted in person at polling places throughout the country.   Voting experts say voter turnout for the contest between Republican President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden could be the highest since 1908, when 65% of the country’s eligible voters cast ballots. President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally at Eppley Airfield, Oct. 27, 2020, in Omaha, Neb.Trump, Biden and their respective running mates — Vice President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris — are continuing to make their closing arguments to voters on Wednesday. Focus on Arizona Both Trump and Harris are campaigning in Arizona, the southwestern state along the Mexican border that Trump won in 2016 against Democrat Hillary Clinton en route to a four-year term in the White House.  But polls in the state, where no Democratic presidential candidate has won since 1996, now show Biden narrowly ahead. The state has 11 of the 270 electoral votes that either Trump or Biden will need to claim the presidency and be inaugurated on January 20. U.S. presidential elections are decided in an indirect form of democracy in the 538-member Electoral College, not the national popular vote. Typically, all of a state’s Electoral College votes go to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each of the 50 states, with the most populous states holding the most sway. Trump is holding two afternoon rallies in Arizona, in Bullhead City and Goodyear.  Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks at a campaign event, Oct. 27, 2020, in Las Vegas.Harris is meeting with Latina business owners in the morning in Tucson and later in the day with a group of Black leaders in the state’s biggest city, Phoenix. She is finishing her day with a speech at a rally where pop singer Alicia Keys is performing.   Biden briefed on virus Biden, who has cast blame on Trump for the country’s world-leading coronavirus death toll of more than 226,000, is being briefed by public health experts on the pandemic and then delivering remarks on his plans to curb the spread of the virus. Later, he is attending a virtual campaign fund-raising event. Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about the coronavirus and health care at The Queen theater, Oct. 28, 2020, in Wilmington, Del.Trump this week has continued to assert the country has “rounded the corner” in dealing with the virus, even as the number of U.S. infections is surging. Pence is holding rallies in two key Midwest states, Wisconsin and then Michigan, that Trump captured in 2016 but where he now trails Biden. Vice President Miek Pence speaks to hundreds of supporters during a rally at an airplane hangar on Oct. 27, 2020, in Greenville, S.C.National polls typically show Biden with a 7- or 8-percentage point lead over Trump, but with about half that margin in key battleground states that are likely to determine the outcome in the Electoral College.                      
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A week ahead of the Nov. 3 election, applications in the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania for mail-in or absentee ballots exceeded 3 million, with Tuesday the last day to request one and legal wrangling creating uncertainty over the deadline to receive them.
State data shows that, of those applications, about 1.9 million, or more than 62%, have been returned to counties.
More than 9 million Pennsylvanians have registered to vote, a record high. If turnout is 70%, which was the rate in 2016’s presidential election in Pennsylvania, that means 6.3 million people will vote.
The majority of people, 1.9 million, applying for mail-in or absentee ballots are Democrats, according to state data. About 760,000 are Republicans and 350,000 are registered independents or third-party voters.
Abby Leafe, a registered Democrat who lives in suburban Philadelphia’s Bucks County, checked her mailbox Tuesday in vain for her mail-in ballot.
“I am desperately, desperately waiting for my ballot to arrive,” said Leafe, a 46-year-old market researcher from Newtown, one of the millions of suburban moms that both parties hope to reach this year.
Leafe hopes to vote by mail, but will go to the polls if need be.
“Making sure we have free and fair elections is worth getting COVID for,” she said.
The crush of mail-in votes is a record, more than 10 times the amount received by counties in 2016’s presidential election when President Donald Trump edged out Democrat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, helping him win the White House.
This year, Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrat, are locked in a battle to win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, with Trump warning that the only way he can lose Pennsylvania is if Democrats cheat. Democrats counter that Trump is mounting a massive voter intimidation and suppression campaign in Pennsylvania.
Counties have staffed up and bought new high-speed sorting equipment to process the ballots as they prepare to hold an election with fast-rising coronavirus numbers, new voting machines and the U.S. Supreme Court potentially deciding the return deadline for mail-in ballots.
In that lawsuit, Luzerne County on Tuesday asked Justice Amy Coney Barrett to recuse herself from consideration of the state Republican Party’s request that the U.S. Supreme Court block counties from counting mailed-in ballots received up to three days after the Nov. 3 election.
The filing by Luzerne County came shortly after Barrett was formally sworn in as the Supreme Court’s ninth justice.
The justices last week divided 4-4 on the GOP’s request to put a hold on the deadline extension, which left it in place while justices decide whether to consider the underlying case. There is no timeline for them to vote on whether to take the case, which seeks to return the deadline to the one in state law, which is when polls close on Election Day.
The state Supreme Court ruled in September that county election officials must count mailed-in ballots that arrive up until Nov. 6, even if they don’t have a clear postmark, as long as there is no proof it was mailed after the polls closed.
Meanwhile, Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration pushed back on Trump’s claims in his three rallies on Monday in Pennsylvania.
Trump claimed that Wolf’s administration tried to prevent him from holding rallies, but the administration said it had had no contact with the campaign about its rallies Monday. Trump’s campaign presumably deals with property owners and local governments, Wolf’s office said.
Trump also complained, falsely, during a rally in Allentown the day before and on Twitter overnight that Philadelphia is blocking his campaign from having observers at polls.
“We can’t have poll watchers, the judge said,” Trump told rally goers. “They fought us on that, they didn’t want people watching them count.”
Trump’s campaign has not been blocked from having poll watchers.
Rather, Trump’s campaign sued Philadelphia’s elections board to force it to allow campaign representatives to monitor satellite election offices, where people can register to vote, apply for a mail-in ballot, fill it out and return it.
A Philadelphia judge and a statewide appellate court judge both reached the same conclusion, that Pennsylvania law does not allow such monitoring of those activities.
Wolf’s top election official, Kathy Boockvar, suggested Trump is spreading disinformation and said every county will appoint poll watchers before Election Day.
“Philadelphia and every other county in the state can have poll watchers,” Boockvar said at a news conference Tuesday. “That hasn’t changed. His tweets, again, voters need to ignore the disinformation. There’s so much disinformation out there, people should not retweet, should not repost, this information is inaccurate. Pennsylvania has very clear laws.”
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With days left until the U.S. election, Democrats are in a position to win a handful of Senate races that could give them control of the chamber in 2021. No matter who wins the White House, party control of the Senate will be a key factor determining how much work gets done in Washington for the next two years.Republicans currently have a 53-47 Senate majority. If Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wins the presidency, Democrats would need a net pickup of just three Senate seats to assume the majority. If U.S. President Donald Trump is elected to a second term, Democrats would need to gain four Senate seats to have a working majority.According to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, seven of the 35 U.S. Senate seats up for reelection November 3 are races that are too close to call. All seven of those seats are currently Republican-held. Additionally, in this cycle Republicans are defending nearly twice as many seats as Democrats, making it more challenging for Republicans to maintain their numbers.Of the 12 Democrat-held U.S. Senate seats up for reelection, only one is rated by Cook Political Report as leaning Republican – the Alabama race between Senator Doug Jones and his Trump-endorsed Republican challenger Tommy Tuberville. The former football coach has been leading Jones in the polls by double digits since the summer.Casey Burgat, director of the Legislative Affairs program at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, said polling data showing a shift in Democrats’ favor reflect how many races have been nationalized by Trump’s presence at the top of the ticket.“If we think of elections as referendums on those incumbents, Republicans are in a really tight spot right now, led by President Trump,” he said. “Candidates are having to work in their seats to distance themselves, to show a streak of independence to say that ‘I’m just not a vote for an unpopular president.’ States where just four years ago he was incredibly popular – being that he brought in some senators to the Senate based on his election tally. So quite a shift in a few short years.”Here’s where a handful of key races stand:Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) walks on Capitol Hill, February 3, 2020, in Washington.IowaEarlier this year, the central state of Iowa looked to be one of the states holding strong for Republicans. But while Trump carried the state by 9 percentage points in 2016, his trade wars have had an impact on its heavily agricultural economy.Incumbent Republican Senator Joni Ernst supported Trump’s policies and government payments to farmers to supplement the lost income. She has either trailed or tied her Democratic challenger, real estate developer Theresa Greenfield, in almost all polls throughout the year.Iowa farmer Doug Thompson, a Greenfield supporter, said Ernst’s political fortunes are tied to the president.“Her success or failure is going to be based on Trump’s success or failure in Iowa,” Thompson told VOA. “Agriculture has been devastated even though we’ve been paid off [received federal aid]. There’s still a lot of stress out here – a lot of stress on balance sheets.”Ernst stumbled in a recent debate answering a question about commodities prices, but farmer and Iowa State Senator Dan Zumbach said she understands agriculture in Iowa.“President Trump will get our trade settled down so that we can get better prices long term. Joni Ernst is genuine, honest and knowledgeable, and she works hard for our agriculture because she understands it – it’s where her roots are.”North CarolinaEarly October was a tumultuous time for both candidates in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races: North Carolina. Considered a bellwether for American politics because its demographic makeup reflects a diverse range of areas, ages and ethnicities, North Carolina is fiercely fought over in the presidential election and features a marquee contest between incumbent Republican Senator Thom Tillis and his Democratic challenger, former state senator Cal Cunningham.FILE – Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) talks to reporters prior to the resumption of the Senate impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, January 30, 2020.Earlier this month, Tillis was diagnosed with COVID-19 as a part of the outbreak of cases that impacted the White House and the U.S. Congress. While Tillis has since quarantined and recovered, the virus kept him from the campaign trail. At the same time, his opponent was facing questions about revelations he had been texting a woman who was not his wife. Cunningham ended up admitting to an intimate encounter earlier in the summer and apologized publicly to his family. According to a Real Clear Politics average of polls, Cunningham appears not to have been significantly damaged by those events. He leads Tillis by an average of 1.8 percentage points in political surveys.FILE – Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Cal Cunningham speaks to supporters during a primary election night party in Raleigh, N.C., March 3, 2020.MaineFacing a tough reelection race, Senator Susan Collins crossed the aisle Monday to vote against the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Collins made it clear she was not voting against Barrett based on her qualifications but on timing.“I do not think it is fair nor consistent to have a Senate confirmation vote prior to the election,” Collins said in a statement Monday.FILE – Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) talks to reporters before attending the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, January 28, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington.Making decisions in the national spotlight is a familiar role for Collins, who cast a key vote earlier this year in the Senate impeachment trial of Trump. Her opponent, Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, raised funds on the basis of Collins’ vote confirming Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, another decision that led some Maine voters to question whether Collins had maintained her reputation as an independent voice in the U.S. Senate.“Her vote for Brett Kavanaugh was kind of that breaking point, or at least one of the flashpoints in saying we like when you’re independent, but only so far as when you are agreeing with what we do as a state,” said Burgat. “She’s been kind of fighting back against that narrative ever since.”Gideon, a Maine state representative, leads Collins by an average of 4.2 percentage points in a Real Clear Politics average of polls conducted in September and October prior to the Supreme Court vote.South CarolinaThe home state of one of Trump’s strongest Senate defenders is a relatively late entry into the list of close races. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is leading his Democratic challenger, former South Carolina Democratic party chairman Jaime Harrison by 6 percentage points in the latest New York Times/Siena poll conducted the week of October 9. But a Quinnipiac University poll has shown the two candidates in a tie in multiple polls since July.FILE – Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jaime Harrison speaks at a campaign rally on Oct. 17, 2020, in North Charleston, S.C.Money is keeping this race competitive. Graham notably complained about Harrison’s fundraising abilities in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Barrett last week. Harrison, the former South Carolina Democratic party chairman, has broken the record for the largest three-month fundraising effort ever in a Senate race – a record $57 million.“His fundraising numbers have been astronomical, but a lot of that money has been coming from outside the state where voters are looking to him as an opportunity for a Democratic pickup,” said Burgat. “So they are funneling money into that race, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that Lindsey Graham has become kind of the face of Trump-enabling, Trump-supporting and going along with the Trump agenda.”Harrison has been careful not to focus his campaign on criticism of Trump – part of a balancing act intended to appeal to voters in a state that went for the president over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by 14 percentage points in 2016.Toss-upsOther toss-up races include both Georgia Senate races. Polls show Republican incumbent U.S. Senator David Perdue leading Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff by 1.5 percentage points. In an open race for Georgia’s other Senate seat, a Democratic political newcomer, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, leads a crowded field by an average of 8.5 percentage points. The Montana Senate race shows encouraging signs for Republican incumbent Senator Steve Daines, who leads his Democratic challenger, Steve Bullock, by 3.3 percentage points.Kane Farabaugh contributed to this report.
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With one week until Election Day, Republican U.S. President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, headed Tuesday to political battleground states in a frantic push to shore up critical support to win a four-year term in the White House.Their travel plans reflect the state of the race, with polls showing Biden ahead of Trump by seven to nine percentage points nationally and about half that in contested states that are likely to determine the overall outcome.On Tuesday, Trump is on defense, headed to three midwestern states he won in his upset victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 — Michigan, Wisconsin and Nebraska – and likely needs to capture again to win a second term.  But polls show him trailing in Michigan and Wisconsin and, while he is ahead statewide in reliably Republican Nebraska, he trails in the race to win a single elector in an Omaha-based congressional district that could play a role in deciding next week’s national winner.  Meanwhile, the seemingly confident Biden is on offense, headed to two stops in the southern state of Georgia, which has not backed a Democrat for president since 1992. Pollsters show Biden and Trump locked in a tossup to win the state’s 16 Electoral College votes.Typically, all of a state’s Electoral College votes go to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in that state. Both Trump and Biden are looking to piece together state-by-state victories to get to a majority of 270 in the 538-member Electoral College, where the most populous states hold the most sway.Trump lost the national popular vote four years ago and is likely to again this time, but he retains a chance to win the presidency a second time in the Electoral College if he can claim wins in key battleground states he is visiting in the final days of the contentious campaign.
Four years ago, Trump narrowly won three northern states – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin – that traditionally have voted for Democrats. He likely needs to capture at least Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, along with holding other key states he won in 2016, in order to remain the U.S. leader.Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden arrives to speak with supporters outside a voter service center, in Chester, Pennsylvania, Oct. 26, 2020.Forecasts show Biden has numerous paths to 270 votes in the Electoral College, including recapturing Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin while holding on to all the states Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Currently, polls show Biden ahead of Trump in all the states she captured, making Trump’s climb to winning even steeper.Later in the week, Biden is headed to another state Trump won last time — the Midwest farm state of Iowa. Biden’s vice-presidential running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, is visiting two more 2016 Trump states — Arizona, where polling shows Biden narrowly pulling ahead, and populous Texas with 38 electors, where Trump is maintaining a slight advantage.But the former vice president is also mindful of Clinton’s downfall at the end of the 2016 campaign when she shunned a last-minute stop in Wisconsin. Biden is visiting there later in the week, as well as Michigan and the pivotal southeastern state of Florida, Trump’s adopted home state where he maintains a mansion along the Atlantic coastline.On Tuesday, Trump, fresh from presiding over Monday night’s White House swearing-in ceremony for newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is heading to a rally in the Michigan capital of Lansing and a stop in the small city of West Salem, Wisconsin, before leaving for the visit to Omaha, Nebraska’s biggest city.At large outdoor rallies, Trump has contended that he successfully helped build the American economy before it was decimated this year by the onslaught of the coronavirus, and that he can restore the economy again.Trump has several times this week said the national news media continue to report extensively on the devastation the pandemic has wrought on the U.S., which has recorded a world-leading 225,000 deaths and 8.7 million infections, according to the Johns Hopkins University.In all caps, Trump tweeted, “ALL THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IS COVID, COVID, COVID. ON NOVEMBER 4th, YOU WON’T BE HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT IT ANYMORE. WE ARE ROUNDING THE TURN!!!”ALL THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IS COVID, COVID, COVID. ON NOVEMBER 4th, YOU WON’T BE HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT IT ANYMORE. WE ARE ROUNDING THE TURN!!!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2020But Biden has regularly assailed Trump’s handling of the virus, saying in a statement that the moment “required presidential leadership – and when we needed it, President Trump panicked. He froze. And today, eight months into this crisis, he still has no plan to get the virus under control, no interest in listening to the scientists, and no ability to lead our country through this moment.”More than 66 million Americans have already cast early ballots, two-thirds of them by mail and one-third in person at polling stations. Many voters say they are looking to avoid coming face-to-face with others in the expected long lines of people waiting to cast ballots next Tuesday.    
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