Voting, Voting Rights, Voter Challenges, Elections, Election Rules & Election Fraud_2

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Ex-Trump advisers help to grow pro-Russia website that spreads misinformation

Amid the recent crackdown on Russian influence in American media, a group of former Trump advisers and operatives have quietly helped build a pro-Russian website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine, election fraud and vaccines.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/19/intelligencer-pro-russia-website-trump

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Mail-in voting

 

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy pledged that the US Postal Service will undertake "heroic efforts" to deliver all mail-in ballots on time this year and urged people to put their ballots in the mail at least one week before Election Day on November 5. The USPS will work "around the clock" and implement "extraordinary measures" to ensure the timely delivery of mail-in voting, DeJoy said Thursday. His comments came after a bipartisan group of election officials raised concerns about the delivery of mail-in ballots and as Trump resurrects debunked false claims about supposed fraud with mail-in voting. Voter fraud is extremely rare in US elections, according to studies from liberal and conservative groups. However, Trump's attacks on the practice have made it much less popular among Republican voters.

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Worst of 2016 + 2020

Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios

Thought experiment: Do you feel at least slightly more anxious today than six months ago? Do you feel at least slightly more skeptical that what you're reading is real and true than six months ago? Why it matters: Join the club. We've been asking people that as we travel the country. Almost everyone nods — regardless of age, region or education. Here's why: This election combines the worst of 2016 with the worst of 2020, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column. 🖼️ The big picture: Fake news — a concept seared into the American psyche during the 2016 campaign, when Donald Trump tried to discredit real reporting — has exploded in sophistication and scale. Political violence, a taboo shattered in the wake of the 2020 election, now threatens U.S. democracy — and candidates — in chilling ways. Underpinning it all is growing mistrust of government — and falling trust in institutions of all kinds. Zoom in: Axios' Zachary Basu has elegantly synthesized the many ways both problems are worsening in the final stretch of the 2024 campaign. Think about the last week alone: Former President Trump survived a second assassination attempt. Then, rather than call for unity as he briefly did after being shot in July, he and his allies explicitly blamed Democrats for the threats on his life. Elon Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers on X, drew the attention of the Secret Service with a now-deleted post suggesting it was odd that "no one is even trying to assassinate" Vice President Harris or President Biden. An Alaska man was charged this week with threatening to torture and kill six Supreme Court justices — the latest in what the Justice Department called an "unprecedented" level of threats against public officials. 🔎 Between the lines: Members of Congress are especially open to increasing the Secret Service budget for a scary reason: their own experiences with growing threats and startling security breaches, Axios' Andrew Solender reported this week. 60% of U.S. adults find it stressful and frustrating to discuss politics with people who hold different views — up 10 points from the relatively innocent days of 2019, before rampant election denialism, a Pew Research poll found. And 60% of Americans limit how much political news they consume to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a poll out last week from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts. The American Psychological Society even has a term for it: "political stress." Politics "is increasingly recognized as a significant source of chronic stress, affecting both mental and physical health negatively across a broad swath of the population," the association says. Now turn to America's mounting swamp of misinformation: Trump used the national debate stage to spread fake news: Haitians in Ohio are eating pet dogs and cats. A week later, his allies are still at it — even after a flood of fact checks and bomb threats. X is overflowing with conspiracy garbage, often promoted by people who should know better: Musk shared a fake Trump rally bomb threat this week that could have been debunked with one more click. Trump's lies are growing more frequent and more bizarre: Over the past month, the former president has told at least 12 "completely fictional" stories, according to a detailed CNN rundown. Harris' campaign has been guilty of its own fake-news offenses, using the popular @KamalaHQ social media account to post misleading clips about Trump and Republicans on several occasions — more of a cynical campaign tactic than a sustained misinformation effort. 🥊 Reality check: Trump is unique in his refusal to commit to accepting the results of the election unless he wins — as was the case in 2020. That alone is a source of incalculable alarm for many ordinary Americans. Like 2020, the 2024 election could take days to call because of razor-thin margins and counting procedures in the most important swing states. Like 2016, when prosecuting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a rallying cry for Trump supporters, the convicted former president's personal fate is looming large over the country and the election. And like 2020 and 2016, a few hundred thousand votes in just a few states are expected to decide the winner. 🔭 Zoom out: The threat of election chaos has been turbocharged by widespread distrust in politicians, the media and institutions. Foreign actors, as in 2016 and 2020, are taking notice. Iranian hackers penetrated Trump's campaign and sent stolen emails over the summer to media outlets and people associated with the Biden campaign, the FBI said this week. Russia has stepped up efforts to sow discord and undermine the Harris campaign, including by allegedly paying popular pro-Trump influencers through a shell company. The bottom line: Not to be downers, but end with this thought experiment: How confident are you that the election results will be seen as valid, unpolluted by fake news and free of political violence? If you're like most Americans, you're bracing for the worst. 67% expressed anxiety about the election in a recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll. 60% cited "political violence" as the election outcome they're most anxious about.

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🛡️ America's new election shields

Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios

From bulletproof glass to panic buttons, election officials across the U.S. are taking unprecedented steps to protect poll workers and ballots, Axios' Sophia Cai writes. Why it matters: The moves are stark reminders of how Donald Trump's allegations of rigged elections have undermined trust and made election officials — many of them volunteers — the focus of suspicion and threats. Officials are already on edge: This week, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service launched an investigation after officials in 16 states reported receiving suspicious packages. Several secretaries of state reported being mailed letters containing white powder. 👓 Zoom in: Election officials in Durham County, N.C., soon will move into a new building equipped with bulletproof glass at the front desk, panic buttons to summon help in any emergencies, a network of security cameras and a separate exhaust system where mail-in ballots will be processed. On Election Day, each of the county's 59 polling site coordinators will receive employee badges with panic buttons. GPS tracking will be used to follow ballots' chain of custody as they're escorted from polling places to county offices. At the end of the night, the chief election judge at each polling place will take ballots to the county's election headquarters with an escort — an election judge from the opposite party. Keep reading.

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Early voting begins

The first 2024 presidential votes were cast today — but the rules of the road are still changing before our eyes.

🗓️ Early voting began today in Virginia, Minnesota and South Dakota.

• At the same time, local officials in critical battlegrounds are making or contemplating major changes that could slow vote-counting, and even change the candidates' paths to victory.

🌽 The intrigue: Former President Trump is pressuring Nebraska's legislature to change how it allocates its electoral votes — a move that most likely would give him one extra vote in the Electoral College.

• Nebraska parcels out its electoral votes to each of its congressional districts, one of which usually votes for Democrats. Some Republicans want to move to a winner-take-all system like almost all other states use.
• Shifting one electoral vote out of 538 toward Trump might not seem like a game-changer, but it would set up a not-unrealistic path to an Electoral College tie.

🍑 In Georgia, the state's GOP-controlled election board voted today to require hand-counting for all ballots after polls close on Election Day — a move that could delay the results in a critical swing state.

• Go deeper.

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A state senator has thwarted a GOP effort to lock down all of Nebraska’s electoral votes for Trump

A Republican effort to lock down all of Nebraska’s electoral votes for former President Donald Trump appeared doomed Monday when a state lawmaker denied backers his crucial support for the move.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-presidential-election-nebraska-9e50607926915b1a6b34a8d1ac2fd40f?

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Nebraska governor admits defeat in GOP push for electoral vote reform

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen put the effort to reform the Cornhusker state's allocation of electoral votes to rest Tuesday, confirming he has no plans to call a special session before the November election.

https://www.axios.com/2024/09/24/nebraska-electoral-vote-reform?

Pennsylvania county must tell voters if it counted their mail-in ballot, court rules

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Republican-controlled county in Pennsylvania violated state law when election workers refused to tell voters whether their mail-in ballot would be counted in April’s primary election, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.

https://apnews.com/article/election-voting-pennsylvania-mail-ballots-d34f5641da1e2e9e985b39fdf5d98324?

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Wisconsin district attorney pursuing investigation into mayor’s removal of absentee ballot drop box

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin district attorney said Thursday that her office is pursuing an investigation into the removal of an absentee ballot drop box by the mayor of Wausau.

https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-absentee-ballot-drop-box-wausau-1c157c247109581a7b888b64df3741bd?

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Conservative Christians were skeptical of mail-in ballots. Now they are gathering them in churches

MENIFEE, California (AP) — With Election Day just a few weeks away, longtime church members Lucky Hartunian and Janie Booth sat outside the Revival Christian Fellowship’s sanctuary in Menifee, California, inviting congregants to register to vote.

https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-churches-ballot-gathering-evangelicals-1d1a48c53f8e970fb3f31a7650f200fb?

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🌀 N.C. election nightmare

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Beyond the physical and emotional toll of the storm, Hurricane Helene suddenly has created massive hurdles for voters and election officials just five weeks before Nov. 5, Axios' Erin Doherty and Lucille Sherman write. Why it matters: "Voting won't be a priority for a lot of people," said Seth Morris, an election law expert and associate at Parker Poe in North Carolina. North Carolina election officials were already late sending out mail-in and absentee ballots because of an 11th-hour ruling that let RFK Jr. remove his name. Now, with mail and delivery services suspended in many areas, officials are racing to answer questions about how and when the voters who requested ballots will receive them. Nearly 250,000 North Carolinians requested an absentee ballot this year, including almost 10,000 from Buncombe County, which includes Asheville and is one of the hardest-hit parts of the state. President Biden met yesterday on Hurricane Helene response with N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell and Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images Former President Trump visited hurricane devastation in Valdosta, Ga., yesterday — and drew a scolding from President Biden for trying to take political advantage, Axios' Sophia Cai writes. Trump began the day posting unsubstantiated claims that Biden's administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) were "going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas." Biden said at the White House: "He's lying ... and the governor told him he was lying." During the visit, Trump falsely claimed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) hadn't been able to reach Biden to discuss the damage. Photo: Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images Austin Grindstaff, 14, salvages a framed photo from his grandparents' house in Old Fort, N.C.   ps:What else can we expect from a cult leader??????????

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Election Skeptics Are Running Some County Election Boards in Georgia. A New Rule Could Allow Them to Exclude Decisive Votes.

An examination of a new election rule in Georgia passed by the state’s Republican-controlled election board suggests that local officials in just a handful of rural counties could exclude enough votes to affect the outcome of the presidential race.

https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-election-rule-could-exclude-votes?

ps:If you can't win? Cheat again or just reject the results!!!!!

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American voters don’t directly elect the president. Sometimes that can undermine the popular will The U.S. has a unique system for electing a president, the Electoral College. When voters cast their ballot, they are technically voting for a slate of electors who will then vote for president and vice president. In modern times, this system has put disproportionate voting power in the hands of a few states that are fairly evenly divided politically. The lack of attention to other states leaves voters in much of the country feeling as if they are being overlooked. In two of the last six elections, candidates have lost the nationwide popular vote but won the presidency. Read more.

Why this matters: Each state’s presidential electors are equal to the number of its representatives in the U.S. House and Senate. This benefits smaller states and incentivizes presidential campaigns to focus visits and dedicate most of their money on swing states, or so-called battleground states. There are seven of them this year — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.   The seven states represent 18% of the U.S. population but have dominated the attention of the Democratic and Republican tickets. Through Tuesday, both tickets have had just over 200 total campaign stops — three-quarters of which have been to these states, according to a database of campaign events based on AP reporting. Pennsylvania alone has been visited 41 times.

Related coverage ➤ Early in-person voting begins in Arizona, drawing visits from the presidential campaigns   Trump has long blasted China's trade practices. His 'God Bless the USA' Bibles were printed there   Harris gets personal in media blitz and balks at breaking with Biden on policy

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Voting rights group unhappy that registration deadline isn’t extended with Milton approaching

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that he had no intention of extending the deadline to register to vote in next month’s presidential election, even as voters in a broad swath of Florida have been forced to evacuate their homes because of Hurricane Milton.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/10/08/voting-rights-group-unhappy-that-registration-deadline-isnt-extended-with-milton-approaching/?

ps:Of course not!!

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Millions of people in the U.S. don’t vote. Could anything change their minds?

Across the U.S. there are millions of people who, like Jones, are considered eligible to vote but do not.

https://apnews.com/projects/election-2024-our-very-complicated-democracy/election-2024-why-americans-dont-vote-episode-6.html?

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South Dakota removes 273 people from voter rolls due to human error by the state

South Dakota removed hundreds of people from the state’s voter rolls as general election voting was underway because an agency mistakenly marked the residents’ citizenship status on a government form.

https://apnews.com/article/dakota-noncitizens-voting-removed-77b8433267d0de64430889b6f9092dc1?

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🗳️ Pennsylvania's split swing voters

Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios

Just six of 12 Pennsylvania swing voters who backed Donald Trump in 2016 but switched to Joe Biden in 2020 said they're all-in for Vice President Harris in our latest Engagious/Sago focus group. Two others said they're going back to Trump, while the remaining four lean toward Harris but reserve the right to change their minds, as they grapple with uncertainty or mixed emotion, Axios' Erin Doherty writes. Why it matters: Harris' path to victory relies on either keeping or replacing President Biden's coalition in the state. 👀 What we're watching: Nine of the 12 voters said they are concerned about political violence breaking out after the election.

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🗳️ Most valuable voters

The presidential election — 25 days from now — could come down to a mere 13% of voters who are still persuadable, Axios' Ivana Saric writes from a new Pew poll.

• Just 5% said they had no preference. The rest of the persuadable group said they're likely to vote one way or the other, but said they could still change their minds.
• Even among the 5% who didn't initially pick a candidate, virtually all leaned one way or the other when pressed by the pollster.

Why it matters: The results underscore just how few votes are up for grabs in the multibillion-dollar race between former President Trump and Vice President Harris.

🖼️ The big picture: Pew found 82% of voters are locked in — 42% for Harris and 40% for Trump.

• 5% say they'll vote for a third-party candidate.

🔎 Between the lines: Operatives in both parties have long told us they expect the race to come down to roughly 6% of voters in the seven swing states.

• Harris campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon has said going back to the convention that this'll be a "margin of error race."

Explore the data.

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AP VoteCast: How Americans voted in 2020, and what it could mean for 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Election Day draws nearer, Democrat Kamala Harris is trying to maintain a diverse coalition of voters who were driven four years ago by their fierce opposition to Republican Donald Trump and anxiety over a deadly pandemic.

https://apnews.com/article/ap-votecast-2020-election-2024-election-biden-trump-harris-f8e35d86efcea67c1eb6713b62c35546?

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Judge blocks hand-counting of election ballots in Georgia In a ruling late Tuesday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote that the so-called hand count rule “is too much, too late,” after the State Election Board passed a rule in September requiring that three poll workers each count the paper ballots by hand after the polls close. McBurney blocked its enforcement while he considered the merits of the case. Read more.

Why this matters: The state board may be right that the rule is smart policy, McBurney wrote, but the timing of its passage makes implementing it now “quite wrong.” He invoked the memory of the riot at the U.S. Capitol by people seeking to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021, writing, “Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.”   McBurney on Monday had also ruled in a separate case that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” This is a victory for liberal voting rights groups and legal experts who have raised concerns that Donald Trump’s allies could refuse to certify the results if the former president loses to Vice President Kamala Harris in next month’s presidential election.    The two rulings came as early in-person voting began Tuesday in Georgia.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Republicans challenge more than 63,000 voters in Georgia, but few removed, AP finds   Voting rights groups seek investigation into Wisconsin text message   Arizona counties won’t be forced to do citizenship checks before the election, a judge rules

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Georgia shatters turnout record

300,000+ people cast votes in Georgia on the state's first day of early voting — more than doubling a record set in 2020, Axios Atlanta's Kristal Dixon and Thomas Wheatley write.

• ⚡ Breaking: A Fulton County, Georgia, judge last night temporarily blocked a new state election rule that requiring counties to hand-count ballots. Go deeper.

 

Early voting

A record number of early votes were cast in Georgia on Tuesday as residents headed to the polls in the critical battleground state. "We have had over 328,000 total votes cast so far," Gabe Sterling of the Georgia secretary of state's office said on X. The previous first-day record was 136,000 in 2020, Sterling said. The swing state is one of the most closely watched in this election, with former President Donald Trump trying to reclaim it after losing there to President Joe Biden by a small margin four years ago. At the same time, several new rules passed by a Trump-backed Republican majority on the State Election Board are creating uncertainty around the post-election process. This has led Democrats and others to mount legal challenges, many of which have yet to be resolved even as Election Day nears.

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Where are the voters who could decide the presidential election?

WASHINGTON (AP) — When you hear the term bellwether, you might think about states in the presidential election that always vote with the White House winner. The true meaning of a bellwether is an indicator of a trend. And for that, you need to be thinking about counties.

https://apnews.com/article/election-swing-states-georgia-arizona-nevada-michigan-e69da5eb0584606ba9f02ff8fe1de9ee?

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Overseas voters

An overseas ballot process that could be crucial for Democrats has been the target of multiple Republican-backed lawsuits filed in recent days. There are about 6.5 million eligible American voters living, serving and studying overseas, with about 1.6 million of them from battleground states — and more in tight House districts. Those votes could be decisive: The 2020 election was decided by 44,000 votes over four states. More than 1.2 million ballots were sent abroad in 2020 and nearly 890,000 were eventually counted, according to a report by the US Election Assistance Commission. In addition to the new lawsuits filed by Republicans in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan, Donald Trump has suggested without evidence that the overseas vote is a source of fraud. 

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Asian American evangelicals’ theology is conservative. But that doesn’t mean they vote that way

The Rev. Wayne Lee leads an English-speaking church of second- and third-generation Chinese Americans in the heart of Philadelphia’s Chinatown.

https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-asian-american-evangelicals-voters-9d40ec99fbb51c56f5f08a23ab6cda9e?

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Early voting

The North Carolina State Board of Elections said more than 200,000 early voting ballots were cast as of Thursday afternoon, which suggests the state is on track to come close to — or exceed — its 2020 early voting numbers. Meanwhile, some residents in the critical battleground state continue to grapple with inconsistent cell phone service and power after Hurricane Helene. CNN visited Western North Carolina, a disaster zone after the storm, where determined residents are even driving ATVs and trucks through debris to reach voting sites. The pivotal swing state of Georgia also began early in-person voting earlier this week and saw record turnout. Georgia election officials say absentee ballots were sent out by the US Postal Service as scheduled and were not impacted by the storm.

ps:Well I've done my early voting, voting by mail that is!!

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Despite Trump's Claims, Large Numbers of Noncitizens Don't Vote in US Elections

Throughout his political career, former U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that the nation's electoral system is "rigged" against him. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump and his allies spread rumors questioning the election's integrity even before votes were cast, with the apparent goal of persuading people that a Trump loss to Vice President Kamala Harris could not happen in a fair and just election.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/10/16/undocumented-immigrants-voting/?