The 2020 Election

Rad · Oct 09, 2020, 07:54 AM

"˜GOP loses a big one in their war on drop boxes': Federal judge bars Ohio from limiting ballot sites to one per county

on October 9, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

A federal judge on Thursday blocked an order by Ohio's Republican secretary of state limiting the number of absentee ballot drop boxes to one location per county, a move civil rights groups decried as a last-minute attempt to erect yet another barrier to safe and accessible voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"No voter should have to sacrifice their health and well-being to cast their ballot."
-Kristen Clarke, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

The scathing decision by Judge Dan Polster of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio came in response to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose's directive (pdf) earlier this week prohibiting counties from establishing ballot drop boxes "at any location other than outside the board of elections"-an order similar to one issued by Texas' Republican Gov. Greg Abbott last week, prompting rights groups to sue.

"While it may be said that the 7,903 registered voters in Noble County may find a single drop box location sufficient, the record demonstrates that the 858,041 registered voters in Cuyahoga County will likely not," Polster wrote in his 26-page ruling (pdf). "The Secretary is continuing to restrict boards from implementing off-site collection, and he appears to be doing so in an arbitrary manner."

"We are in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century coupled with reasonable concern over the ability of the U.S. Postal Service to handle what will undoubtedly be the largest number of absentee voters in Ohio's history," Polster continued. "The Secretary has not advanced any legitimate reason to prohibit a county board of elections from utilizing off-site drop boxes and/or off-site delivery of ballots to staff."

ðŸš¨BREAKING: Ohio Federal Judge BLOCKS Republican Secretary of State's ban on counties offering more than one ballot drop box per county.

The GOP loses a big one in their war on drop boxes! Congrats to all the plaintiffs! pic.twitter.com/Hhdh6E6EZK

- Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) October 9, 2020

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement that Polster's decision "protects the right to vote for tens of thousands of Ohioans, especially black voters and people of color who disproportionately reside in some of the most populous county in the state."

"No voter should have to sacrifice their health and well-being to cast their ballot," said Clarke. "Drop boxes have proven to be a secure method of collecting ballots, and are crucial in allowing voters to safely cast their vote during this unprecedented pandemic. The court's ruling is a success in the ongoing fight against eleventh-hour voter suppression efforts."

Plaintiff Beatrice Griffin, a voter in the critical battleground state, said she was compelled to join the lawsuit against Ohio's top election official "not only by my own need, but my awareness that many of the 860,000 voters in Cuyahoga County do not have cars and would spend hours reaching the one downtown drop box location on public transportation."

"This is an unfair burden on any voter," said Griffin.

**************

In Philadelphia, Democrats embrace early voting - Trump's bugbear

Raw Story
10/9/2020

Hundreds of voters line up for Joe Biden: less than a month before the presidential election, images from Philadelphia are likely to irritate Donald Trump who says the Democratic stronghold is a potential source of fraud.

This week, a line of voters wearing masks stretched around the town hall of the largest city in the swing state of Pennsylvania to cast "mail-in ballots" for the Democratic candidate under the supervision of municipal employees and police.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, for the first time, this year, any voters in this key state can request a ballot by mail, and then return it via post or drop it off in person at a temporary office to ensure it is counted on time.

Since these offices opened on September 29, thousands of citizens have dropped off their ballots early, with several hundred thousand expected to have done so by polling day on November 3.

In 2016, 82 percent of voters in Philadelphia plucked for Hillary Clinton and Trump is unlikely to fare better this year. All but one of 16 people asked by AFP said they were voting for Biden.

Nancy Rasmussen, 74, said she felt like November 3 had arrived already.

"I gotta be here. Because it's so important (to get rid of Trump), so I'll stand in a long line to get this vote in," she said, teary-eyed.

Kenneth Graitzer, a retired librarian, said he chose to vote in advance because he considers it "safer" due to heightened political tensions, which include Trump calling on his supporters to monitor polling stations.

"I'm afraid of him, and I'm afraid of people that are on the edge, that think that he's a god. And I just think he's a danger to the country, and it's been a disaster," he said.

Curtis Adams, a bar owner and art historian, said he had no fear of intimidation but he still felt happier getting his vote in early.

"I didn't want to take a chance on my vote not being counted. I had to wait an hour or two, but I wanted to get it in," he said.

Lisa Deeley, the chairwoman of the city's commissioners, which oversees voting, said early voting had been "tremendously popular" but added that "the pressure is real" to ensure the elections are conducted properly.

- "˜Bad things' -

She has recruited hundreds of extra people to manage the advance poll, the ballots of which will not be opened until election day. But she is worried about the suspicions Trump is raising about the city's vote.

"Bad things are happening in Philadelphia," he said during his TV debate with Biden last month after one of his supporters was ejected from a polling station for filming on his mobile phone without authorization.

No fraud has ever been proven in Philadelphia, but that hasn't stopped local Republican officials from suggesting it might occur.

Connie Winters, an elected representative, says "the system is open to fraud," and claims to have seen electoral lists with names of people who could not be found.

Fraud, she says, would be tempting in a city where Democrats hold the overwhelming majority of elected positions and every vote counts in a state that Trump only won by 44,000 votes in 2016.

"We heard the very same cries in 2016 from then-candidate Trump," said Deeley, who is a Democrat but whose role demands impartiality. "But it's certainly different when it's the president saying it," she adds.

Deeley insists that everything will be done to ensure the vote goes smoothly, as did the local prosecutor who announced Wednesday that he would deploy investigators from his office to avoid any attempts at intimidation.

"We're Philadelphia: we're the birthplace of democracy," she said, referring to the signing of America's Declaration of Independence there.

"We're going to do everything we can to keep this democracy thriving."

Â© 2020 AFP

Rad · Oct 10, 2020, 03:34 AM

Republicans' key electoral coalition appears to be "˜in danger of coming apart'

Raw Story
10/10/2020

During the 1980s and 1990s, political pundits used the term "Solid South" to refer to the seemingly impenetrable red wall that Republicans had achieved in southern states - which was a big departure from the years in which that term referred to all the southern states that allied themselves with the Democratic Party. Now, the Republican Party finds itself losing ground in the Sun Belt, and that shift is the focus of a New York Times article by reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.

The piece not only describes the ground that Republicans have been losing in parts of the Deep South, but also, in southwestern states like Arizona - which has evolved into a swing state after being heavily Republican for generations.

"Nowhere has [President Donald] Trump harmed himself and his party more than across the Sun Belt, where the electoral coalition that secured a generation of Republican dominance is in danger of coming apart," Martin and Burns explain.

Certainly, some of the southern states are still deeply Republican, including Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. But Florida has been a swing state. Meanwhile, Texas and Georgia are two Sun Belt states that could be described as "light red" rather than "deep red" at this point, and recent polls indicate that both states are in play for former Vice President Joe Biden in this year's presidential election.

Martin and Burns cite Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic as one of the reasons why Biden is competitive in both the southeastern and southwestern parts of the Sun Belt.

"Many of the Sun Belt states seemingly within Mr. Biden's reach resisted the most stringent public-health policies to battle the coronavirus," the Times reporters note. "As a result, states like Arizona, Georgia and Texas faced a powerful wave of infections for much of the summer, setting back efforts to revive commercial activity."

Two of the Republicans who candidly discussed the GOP's problems in the Sun Belt are former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and Oklahoma City Mayor David F. Holt. Flake, a conservative who has endorsed Biden, said of Trump, "There are limits to what people can take with the irresponsibility, the untruthfulness, just the whole persona." And Holt told the Times, "Cities in states like Arizona and Texas are attracting young people, highly-educated people and people of color - all groups that the national Republican Party has walked away from the last four years. This losing demographic bet against big cities and their residents is putting Sun Belt states in play."

If recent polls are accurate, Biden has a good chance of winning more Sun Belt states than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Clinton carried Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and, of course, deep blue California, but Trump won Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona and both of the Carolinas.

"Even as he stunned Hillary Clinton in three crucial Great Lakes states, (Trump) lost Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico and fared worse in Arizona, Texas and Georgia than Mitt Romney had four years earlier," Martin and Burns note. "Two years later, Democrats performed even better in a series of high-profile races across the region with college-educated white voters and people of color."

One Democrat who is very bullish on Biden's prospects in Texas is former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, who lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz by only 2% when he challenged him in the 2018 midterms. The fact that a Democrat came within striking distance of Cruz in a statewide race in Texas - which Democratic strategists had written off as out of reach for their party - was one of 2018's biggest political shockers.

"Texas is really Biden's to lose if he invests now, and that must include his time and presence in the state," O'Rourke told the Times. "He can not only win our 38 electoral votes, but really help down-ballot Democrats, lock in our maps for ten years, deny Trump the chance to declare victory illegally and send Trumpism on the run."

Meanwhile, in Arizona, centrist Democrat Mark Kelly - according to a long list of polls - stands a good chance of defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Martha McSally. If Kelly is successful, a state that was once synonymous with the conservative GOP politics of Sen. Barry Goldwater and later, Sen. John McCain, will have two Democratic U.S. senators in 2021.

Describing the fears of Arizona Republicans, Martin and Burns explain, "If the election"¦. unfolds like many Arizona Republicans are dreading it might, they will, in two years, have lost the presidential race, both Senate seats, both chambers of the state legislature - and watched as voters approved a ballot measure levying a surtax on the wealthy for increased education funding."

Thirty-two years ago on Election Night 1988, many pundits at CBS, NBC and ABC commented on how badly former Massachusetts Gov. Mike Dukakis, a Democrat, had lost the presidential election to Republican Vice President George H.W. Bush in the Sun Belt - pointing out that Dukakis lost one state after another in the Deep South as well as the Southwest. Democrats, pundits predicted, would face an uphill climb in their battle to regain ground in the Sun Belt.

But this year, if polls are right, Biden might be headed for a lot of Sun Belt victories.

Rad · Oct 12, 2020, 02:29 AM

Huge Absentee Vote in Key States Favors Democrats So Far

In Wisconsin, about 146,000 people voted by mail in the 2016 general election. This fall, about 647,000 people have already voted absentee, many in Democratic strongholds.

By Reid J. Epstein, Nick Corasaniti and Stephanie Saul
NY Times
Oct. 12, 2020

In Madison, Wis., thousands of people have gone to parks to deliver their ballots during Saturday voting festivals. In Milwaukee, Facebook feeds are inundated with selfies of Democrats inserting ballots into drop boxes. And along the shores of Lake Superior, voters in Wisconsin's liberal northwest corner still trust the Postal Service to deliver ballots.

Of all the mini-battlegrounds within Wisconsin - perhaps the most pivotal state in November for both President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. - the mother lode of absentee ballots is coming in Dane County, a Democratic stronghold that includes Madison. As of Friday, the number of submitted ballots there amounted to more than 36 percent of the county's total 2016 election vote, a sign of significant enthusiasm; that figure is 10 percentage points higher than in any other county in the state.

In Wisconsin's Republican heartland, the suburban counties that ring Milwaukee, the absentee turnout is only at about the state average so far. And in the dozens of rural counties where President Trump won huge victories four years ago, ballots are being returned at a far slower rate than in the state's Democratic areas.

The yawning disparities in voting across Wisconsin and several other key battlegrounds so far are among the clearest signs yet this fall that the Democratic embrace of absentee voting is resulting in head starts for the party ahead of Election Day. For Republicans, the voting patterns underscore the huge bet they are placing on high turnout on Nov. 3, even as states like Wisconsin face safety concerns at polling sites given the spikes in coronavirus cases.

The Democratic enthusiasm to vote is not limited to Wisconsin. Ballot return data from heavily Democratic cities like Pittsburgh; Chapel Hill, N.C.; and Tampa, Fla., and the long lines of cars waiting at a Houston arena to drop off ballots, are signs that many voters have followed through on their intentions to cast ballots well ahead of Nov. 3.

There is still time for Republicans to catch up in many places, and they are expected to vote in strong numbers in person on Election Day. And untold numbers of absentee ballots could be rejected for failing to fulfill requirements, like witness signatures, or could face legal challenges. But in states that have begun accepting absentee ballots, Democrats have built what appears to be a sizable advantage, after years when Republicans were usually more likely to vote by mail.

Tom Bonier, the chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, said his models showed Democrats with a 10-point advantage among the 275,000 first-time voters nationwide who had already cast ballots and an 18-point lead among 1.1 million "sporadic voters" who had already voted.

At the same point in the 2016 cycle, Mr. Bonier said, his model showed Democrats with a 1.6-point advantage among sporadic voters.

"Democrats are highly engaged, and they're turning out," Mr. Bonier said. "Republicans can't say the same."

Across the country, voters in states with little history of casting their ballots weeks before Election Day have embraced the practice as the nation grapples with the eighth month of a pandemic that has so far killed more than 212,000 Americans.

As of Saturday, more than 8.8 million ballots had already been received by elections officials in the 30 states that have made data available. In five states - including the battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Minnesota - the number of ballots returned already is more than 20 percent of the entire 2016 turnout.

The Wisconsin ballot numbers illustrate how much voting has changed in the pandemic era. In the 2016 general election, 146,294 Wisconsinites voted by mail, and 666,035 others voted at in-person early-voting sites. In the current general election, 646,987 people have already voted absentee as of Friday. Early-voting sites start opening in Wisconsin on Oct. 20.

Wisconsin's municipal clerks can begin tabulating absentee ballots once the polls open on Election Day. As a result, the full results from early voting in Wisconsin as well as some other states may not be known until after Nov. 3.

Officials from both parties say that Democrats are far more eager to vote early, a consequence of encouragement from party leaders like Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama to vote as soon as possible to avoid possibly exposing themselves to the virus at Election Day polling sites. Many Republicans have followed the lead of Mr. Trump, who has regularly castigated voting by mail, while the party's leadership in some states has offered mixed messages about when supporters should vote.

While Wisconsin Democrats have waged a campaign for months to urge voters to request absentee ballots and return them quickly, the Republican Party of Wisconsin recently sent mail to its supporters urging them to hand-deliver ballots to their local municipal clerks. But in much of Republican-heavy rural Wisconsin, clerks work only part-time, leaving fewer opportunities to return ballots by hand.
ImageJulie Chase, a poll worker, collected and stored ballots received at Tenney Park in Madison.
Julie Chase, a poll worker, collected and stored ballots received at Tenney Park in Madison.Credit...Lauren Justice for The New York Times

"The left is very focused on getting their people to request absentee ballots and return them," said Matt Batzel, the Cedar Grove, Wis.-based executive director of American Majority, a conservative grass-roots training organization. "Democrats are in the lead as of the ballots that are returned, no doubt."

Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political science professor, said the 2020 presidential election is the first in which Democrats are casting pre-Election Day ballots at a faster rate than Republicans.
Election 2020 "º

What You Need to Know About Voting

How to Vote: Many voting rules have changed this year, making it a little trickier to figure out how to cast your ballot. Here's a state-by-state guide to make sure your vote is counted.
Three Main Ways to Vote: We may be in the midst of a pandemic, but whether you vote in person on Election Day, a few weeks early, or prefer to mail in your ballot this year, it can still be a straightforward process.
Do You Still Have Time?: Voters in 35 states can request ballots so close to Election Day that it may not be feasible for their ballots to be mailed to them and sent back to election officials in time to be counted. Here's a list of states where it's risky to procrastinate.
Fact-Checking the Falsehoods: Voters are facing a deluge of misinformation about voting by mail, some prompted by the president. Here's the truth about absentee ballots.

In Florida, he said, 11.5 percent of Democrats who requested absentee ballots have returned them, compared with 8.7 percent of Republicans. The same pattern emerges in another battleground state, North Carolina, where the return rate for Democratic ballots is 32.9 percent and the return rate for Republicans is 27.4 percent.

While Democrats fret about the possibility of Mr. Trump repeating his 2016 Election Day turnout that swamped Hillary Clinton's early-voting lead, Democrats' early-voting advantage this year, particularly in states like Florida, is worrying top Republicans. While many Republicans expected turnout before Election Day to be slightly depressed by the president's criticism of mail voting, the gap means that Republicans have to flood the polls on Election Day. And a lack of absentee ballots returned could leave the G.O.P. blind as it adjusts its get-out-the-vote operation in the weeks ahead.

"One of the advantages of having absentee ballots or voting by mail is it gives you a little bit of a snapshot as they are returned, and finding out who is returning them and where you are in your field operation," said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. "If Republicans aren't getting accurate reads on that, they're not getting accurate reads on where they need to adjust more."

Alex Conant, a veteran adviser to Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said the president's continued belittling and questioning voting by mail had suppressed Republican turnout.

"In Florida, Republicans have a really good early-vote program," he said. "The president takes advantage of it. So why the president would tell Republicans in Florida not to vote early, when historically that's how we run elections in Florida, is very concerning."

Just 26 percent of Democrats said they planned to vote in person on Election Day, compared with 56 percent of Republicans, according to polling of likely voters in 11 battleground states conducted by The New York Times and Siena College since Sept. 8.

"People that I'm talking to are going to go to the polls," said James Edming, a Republican assemblyman from northern Wisconsin who was the first elected official there to endorse Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign. "If you put 'em in the mail, God only knows. But if I turn it in to the clerk at the Town of True, I know it's going to count."

Looming over the absentee ballot returns are the continued lawsuits and systemic problems that the president has seized on in an attempt to cast doubt on mail voting. There are currently hundreds of lawsuits across the country, still undecided, regarding the rules and regulations of how ballots will be cast and counted.

In Pennsylvania, for example, the secretary of state is still seeking court guidance on whether the state is required to perform signature matching on absentee ballots, and the state is still waiting on a potential Supreme Court ruling regarding ballot deadlines.

Election officials nationwide are also bracing for challenges to some ballots, over whether postmarks are clear and legible or whether signatures were incorrectly rejected.

News of ballot errors, while infrequent, has nonetheless received outsize attention and amplification, mostly from the president. Still, the issues raise some doubt about the ability of cities and states to meet the surge in demand for mail-in ballots. In Ohio, nearly 50,000 ballots were mailed out with incorrect information. In Brooklyn, nearly 100,000 ballots were sent out with similar errors.

Even within states, the effort put toward absentee voting varies wildly.

To vote early in Pennsylvania, a voter can go to a county election office to request an absentee ballot, fill it out in person and submit it on the spot. The Pennsylvania secretary of state encouraged counties to open satellite election offices.

But not every county has done so. Philadelphia, for example, has seven open and will have 17 throughout the city by Election Day. In Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, there will be five open on weekends throughout October. But in Lackawanna County in northeastern Pennsylvania, there are no satellite election offices.

And in North Carolina, Democratic-leaning counties around Asheville, Charlotte and Raleigh have high rates of absentee voting so far, but a half-dozen rural Democratic counties with majority Black populations have some of the state's lowest turnout ratios so far.

In Wisconsin, election officials in Milwaukee and Madison, the state's largest and most heavily Democratic cities, have sought to make absentee voting more accessible to avoid large gatherings at the polls.

For the last two Saturdays, the Madison municipal clerk's office has sent 1,000 poll workers to more than 200 city parks, where they have collected more than 16,000 ballots. Milwaukee officials have 13 drop box sites across town, which have become the city's latest selfie-taking hot spots.

"I see lots of pictures on Facebook of people taking selfies as they drop their ballots into the boxes," said Sachin Chheda, a Democratic consultant in Milwaukee. "And I'm not seeing that a little bit, I'm seeing a ton of that."

Up north, turnout in Ashland County, a rare rural county that backed Mrs. Clinton in 2016, is already at 22 percent of the 2016 total. In adjacent Price County, where Mr. Trump won 60 percent of the 2016 vote, turnout is lower so far, matching just 14 percent of 2016's turnout.

"There's a lot of trust in our mail system up here and a lot of dependence on the mail system," said Xristobal Ramirez, the chairman of the Chequamegon Democratic Party, which covers Ashland and nearby Bayfield counties along the Lake Superior shore. "The mail generally doesn't fail us out here."

Amanda Cox contributed reporting.

Rad · Oct 12, 2020, 02:31 AM

The Texas electorate is changing - but could Biden really flip the state?

The 24th district is a microcosm of political shifts in the state and a test of which vision of the suburbs is more accurate

Oliver Laughland in Dallas
Guardian
12 Oct 2020 10.00 BST

Texas's 24th congressional district is in many ways a microcosm for this entire election.

An expansive sprawl of suburbia that connects the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, it has for the past 15 years been dominated by conservative politics. The incumbent Republican congressman Kenny Marchant has held the district since 2004 but his retirement, announced to little fanfare last year, has sparked a political turf war that crystallizes Texas's rapid diversification and the bitter politics that underpin it.

When Marchant, now 69, first won here he carried the area with a decisive 64% of the vote, and those margins continued for over a decade. But in 2018, two years into the Trump era, he clung to his seat in Congress by just 3%.

Now, in 2020, this race for the 24th district is a tossup, making it a perfect second stop in the Guardian's Anywhere But Washington series, in which I am traveling the country with film-maker Tom Silverstone.

"As soon as Trump was elected folks needed to feel as though they were doing everything they could to make sure that they save their communities and this country," says Candace Valenzuela, the Democrat running here. "We knew Donald Trump would be disastrous for the state of this country, and I think that movement here is gaining speed because Trump shows himself to be more and more derelict of his duties."

The tight race here is an indication not only of some suburban voters' distaste for some of the more extreme moments of the Trump presidency, but also of Texas's evolving electorate. This district, like the state as a whole, is becoming increasingly diverse. By 2022 Hispanic Americans will become the majority in Texas, in the 24th district they now make up almost 25% of the population.

There are two opposing visions of the suburbs described in this election. For Donald Trump, a now archaic depiction of neighborhoods under threat from change: "If he [Joe Biden] ever got to run our country, our suburbs would be gone," he said during the first presidential debate. For Biden, an increasingly realistic assertion that suburban life is no longer a relic of white communities in the 1950s but dynamic and multicultural: "He wouldn't know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn," Biden retorted in the same debate.

Valenzuela herself is emblematic of a wave of young, dynamic and diverse candidates running down the ballot for the Democrats this year. If she wins she will become the first Afro-Latina elected to Congress in an election year that has seen the highest number of black women running for office in US history. She battled homelessness as a child and first held political office on the local school board.

Her Republican opponent Beth Van Duyne, a former mayor of the city of Irving, is also an emblem of the current state of her party. In 2015 Van Duyne drew national controversy for falsely suggesting that a local Islamic tribunal could lead to sharia law, and for passing an entirely symbolic but deeply divisive city ordinance supporting "American Laws for American Courts".

Van Duyne won't speak to me, however, and there's little mention of this divisive past on her campaign site. Initially her office says they have no in-person events for me to attend the week I'm in town. But given she's posting images on social media of her out and about meeting residents I suggest to her campaign manager this is a false justification to deny an interview request. He denies it and adds via email: "I am pleased we did not accommodate whatever garbage hit piece you are producing." Van Duyne later describes me as a "liberal hack reporter" on Twitter.

Members of the county Republican party here are more accommodating, however. And Rick Barnes, president of the Tarrant county Republicans, argues that Trump's presidency has actually brought people together in this district as he expresses confidence in Van Duyne's ability to win the seat. He cites the president's ongoing war against professional athletes taking a knee during the national anthem as a prime example.

"It probably speaks to suburban voters more than anybody," Barnes says. "Telling anybody that it's OK to kneel to the US flag is not a good conversation for suburbanites at all. Around here everyone I talk to says good riddance, we don't need to continue to watch pro sports."

Barnes hasn't watched any professional sport other than golf since Colin Kaepernick took up his first protest. But outward political sentiment is mainstream in sports now, with NBA courts and player jerseys emblazoned with social justice messaging.

***

At Texas Woman's University, a nearby college campus, the Latinx voter advocacy group, Jolt Action, is trying to capitalize on surging participation from young people by registering first-time voters. The organization was founded shortly after Trump won in 2016 and says it helped to boost youth turnout statewide by 500% in 2018 and Latino early turnout by 250%. Young Latina women voted at a 25% higher rate than their male counterparts.

"We want to make sure that Texas understands that the next chapter of Texas history will be written by black and brown women that are leading the charge on civic engagement," says Antonio Arellano, the group's young, charismatic interim director.

"The Latino community in Texas has been terrorized for the last decade by our statewide officials, by the federal government. Our communities have come under direct attack," he says, pointing to a 2019 white nationalist terror attack against the Latino community in the city of El Paso in south Texas, where a lone gunman took 23 lives.

But voter registration here is made more complicated by the pandemic. A once bustling campus is now sparsely populated, and Texas's antiquated voter registration system makes the job even harder. I watch volunteers from Jolt sign up fewer than 10 new voters in one session. But, says Arellano, every vote will count in a presidential race that is tightening by the day.

Voter suppression is also rampant in the state of Texas, which has some of the harshest voter ID laws in the country and last week moved to curtail early voting by limiting mail-in-ballot drop-off sites to one per county (Tarrant county alone has a population of 2.1 million people.)

But the enthusiasm among the younger voters we do speak to here is palpable. Many are first-generation immigrants and are motivated to turn up by Trump's hardline immigration policies that have seen children separated from their families and the partial construction of a wall at the southern border.

"It breaks me," says one first-year student as she registers to vote. "My mum crossed the border herself."

It's clear that candidates like Valenzuela empathize with such views.

"When you grow up as a person of color in Texas, there's a lot to love about Texas," she says. "But you are also very much used to many political officials not caring about your wellbeing to the point of even villainizing you in order to make their own political points."

Rad · Oct 12, 2020, 04:51 AM

From the streets to the ballot box, America's youngest voters are ready to be heard

on October 12, 2020
By Agence France-Presse

In key battleground states, Gen Z is ready to make its voice heard. And for many among America's most progressive generation, that means setting aside their misgivings about establishment politics to vote for the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.

On a crisp Thursday in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan's flagship campus is unusually quiet. The university is one of many across the United States that has welcomed students back to campus amid the Covid-19 pandemic; but with many activities and some courses shifting online, the fall semester is off to a somewhat muted start.

One corner of campus, though, is bustling. Tucked in the lobby of the university's Museum of Art (UMMA) is a voter registration office operated by the Ann Arbor City Clerk. The temporary office has been open since September 24, when early voting began in the state, and staff said interest among students has been overwhelming.

""˜Surge' is an understatement," said Candice Price, 34, a poll worker and Ann Arbor native.

"After the debate, it was crazy," Price told FRANCE 24, referring to the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Biden on September 29, in which Trump repeatedly interrupted his opponent, to the dismay of both Biden and the moderator.

"It was like zombies on the windows, trying to get in here. It was insane. There were kids waiting in line for like 45 minutes to vote."

Price said many students who came to the office that day were quick to say why: They wanted to vote Trump out.

"They were very clear why they came in," Price said. "Their words were, "˜I'm tired of this foolishness, this can't happen anymore "¦ you need my vote, this is a swing state.'"

Michigan, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, is one of the three states that delivered Trump's electoral college victory with a razor-thin margin in 2016.

The temporary election office, which will close on Election Day, is one of hundreds of sites where Michigan residents can cast their votes early under sweeping election reforms approved by voters in a 2018 ballot initiative. Michiganders can now register and vote on the same day - up to and including Election Day - as well as obtain an absentee ballot without providing a reason.

Price has seen the results first hand.

"Typically, Ann Arbor City has about 15,000 people that request absentee ballots. We've had over 40,000," she told FRANCE 24. "At the headquarters, people are stuffing envelopes over and over and over "¦ I've probably done about 1,000 myself."

UMMA has given similar numbers, reporting in a tweet that the office "registered more than 1,000 new voters" in its first week and that "more than 800 absentee ballots (were) returned".

Logan Woods, a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan and secretary of the campus voter registration drive Turn Up Turnout, told FRANCE 24 by email that he has "heard no indication that number is dropping" as voting continues.

Across Michigan, youth voter registration is up since 2016, according to researchers at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

As of September, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds registered to vote in the state was 12 percent higher than in November 2016, with some six weeks to go before Election Day. That was before National Voter Registration Day (September 24), the debate and the rush of voters seen by the Ann Arbor campus office.

Still, CIRCLE's findings suggest that the "surge" Price describes may not be reflected nationwide. In six of the 27 states the researchers surveyed, youth registration at last count was actually down from November 2016.

Reports have pointed to several possible factors. In Ohio, where youth registration has dropped the most, voting rights advocates have blamed voter ID laws and other technicalities for making it harder for students to vote.

Then, of course, there's Covid-19, which has collided with a maze of state laws to turn voting into a logistical, legal and political battle not seen in decades. Many states have made it easier to vote by mail, but that is not an intuitive solution for a generation raised with smartphones.

Even in states like Michigan, which have made it relatively easy to vote, the pandemic has exacerbated longstanding logistical hurdles to getting to the polls. Price said social media has played a role in counterbalancing that.

"First-time voters come in and say, I saw it on Instagram"¦ I saw it on Twitter"¦ that's a big deal," she said. If you don't connect with them online, she added, young people are not going to show up.

Diverse, progressive - and elusive

The biggest obstacle of all, though, may be convincing young voters that the candidates can actually make a difference in their lives.

It's not that they're apathetic. On the contrary, members of Generation Z - generally defined as those born after 1996 - have been at the forefront of the defining social movements of the last several years, from the climate strikes to March for Our Lives to Black Lives Matter.

That's no great surprise: polling from Pew Research has found Gen Z to be the most diverse and progressive generation of Americans yet. Just a slim majority (52 percent) are white. Of the 13- to 23-year-olds surveyed by Pew, 35 percent said they knew someone who used gender-neutral pronouns, compared to just 16 percent of Gen Xers and 12 percent of baby boomers.

On the economic front, about half of those polled this year reported that their household had faced a loss of income due to Covid-19 and a whopping 70 percent said the government should do more to address social problems - nearly double the rate among the oldest Americans.

The open question is how much of Gen Z's political energy will translate to the ballot box in what, for millions, will be their first-ever presidential election.

The generation's older members make up some 24 million eligible voters this year, but only 4 percent of likely voters. That's because, historically, most young Americans do not vote. And while they bucked that trend in 2018, helping Democrats reclaim the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, there is no guarantee the pattern will hold.

"Zoomers" may lean heavily Democratic, but polling shows them to be increasingly distrustful of established institutions. As many as half of those who identify as Democrats are also wary of "party elites", according to CIRCLE polling from 2018.

"I don't think [Biden is] a long-term plan," said Madison Horton, a 20-year-old student in nursing and anthropology at Ann Arbor. She backed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, and like many of Sanders's young supporters, lost enthusiasm after he conceded defeat. Still, since Biden clinched the nomination, she "never really doubted" she would vote for him.

Some of Trump's more extremist positions might also help galvanize young voters. Horton said that when Trump couldn't do "something as simple as condemning white supremacy" on the debate stage, that sealed her decision.

Horton, who works in the art museum cafÃ© adjacent to the city clerk's office, is confident that many of her peers will vote the same way - even those who still support Sanders.

"I think to continue the support for Bernie, people are deciding to vote for Biden," she said.

Despite their reservations, nearly two-thirds of likely Gen Z voters polled by Morning Consult in September plan to vote for Biden, compared to just 27 percent for Trump.

"˜Someone has to step up'

Horton joins a wide swath of young voters who feel disillusioned with the political options available at the national level but who plan to cast what they see as a necessary vote for Biden. In FRANCE 24's reporting across the Rust Belt in late September and early October, we encountered versions of this sentiment among a range of young social movement activists in key swing states spanning from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin.

In Cleveland, Ohio, on the night of Trump and Biden's rancorous debate, several hundred demonstrators gathered a few blocks from the venue for the Cleveland presidential debate protest for Black lives and climate justice. The protest was organized by about a dozen racial justice, environmental and left-wing groups, including the Sunrise Movement, Black Spring CLE and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Jonathan Roy heard about the protest online from Black Lives Matter Cleveland. The 24-year-old, who plays drums for a church full time and moonlights at local breweries, said that growing up biracial in East Cleveland, he had himself experienced police abuse.

"I got pulled over in a suburban area," he said. Police cursed at him, and "made me do a sobriety test for no reason, in the cold, while it was snowing."

"I almost got six months in jail and a $1000 fine for nothing," he said. The charges against him were eventually dropped.

Roy said he was also jolted by the 2014 killing of Tamir Rice, a Black 12-year-old who was shot by Cleveland police while playing with a toy gun. Rice's killing was among those that spurred the first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement that year, and it continues to be a driving force for organizers in the city to this day.

When it comes to the election, Roy said he plans to vote for Biden.

"Personally, I'm not into government. But someone has to step up and do something," he told FRANCE 24.

"˜Issues-first voters'

Among those Gen Z voters who support Trump, many are just as mobilized as their left-wing counterparts and have garnered a dedicated following online. On the social media platform TikTok, Trump fans rally around hashtags like #SocialismSucks, bashing progressive icons like Sanders and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

YouTube, the most widely used social media app among teens, has served as a recruiting ground for the far right. And across various channels, well-funded youth groups like Talking Points USA use aggressive new tactics to champion longstanding conservative causes.

In Cleveland, Lexie Hall, the 19-year-old spokesperson for the anti-abortion group Created Equal, carried a placard displaying a graphic image of an aborted foetus. Gathered with about a dozen other activists, she said their group "seeks to make abortion unthinkable in our culture".

Hall said she was planning to vote for Donald Trump, whom she called "the only pro-life candidate".

When asked whether there was any contradiction between being pro-life and supporting a candidate who has overseen one of the deadliest years in US history, Hall answered: "Really, for me, abortion is the main thing. If a candidate is pro-abortion, I'm not going to be able to vote for them."

The sentiment reflects one area where Hall finds common ground with her progressive peers: They're driven at least as much by issues as by party affiliation.

An open letter to Biden from a coalition of eight progressive, youth-led groups in April spelled it out plainly.

"Young people are issues-first voters," the groups wrote. "Exclusively anti-Trump messaging won't be enough to lead any candidate to victory. We need you to champion the bold ideas that have galvanized our generation and given us hope in the political process."

Rad · Oct 12, 2020, 07:21 AM

"˜Appalling criminal conduct': California GOP accused of operating fake "˜official' ballot drop boxes

October 12, 2020
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

Over a hundred people lined up in front of Philadelphia City Hall on October 7 to cast their "mail-in ballots" ahead of the November 3 presidential election GABRIELLA AUDI AFP

California's top election official is investigating reports that the state's Republican Party has set up unauthorized ballot drop boxes posing as "official" in several major counties, an illegal practice that could deceive voters into depositing their ballots at unsecure locations.

"Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes-especially those misrepresented as official drop boxes-is not just misleading to voters, it's a violation of state law," California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement responding to reports of unauthorized ballot drop boxes in Fresno, Los Angeles, and Orange counties.

"California Republicans are allegedly creating fake drop boxes and tricking voters into depositing their ballots in them. Apparently they're trying to prove voter fraud is real by committing actual election fraud."
-Mark Joseph Stern, Slate

As the local Orange County Register reported late Sunday, "In a photo posted to social media last week, a young man wearing a mask with Orange County congressional candidate Michelle Steel's name on it is holding a mail ballot and giving a thumbs up next to a box about the size of a file cabinet labeled "˜Official ballot drop off box.'"

"The post, from Jordan Tygh, a regional field director for the California Republican Party, encouraged people to message him for "˜convenient locations' to drop their own ballots," the Register reported.

That was just one of several instances of potentially illegal election activity by Republican officials that has been reported in recent days. On Saturday night, the Register noted, reports emerged of "a metal box in front of Freedom's Way Baptist Church in Castaic that had a sign matching the one on the Orange County box."

"The church posted on social media that the box was "˜approved and brought by the GOP,'" the Register reported. "The post said church officials don't have a key to the box and that GOP officials pick up the ballots"¦ On its website, the Fresno County Republican Party also shared a list of "˜secure' ballot collection locations. None are official county drop box sites, with the local GOP instead listing its own headquarters, multiple gun shops, and other local businesses."

Under California state law, only county election officials are authorized to set up ballot drop boxes to ensure adequate security.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley told the Register that hundreds of people called his attention to the potentially unlawful ballot drop box promoted by Tygh of the California Republican Party.

"What we did was started to look into it, notified the state, and the secretary of state issued guidance this afternoon that it is illegal and you can't do that," said Kelley said. "It would be like me installing a mailbox out on the corner-the Post Office is the one that installs mailboxes."

BE ON ALERT: Republicans in California have set up fake ballot drop boxes that they're promoting on social media. Whatever your state, before you use a drop box, confirm with your local election office that it's legitimate https://t.co/NkLhcA1L0i

- David Nir (@DavidNir) October 12, 2020

Slate staff writer Mark Joseph Stern called the Register's reporting "incredibly alarming" and said it suggests "appalling criminal conduct by California Republican operatives."

"California Republicans are allegedly creating fake drop boxes and tricking voters into depositing their ballots in them," wrote Stern. "Apparently they're trying to prove voter fraud is real by committing actual election fraud."

Rad · Oct 13, 2020, 02:39 AM

More than 10-hour wait and long lines as early voting starts in Georgia

Georgia, where at least two counties had problems with electronic pollbooks, is latest state to see extremely long lines on first day of in person voting

Sam Levine and agencies
Guardian
Tue 13 Oct 2020 04.02 BST

Voters in Georgia faced hours-long lines on Monday as people flocked to the polls for the first day of early voting in the state, which has developed a national reputation in recent years for voting issues.

Eager voters endured waits of six hours or more in Cobb County, which was once solidly Republican but has voted for Democrats in recent elections, and joined lines that wrapped around buildings in solidly Democratic DeKalb County. They also turned out in big numbers in north Georgia's Floyd County, where support for Donald Trump is strong.

At least two counties briefly had problems with the electronic pollbooks used to check in voters. The issue halted voting for a while at State Farm Arena, in Atlanta. Voters who cast their ballots at the basketball stadium, which was being used as an early voting site, faced long waits as the glitch was resolved.

Adrienne Crowley, who waited more than an hour to vote, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution there wasn't anything that would make her get out of the line to vote. "I would have voted all day if I had to."

THIS IS A MARIAH CAREY STAN ACCOUNT (@newsworthy17)

The line outside State Farm Arena. pic.twitter.com/J2oMFJecRl
October 12, 2020

Elsewhere in Atlanta, some voters reported waiting more than 10 hours for their chance to cast an early ballot.

melissa block (@NPRmelissablock)

In Atlanta ðŸ'‡ðŸ¼ https://t.co/xVoMdWkWqa
October 13, 2020

Voters began lining up outside polling stations in the predawn hours, some using their cellphone flashlights to help other voters fill out pre-registration forms, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

tyler, the reporter (@ByTylerEstep)

The line of voters at George Pierce Park in Suwanee.... pic.twitter.com/3stVPEuyZp
October 12, 2020

Janine Eveler, the elections and registration director for Cobb County, said the county had prepared as much as much as it could, "but there's only so much space in the rooms and parking in the parking lot."

"We're maxing out both of those," she said. "People are double parking, we have gridlock pretty much in our parking lot," she added.

Hundreds of people slowly moved along a line that snaked back and forth outside Cobb's main elections office in a suburban area northwest of Atlanta. Good moods seemed to prevail, even though some people said at 1pm that they'd been waiting for six hours. A brief cheer went up when a pizza deliverer brought a pie to someone in line.

Steve Davidson, who is Black, said the late US congressman John Lewis and others had fought too long and hard to secure his place at the polls for him to get tired and leave.

"They've been fighting for decades. If I've got to wait six or seven hours, that's my duty to do that. I'll do it happily," Davidson said.

Georgia is the latest state to see extremely long lines during the first day of in person voting. Election officials have also seen unprecedented voter turnout on the first day of in-person early voting in states like Virginia and Ohio.

With record turnout expected for this year's presidential election and fears about exposure to the coronavirus, election officials and advocacy groups have been encouraging people to vote early, either in person or by absentee ballot.

Nationally, more than 9.4m people have already voted, an unprecedented number, according to data collected by Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida.

Democrats are trying to pick up a US senate seat in Georgia in a race, where the Democratic candidate, Jon Ossoff, is challenging the incumbent Republican, David Perdue.

Georgia has long been seen as a Republican bastion, but many believe recent demographic changes have made it a more competitive state. A recent poll shows Donald Trump and Joe Biden in a statistical tie in the state

Rad · Oct 13, 2020, 06:16 AM

Texas counties can offer only one drop-off ballot location: Federal appeals court

on October 13, 2020
By Texas Tribune

Texas counties may collect mail-in ballots at only one location, a federal appeals court ruled late Monday, once again upholding an order from Gov. Greg Abbott that restricts voting options.

Abbott in July acted to lengthen the early voting period and allow voters to deliver completed absentee ballots in person for longer than the normal period. But after large Democratic counties including Harris and Travis established several sites where voters could deliver their ballots, Abbott ordered Oct. 1 that they would be limited to one.

A number of civil rights groups sued in at least four lawsuits, calling the order an act of voter suppression that would disproportionately impact low-income voters, voters with disabilities, older voters and voters of color in Democratic counties. A federal judge on Friday sided with those groups, blocking Texas from enforcing the ruling.

But a three-judge panel on the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted that ruling on Saturday and on Monday gave a more formal word on the matter in a written opinion.

"Leaving the Governor's October 1 Proclamation in place still gives Texas absentee voters many ways to cast their ballots in the November 3 election. These methods for remote voting outstrip what Texas law previously permitted in a pre-COVID world," wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan for the panel of three judges all appointed by President Donald Trump. "The October 1 Proclamation abridges no one's right to vote."

Travis County had designated four locations and Harris County - home to 2.4 million registered voters and spanning a greater distance than the entire state of Rhode Island - had designated a dozen before Abbott's order forced them to close most sites. Fort Bend and Galveston counties also planned to use multiple locations, according to court documents.

Voting rights advocates and local election administrators said the extra sites were critical for helping voters cast their ballots safely during the coronavirus pandemic. Texas is set to receive an unprecedented number of absentee ballots this year, and amid concerns over U.S. Postal Service delays, advocates say, in-person drop-off locations are critical.

Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins has not hesitated to say the governor's decision amounts to voter suppression.

"To force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches over nearly 2,000 square miles is prejudicial and dangerous," Hollins said earlier this month.

In some states, voters can simply leave their ballots in boxes outside town halls or local churches. Not in Texas, where voters must show an election worker an approved form of identification and can only bring their own ballot.

Abbott had argued that the measure was necessary to ensure election integrity, but he did not provide any evidence and his office did not answer questions about how limiting the highly regulated drop-off locations would do so. In court filings, lawyers for the Texas Attorney General's Office wrote that some counties wouldn't provide "adequate election security, including poll watchers" - "inconsistencies" that the state argued "introduced a risk to ballot integrity."

Abbott said that poll watchers must be allowed at the drop-off sites, as they are at in-person voting sites. Experts say voter fraud is rare, but Republican officials in Texas and nationally have sought to cast doubt on the security of absentee ballots even as their political party calls on its own voters to use them.

The appeals court ruled Monday that Texas did not need to show evidence of voter fraud to justify its decision to limit counties to one location.

"Such evidence has never been required to justify a state's prophylactic measures to decrease occasions for vote fraud or to increase the uniformity and predictability of election administration," Duncan wrote for the court.

One voter who sued the state over the order, 82-year-old Ralph Edelbach, said in court documents that closing the site nearest his Cypress home will mean he adds an extra 20 miles each way to his trip to deliver his ballot, forcing him to spend nearly 90 minutes round trip.

That inconvenience will only be greater, advocates say, for voters with disabilities or those without reliable access to transportation.

The groups that sued the governor include the Texas and National Leagues of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters of Texas, the Mexican American Legislative Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Legislative Black Caucus.

Rad · Oct 14, 2020, 03:23 AM

Biden leads Trump by 17 points as election race enters final stage

Opinium/Guardian poll finds Biden ahead by 57-40 margin
Biden leads on healthcare, the economy and race relations

David Smith in Washington
Guardian
14 Oct 2020 21.28 BST

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's lead over Donald Trump has surged to a record 17 points as the US election enters its final sprint, an Opinium Research and Guardian opinion poll shows.

Some 57% of likely voters intend to vote for Biden, while just 40% say they will vote for the incumbent president, the survey shows.

The 17-point gap is even bigger than than 57%-41% margin found by CNN earlier this month. It is just short of the lead in the popular vote that Ronald Reagan enjoyed in his second landslide victory in 1984. Four years later, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis led George HW Bush by 17 points only to suffer defeat, but that poll was taken in July so Bush had ample time to recover.

With election day just three weeks away and millions of votes already cast, some Republicans fear a rout in the races for the presidency, Senate and House of Representatives. Ed Rollins, who advises a pro-Trump super political action committee, told the New York Times: "The president's political environment is terrible. It's an uphill battle."

Asked by the Times if Trump can still turn things around, Rollins replied: "It's cooked."

Opinium's findings for the Guardian suggest that a hectic month that saw the death of the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Trump's disastrous debate performance and a White House outbreak of coronavirus that infected the president himself swung the pendulum decisively in Democrats' favour.

Biden has gained five percentage points among undecided voters since September. Democrats also injected momentum into existing supporters, with voters for Biden now more likely to turn out, up from 75% in September to 82% this month.

The former vice-president now leads on healthcare, race relations, jobs and even the economy (45% to 43%), usually seen as Trump's signature issue. His reputation as a successful businessman took a hit from a New York Times investigation into his tax affairs.

The research also exposes some key differences from the 2016 election when Trump edged out Hillary Clinton in the electoral college.

Both Trump and Clinton were historically unpopular. The president again has a negative approval rating of -11%, with two in five (42%) strongly disapproving of how he is handling the presidency. But this time Biden has a strong positive approval rating of +18%. More than half (52%) of voters approve of his handling of his campaign.

Clinton also fared poorly on sexism-charged questions of "likability" and which candidate would voters rather go for a beer with. But in 2020 voters say Biden is more likable than Trump by a 57% to 32% margin.

And whereas Trump's "Crooked Hillary" label and allegations seemed to stick, his attempts to portray Biden as mentally unstable appear to be falling short. In fact, voters say Biden, 77, has better mental stamina than 74-year-old Trump by a 48% to 44% margin.

Opinium surveyed 2,003 US adults aged 18 or over from 8 to 12 October. Interviews were conducted online and sampled and weighted to match the demographics of the US adult population as well as factoring in education level and past vote in recent elections.

Trump's core support is notoriously loyal, and still turning out at his resurrected campaign rallies, but there is evidence of some Americans turning against him, even in battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Nearly two in three (62%) of ex-Trump voters (who voted for him in 2016 but will not do so this year) say his handling of the coronavirus pandemic is the reason they switched their vote. In addition, almost half (47%) of ex-Trump voters say his personality and behaviour contributed to the switch.

Democrats have said a massive victory is the surest way to avoid lengthy legal disputes that could even spill over into street violence. Trump has spent months seeking to undermine the credibility of the election in general and mail-in voting in particular.

Opinium found that Biden's lead relies on the success of mail-in voting, likely to hit record levels during the pandemic. Some 55% of in-person voters intend to vote for Trump while 42% intend to vote for Biden. But when it comes to mail-in voters, 75% intend to vote for Biden and only 22% intend to vote for Trump.

As a result, America may witness a so-called "red mirage" in which Trump appears to be winning based on the early count of in-person votes, only to be overtaken by Biden's mail-in ballots hours or day later. Only 30% of voters expect to know who the winner is on election night.

There are fears that Trump will use that time to spread conspiracy theories and declare victory. Half (50%) of voters are worried that if the president loses the election, he will not concede. There is a partisan divide: two-thirds (66%) of Trump voters are worried that the election will be rigged.

In the meantime, Republicans are racing to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court before election day. More than half (55%) of Americans think the court would become skewed towards a conservative viewpoint if Barrett joined it. A third (32%) think it will become "very conservative".

Subsequently, two in five (41%) think the new court would vote to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationwide. This is despite a plurality of support for the ruling (45%).

*************

Covid crisis shows Trump sees older voters as 'expendable', says Biden

Democratic rival tells battleground state of Florida that president dismissed the threat the virus posed to older generations

Guardian staff and agencies
Wed 14 Oct 2020 06.25 BST

Joe Biden has said Donald Trump views older voters as "expendable" and "forgettable" as the Democratic presidential candidate sought to win fresh support in the battleground state of Florida.

Biden's visit on Tuesday came a day after the president's own trip to Florida - his first outside Washington since his Covid-19 diagnosis.

Speaking to about 50 people at a socially distanced event in Broward County in South Florida, Biden said Trump had recklessly dismissed the threat that the virus had posed to their at-risk population.

"To Donald Trump, you're expendable. You're forgettable. You're virtually nobody. That's how he sees seniors. That's how he sees you," Biden said.

He added said he was disappointed that Trump's bout with the virus had not left him more chastened about his approach to the pandemic. "The longer Donald Trump is president, the more reckless he seems to get," Biden said. "Thank God we only have three weeks left to go."

A Biden win in Florida would seriously jeopardise the president's chances of re-election, and most recent opinion polls show the Democrat ahead with key demographic groups in the state, particularly seniors. Trump won Florida in 2016 by 1.2 percentage points.

An Opinium Research and Guardian opinion poll shows Biden's lead over Trump surging to a record 17 points. Some 57% of likely voters said they intended to vote for Biden, while just 40% say they would vote for the incumbent president. The 17-point gap is even bigger than than 57%-41% margin found by CNN earlier this month.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday showed Biden with a seven-percentage-point lead over Trump in Pennsylvania, with a majority of voters saying Biden would do a better job of handling the pandemic.

Early voting ahead of election day on 3 November is breaking records across the US, with more than 11.8m ballots cast so far, including more than 1.6m in Florida, according to the Elections Project at the University of Florida.

Biden, 77, has accused Trump, 74, of wanting to gut the social security benefit program for retirees, an allegation that Trump's campaign denied again on Tuesday, saying Biden was trying "to scare seniors for political reasons".

Biden later staged an outdoor, drive-in event in nearby Miramar, Florida, with dozens of cars attending, honking their horns along to his speech.

Trump visited Johnstown, Pennsylvania on Tuesday, arguably the most important state on the electoral map, speaking in his second rally since contracting coronavirus for more than an hour to thousands packed in tightly and mostly maskless.

He told the crowd he felt extra pressure to win because Biden was the worst presidential candidate of all time. He also tweeted an image superimposing Biden's face on that of a care home resident, in a move unlikely to appeal to older voters.

Trump made a local pitch, hammering home the false claim that a Biden administration would limit fracking in areas where the economy is heavily dependent on energy. Biden's proposal would only bar new leases on federal land, a fraction of US fracking operations.

Touting his elimination of a federal rule that would have brought more low-income housing to the suburbs, Trump zeroed in on groups whose support he has struggled to retain, including female voters turned off by his rhetoric.

"So I ask you to do me a favour. Suburban women: Will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighbourhood, OK?" Trump said. "The other thing: I don't have that much time to be that nice. You know, I can do it, but I gotta go quickly."

Trump plans rallies in Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida later this week as he tours crucial states just weeks ahead of the November election.

The president's schedule, however, also sends him to areas friendly to him, suggesting that his campaign is concerned with mobilising his conservative base rather than reaching out to undecided voters, many of whom live in the nation's suburbs.

The president returned to the campaign trail on Monday night in Florida for the first time since disclosing he had the coronavirus, throwing out protective masks to supporters but not wearing one himself as he talked about his recovery.

"I went through it now. They say I'm immune. I feel so powerful," Trump told the crowd, who stood shoulder to shoulder, with most not wearing face coverings. "I will kiss everyone in that audience, I will kiss the guys and the beautiful women, I will give you a big fat kiss."

The rally came hours after the White House said Trump had tested negative for Covid-19 on consecutive days and was not infectious to others. In a memo, White House physician Dr. Sean Conley did not say when the tests were conducted.

Biden has been critical of Trump's management of the pandemic. Trump has worked for months to shift public attention away from the coronavirus, which has infected more than 7.8 million people in the US, killing more than 214,000 people and putting millions out of work.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

****************

'They're turned off by him': Trump in trouble as Florida's seniors shift towards Biden

The economic and health effects of Covid have special resonance for the state's older voters - and that's not good news for the president

Richard Luscombe in Miami
Guardian
Wed 14 Oct 2020 08.00 BST

If Donald Trump believed joining the ranks of Florida's senior voters would earn him political capital with a group crucial to his hopes of a second term in the White House, it may have been a miscalculation.

National opinion polls show the 74-year-old president is chasing a substantial deficit among seniors, and his standing with older voters in the Sunshine State appears equally grim, with less than a month until election day.

In 2016, Trump trounced Hillary Clinton in Florida by about 17 points among elderly voters, exit polls indicated. The state is considered critical for Trump's path to victory in 2020, yet this time around, some polls of voters 65 and older suggest it could be a virtual tie between the Republican incumbent and his challenger Joe Biden, while others give the Democrat an even healthier advantage.

That could be all Biden needs to clinch a win in "the 1% state", so called for the closeness of its important elections.

"You go to places like The Villages [retirement community] and mostly they're going to vote for Trump, but it's gone from most to mostly," said Charles Zelden, professor of history and politics at Nova Southeastern University, and a veteran Florida poll watcher.

"That additional 10 to 20% may be enough for Biden to win the I-4 corridor. You win the I-4 corridor, you win Florida. You win Florida, effectively Biden has won the election."

The key issues that will determine the beneficiary of Florida's 29 electoral college votes - Covid-19, the economy, and the pandemic's impact on it - have particular resonance for older voters, and account for soaring levels of enthusiasm for Biden, according to seniors keen to see the former vice-president return to the White House at the age of 78.

Aside from the opinion polling data, there is perhaps no better bellwether of Florida seniors' voting intentions than the tradition of golf cart rallies, the ultimate symbol of political expression in retirement communities across the state.

Once the near-exclusive preserve of Republican supporters, rallies in The Villages, north of Orlando; in Sun City Center, south of Tampa; and other sizable and classically Floridian enclaves of retirees have become noticeably more blue in recent months.

"They're loving it, they're having a ball," said Chris Stanley, president of the Democratic Club of The Villages, 32 sq miles of north-central Florida where census figures show 80% of the 125,000 residents are older than 65 and more than 98% are white.

She says such energy is mirrored in activism: "Several times a day people will call and ask: "˜What can I do?' People who have never paid attention to politics before are working the phone bank, helping with the data, out there doing the traditional campaign stuff."

The reasons for the surge of support for the Democratic candidate in a region that went for Trump by a 115,000-vote margin in 2016 are simple, Stanley says.

"They're turned off by him. They're concerned for their Medicare, their social security, of course. But they can't stand the hate, the vitriol. They're considering Biden because of the way Trump behaves," she said.

Perhaps aware of this image problem, the Trump campaign is giving The Villages, and Florida, a lot of attention this week. Vice-President Mike Pence spoke there on Saturday and Trump's first public appearance outside Washington following his Covid-19 hospitalization was in Sanford on Monday.

Biden offers them that stability. In the case of the elderly he's one of them in a way that Trump really isn't
Charles Zelden

In a state where about a quarter of its 14 million voters are 65 or older, Trump clearly feels he needs all the public relations help he can get.

Zelden, the political science professor, agrees with Stanley. "You're seeing similar shifts among the elderly as you are with women in general, and college-educated women in particular. They're just tired of the drama. They want some stability," he said.

"And Biden offers them that stability. In the case of the elderly he's one of them in a way that Trump really isn't. Maybe in terms of age he is, but in experience and background he isn't. You could picture Biden living in Florida in a two-bedroom villa but you couldn't picture Trump doing that, or anywhere other than a multi-room palace in Palm Beach."

Covid-19 is spreading fear among seniors, Dr Zelden says, not only in Florida where the virus has claimed more than 15,000 lives, but in other states where Trump's once-solid support from the ageing voters is also fading, such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.

"People are concerned, they're afraid, they're frustrated, and they hear the president talking about how it was a blessing he got it, he conquered it," he said. "Well, he hasn't conquered it and if he has he's done it with a medical cocktail that no one else in the country has access to.

"Seniors are fed up with that even if they like elements of Trump's agenda. They want stimulus, they want the economy to be humming because it keeps their investments going well. It's the obvious things like that, but there are a lot of elderly voters who saw the president talking over and interrupting constantly in the [first presidential] debate and they didn't like it.

"There's a subset of seniors who really like the bombastic element of Trump, they tend to be male, they tend to be a little bombastic themselves. [But] a lot of them have wives who are rolling their eyes."

Even Trump's supporters acknowledge that, economically at least, things aren't so good. "Most seniors are relying on a fixed income and they may have investments, and with the economy down and maybe because of the virus their investments are not doing as well," said Dick Inglis, 78, from Sun City Center, a retirement community of about 17,000 with an average age of 75.

Inglis, president of the enclave's Republican club, sees coronavirus as "an extra thing to be careful about" for seniors but not an overriding election issue.

"When it comes down to what seniors are concerned about, it's money," he said. "They want to know if they'll have enough for their future and if Joe Biden is going to eliminate the tax cuts that Donald Trump brought in. They want to make sure their healthcare is in place, and that they're safe."

Inglis doubts seniors are put off by Trump's combative style, citing a surge in membership of the Republican club this year. "I compare them to a poodle and a bulldog," he said of Biden and Trump. "Which would you rather own? Of course it would be the poodle. But which one would you want guarding your house?"

Mail-in voting, favored by many Florida seniors, including Trump, began on 24 September, and analysts such as Zelden doubt there are many yet to make up their minds in any case. But Jackie McGuinness, Biden's press secretary in Florida, said Democrats would work right up until election day to chase down every last vote.

"One candidate has seniors' backs and the other doesn't. One has a plan for Covid and the other doesn't," she said. "In Florida every single vote counts and reaching seniors is a high priority."

***********

The World's Election: Trump and Biden offer starkly different visions of US role in world

The world is anxiously watching the election, with the candidates far apart on issues such as the climate crisis and nuclear weapons

by Julian Borger in Washington
Wed 14 Oct 2020 10.00 BST
Guardian

Foreign policy barely gets a mention in this US election, but for the rest of the world the outcome on 3 November will arguably be the most consequential in history.

All US elections have a global impact, but this time there are two issues of existential importance to the planet - the climate crisis and nuclear proliferation - on which the two presidential candidates could hardly be further apart.

Also at stake is the idea of "the west" as a like-minded grouping of democracies who thought they had won the cold war three decades ago.

"The Biden versus Trump showdown in November is probably the starkest choice between two different foreign policy visions that we've seen in any election in recent memory," said Rebecca Lissner, co-author of An Open World, a new book on the contest for 21st-century global order.

In an election which will determine so much about the future of America and the world, the Trump campaign has said very little about its intentions, producing what must be the shortest manifesto in the annals of US politics.

It appeared late in the campaign and has 54 bullet points, of which five are about foreign policy - 41 words broken into a handful of slogans such as: "Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans".

The word "climate" does not appear, but there are two bullet points on partnering with other countries to "clean up" the oceans, and a pledge to "Continue to Lead the World in Access to the Cleanest Drinking Water and Cleanest Air". (The phrase ignores a series of US scandals about poor water quality - and the fact that millions of Americans can no longer afford their water bills.)

The US remains the world's second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and the average American's carbon footprint is twice that of a European or Chinese citizen.

Joe Biden has pledged the US will rejoin the Paris climate accord on the first day of his presidency, and mount a diplomatic push for ambitious global targets. He has vowed to make the climate crisis a national security priority and has outlined a plan to spend $2tn on clean energy infrastructure and other climate investments.

"By the end of the Obama administration climate change had become a central foreign policy priority in a way that it wasn't necessarily at the beginning," Ben Rhodes, Obama's closest foreign policy adviser, said. "I think that the evolution of the Democratic party will only heighten the prioritisation of climate change as a national security and foreign policy issue."

On the second existential danger, nuclear weapon proliferation, the landscape has grown darker over the past four years. The display of a new mobile intercontinental ballistic missile in Pyongyang last weekend provided glaring proof that North Korea has continued to build up its nuclear arsenal despite Trump's abortive face-to-face diplomacy with Kim Jong-un.

Iran has increased its stockpile of low-enriched uranium since Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Tehran has signaled it will continue to shrug off the JCPOA's constraints on its activities as long as the US perseveres with "maximum pressure" sanctions.

At the same time, the US and Russia (who together possess more than 90% of the world's nuclear warheads) are modernising and expanding their arsenals with new weapons. The US-Russian treaty on Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) collapsed last year, and the last remaining constraint on them, the New Start Treaty, expires in February, possibly clearing the way for a new arms race.

On North Korea, Biden says he will "jump-start" an international campaign with China and others to try to constrain Pyongyang, but such campaigns have not proved successful before. Neither candidate has a convincing strategy to make Kim disarm.

On Iran, however, there is a sharp difference. Biden has said one of his first foreign policy initiatives will be to rejoin the JCPOA if Tehran agrees to abide by its limits once more. It could be hard, however, to rally international support and Iranian acquiescence, after the experience of the Trump administration.

"We're going to have to deal with these questions from our allies and partners such as: "˜How do we know that we'll be able to trust that the United States is going to stick with it this time?'" Matt Duss, Bernie Sanders' chief foreign policy adviser, warned. "The real challenge is forging a new political consensus that will outlast one presidency."

If elected, Biden would have a few days before New Start expires to extend it by five years, something Russia has said it will agree to. For nearly four years Trump refused to commit to an extension - insisting that China should be included in any new strategic arms deal, something Beijing has consistently refused to do, on the grounds that its arsenal is a fraction of the size of the two other powers.

With under three weeks left before the election, however, US negotiators are under pressure to produce a quick, temporary deal with Moscow, possibly involving a one-year New Start extension. Moscow, suddenly bestowed leverage, is no hurry to cut such a deal, deriding hopeful briefings from US officials as "delusion".

The policy zigzag reflects Trump's conflicting impulses. He has frequently boasted about his ability to strike a grand nuclear bargain with other powers, but at the same time taken relish in brandishing the US nuclear sword, which he repeatedly promises to polish and enlarge at a price tag of $1.5tn or more in the next three decades.

Biden has promised to trim that budget, cutting some of the new weapons programmes and limiting their use to retaliation only against a nuclear attack on the US.

The November election is also likely to prove a decisive moment in determining how the US chooses its allies and partners in the coming years. Trump has made a bonfire of multilateral treaties and international commitments in pursuit of the splendid isolation of America First.

He has threatened judges and lawyers at the international criminal court in the Hague with sanctions, and has severed US ties with the World Health Organization at the height of a global pandemic, refusing to play any part in a UN-sponsored global effort to develop and distribute a coronavirus vaccine.

He has shown a consistent preference for dealing with autocrats abroad, over America's traditional democratic partners.

That trend is likely to be accentuated if he wins a second term, a success he would see as proof he need not be constrained by US traditions and institutions. His former national security adviser, John Bolton, has suggested he might even take the US out of Nato, reshaping the world in an instant.

"I think the west as a concept would no longer be meaningful and instead there would be a realignment, whereby the United States would be increasingly in partnership with more authoritarian-leaning leaders, and more populist nationalist-leaning leaders," Lissner, an assistant professor at the US Naval War College, said.

Biden has vowed to reverse that trend, and put a new emphasis on partnerships with democracies beyond Europe and North America. In his first year in office he has said he would host a global "Summit for Democracy" as a way of mobilising world opinion behind the US, sidestepping the chronic impasse in the US security council.

"The US position in the world is going to be an urgent priority," said Rhodes, who maintains close informal ties to Biden's foreign policy team. "And so I'd expect a much more concerted effort to try to reconsolidate some form of community of democracies, not just alliances, but around the idea of democracy itself."

In the Middle East, that would mean a far more critical approach to Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Egypt and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. Biden has pledged to cut off all US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen - representing a clear win for the progressive wing of the Democratic party.

"I think it's already had substantial influence," Duss, the Sanders aide, said. "If you look at what Biden has been saying about making Saudi Arabia a pariah state, about ending support for the Yemen war, I think it's clear he understands that relationships with repressive regimes need to change."

It is not just autocratic regimes who risk losing influence in Washington under a Biden administration. His foreign policy team sees populist and nationalist governments in Europe as undermining western cohesion.

"Boris Johnson is one of the most prominent leaders in that category," Rhodes said. "And so I think the center of gravity and transatlantic relations is more likely to be through Paris and Berlin than London."

Another sign that progressive influence and the lesson of Trump's original foreign policy appeal is in Biden's manifesto promise to end America's "forever wars" in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

"This has been a progressive priority. It's now a Democratic party priority. I think progressives will be watching Biden closely on the pace of the withdrawals," Duss said. "Trump is tapping into something, because the majority of Americans don't want to keep fighting these wars."

Another area where there could be substantial continuity between a Biden and a Trump administration is in the adversarial relationship with China, which is being driven in large part by Xi Jinping's increasingly assertive approach to the Chinese role in Asia and the Pacific.

Turning the clock back to Obama's more accommodating policy to Beijing is no longer possible, but Biden has said he sees the solution to containing the Chinese as through reinvesting in Pacific alliances, which Trump has downgraded in his pursuit of bilateral trade deals.

Lissner argued a Biden approach - not just to the rivalry to China, but to foreign relations in general - will focus on making the US a more attractive partner on the world stage, through democratic renewal at home.

She said: "I do think we also see with Biden, a real conviction that the sources of American power lie at home, and that the US does have the capacity to outrun China if only we can get our house in order."

Rad · Oct 14, 2020, 06:04 AM

Election officials fear Trump "˜army' of conspiracy-loving poll watchers will terrorize voters

on October 14, 2020
Raw Story
By Travis Gettys

President Donald Trump has encouraged an "army" of supporters to show up to "monitor" polling places, which has raised concerns about intimidation and suppression.

Voting rights activists and government officials fear Trump supporters will scare off Democratic voters afraid of possibly violent confrontation, and some officials suspect that's the president's intent, reported USA Today.

"The rhetoric itself is suppressive," said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. "All of that taken together is aimed to suppress turnout. As elections officials, we have to clearly state that voter suppression is systemic racism."

Trump has repeatedly claimed the election, which is already underway in many states, is "corrupt," and he and his campaign have urged supporters to show up at polls using militaristic and inflammatory language.

"My biggest concern, and both sides do this, is undermining confidence in elections across the board," said Trey Grayson, a Republican and former Kentucky secretary of state. "We've got to have people trust the outcome. The losers have to believe it was a fair fight."

Election experts worry that violence could break out between armed right-wing groups and voters, especially since the president has called for his supporters to protect polling places for him.

"Some people are just not very smart and buy into conspiracy theories, and some people are smart and they would happily disenfranchise voters," said Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor and now a Georgetown Law School professor. "You can't ignore the disinformation coming straight from the president. He right now is the greatest threat to our democracy, and people do act on the things he says."

Rad · Oct 15, 2020, 03:12 AM

Record turnout as Americans endure long waits to vote early in 2020 election

A "˜pretty staggering' 14 million Americans have already voted in the general election, according to an analysis

Kenya Evelyn in Washington
Guardian
15 Oct 2020 19.36 BST

As voters turn out in record numbers to choose between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Americans continued to endure hours-long waits to vote early.

A record of 14 million Americans have already voted in the general election, according to an analysis of voting information from the US Elections Project. In key swing states such as Florida more than 2 million voters have already cast their ballots.

"The numbers are pretty staggering for us and the return rates and the polling look good," Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist in Florida, told Politico. "But there's just a lot we don't know."

In Georgia, residents waited for as long as eight hours to exercise their democratic right. Many took to social media to share their experiences with early voting, noting lines of voters spanning several city blocks or school parking lots.

Political analyst Roland Martin was moved to tears as dozens of voters lined the exterior of a voting center located at a Texas church.

"I'm a grown man, but I have no problem showing this type of emotion because I know what is at stake for our people," he wrote on Instagram. "I know what Black folks have been through in this country. Voting is not the be-all-to-end-all, but I sure as hell know it is part of the solution".

Long lines are not the only obstacles voters have faced. Technical glitches have also delayed the process. Voters have also faced barriers to accessing their ballots, including computer problems in some precincts as well as legal challenges in places throughout the US south.

In Georgia, whose Republican administration has fought accusations of voter suppression, residents reported technical problems that initially slowed voting, including at one voting center in Atlanta.

Democrats have made a push for the traditionally red state in recent weeks, insisting Georgia is competitive. Nearly 750,000 votes have been cast thus far.

Authorities in Virginia are investigating a voter registration portal that crashed on Tuesday. Officials have so far ruled a cable that was cut an accident, but the glitch shut down the entire system on the last day to register. A Virginia court has since extended the voter registration deadline to 15 October.

Both parties have steered their supporters toward mail-in and early voting due to a surge in cases of coronavirus in many states across the nation, amid a pandemic that is not under control. Worrying case rises are being experienced in battleground states including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Before, health experts had warned that large crowds on election day could worsen the health risks.

But in an effort to stifle early voting in key battleground states, Republican governors and legislators have launched legal challenges to everything from ballot drop-off locations and quantity of sites, to submission and counting deadlines.

On Monday, a Texas appeals court upheld an executive order by Governor Greg Abbott limiting ballot drop-box locations to one per county, meaning a place like Harris county, with a population of 4.7 million - including its largest city of Houston - is left severely underserved.

According to the US Elections Project, 50,000 ballots had already been cast in 122 early voting locations in the county by midday Tuesday - the first day of early voting.

Early voting begins on Thursday in the key electoral state of North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Republican state party officials in California were forced to remove unofficial drop boxes placed throughout the state. Election officials there say the unofficial drop boxes do not meet required security and transfer benchmarks.

And in Pennsylvania, a judge over the weekend denied an effort by the Trump campaign and the Republican party to make ballot drop boxes in the commonwealth unconstitutional. While a federal judge reopened voter registration in the state through Thursday, in Florida, a bid to extend its the voter registration deadline was rejected.

Nearly 130 million Americans voted in the presidential election in 2016. Turnout is expected to exceed those numbers for an election that most analysts say can determine the political trajectory for a generation.

Early returns show a commanding lead for Democrats, even as most polls show their supporters are more likely to favor early or mail-in voting compared with Republicans. Conservatives, who are also more likely to ignore official federal coronavirus guidance, are more committed to vote in the traditional way, in person on election day.

A surge in mail-in voting in a pandemic has fueled unfounded claims by Trump that the election will be one of the most corrupt in the nation's history.

Rad · Oct 15, 2020, 03:13 AM

"˜Screw you': Devin Nunes defies state officials as Trump continues to urge California GOP to engage in "˜illegal' activity

Raw Story
on October 15, 2020

President Donald Trump urged California Republicans to defy a state order to remove fake "official" ballot drop boxes after numerous top officials called them "illegal."

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla on Monday issued an order to the California GOP and three county chapters requiring the removal of unofficial ballot drop boxes erected in front of locations like gyms, gun stores and churches that were falsely marked "official."

Trump, however, urged the party to fight the order in court.

"You mean only Democrats are allowed to do this? But haven't the Dems been doing this for years?" the president tweeted, drawing a dubious comparison between the boxes and the legal "ballot harvesting" efforts by Democrats that have drawn his ire. "See you in court. Fight hard Republicans!"

Trump's call came after Becerra, Padilla and Gov. Gavin Newsom, all Democrats, labeled the Republican effort "illegal."

"Nothing reeks of desperation quite like the Republican Party organization these days - willing to lie, cheat, and threaten our democracy all for the sake of gaining power," Newsom tweeted. "These unofficial drop boxes aren't just misleading, they are illegal."

Trump's comments also came after the California Republican Party already vowed to defy Monday's order.

"Screw you!" Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said in response to Newsom's tweet, according to Politico. "You created the law, we're going to ballot harvest."

Fresno County Republican Chairman Fred Vanderhoof, who installed a dozen collection boxes, including one which was labeled an "Authorized Secure Ballot Drop," claimed to GVWire that a 2016 ballot harvesting law passed by Democrats allowed the party to install drop boxes falsely marked as "official."

"We are doing nothing illegal," he insisted. "The whole ballot harvesting law is purposely designed very loosely so the Democrats can cheat, which they are doing in large numbers. They can do ballot harvesting, but we can't. That's what they're saying, so they're hypocritical."

State officials rejected Republican claims that falsely-marked collection boxes were allowed under the law permitting ballot harvesting, which permits a third-party to submit ballots on voters' behalf.

The offices of the attorney general and secretary of state said in a cease-and-desist order to the GOP that the law required "persons to whom a voter entrusts their ballot to return to county election officials provide their name, signature and relationship to the voter."

Becerra and Padilla also argued during a Monday conference call that the boxes were "illegal," because they were designed to trick voters by claiming to be "official." The boxes lack the security requirements mandated for official collection boxes installed by election officials, they added.

"We hope that the message goes out loud and clear to anyone who is trying to improperly solicit, obtain and manage a citizen's vote that they are subject to prosecution," Becerra said. "I'm trying to be careful with how I say this, but the reports we are hearing are disturbing."

Some voters were stunned when they discovered they had tossed their ballots into an unofficial collection box marked an "Official Ballot Drop Box."

California GOP spokesman Hector Barajas told The New York Times that Republicans would continue to operate the boxes and not label them to make it clear that they were set up by the party rather than "official" drop boxes set up by the state.

Becerra and Padilla said they would consider legal action if the party fails to comply by their Oct. 15 deadline.

"Anyone who knowingly engages with the tampering or misuse of the vote is subject to prosecution," Becerra said.

"If they refuse to comply," Padilla added, "we'll of course entertain all of our legal options."

Rad · Oct 15, 2020, 04:10 AM

Harris County tried to make voting easier during the pandemic. Texas Republicans fought every step of the way

on October 15, 2020
By Texas Tribune

A potential nightmare for Texas Republicans began to materialize early Tuesday, taking the form of tens of thousands of voters lined up at the polls in Harris County.

By day's end, the number of ballots cast on the first day of early voting in Houston and its suburbs had shattered all records.

The early numbers are almost certainly bad news for Texas Republicans. Control of the White House depends on Republican domination of Texas, which in turn relies on containing a voting surge in the nation's third most populous county, which is only solidifying as a Democratic stronghold.

Much of the Democrats' dream of turning Texas blue is pinned on ramping up turnout in Houston and other Texas cities where voters, many of whom are people of color, trend heavily their way.

In a bitterly contested election, overlaid with the fears and risks of an uncontrolled pandemic, Harris County has become a case study in raw politics and partisan efforts to manipulate voter turnout. Republican leaders and activists have furiously worked the levers of power, churning out lawsuits, unsubstantiated specters of voter fraud and official state orders in their bid to limit voters' options during the pandemic.

Their power hemmed in by state officials, Houston Democrats have launched a robust effort to make voting as easy as possible, tripling the number of early and Election Day polling locations and increasing the county's election budget from $4 million in 2016 to $33 million this fall. They reject GOP claims that making voting easier carries inherent risks of widespread voter fraud.

The battle lines were acknowledged in one of the many lawsuits Republican leaders and activists filed in the past few months attempting to rein in Harris County's efforts to expand voting access.

"As Texas goes, so too will the rest of the country. As Harris County goes, so too will Texas," the GOP lawsuit read. "If President Trump loses Texas, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to be reelected."

Local political observers agree the writing is on the wall: Most of Houston's residents are people of color, its local leaders are Democrats, and it is the fastest-growing county in the state, according to recent census data.

"This county looks like what Texas is going to look like in 10 years, and they know that if Harris County can become solidly entrenched in the Democratic Party, it's just going to disperse from there," said Melanye Price, endowed professor of political science at Prairie View A&M University and a Harris County voter. "I think in some ways they're going to have more of an influence, and the governor knows that, and the attorney general knows that, and that is why they've decided to hobble them at every turn."

It's no coincidence, Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins said, that GOP efforts to tightly enforce Texas voting laws - among the nation's most restrictive - target an important Democratic stronghold and one of the country's most diverse cities.

"If you look at election results for Harris County, you see a very clear trend," Hollins said. "If I were in the business of trying to suppress Democratic votes, I know where I would target."

Harris County going bluer

With Harris County slipping from its grasp, the GOP's road to political safety in Texas and beyond grows more perilous as Democratic candidates from the top to the bottom of the ballot siphon more and more votes from the county's 2.4 million registered voters.

In 2008, nearly 600,000 Democratic votes were cast in the presidential election in Harris County, edging out Republican votes for the first time in recent history. In 2016, the spread was even wider: Democrats cast more than 700,000 votes for president, while Republicans cast closer to 550,000.

In 2018, 17% of the state's Democratic votes for U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke were cast in Harris County alone.

"The number of Democratic votes that come out of Harris County is very important for who wins the state," said Austin attorney and public-interest advocate Fred Lewis, who helped organize voter drives in Harris County after President Barack Obama won the county in 2008. "It's no longer important for who wins Harris because that's over."

Jared Woodfill, a local attorney and former Harris County GOP chairman who has sued both Abbott and the county over the election, said conservatives aren't trying to thwart Democrats but are trying to enforce election laws.

"To the extent that the law is what it is, you've got to follow it," he said. "If the Democrats want to flaunt or violate the law, it's just illegal. The reason that these laws are in place is to protect the integrity of the ballot box. So it's interesting that the Democrats want to somehow unilaterally suspend the law and put provisions in place that will allow voter fraud to thrive."

Requests for interviews with Harris County GOP officials, including Chairman Keith Nielsen and several precinct chairpersons, and the Republican Party of Texas were not answered. The offices of Abbott and Steven Hotze, a Houston conservative activist who has filed several lawsuits with Woodfill, did not respond to requests for interviews. A spokesperson at Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office referred questions to his previous statements and court filings.

Expanding voter access

When Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman resigned in May, the commissioners on a party-line vote appointed Hollins, vice chairman of finance for the Texas Democratic Party and a local personal injury lawyer, to serve on an interim basis until her successor is elected in November. Hollins is not running for election.

Since Hollins' June appointment, he and Houston elections officials have launched a robust effort to expand voter access.

Hollins created a 23-point initiative this summer to turn around a decadeslong history of chronic election problems in the county of 4.8 million and avoid a drop in turnout due to the coronavirus, which disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic people.

But Republican activists, party officials and state leaders have voted against local initiatives, sought injunctions and filed multiple lawsuits to halt the unprecedented effort in Harris County.

Their resistance has almost uniformly advanced under the banner of guarding against "voter fraud."

"The State of Texas has a duty to voters to maintain the integrity of our elections," the state's top Republican, Gov. Greg Abbott, said after issuing a recent proclamation aimed at Harris and Travis counties that forced them to shut down multiple drop-off locations for absentee ballots. "As we work to preserve Texans' ability to vote during the COVID-19 pandemic, we must take extra care to strengthen ballot security protocols throughout the state."

Abbott's nod to "ballot security" is in line with efforts by Republicans nationally seeking to cast doubt on the security of mail-in ballots even as they encourage their own voters to use them.

There are documented cases of voter fraud in Texas, including recent highly publicized arrests in Gregg County and Carrollton, but they are rare and have been small-scale efforts to manipulate local elections.

"Election fraud, particularly an organized mail ballot fraud scheme orchestrated by political operatives, is an affront to democracy and results in voter disenfranchisement and corruption at the highest level," Paxton said in a statement about one case.

Fraudulent efforts on a scale large enough to affect the outcome of a statewide or national election have not been discovered, experts point out.

Beth Stevens, a former voting-rights activist who is now a senior adviser for voting rights for Harris County, said it has tried to place itself on the "cutting edge of voter access" in the months leading up to the November election.

"That has absolutely resulted in backlash from state leadership that wants to undo or prevent access that Harris County is trying to create for all eligible voters and, in the process, confusing voters and suppressing votes," said Stevens, an attorney who took a temporary leave from her job as voting rights director for the Texas Civil Rights Project in July to work on elections in Harris County this cycle.

Hollins' decision to hire Stevens was celebrated by Democrats, who view her as an ally in their efforts to increase voting accessibility and turnout.

"Hollins has shown that he really understands that anybody who can lawfully vote should be allowed to vote, and that voting should be easy and accessible, and I think that by appointing Beth, he showed a real commitment to that," said Nicole Pedersen, who spearheads the Harris County Democratic Party's voter protection efforts.

No. 3 on Hollins' list for improving access was to "promote and maximize vote-by-mail within the bounds of the law."

Commissioners had already approved $12 million - tripling the budget for the 2016 elections - in April to help with mail-in voting expansion as voters became increasingly concerned about catching the virus at the polls and large Texas counties joined the call to expand mail-in voting.

In Texas, absentee ballots are available only to people age 65 or older, those confined in jail but otherwise eligible, people who are out of the county for the election period, and voters who cite a disability or illness.

The all-Republican Texas Supreme Court scuttled that vote-by-mail expansion effort in June. The court said susceptibility to the coronavirus could not in itself constitute a disability that would make a voter eligible for a mail-in ballot.

But the court also said that voters could decide for themselves whether their personal health histories, along with susceptibility to COVID-19, qualified under the disability provision.

In August, Harris County commissioners, along party lines, approved another $17 million to expand access to voting, most of it funded by a federal coronavirus aid package.

The county moved its election headquarters to a 100,000-square-foot space in NRG Stadium, home to the rodeo and the Houston Texans football team, and secured the Toyota Center, home to the Houston Rockets, as a drive-thru voting location.

For the first time in Texas, drive-thru voting was implemented in 10 locations.

Officials also increased the hours of several early voting sites and announced that six locations would be open 24 hours a day in the final days of early voting.

Election machines were added in districts that expected heavy turnout, and changes in technology promised no more delayed results - an ongoing headache in Harris for decades - or false waiting times.

Officials authorized 12 locations for voters to hand-deliver their mail-in ballots. In previous elections, only one drop-off point had been used.

Then Hollins announced plans in September to send mail-in ballot applications to the county's 2.4 million registered voters.

Chris Davis, the elections administrator for Williamson County, called Hollins' innovations "very impressive" and said he thinks other elections administrators will look to Harris County as an example if all goes well this fall.

"Personally, I like what I'm seeing," said Davis, who has served in leadership for the Texas Association of Elections Administrators. "He's thinking outside the box, and maybe that's what this kind of work needed."

But by the time the county's effort began picking up steam, the political power struggle had already moved to the courts.

Fight from Republicans

For nearly every step it has taken, Harris County has faced opposition from state and Harris County Republicans. The most ground gained by the GOP has come in fighting efforts to expand access to mail-in voting.

With just three weeks to go before Election Day and early voting in Texas already underway, mail-in balloting remains the hottest flashpoint for the national GOP effort to raise concern over the integrity of the elections - and in Harris, the decisions and challenges mutate on a daily basis.

Paxton and others have insisted in court filings, as have GOP state lawmakers who have supported other measures limiting voters' options, that their efforts are not partisan but rather in the interest of election integrity.

Usually the target of criticism from Democrats, Abbott has also been sued by members of his own party over the steps he's taken to expand voting - an extra week of early voting and allowing early drop-off of absentee ballots - using his pandemic-era powers in the name of election integrity to tinker with election law in response to the tug-of-war in the courts.

In August, both the Harris County Republican Party and the Texas attorney general's office filed legal challenges to Hollins' plans to send mail-in ballot applications to every registered voter, arguing that it invited ballot harvesting and would encourage ineligible voters to put false information on their applications in order to qualify. Local officials had planned to include eligibility information with the mailers.

In September, a cadre of statewide Republican politicians and party leaders sued to stop Abbott's order allowing early voting to start a week early, on Oct. 13, to combat long lines and crowds during the pandemic. That lawsuit failed.

Days later, Hotze, members of the Harris County Republican Party, and a number of Republican officials and candidates asked the Texas Supreme Court to strike the early-vote expansion in Harris and limit the county's mail-in drop-off locations to one spot. That lawsuit was dismissed after Abbott effectively made the change with an executive proclamation, citing his emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic.

On Oct. 1, a few days after Harris County opened its 12 locations for hand-delivering mail-in ballots, Abbott issued his proclamation limiting counties to one location, causing some of the state's strongest Democratic counties to shutter multiple locations and triggering legal challenges.

Harris County has already received nearly a quarter of a million absentee ballot requests. In addition to the influx, there also are concerns about delays from the U.S. Postal Service.

Court rulings over the past week affirmed Abbott's decision to expand early voting and blocked Hollins from a plan to send some 1.9 million unrequested absentee ballot applications to registered Harris County voters under the age of 65.

The Texas GOP unsuccessfully sued Harris County on Monday, fighting Hollins' work to expand access to curbside and drive-thru voting so that locals can cast their ballots from the safety of their cars, the latest in a long list of challenges to the county's efforts this summer.

Also this week, after much back-and-forth in court, Abbott was allowed to limit mail-in drop-off points to one location per county in a federal appeals court ruling - a battle that followed Harris County election officials' decision earlier in the summer to allow 12 drop-off points to make voting more convenient for hundreds of thousands of voters casting mail-in ballots.

Woodfill has filed a dozen petitions and lawsuits related to government action on the pandemic and the elections since May.

He and his clients oppose all election-law changes - particularly those pushed by the Harris County Clerk's Office and ordered by Abbott - that fall outside the scope of the Texas Legislature, which is majority Republican.

"He [Hollins] is really changing the whole system up to make it a lot more conducive to voter fraud, and you have to ask yourself why," Woodfill said.

Stevens said the county's efforts, even though some have been thwarted, will make a difference in turnout for this year's election.

"Despite all of the attempts to walk back and suppress the efforts that Harris County has taken to make sure that all voters have access, this will be more access than voters have ever had in Harris County, because of the initiatives that the clerk's office has put forward and that have been supported by county leadership," Stevens said. "So we're excited to see that unfold."

Disclosure: Prairie View A&M University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism.

Rad · Oct 16, 2020, 04:00 AM

Will Bunch: 12-hour voting lines give me hope, even as America looks like a banana republic

The Philadelphia Inquirer
10/16/2020

Elsa Demedo, left, and Jeanette Breedlove wait in a long line at an early voting location at Ben Hur Shrine Temple on Tuesday in Austin, Texas. - JAY JANNER/Austin American-Statesman/TNS

Like most Americans, Stacy Bogan - a headshot and wedding photographer who lives in the sprawling Texas exurb of Mansfield, south of Dallas-Fort Worth - has had a rough 2020. While working to keep her studio afloat, her husband lost her job at the business services giant Cintas, which she blames on the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mostly, the couple shelters at home - but not when Texas opened polling stations for early voting on Tuesday.

Bogan was hardly alone in venturing out to vote at the very first opportunity. Standing in a line that wrapped all the way around a local courthouse in Mansfield, she ultimately waited five-and-a-half long hours before she could cast her vote for Joe Biden and down-ballot Democrats - and she doesn't regret one minute of it.

"I was tired toward the end, but I was determined to vote yesterday and stand in line until my voice was heard," she told me in a Twitter interview. "I was determined to vote for equal rights, 216,000+ dead Americans that can't vote this year. I voted for healthcare, and sanity."

The remarkable thing about what Bogan did this week was how unremarkable it was. Millions of Americans - mostly wearing masks, trying to stand 6 feet apart, bringing a lawn chair if they were smart - stood on similar lines not just in Texas but in Georgia and other states that allow for in-person early voting. In the suburbs outside of Atlanta, some voters said they ultimately waited as long as 11 hours, thanks to voting book glitches and simply not enough polling stations. In some locales, chefs brought food to the idled voters.

The numbers so far are staggering - more than 15 million Americans had already voted by the mid-point of October, and that figure will be higher by the time you read this. Despite a deadly pandemic that's killed more than 216,000 U.S. citizens, both early in-person and mail voting are shattering any known records. And the information posted so far shows Democrats and African Americans are voting disproportionately higher. But statistics don't truly do justice to images of exhausted citizens stretched across parking lots and down tree-lined streets in the autumn heat of the Sunbelt, more determined to exercise their right to vote than any presidential election in living memory.

To some observers on social media, the endless lines looked like something you'd expect to see in a faraway banana republic where beleaguered residents were voting for the first time after decades under a military dictatorship, not images you should be seeing in a nation that's long branded itself the Cradle of Democracy.

The long-awaited start of 2020 voting has taken the focal point of the war to save America finally away from a White House where an infected and increasingly manic and desperate authoritarian in chief is clinging to power, and finally into our battered communities, bringing along a Texas-sized flood of emotions, and nagging questions.

Should Americans be feeling deep anger that decades of voter suppression engineered by one party, the Republicans - shutting down many early or traditional polling places in Black and brown neighborhoods or college campuses that skew Democratic, trying to limit drop boxes or voting hours, or anything that would make it easier to vote instead of harder - now force everyday folks to risk their health in a pandemic to stand up and be counted?

Or should we be feeling an almost exuberant sense of pride that - despite both government-sanctioned voter suppression and efforts by President Donald Trump to discourage turnout by convincing folks that the election is rigged or that their ballot won't be counted - everyday people are willing to stand on their aching feet and get this done, even if it takes 11 exhausting hours? And that the majority are doing so to reject American autocracy?

The answer, of course, is both. The beautiful sight of doggedly determined voters, despite everything that 2020 has thrown at them, is giving me a surge of hope that I haven't experienced in months. Experts like voting guru Dave Wasserman, looking at this record-setting week, now predict as many as 150 million or even 160 million citizens will cast ballots this fall, shattering 2016's total of 137 million and suggesting American willpower is stronger than any policy of voter suppression. But the other thing about voting lines is that it doesn't have to be this way.

"It's unconscionable in America that people should have to wait for hours to vote," journalist Ari Berman, author of "Give Us the Ballot : The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America," told me in an email interview. "Yes, it's a sign of voter enthusiasm but it's also a modern-day poll tax to make people with jobs/kids/families wait 3 or 6 or 12 hours to vote. Many people do not have the luxury to wait that long to vote and a certain number of people will leave the line or decide not to vote at all if the lines are that long."

Another important thing about voting lines is that they are racist. Berman noted that in Georgia's 2020 primary, when turnouts were lower, wait times were six minutes in predominantly white neighborhoods but 51 minutes in predominantly Black ones. A recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found similar problems in the 2018 vote - that lines were much longer in African American and Latinx neighborhoods.

The center estimated more than 3 million voters waited more than 30 minutes that year, and the worst problems were in Deep South states mostly covered by the 1965 Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court gutted it in 2013. In the seven years since then, GOP-led state and local governments have reduced polling places in mostly nonwhite communities - about 1,600 across the Sunbelt - or otherwise slashed resources.

But here's the thing: The crux of the Republican war on ballot box involves aiming to discourage voters by making it harder on them - making it difficult to find a polling place, or produce proper ID, and navigate a byzantine system. But these measures still aren't enough to deter voters who see an election as a matter of life or death, which is what we're seeing in 2020.

"I've always taking voting seriously and thought that I wanted to get my vote in as soon as possible," Robert Carrasco, a 32-year-old comic shop owner in San Antonio, told me after he stood for five-and-a-half hours on a line that wrapped around that city's Wonderland of Americas Mall to vote on Tuesday. "That's always a worry for a lot of people," he said of getting his vote counted, "but I'm putting faith in our system that it will be."

But here's the best part of what we've seen over the past week. It could be the start of a virtuous cycle of democracy. If citizens, especially in Black and brown communities, overcome this campaign of GOP suppression to vote those folks out of office, the Democrats who replace them owe to the people to make it easier to cast their ballot in 2022 and beyond.

"The fix is to give people as many voting options as possible and to make voting as convenient as possible," Berman said. "Make it easy to vote by mail and have people trust the mail system, because there's no wait if you vote from home. Make sure there's enough poll workers and the voting machines work properly. Every state should have weeks of early voting and polling places at every school, library, sports arena and public institution if feasible."

Congress will have a lot on its plate in January. If Trump and Senate Majority Leader (for now) Mitch McConnell continue on their current track, both the pandemic and the recession will be even worse, and in need of urgent attention. But lawmakers can't forget that the erosion of our voting rights is how we got such an unresponsive government in the first place. The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would update and thus restore the key provisions of the 1965 law, should be one of the first acts of a Democratic government, not an afterthought.

The gritty determination of those voters in Houston or Atlanta patiently baking under the October sun to make a stand for American democracy is a scene that I will never forget - and it's something I never want to see again after Nov. 3, 2020.

Rad · Oct 16, 2020, 04:37 AM

End Our National Crisis: The Case Against Donald Trump By The Editorial Board

NY TIMES
Editorial Board
10/16/21020

The Verdict

Donald Trump's re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.

Mr. Trump's ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.

The editorial board does not lightly indict a duly elected president. During Mr. Trump's term, we have called out his racism and his xenophobia. We have critiqued his vandalism of the postwar consensus, a system of alliances and relationships around the globe that cost a great many lives to establish and maintain. We have, again and again, deplored his divisive rhetoric and his malicious attacks on fellow Americans. Yet when the Senate refused to convict the president for obvious abuses of power and obstruction, we counseled his political opponents to focus their outrage on defeating him at the ballot box.

Nov. 3 can be a turning point. This is an election about the country's future, and what path its citizens wish to choose.

The resilience of American democracy has been sorely tested by Mr. Trump's first term. Four more years would be worse.

But even as Americans wait to vote in lines that stretch for blocks through their towns and cities, Mr. Trump is engaged in a full-throated assault on the integrity of that essential democratic process. Breaking with all of his modern predecessors, he has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, suggesting that his victory is the only legitimate outcome, and that if he does not win, he is ready to contest the judgment of the American people in the courts or even on the streets.

Kathleen Kingsbury, acting editorial page editor, wrote about the editorial board's verdict on Donald Trump's presidency in a special edition of our Opinion Today newsletter. You can read it here.

The enormity and variety of Mr.Trump's misdeeds can feel overwhelming. Repetition has dulled the sense of outrage, and the accumulation of new outrages leaves little time to dwell on the particulars. This is the moment when Americans must recover that sense of outrage.

It is the purpose of this special section of the Sunday Review to remind readers why Mr. Trump is unfit to lead the nation. It includes a series of essays focused on the Trump administration's rampant corruption, celebrations of violence, gross negligence with the public's health and incompetent statecraft. A selection of iconic images highlights the president's record on issues like climate, immigration, women's rights and race. And alongside our judgment of Mr. Trump, we are publishing, in their own words, the damning judgments of men and women who had served in his administration.

The urgency of these essays speaks for itself. The repudiation of Mr. Trump is the first step in repairing the damage he has done. But even as we write these words, Mr. Trump is salting the field - and even if he loses, reconstruction will require many years and tears.

Mr. Trump stands without any real rivals as the worst American president in modern history. In 2016, his bitter account of the nation's ailments struck a chord with many voters. But the lesson of the last four years is that he cannot solve the nation's pressing problems because he is the nation's most pressing problem.

He is a racist demagogue presiding over an increasingly diverse country; an isolationist in an interconnected world; a showman forever boasting about things he has never done, and promising to do things he never will.

He has shown no aptitude for building, but he has managed to do a great deal of damage. He is just the man for knocking things down.

As the world runs out of time to confront climate change, Mr. Trump has denied the need for action, abandoned international cooperation and attacked efforts to limit emissions.

He has mounted a cruel crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration without proposing a sensible policy for determining who should be allowed to come to the United States.

Obsessed with reversing the achievements of his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, he has sought to persuade both Congress and the courts to get rid of the Affordable Care Act without proposing any substitute policy to provide Americans with access to affordable health care. During the first three years of his administration, the number of Americans without health insurance increased by 2.3 million - a number that has surely grown again as millions of Americans have lost their jobs this year.

He campaigned as a champion of ordinary workers, but he has governed on behalf of the wealthy. He promised an increase in the federal minimum wage and fresh investment in infrastructure; he delivered a round of tax cuts that mostly benefited rich people. He has indiscriminately erased regulations, and answered the prayers of corporations by suspending enforcement of rules he could not easily erase. Under his leadership, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has stopped trying to protect consumers and the Environmental Protection Agency has stopped trying to protect the environment.

He has strained longstanding alliances while embracing dictators like North Korea's Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin, whom Mr. Trump treats with a degree of warmth and deference that defies explanation. He walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a strategic agreement among China's neighbors intended to pressure China to conform to international standards. In its place, Mr. Trump has conducted a tit-for-tat trade war, imposing billions of dollars in tariffs - taxes that are actually paid by Americans - without extracting significant concessions from China.

Mr. Trump's inadequacies as a leader have been on particularly painful display during the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of working to save lives, Mr. Trump has treated the pandemic as a public relations problem. He lied about the danger, challenged the expertise of public health officials and resisted the implementation of necessary precautions; he is still trying to force the resumption of economic activity without bringing the virus under control.

As the economy pancaked, he signed an initial round of aid for Americans who lost their jobs. Then the stock market rebounded and, even though millions remained out of work, Mr. Trump lost interest in their plight.

In September, he declared that the virus "affects virtually nobody" the day before the death toll from the disease in the United States topped 200,000.

Nine days later, Mr. Trump fell ill.

The foundations of American civil society were crumbling before Mr. Trump rode down the escalator of Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his presidential campaign. But he has intensified the worst tendencies in American politics: Under his leadership, the nation has grown more polarized, more paranoid and meaner.

He has pitted Americans against each other, mastering new broadcast media like Twitter and Facebook to rally his supporters around a virtual bonfire of grievances and to flood the public square with lies, disinformation and propaganda. He is relentless in his denigration of opponents and reluctant to condemn violence by those he regards as allies. At the first presidential debate in September, Mr. Trump was asked to condemn white supremacists. He responded by instructing one violent gang, the Proud Boys, to "stand back and stand by."

He has undermined faith in government as a vehicle for mediating differences and arriving at compromises. He demands absolute loyalty from government officials, without regard to the public interest. He is openly contemptuous of expertise.

And he has mounted an assault on the rule of law, wielding his authority as an instrument to secure his own power and to punish political opponents. In June, his administration tear-gassed and cleared peaceful protesters from a street in front of the White House so Mr. Trump could pose with a book he does not read in front of a church he does not attend.

The full scope of his misconduct may take decades to come to light. But what is already known is sufficiently shocking:

He has resisted lawful oversight by the other branches of the federal government. The administration routinely defies court orders, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly directed administration officials not to testify before Congress or to provide documents, notably including Mr. Trump's tax returns.

With the help of Attorney General William Barr, he has shielded loyal aides from justice. In May, the Justice Department said it would drop the prosecution of Mr. Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn even though Mr. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. In July, Mr. Trump commuted the sentence of another former aide, Roger Stone, who was convicted of obstructing a federal investigation of Mr. Trump's 2016 election campaign. Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, rightly condemned the commutation as an act of "unprecedented, historic corruption."

Last year, Mr. Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation of his main political rival, Joe Biden, and then directed administration officials to obstruct a congressional inquiry of his actions. In December 2019, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Mr. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors. But Senate Republicans, excepting Mr. Romney, voted to acquit the president, ignoring Mr. Trump's corruption to press ahead with the project of filling the benches of the federal judiciary with young, conservative lawyers as a firewall against majority rule.

Now, with other Republican leaders, Mr. Trump is mounting an aggressive campaign to reduce the number of Americans who vote and the number of ballots that are counted.

The president, who has long spread baseless charges of widespread voter fraud, has intensified his rhetorical attacks in recent months, especially on ballots submitted by mail. "The Nov 3rd Election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED," he tweeted. The president himself has voted by mail, and there is no evidence to support his claims. But the disinformation campaign serves as a rationale for purging voter rolls, closing polling places, tossing absentee ballots and otherwise impeding Americans from exercising the right to vote.

It is an intolerable assault on the very foundations of the American experiment in government by the people.

Other modern presidents have behaved illegally or made catastrophic decisions. Richard Nixon used the power of the state against his political opponents. Ronald Reagan ignored the spread of AIDS. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying and obstruction of justice. George W. Bush took the nation to war under false pretenses.

Mr. Trump has outstripped decades of presidential wrongdoing in a single term.

Frederick Douglass lamented during another of the nation's dark hours, the presidency of Andrew Johnson, "We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man, we shall be safe." But that is not the nature of our democracy. The implicit optimism of American democracy is that the health of the Republic rests on the judgment of the electorate and the integrity of those voters choose.

Mr. Trump is a man of no integrity. He has repeatedly violated his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Now, in this moment of peril, it falls to the American people - even those who would prefer a Republican president - to preserve, protect and defend the United States by voting.