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Tag: 2022 Midterm elections
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The presidential factor in the 2022 midterm elections
The presidential factor in the 2022 midterm elections – CBS News
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ICYMI: A look back at Sunday’s 60 Minutes
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Social media and political polarization in America; The migrant situation in New York City; What prepping looks like in 2022.
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Presidential push ahead of the 2022 midterm elections
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Presidential push ahead of the 2022 midterm elections – CBS News
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Media preps for 2022 election with focus on democracy issues
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NEW YORK (AP) — Time was, a television reporter assigned to “democracy issues” would have a quiet time on election night sets, occasionally popping up to talk about broken voting machines at a polling place or two.
That’s not the case in 2022.
Between election deniers and threats to voting rights, news organizations have emphasized the beat. That will continue next Tuesday, with coverage plans for the midterms rounding into shape.
CBS News will have its first-ever “Democracy Desk” to look at those issues and how law enforcement is dealing with threats. NBC News’ “Vote Watch Unit” is looking at election security and disinformation. ABC News has assigned the team of Dan Abrams, Pierre Thomas, Terry Moran and Kate Shaw to the topic.
News teams, mindful of public suspicion about journalists, also promise transparency in their own operations.
“Because there is an adamant disinformation campaign, there are efforts to sow chaos, one of the most important things we can do is stick to the facts,” said CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell.
Following a precedent set in the 2018 midterms, the broadcast networks will set aside their entire prime-time schedules to follow the action. CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC will have wall-to-wall coverage. There will be a wealth of online options for those whom one screen won’t do.
Expect surprises. Close pre-election polls, with control of the House and Senate up for grabs, combined with the lingering question of whether any politician will take Donald Trump’s example from 2020 and not accept the results, make the night potentially combustible.
“The stakes are high,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director. “The results of this will alter the course of Biden’s presidency.”
ABC News is preparing for the possibility that answers to which party controls the House and Senate won’t be known when the network’s planned cut-off point of 2 a.m. Eastern is reached — and to extend that if necessary, said Marc Burstein, who’s in charge of the coverage.
“There’s just a lot of tight races,” said Martha MacCallum, who will co-anchor Fox News’ coverage with Bret Baier. “As a reporter and anchor that makes it a lot more fun to cover. It’s going to be a really exciting night in a lot of ways in terms of the drama that has already been built into this.”
Fox became a major part of the election night stories in 2018, when it declared long before its rivals that Democrats would control the House, and in 2020, when its first call of Arizona for Joe Biden infuriated Trump and his supporters.
After the fallout, one of Fox’s decision desk executives retired and another was reassigned, soon to leave the network — even though Fox got it right.
As a result, Fox viewers will probably see a lot of Arnon Mishkin, who returns to lead the network’s decision desk. Fox wants to bring viewers into the process as much as possible this year, so they can see the communication between the anchors, decision desk and producers, MacCallum said.
“We want people to understand how the calls are made,” she said. “We’re definitely making an effort to open up that process so viewers can see for themselves.”
Networks won’t say they’ll be more cautious than usual in calling races, not wanting the implication they weren’t careful enough in the past. Executives noted that news organizations didn’t declare Biden the winner in 2020 until the Saturday after the election.
But transparency — showing with perhaps mind-numbing detail how voting is going in close races — was a byword.
“We care about being right,” said Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of “Meet the Press” and executive in charge of NBC News’ election coverage, “not necessarily being first.”
Burstein preached patience with so many local races. “We’re not going to jump to any conclusions that it’s a red wave or a blue wave,” he said.
The Associated Press, which has counted the nation’s votes for more than a century, does not declare a winner in an individual race until it has determined that there is no scenario under which trailing candidates can close the gap — even if a candidate has declared victory or others have conceded.
One of Tuesday’s biggest mysteries is whether any 2020 election deniers become 2022 election deniers.
“I can’t control what a politician comes out and says about the election results,” Chalian said. “What is in our control is our ability to present the factual results to the viewer.”
CNN will have more reporters out in the states than it ever has for a midterm election, he said. Other networks echo him; CBS News is preparing to tap into the expertise and staffing of its local stations across the country. NBC News has assigned six reporters each to Georgia and Pennsylvania alone.
“Through it all, they are going to have to be nimble and cover whatever story that emerges,” Budoff Brown said.
NBC News’ coverage will be led by the team of Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell. David Muir anchors ABC’s coverage. CNN says its hosts include Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Dana Bash and Don Lemon.
With the exit of news anchor Brian Williams, MSNBC’s coverage will be led by three anchors who host opinion shows: Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace.
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David Bauder is the media writer for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dbauder
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Deadly year could imperil Little Rock mayor’s reelection bid
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Frank Scott became Little Rock’s first popularly elected Black mayor four years ago on campaign promises to unite a city long divided along racial lines.
But a deadly year in Arkansas’ capital, criticism of his management and attacks from Republicans are threatening reelection chances for Scott, a rare high-profile Democrat in this solidly red state. His reelection bid is one of the few competitive races on the ballot in Arkansas, where Republicans are heavily favored in statewide and congressional matchups.
“This race is very simple: do you want to go backward to a horrid past, or do you want to continue growing forward?” Scott told supporters before he cast his ballot during early voting.
Scott’s election in 2018 was a landmark for a city long known for the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, when nine Black students were escorted into the school in front of an angry white mob. The city remains racially divided, with whites making up about half of Little Rock’s population.
Little Rock’s mayoral race is nonpartisan. But Scott is running in a midterm election where violent crime has become a pivotal issue nationwide, with Republicans eager to paint Democratic mayors as unable to protect their cities.
In neighboring Texas, the top elected official in reliably Democratic Harris County — home to Houston — also faces such criticism. Crime dominates advertising by GOP candidates in some of the most competitive Senate and governor’s races across the country.
Scott’s chief rival in the race is Steve Landers, a retired car dealer who regularly cites the city’s spiraling homicide rate in campaign appearances and materials. Little Rock so far this year has reported at least 71 homicides, surpassing the record the city reached in 1993.
“People want a change in our city. Our city is dangerous,” Landers said.
Landers calls himself an independent who’s voted for Democrats and Republicans. Federal Election Commission records show he’s donated to several Republican candidates and the state GOP in recent years, but also to some Democrats. He’s outspent Scott’s campaign, and loaned $400,000 to his bid, according to fundraising reports filed last week.
The other candidates running are Greg Henderson, a local businessman who publishes a food blog, and Glen Schwarz, a longtime marijuana legalization advocate. All three challengers are white.
Scott, a former member of the state highway commission, became Little Rock’s first elected Black mayor in a runoff election. Little Rock previously had two Black mayors, but they were chosen for the job by fellow city board members and not by voters.
Scott had the backing of Democratic and Republican figures four years ago when he led a campaign that sought to bridge the city’s biggest divides: race, income and geography.
The homicide rate and some stumbles at City Hall, however, have since drawn the involvement of Republican-backed groups. They include one campaign that’s been supported by former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s political action committee.
Crime in Little Rock is also factoring into other races in the state.
An ad by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Sarah Sanders — the former White House press secretary and Huckabee’s daughter — mentions the city’s violent crime.
Scott has blasted the former governor’s involvement in the race, with one mailer warning voters, “do not let Mike Huckabee bring Donald Trump policies to Little Rock.”
Political observers say the Republican attacks could backfire.
“This adds a new dimension to it, this has in essence become a partisan race and there are a lot of Democrats in Little Rock,” said Skip Rutherford, a former chairman of the state Democratic Party.
Since the GOP-backed groups’ involvement, Scott’s campaign has rolled out endorsements from high profile Democrats and groups, such as retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes. He’s also been endorsed by some of the Black students who integrated Central High.
Scott has defended his handling of crime, noting that Little Rock’s overall violent crime rate is down compared to the same period last year.
The mayor and police have said this year’s homicide spike, unlike what the city saw in the early 1990s, isn’t driven by gang activity but by domestic violence or crime between acquaintances. In a statement over the weekend, he said the city has put social workers in the field, funded conflict resolution programs for at-risk youth and targeted patrols in high-crime areas of the city.
Scott’s woes are compounded by criticism of his management of City Hall, including an art and music festival he championed that was abruptly canceled days before it was to take place. The city’s manager canceled Little Rock’s contract with an outside firm that was organizing the festival following questions about the financial arrangement with the firm.
The city’s police chief, who Scott hired, retired in May after a rocky three years marked by lawsuits and clashes with officers. Little Rock also faces criticism about a lack of transparency, prompting the local prosecutor to vent frustration last week about the number of Freedom of Information Act complaints he’s received about the city.
In his reelection bid, Scott has touted the city landing economic development deals, including an Amazon delivery station and warehouse.
“Little Rock has an opportunity to be a catalyst for the new South,” Scott told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this year.
Rachel Luckett, who cast a ballot for Scott during early voting, said she is concerned about crime but want to give the mayor another chance.
“I think he’s handled it just as well as any other mayor that’s come through,” Luckett said. “It won’t change overnight.”
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Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.
Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.
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California tenants rise up, demand rent caps from city halls
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ANTIOCH, Calif. (AP) — Kim Carlson’s apartment has flooded with human feces multiple times, the plumbing never fixed in the low-income housing complex she calls home in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Antioch.
Her property manager is verbally abusive and calls her 9-year-old grandson, who has autism, a slur word, she said. Her heater was busted for a month this winter and the dishwasher has mold growing under it. But the final straw came in May: a $500 rent increase, bringing the rent on the two-bedroom to $1,854 a month.
Carlson and other tenants hit with similarly high increases converged on Antioch’s City Hall for marathon hearings, pleading for protection. In September, the City Council on a 3-2 vote approved a 3% cap on annual increases.
Carlson, who is disabled and under treatment for lymphoma cancer, starts to weep imagining what her life could be like.
“Just normality, just freedom, just being able to walk outside and breathe and not have to walk outside and wonder what is going to happen next,” said Carlson, 54, who lives with her daughter and two grandsons at the Delta Pines apartment complex. “You know, for the kids to feel safe. My babies don’t feel safe.”
Despite a landmark renter protection law approved by California legislators in 2019, tenants across the country’s most populous state are taking to ballot boxes and city councils to demand even more safeguards. They want to crack down on tenant harassment, shoddy living conditions and unresponsive landlords that are usually faceless corporations.
Elected officials, for their part, appear more willing than in years past to regulate what is a private contract between landlord and tenant. In addition to Antioch, city councils in Bell Gardens, Pomona, Oxnard and Oakland all lowered maximum rent increases this year as inflation hit a 40-year high. Other city councils put the issue on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Leah Simon-Weisberg, legal director for the advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, says local officials can no longer pretend supply and demand works when so many families are facing homelessness. In June, 1.3 million California households reported being behind on rent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The situation in working-class Antioch — where more than half the population is Black or Latino — illustrates how tenuous even a win for tenants can be.
The two council members who voted in favor of rent stabilization are up for re-election Tuesday, with one of them, Tamisha Torres-Walker, facing a former council member she narrowly beat two years ago. The local newspaper endorsed Joy Motts and called Torres-Walker, who was homeless as a young adult, polarizing.
Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who provided the third vote, faces sexual harassment allegations by two women, which he denies. They are part of a progressive Black majority.
If either member loses her seat, the rent ordinance could be repealed.
The two council members who voted no are both in the real estate industry, and not up for re-election.
A once largely white suburb, Antioch has become more politically liberal as Black, Latino and low-income residents forced out of San Francisco and Oakland moved in. Advocates tried for years to mobilize tenants, but it took the shockingly high rent-hike notices and the expiration of a statewide eviction moratorium in June to get movement.
Outraged tenants jammed into council chambers describing refrigerators pieced from spare parts and washing machines that reeked of rotten eggs. They spoke of skipping meals, working multiple jobs and living in constant terror of becoming homeless, sleeping in their car and washing their children with bottled water.
“We saw a lot of fear, a lot of desperation,” said Rhea Laughlin, an organizer with First 5 Contra Costa, a county initiative that focuses on early childhood. But, she said, she also saw people summon the courage “to go before council, to rally, to march, to speak to the press and be exposed in a way that I think tenants were too afraid to do before, but now really felt they had little to lose.”
Teresa Farias, 36, said she was terrified to speak in public but she was even more afraid that she, her husband and their three children, ages 3 to 14, would have to leave their home. When the family received a $361 rent increase notice in May, she called the East County Regional Group, a parent advocacy organization supported by First 5. They told her to start knocking on doors and talk to her neighbors.
“I really don’t know where my strength came from, to be able to speak in public, to be able to speak in front of the City Council … to ask them to help us with this issue,” she said in Spanish outside her home at the Casa Blanca apartments.
California’s tenant protection law limits rent increases to a maximum 10% a year. But many types of housing are exempt, including low-income complexes funded by government tax credits and increasingly owned by corporations, limited liability companies or limited partnerships.
The tenants who flooded City Council meetings drew largely from four affordable-housing complexes, including sister properties Delta Pines and Casa Blanca, where an estimated 150 households received large rent increases in May. The properties are linked to Shaoul Levy, founder of real estate investment firm Levy Affiliated in Santa Monica.
The rent increases never took effect, rescinded by the landlord as the City Council moved toward approving rent stabilization. Levy did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Council member Michael Barbanica, who owns a real estate and property management company, called the rent hikes outrageous, but said the city could have worked with the district attorney’s office to prosecute price-gouging corporate landlords.
Instead, the rent cap penalizes all local landlords, some of whom are now planning to sell, he said.
“They’re not the ones doing 30-40-50% increases,” Barbanica said, “yet they were caught in the crossfire.”
But, Carlson said, the city needs to pass even more tenant protections. The apartment complex is infested with roaches and her neighbors are too scared to speak up, she said.
Her apartment has flooded at least seven times in the eight years she’s lived there, she said, flipping through cellphone photos of her toilet and bathtub filled with dark yellow-brown water. In October 2020, she slipped from water pouring down from the upstairs apartment and dislocated her hip.
She has never been compensated, including all the gifts lost when the apartment flooded with water on Christmas Eve 2017. Two months later, in February 2018, feces and urine bubbled from the tub and toilets.
“We got two five-gallon buckets and a bag of plastic bags brought to us and we had to (urinate and defecate) in those buckets for five days because the toilets were blown off the floor,” Carlson said.
The toilets still gurgle, indicating blockage. That’s when she shuts off the water and waits for plumbers to clear the backup.
Tenant organizer Devin Williams grew up in Antioch after his parents moved out of San Francisco in 2003, part of a migration of Black residents leaving city centers for cheaper homes in safer suburbs. The 32-year-old is devastated that the same opportunity is not available to tenants like Carlson now.
“People have a responsibility to make sure people have habitable living conditions,” he said. “And their lives are just being exploited because people want to make money.”
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Over half of Republicans running for federal, statewide office have raised unfounded doubts about 2020 election
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Over half of all Republican midterm candidates running for federal and statewide office have raised unfounded doubts about the validity or integrity of the 2020 election results, and according to CBS News’ analysis, all of the states but two — Rhode Island and North Dakota — have a candidate on the the ballot who is an “election denier,” that is, who denies the results of the 2020 election were valid.
Among the 597 GOP candidates running for state or federal office this November, 308 have raised unfounded doubts about the results of the 2020 election.
Here’s the candidate breakdown:
- 20 out of 37 Republicans running for governor (2 Republicans are running for Alaska’s gubernatorial seat under the state’s ranked choice voting)
- 9 out of 31 Republicans running for lieutenant governor
- 9 out of 30 Republicans running for attorney general
- 12 out of 27 Republicans running for secretary of state
- 20 out of 36 Republicans running for the U.S. Senate (2 Senate races in Oklahoma)
- 238 out of 436 Republicans running for U.S. House (2 Republicans are running for the Alaska at large seat under the state’s ranked choice voting)
Many GOP candidates have voiced support for continued “Stop the Steal” efforts, falsely claiming that President Biden is in the White House illegitimately and must be removed. Others acknowledge he’s the president but won’t say whether he was legitimately elected, and they incorrectly suggest there was wide-ranging fraud in the 2020 election. Some objected to the 2020 Electoral College certification or signed an amicus brief in a Texas lawsuit arguing electoral votes in battleground states Mr. Biden won should be tossed.
Other candidates backtracked after their primary races, hoping to appear less extreme to a wider electorate. CBS News still considers these candidates to have questioned the integrity of the election, even if they have since changed course.
Should GOP election deniers who are running for governor or secretary of state in the 2020 battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin win on Nov. 8, it’s possible that state-level certifications of the 2024 presidential election will be in the hands of officials who continue to propagate the idea that Joe Biden did not win in 2020.
In Arizona, where there are election deniers running for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem could have the final say in certifying the state’s 2024 election results. Lake has already said that she would not have accepted the state’s results in 2020 had she been Arizona’s governor, and Mark Finchem has suggested that he wouldn’t either.
The same is true in Michigan, where Tudor Dixon and Kristina Karamo, running for governor and secretary of state, have also said they wouldn’t have certified Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory.
Other races to watch include the governor’s races in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where the far-right Republican nominees Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania and Tim Michels of Wisconsin are on the ballot.
Below are profiles of some of the candidates who meet one or more of the following criteria:
- Said they believe the 2020 election was stolen;
- Repeated disproven claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020;
- Supported a type of post 2020-audit, sometimes following recounts or canvassing;
- Signed onto the Texas lawsuit looking to overturn the 2020 election results in several battleground states;
- Objected to certify the 2020 electoral college results in Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021; or
- Have at least once, if not more, been unclear when asked if they believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected.
U.S. Senate candidates: 20 of 36 GOP candidates
Adam Laxalt (Nevada): Former Nevada Attorney General and Trump Nevada campaign co-chair Adam Laxalt said in a radio interview in August 2021, “There’s no question that they rigged the election.” He also worked with the 2020 Trump campaign in filing a lawsuit in November 2020 with Ric Grenell, the Trump-appointed former director of national intelligence to try to convince a judge to “stop the counting of improper votes.” Laxalt also spread a false claim about thousands of illegal votes in an op-ed after Mr. Biden had been certified as the winner.
Laxalt has since acknowledged Mr. Biden is the president, but has not explicitly said he was legitimately elected. “I know you want to make this entire election about this. We have major issues going on in our country right now,” he said, avoiding the question in October 2021.
JD Vance (Ohio): “I believe the election was stolen too, but why are we talking about the past,” JD Vance said during a campaign event in January. When asked by Spectrum News Ohio that same month if he felt the election had been stolen, Vance affirmed that he does. “The fundamental problem is we had a massive effort to shift the election by very powerful people in this country. I don’t care whether you say it’s rigged, whether you say it’s stolen, like I’ll say what I’m going to say about it,” he said.
Herschel Walker (Georgia): While he was aggressive in saying the election was stolen in 2020, Herschel Walker has since softened his tone. Days after the election, on Nov. 6, 2020, Walker was suggesting several battleground states should vote again. On Dec. 27, 2020 he said on Fox News that he was certain “Biden didn’t get 50 million people voting for him, yet people think he won this election.”
Walker expressed doubt that the Jan. 6 rioters were Trump supporters, calling them “Trojan horses” and tweeting that Trump has the power “right now to see who they really are and to get the bottom of who stole this election!” In May, Walker claimed he’d never heard Trump say the election was stolen.
Don Bolduc (New Hampshire): In August, Don Bolduc said, “I signed a letter … saying that Trump won the election, and, damn it, I stand by my letter.” He added: “I’m not switching horses, baby. This is it.” After winning his primary, Bolduc reversed course “I’ve come to the conclusion, and I want to be definitive on this: The election was not stolen,” he said, adding that while he still believes there was fraud, “elections have consequences and, unfortunately, President Biden is the legitimate president of this country.”
Rep. Ted Budd (North Carolina): As a congressman, Budd voted to object to the Electoral College results in Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021. He also voiced support for the Texas lawsuit that tried to contest Mr. Biden’s victories in several battleground states in the Supreme Court. “Millions of Americans do not have faith in the November election. One of the best ways to air out the legitimate concerns over voter fraud, machine irregularities, and mail-in ballots is at the Supreme Court,” he tweeted in December 2020.
But more recently, Budd has said that he does believe Biden is “the legitimate president.” He told Fox 46 in April, “He is the president, but I have tremendous constitutional concerns about how the election of 2020 happened.”
Mehmet Oz (Pennsylvania): While he said during a debate in April that “we cannot move on” from the 2020 election, he also said on conservative network “Real America’s Voice” that he wants “to be careful” about how he talks about the 2020 election. “I know for sure we’ve got to deal with 2020, but this is about knowing what exactly the diagnosis is so we can give it the right treatment,” he said. During the general election campaign, however, Oz said that he would have voted to certify Mr. Biden’s election. In September, Oz said that he would have certified the 2020 election for Joe Biden. “I would not have objected to it,” Oz said. “By the time the delegates and those reports are sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it. That’s what I would have done.”
Blake Masters (Arizona): Before his primary, Blake Masters said in a campaign ad, “I think Trump won in 2020,” and he called the 2020 election “really messed up.” He also claimed, “If we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today.” But after winning the GOP primary, he shifted his stance to say that Joe Biden had won — with help from and interference by the FBI and the media.
Gubernatorial candidates: 20 of 36 GOP candidates
Doug Mastriano (Pennsylvania): In addition to being near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and spending thousands of dollars from his campaign account to arrange buses from Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., that day, Doug Mastriano, a state senator, held a hearing weeks after the 2020 election and called Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani to testify “on election issues.” Mastriano and other Pennsylvania Republicans challenged the state’s new mail ballot law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court — which upheld the legality of the rules. On Nov. 27, 2020, he introduced a bill asking Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar “to withdraw and vacate the certification of the presidential election.”
In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state and in April, Mastriano said he already has someone in mind, though he hasn’t released a name. He’s also contemplating forcing all voters to re-register in Pennsylvania. He said on “The John Fredericks Show” that he has the power to decertify or certify “any machines or anything else involved with elections… with the stroke of a pen, I can decertify every single machine in the state.”
Kari Lake (Arizona): Kari Lake has never backed away from remarks she’s made denying the 2020 election’s legitimacy. She has said, “If you think that election was fair, put down Hunter’s crack pipe.” She has also said she would not have certified Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in Arizona if she had been governor. She called late-night ballot counting that favored Mr. Biden over Trump “magic.” On “Face the Nation” in October, Lake refused to say whether Mr. Biden is the legitimate president, and she has also appeared on QAnon-affiliated talk shows.
Gov. Greg Abbott (Texas): In December 2020, Gov. Greg Abbott supported the Texas lawsuit led by Attorney General Ken Paxton that sought to toss the election results of four battleground states that Mr. Biden won (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin). Abbott said of the case, which was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, that Paxton was trying to “accelerate the process, providing certainty and clarity about the entire election process.”
In Sept. 2021, the Texas secretary of state’s office announced an audit of the 2020 election. Abbott defended the audit in an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” saying, “Why do we audit everything in this world, but people raise their hands in concern when we audit elections?” Abbott approved $4 million in funding for the audit in Nov. 2021, which found very few issues with the 2020 election, according to the Texas Tribune.
Tudor Dixon (Michigan): In a primary debate, Tudor Dixon raised her hand along with the rest of the Republican gubernatorial field when they were asked if there was enough fraud to impact the 2020 election results. In another debate, she was asked if she believed Trump had legitimately won Michigan. She replied, “Yes,” even though Mr. Biden had won the state by about 154,000 votes. After his victory, Dixon, in a since-deleted tweet, wrote the election had been stolen and claimed Democrats had committed “sloppy and obvious” voter fraud, according to MLive, but she offered no evidence to support her accusation.
Dan Cox (Maryland): In December 2020, Dan Cox suggested on Facebook that Trump should seize voting machines as a way to prove fraud had occurred. Cox also sponsored buses to take people to the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. That afternoon, Cox tweeted: “Mike Pence is a traitor.” Cox later deleted the tweet. In a July 2021 Facebook post, Cox wrote: “I was in Philadelphia with President Trump’s team for three weeks during the 2020 election and witnessed PA election fraud.” Cox also posted tweets containing QAnon rhetoric ahead of the 2020 election.
Secretary of state: 12 of 27 GOP candidates
Kristina Karamo (Michigan): In December, Kristina Karamo tweeted that “corrupt politicians with the help of the lying media were trying to steal the election, ain’t going to happen.” Karamo gained a following after the 2020 election, when she claimed to have witnessed fraudulent activity where Detroit was counting absentee ballots. She made several cable news appearances to spread unfounded claims of widespread fraud and filed to intervene in Texas’ lawsuit to overturn the election. One of Karamo’s central fraud claims was about a ballot that had straight-ticket voting bubbles filled out for both Democrats and Republicans. She claimed a worker had wanted to count the ballot for Democrats and a supervisor told the worker to “push it through.” Chris Thomas, the longtime elections director in Michigan who was at the absentee counting facility in Detroit, told CBS News that “push it through” meant that the ballot would be registered as an overvote and would not count for either party.
During New Jersey’s gubernatorial election last November, Karamo claimed that ballots for Democrat incumbent Governor Phil Murphy were “magically” appearing. “Can’t make this stuff up, but again you’re ‘insurrectionist’ and a ‘big lie proponent’ for pointing out the obvious,” she tweeted. Ahead of her election this November, Karamo has claimed that election machines in Detroit are illegal.
Mark Finchem (Arizona): “The 2020 General Election is irredeemably compromised, and it is impossible to name a clear winner of the contest,” Mark Finchem, a state House member, wrote in a resolution he introduced in the Arizona Legislature to decertify the 2020 election results in Maricopa, Pima and Yuma counties. Finchem attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally and was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6. He also supported the Maricopa County GOP-led state Senate-mandated audit that ultimately found President Biden had won the county by about 45,000 votes, a handful more than the original count. He has also attended conferences and fundraisers hosted by QAnon influencers.
Jim Marchant (Nevada): Jim Marchant, who was the Republican nominee for Nevada’s 4th District in 2020, falsely claimed that the election had been “stolen” from him and from Trump and filed a lawsuit over his own 33,000 vote loss in 2020. The challenge was dismissed. He lost to Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford in 2020. Now, as the GOP nominee to be secretary of state, Marchant has told The Guardian that he would be open to sending an alternate slate of electors to Congress in 2024. Marchant and former Clark County District Court Judge Richard Scotti, another Nevada Secretary of State Republican candidate in the race, have said they would push to decertify Dominion voting machines, which are used by nearly all of Nevada’s counties. Like Mastriano, Marchant also said he supported a proposal to “re-register” voters, which was used by segregationists to restrict the votes of Black Americans during Reconstruction and through the 1960s. Marchant has also attended QAnon-affiliated conferences and spoke on panels about election fraud- and has falsely claimed that Nevada has not “elected anybody since 2006,” but politicians in the state have been “installed by the deep state cabal.”
Audrey Trujillo (New Mexico): In June, Trujillo called for county commissioners to remove all Dominion machines and all drop boxes, and said the state’s primary results couldn’t be certified until counties did a hand recount, forensic audit and a cast vote record has been provided. In a Facebook interview in March, she said the 2020 election “was a huge, huge, I would say coup to really unseat a president who had the best interests of Americans.”
House candidates: 238 of 436* GOP candidates
*2 Republicans are running for the Alaska at large seat under the state’s ranked choice voting
Sarah Palin (Alaska): When broadcaster Piers Morgan asked her if she accepted that Biden won the election “fair and square,” she said, “Evidently he did because he is sworn in as our president, but no one will convince me, nor anyone else with common sense and a sense of justice — no one will convince us that there was not shenanigans.”
Kevin McCarthy (California): The House minority leader and potential future House speaker voted to object to the Electoral College certification and said on Fox News right after the election that “President Trump won this election, so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.” At a press conference June, McCarthy said that Joe Biden was president, but did not say if he was legitimately elected.
Lauren Boebert (Colorado): Before the 2020 election, Boebert wrote in a tweet that “the only way Democrats can win [in 2020] is through election fraud.” Ahead of Jan. 6, she tweeted about “video footage, voice recordings, data analysis, statistical improbabilities,” and more disproven allegations of mass election fraud. She also objected to the Electoral College certification the morning of Jan. 6. Rep. Boebert, now the incumbent in 2024, was at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse and tweeted that morning, “Today is 1776.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia): Marjorie Taylor Greene was also one of the 10 Republican members of Congress who attended a Trump White House meeting that focused on efforts to overturn the 2020 election. She voted to object to the Electoral College Certification on Jan. 6 and continues to incorrectly insist that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
John Gibbs (Michigan): During a debate with his primary opponent, incumbent Rep. Peter Meijer, in late June, John Gibbs made the unfounded claim that there were “anomalies” in the 2020 election results “that are simply mathematically impossible.” On his campaign website, Gibbs calls for a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 election and writes that there should be an ID required to vote and an elimination of the early voting period. He also says the “mass mailing of ballots to every voter… would be considered corrupt if used in any developing country.”
JR Majewski (Ohio): JR Majewski was in Washington, D.C.,on Jan. 6 and in since-deleted tweets first reported by CNN, Majewski tweeted ahead of the Capitol Hill riot that “it’s going down” on Jan. 6. He also has shared QAnon memes and language on his Parler social media account that was later deleted.
Mayra Flores (Texas): Mayra Flores has suggested that the Capitol riot was caused by Antifa and “infiltrators.” A CNN review of – tweets leading up to January 2021 that have since been deleted, noted that Flores had shown admiration for Trump attorney Sidney Powell, calling her an “American hero.” Powell filed a number of baseless lawsuits that alleged massive fraud in the 2020 election. Powell is being sued for defamation over some of her claims and has been sanctioned by a federal judge for a failure to do her due diligence before submitting one of her lawsuits. Flores wrote that “this election is not over” in late November 2020.
Harriet Hageman (Wyoming): Harriet Hageman, who defeated incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney in the GOP primary, said the 2022 election was “rigged” and told a primary debate audience that “we have serious questions” about the 2020 election.
Contributions by Sierra Sanders, Grace Kazarian, Fritz Farrow, Scott MacFarlane and Major Garrett
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Experts see a “resilient” U.S. economy. Voters aren’t buying it.
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With just days until the midterm elections, getting a read on the U.S. economy can be elusive: The country remains a step ahead of a recession and the labor market is surprisingly strong, with most workers who want a job currently employed.
Yet inflation remains at a 40-year-high, souring the mood of many voters, some of whom say they have had to cut back on basic expenses to pay for their energy bills. The key housing market is also sagging, with mortgage costs soaring as the Federal Reserve jacks up interest rates in a bid to stifle inflation.
Asked to sum up the U.S. economy in a word, economists interviewed by CBS MoneyWatch described it as “fragile” and “cooling,” yet also “resilient.”
Some voters may use more descriptive terms as they head to the polls on November 8. Sue Lee, an 80-year-old retiree in Crestwood, Kentucky, said this election marks the first time she will vote straight Republican on the ballot because she blames Democrats for rising propane and gas bills, which have forced her to cancel her dental insurance and home warranty.
“I’m getting down to the point of, what do I cancel next? I can’t cancel my taxes because I’ll lose my home,” said Lee, whose propane heating costs have jumped from $120 to $175 a month, prompting her to turn off her furnace at night.
It’s still the economy
It’s been 30 years since James Carville’s pithy explanation of what drives voters: “It’s the economy, stupid.” And surveys underline the deep public pessimism about the state of the economy, with 70% of Americans saying the economy is either “fairly bad” or “very bad,” according to more than 2,000 registered voters polled in mid-October by CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker.
To be sure, the job market remains strong, with businesses still hiring and many Americans continuing to job-hop in search of better pay and working conditions. But voters who prioritize the economy — and whose mood has curdled after months of high inflation — will likely lean toward Republican candidates on Tuesday, according to CBS News polling.
Economists are less negative than voters, although they point out that the U.S. faces a series of economic headwinds, ranging from ongoing high rates of inflation to slowing corporate profits — risks that many experts think could lead to a recession in 2023.
Despite those problems, the economy is currently “still progressing,” noted Greg Daco, chief economist at consulting firm EY Parthenon.
“It’s an economy where businesses are still investing and hiring, where consumers are still spending, but where all of this activity is being done with much more discretion,” Daco said.
Indeed, recent economic data suggest a recession is not around the corner. The economy grew at a 2.6% annual rate from July through September. That marked a strong rebound after the nation’s gross domestic product shrank in the first two quarters of the year, and eased concerns that the U.S. is on the brink of a recession.
But despite the strong GDP headline number, there were signs that consumers are reeling from the brunt of high inflation. Final sales to domestic purchasers — a measure of how much Americans are buying — edged up only 0.1% on an annual basis — the worst showing since the pandemic hit in the second quarter of 2020 and a worrying metric given that consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of economic activity.
“Nobody’s got a magic wand”
Jackie Trapp, a 57-year-old in Muskego, Wisconsin, who left the workforce a decade ago to care for her parents and who relies on Social Security disability and a small pension for most of her income, said she and her husband are cutting back on expenses to offset the impact of inflation.
“Do we need cable? No, we don’t. Do I need that $5 Starbucks? No, we don’t,” Trapp said. “If we get tacos from the taco truck, I like them just as much as that lovely dinner we used to go to.”
Despite the financial pinch, Trapp said she’s planning on voting for Democrats, prioritizing what she described as the party’s support for voting rights and Social Security. Trapp has a rare blood cancer that cost her nearly $22,000 to treat last year, even with Medicare footing most of the bill. She said she’s looking forward to seeing those costs drop in coming years as drug-pricing provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act kick in.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, has suggested transforming Social Security into a discretionary program that would have to be renewed by Congress every year. That would further politicize funding for a program that supports almost 70 million Americans — mostly retirees, but also disabled workers and the survivors of Social Security beneficiaries — many of whom have been hard-hit this year by inflation because the 2022 cost-of-living adjustment failed to keep pace with the sharp spike in prices.
“Senator Johnson in my home state is openly talking about eliminating Social Security and Medicare, and he’s ahead” in the polls, Trapp said. “Inflation is worldwide, and nobody’s got a magic wand.”
Sliding backward
It’s not only retirees who are falling behind — many of America’s 164 million workers have slid backwards despite a spurt in pay during the pandemic. Although wages rose 5% in the third quarter, inflation topped 8% during the same period. That’s forcing some consumers to tap into their savings to cover expenses, noted John Leer, chief economist for Morning Consult.
“Now you’re in a world where wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation. They have to draw down savings, rely on credit,” he noted. “Savings are eroding, but the job market is strong. That’s the dichotomy right now.”
Still, economists expect inflation to recede in response to the six interest rate hikes this year by the Federal Reserve, although not in time for the midterms. Consumers may not see relief for several months, with EY Parthenon’s Daco forecasting that inflation is unlikely to start falling in earnest until the second quarter of 2023.
Still kicking, but for how long?
If there’s a bright spot in the U.S. economy, it’s the nation’s employment sector, economists say.
“Going into the election, the labor market is the one thing going for Joe Biden,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist for ZipRecruiter.
President Biden is touting the strength of the job market ahead of the midterms, pointing out that 10 million jobs have been created since his inauguration in January 2021. Layoffs also remain low, a trend that Leer of Morning Consult calls “labor hoarding.”
“Businesses are holding onto workers even if they don’t need them or if they think there will be a downturn,” Leer said.
That’s because the tight labor market during the pandemic has made it hard to find workers, making business leaders loath to fire people. Companies are laying off a third fewer workers each month than they did prior to the pandemic, according to Pollak.
Even so, there are signs the labor market is slowing in some sectors, such as technology and finance.
“That’s where you’ve got hiring freezes, where you’ve got layoffs, where you’ve got big banking CEOs talking about storms and hurricanes in all kinds of dramatic language,” she said. “Main Street is still all right.”
Power of perception
Unemployment is likely to rise if the economy tumbles into a recession, although perhaps not as much as in prior recessions, Daco said. For its part, the Fed is predicting a significantly higher jobless rate in 2023, expecting it to rise from 3.5% now to 4.4% next year — a number that implies the loss of about 1.2 million jobs.
Whatever the economic data show, some polls show many Americans already believe the U.S. is in a recession. By contrast, the organization that officially calls a recession, the National Bureau of Economic Research, hasn’t made such a declaration.
What’s clear, however, is that the combination of high inflation and the perception that the U.S. is in a rut could affect voter behavior, economists say.
“People really, really don’t like inflation, especially women,” Pollak said. “Women experience inflation more keenly and they feel more negative about the path of the economy when prices are high because they buy groceries, and they feel inflation more regularly.”
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Oprah endorses John Fetterman over Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania Senate race
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TV icon Oprah Winfrey on Thursday endorsed Democrat John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Senate race and rejected Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom she had helped launch to stardom nearly two decades ago when she brought him on her popular daytime talk show as a regular guest.
Until now, Winfrey had said she would leave the election to Pennsylvanians, but she changed that position in an online discussion on voting in next Tuesday’s election.
“I said it was up to the citizens of Pennsylvania and of course, but I will tell you all this, if I lived in Pennsylvania, I would have already cast my vote for John Fetterman for many reasons,” Winfrey said, before going on to urge listeners to vote for Democrats running for governor and Senate in various states.
The Pennsylvania seat has for months been seen as the most likely pickup opportunity for Democrats in the evenly divided Senate.
Polls show a close race between Fetterman and Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
In a sign of how high the stakes are, Trump will return to Pennsylvania on Saturday to campaign for Oz, while President Biden and former President Barack Obama will campaign for Fetterman that same day.
Oz left Oprah’s show after five years and 55 episodes to start his own daytime TV program, “The Dr. Oz Show,” which ran for 13 seasons before he moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to run for the Senate.
The seat is being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
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Georgia gubernatorial candidates sharply divided on key issues as midterms approach
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While the races for control of the House and Senate are getting most of the headlines, Americans are paying close attention to several key gubernatorial races. In Georgia, it’s a high stakes rematch of the 2018 election between Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams.
CBS News joined both candidates on their campaign buses as they traversed the Peach State, where voter turnout surpassed the the 2 million mark Thursday. With five days to go until Election Day, the economy, health care and crime are all taking center stage.
“She said she would defund the police,” Kemp said of Abrams.
Abrams argued that Kemp has “lied repeatedly.”
“We want law enforcement, but we also want accountability,” she said.
In regards to Georgia’s newest voting law, S.B. 202, which Abrams has heavily criticized, she told CBS News that “turnout does not disprove suppression, it actually defeats suppression.”
Kemp said the record early voting numbers tell a different story.
“Stacey Abrams have been saying how bad our state is when it comes to election laws,” he said. “And the numbers just don’t prove that.”
Abortion is another flashpoint in the race. A recent CBS News Battleground Tracker poll found that 82% of Democrats say the issue is very important in their vote. In a recent debate, the governor sidestepped whether he would consider additional legislation after enacting a so-called “fetal heartbeat” law.
“It is not my intention to move the abortion debate any further in Georgia,” Kemp said. When asked if that meant he would not pursue any further restrictions to the procedure, he told CBS News, “I’ve been very clear about that issue. My focus is on the future.”
But Abrams said she does not believe him.
“I believe Brian Kemp intends to expand his prohibition on abortion,” Abrams said. “I believe he intends to ban access to certain forms of contraception because he said so.”
The Senate race has also been contentious, with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in a statistical tie, according to recent polls.
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Inflation hurts Democrats on campaign trail
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Inflation hurts Democrats on campaign trail – CBS News
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How to watch 2022 election night results and live coverage
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CBS News will be providing 2022 midterm election night coverage across all of its platforms on Tuesday, Nov. 8, as voters determine control of the U.S. House and Senate as well as a number of governor’s races around the country.
The CBS Television Network, CBS News Streaming Network and CBS Stations will offer in-depth analysis and reporting throughout the day as voters head to the polls. CBS News’ “America Decides: Campaign ’22” election night coverage will begin at 5 p.m. ET on streaming, and will run on CBS television from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET or longer for some stations. Coverage will also continue throughout the evening on the CBS News Streaming Network, available online or by downloading the free CBS News app.
“CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell will anchor coverage from the CBS News studio in Times Square, New York. She will be joined by “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King, CBS News chief political analyst and “Prime Time with John Dickerson” anchor John Dickerson, and “Face the Nation” moderator and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan. Also joining the coverage will be CBS News director of elections and surveys Anthony Salvanto, chief election and campaign correspondent Robert Costa, chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes, chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett, chief national affairs and justice correspondent Jeff Pegues, senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe, congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane and national correspondent and CBS News Streaming anchor Vladimir Duthiers.
For the first time, CBS News will have a “Democracy Desk,” which will examine ongoing threats to American democracy with the journalists and experts at the forefront of the issues, including election law contributor David Becker on efforts in states to make the vote counting process more transparent; Jeff Pegues on how law enforcement is preparing for and dealing with threats to election workers; and Scott MacFarlane on election deniers and the fallout from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Election coverage on the CBS News Streaming Network begins at 7 a.m. ET on Tuesday, anchored by correspondent and CBS News Streaming anchor Anne-Marie Green, and continues with special election-focused political interviews and in-depth reporting by correspondents throughout the day. CBS News political correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns in Washington, D.C., and correspondent Lilia Luciano in New York anchor a special edition of “Red & Blue” and a countdown to results on “America Decides: Campaign ’22” from 5:00 p.m. until 8 p.m. ET.
The first polls close at 6 p.m. ET in Indiana and Kentucky, and the last polls close at 1 a.m. ET in Alaska. CBS News will have correspondents on the ground in battleground states including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. CBS News will also feature live reports and analysis from political reporters at CBS stations across the country.
The latest CBS News Battleground Tracker poll shows Republicans are favored to win control of the House, with Republicans leading in 228 seats. That would constitute a 15-seat gain — lower than average for a party challenging a first-term president in recent history. At that level, the majority line is just on the lower edge of the margin of error for our model.
There are currently five Senate races CBS News considers toss-ups. The Senate is currently split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.
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What happens if a ballot is damaged or improperly marked?
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What happens if a ballot is damaged or improperly marked?
Election workers reconstruct or “duplicate” ballots that are damaged or improperly marked to preserve voters’ intent. This is necessary if a ballot has, say, a coffee stain or tear — or if a voter circled a candidate rather than filled in a bubble to make their selection — and therefore can’t be read by a machine.
While the process might sound strange to those not familiar with election administration, it’s a legitimate and longstanding way to ensure voters have their votes counted, according to experts. It’s also widely used to translate votes cast by those overseas or in the military onto ballots that can be scanned.
The ballot duplication process involves transcribing a voter’s choices from the damaged ballot onto a new, clean ballot that can be scanned and counted. How exactly that process is handled varies across states.
In many cases, it’s done by bipartisan teams of poll workers, said Barry Burden, a political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center at University of Wisconsin-Madison. That’s not the case everywhere, though it’s common that it’s performed by at least two people — even two staff members — said Jennifer Morrell, a partner at The Elections Group, which works with election officials to improve processes.
Many key states in the midterm elections this year — such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — call for the ballot duplication process to be done by individuals representing different political parties.
There are some cases in which mistakes on a ballot can’t simply be corrected because it’s impossible to confirm the voter’s intent. For example, sometimes a voter makes too many selections in a particular contest, or leaves a stray mark that doesn’t clearly indicate their chosen candidate.
The rules for such ballots depend on jurisdiction. In some places, a ballot with a mistake in one race would simply exclude that race, but in other places, none of the voter’s choices would be counted, Burden said in an email. He added that whether the original ballot is destroyed or retained depends on the state.
Experts say the ballot duplication process is generally done in view of the public or poll watchers. Many states also require that the original and ballot duplicates be labeled and assigned corresponding numbers, creating a paper trail between the two.
Distortions about the ballot duplication process have fueled false claims.
In 2020, footage from a publicly available video stream showed Delaware County, Pennsylvania, election workers transcribing votes from damaged ballots to clean ballots for scanning. But social media posts shared cropped footage, which didn’t show the bipartisan observers present, and baselessly alleged the video was proof of voter fraud.
“Ballot duplication is a standard part of the election administration process and has been for many years,” Burden said. “It is essential for many people who vote by mail whose ballots are not readable by machines, including many overseas and military voters who cast ballots by different means that must be copied onto standard paper ballots.”
If a voter makes a mistake or their ballot is damaged before they turn it in, they can also follow the instructions provided by local officials to request a new one, said Tammy Patrick, a senior advisor for the elections program at the nonpartisan Democracy Fund. The original ballot will be nullified and only one will count.
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Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections. And follow the AP’s coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.
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The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at FactCheck@AP.org.
Am I allowed to drop off a ballot for someone else?
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Gavin Newsom says it’s “not the moment” for him to run for president
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom insists he is not interested in running for president, although he’s bought ads in Florida and Texas to troll their GOP governors, elevating his profile ahead of the 2024 election as President Biden weighs whether to run for reelection.
“It’s not my ambition,” the Democrat told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett in an exclusive interview on Saturday. “It’s not the direction that I’m leaning into. It’s not the moment.”
When pressed on whether he could say he will never run for president, Newsom said, “Yeah, I have no interest.”
Newsom said he, unlike some Democrats, wants Mr. Biden to run for reelection.
“I don’t think there’s been two years of more effective policy-making of a modern American president,” Newsom said. “It’s been a masterclass the last two years, not necessarily in effective communication and generating narrative, but in terms of the substance under the circumstance, with all the headwinds, the obfuscation and opposition. I think it’s been remarkable.”
The governor is seeking a second term after surviving a recall election in 2021. Since his reelection race is not close, he’s been directing his efforts elsewhere, like New Mexico, where Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is in a tight race.
Newsom said it feels like a red wave is coming, criticizing his own party’s messaging before the midterm elections next week.
“Look, I can be the cheerleader. I’m also pragmatic,” he said. “You feel it. It’s not just intellectualization based on polling.”
“You feel it,” he continued. “And it goes to my fundamental grievance with my damn party. We’re getting crushed on narrative. We’re going to have to do better in terms of getting on the offense and stop being on the damn defense.”
Democrats have leaned into abortion rights this election cycle at the expense of other issues, while Republicans are “winning the messaging war,” Newsom said.
“It’s remarkable Democrats have done as well as they’ve done under these circumstances,” he said.
Newsom also said a Republican-controlled House, with California Rep. Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, fills him with “fear.”
“What he’s done to aid and abet this notion, the ‘Big Lie,’ sowing doubts around the foundation of our democracy, how he’s aiding and abetting functionally authoritarian leaders across his party,” Newsom said. “That scares the hell out of me.”
McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Arden Farhi contributed reporting.
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Belief in the Ballot: Republicans in Arizona running on claims of election fraud
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It’s the vote that holds America together—belief that with a ballot voices are heard, disputes are addressed and there’s always another chance. Countries without this belief tend to be in bondage or at war. Election Day is coming, but across America belief is under attack. Politicians who say the 2020 election was stolen are running for governor in 19 states; attorney general in 10; and in 12 states, election deniers are running for secretary of state, which would give them power over elections. After two years of investigations and audits no fraud or error has been found in any state that would change the 2020 outcome. But in 2022, spreading doubt has been key to an endorsement from Donald Trump. no state has been more deeply riven by this than Arizona where a split in the GOP has Republicans on opposite sides of a grand canyon.
On one side of the Arizona chasm stands Rusty Bowers, a life-long Republican and artist who became Arizona’s speaker of the House. Bowers told us he was disappointed when Joe Biden won so when President Trump and Rudy Giuliani called, after the election, he was listening.
Rusty Bowers: First Rudy started. He said, “Well, there’s been a lot of fraud all across the country and in Arizona,” and then he listed off large numbers in categories that would be illegal. Dead people, stolen ballots.
Bowers says Giuliani wanted him to hold a vote to revoke Biden’s electors.
Rusty Bowers: And I said, “But Rudy, I want the proof. You’re gonna give me the proof?” And he said, “Yes.”
So, Giuliani and co-counsel Jenna Ellis flew out to meet Bowers.
Scott Pelley: You left the meeting with Rudy Giuliani thinking what?
Rusty Bowers: That I wasn’t happy. I said, “Okay. Timeout. Mr. Giuliani, you said you were going to bring me some proof. Names, et cetera of all of these people. Did you bring me the proof?” And he looked at Jenna Ellis and he said, “Do we have the proof? “And she said, “Yes, we do.” “Well, do you have it with you?” “No. No. I–” “Where is it?” “Well, it might be back at the hotel room.” And I said, “I asked you for the proof. You said you’d bring it. You’re not bringing it. You’re asking me to break my oath and make up something to pull electors and replace electors, which has never been done in the history of the United States. And I’m gonna try that on my state?”
Without Bowers, Giuliani found an ally willing to call the vote criminal, Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem.
Mark Finchem on November 30, 2020: It’s exceedingly hard for me to place a label on what we’ve heard other than racketeering, good ol’ fashioned mobster racketeering.
Four weeks after Mr. Trump’s defeat, Finchem held an unofficial hearing featuring Giuliani.
Rudy Giuliani on November 30, 2020: A conspiracy that was hatched by the crooked leaders of the Democratic Party.
A day of allegations without credible evidence ended with this.
Mark Finchem on November 30, 2020: When Satan wants to extinguish a light, he will stop at nothing. So be on your guard, put on the full armor of God and be prepared to fight.
Mark Finchem fought. And now, the 65-year-old former police officer is the Republican nominee for Arizona secretary of state, which would give him authority over elections.
Mark Finchem on January 15, 2022: Ladies and gentlemen we know it and they know it. Donald Trump won!
But Mark Brnovich does not know it. He’s Arizona’s Republican attorney general who’s investigated for two years and has a word for claims of fraud.
Mark Brnovich: “Horse****” And that’s what it is. Most of it’s horse****. And I’ve been trying to scrape– scrape it off my shoes for the last year.
Brnovich supported Trump, who called him with advice.
Mark Brnovich: He goes, all you gotta do is say the election’s fraudulent, and you will be a superstar. You’ll be the most popular guy in America. And I told him, I said, Mr. President, I didn’t become attorney general to be a star. I brought my star with me. And I don’t need anybody, whether it’s a former president, or any other person validating what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.
What he’s doing is bringing indictments in every 2020 vote fraud case that he can back with evidence. All together, to date, from the general election, Arizona has indicted 12 defendants in cases involving a total of 12 ballots—12—statewide. Biden won arizona by 10,000.
Mark Brnovich: There was no one in this country that wanted to find evidence of fraud more than I did, but I thought it was important to systematically go through and say “no” this is the facts, this is the evidence, everyone is entitled to their own opinions but when you’re an actual prosecutor, when you’re the actual government, there’s a higher obligation you can’t afford to be sloppy.
In addition to Brnovich’s investigations, in 2021, the Republican led state senate audited Phoenix’s Maricopa County, home to 60% of the state vote. The audit was done by a company that had never audited an election. The audit’s hand recount confirmed Joe Biden won. But its report also raised questions about discrepancies it found. Those questions were answered, online in detail, by Maricopa County. Still, widespread fraud is Mark Finchem’s charge.
Mark Finchem on January 5, 2021: When you steal something, that’s not really a win, that’s a fraud.
That was in Washingtonm the day before the attack on the Capitol which finchem describes this way.
Mark Finchem on June 30, 2022: This entire J6 crap was manufactured to create a narrative that there was an assault on the Capitol. This fits into the Marxist ideology of how do you go to one party rule?
Today, Finchem is running neck and neck with his Democratic opponent, Adrian Fontes, who helped lead the 2020 election in Maricopa County.
Adrian Fontes: We are far too divided away from each other, based on lies and conspiracies. And we as election administrators across Arizona have to do a better job showing folks that the system is quite good.
Mark Finchem: I’d like to see a world where it’s easy to vote but hard to cheat
We asked Finchem for credible proof of fraud. He raised, not evidence, but those questions from the state senate audit. Next, Finchem told us about a mysterious post-election e-mail which he featured in a rally.
Mark Finchem on October 9, 2021: Where we had a whistleblower who sent an email not just to the DOJ but to every single legislator saying there’s 34-35 thousand fictitious voters and they’ve been inserted in the system where you’ll never find them. Well, we believe we found them.
In the email Finchem speaks of, a ‘Brian Watson’ said Democrats added bogus votes, electronically, in Pima County. The writer had no evidence, asked not to be contacted and closed his email account.
Scott Pelley: Why would you give this any credence?
Mark Finchem: Again, it’s an open question. I wanna know was there a possibility that this happened? Now we’ve now proven that it happens, Scott.
Scott Pelley: How so?
Mark Finchem: We’ve got two precincts that show over 100% of the people registered to vote in that precinct voted. That is an undeniable fact.
But it is deniable by Pima County, which says no precinct had more votes than voters. Another of Finchem’s frequent points concerns a pair of indictments.
Mark Finchem on September 22, 2022: We have, for example, in Yuma County ballot harvesting and votes. I mean, we’ve got people who were indicted for the very thing that we are talking about right now who pled guilty. And frankly, those votes altered the outcome of Yuma County.
Mark Finchem: Yuma County we’ve actually had indictments and people that have pled guilty to ballot trafficking.
Scott Pelley: How many ballots were involved?
Mark Finchem: I don’t know off the top of my head.
Scott Pelley: It’s four.
Mark Finchem: ‘Kay. Whether it’s four or 4,000, doesn’t matter.
Scott Pelley: It wasn’t the presidential election; it was a primary.
Mark Finchem: Doesn’t matter. It’s a defect in the system.
A miniscule defect. Two women in Yuma County pleaded guilty to collecting four ballots and dropping them in a ballot box. It’s against state law to deposit a ballot that isn’t yours or your family’s.
Scott Pelley: It’s four ballots in a primary.
Mark Finchem: In that instance. In that instance.
Scott Pelley: You have a bigger one?
Mark Finchem: Well, we’ve got information that’s been turned over to the attorney general’s office and you say that there was nothing there. OK. Then I’m gonna have to live with that. But do I know for a fact that there were other ballot trafficking operations around the country and some in Arizona? Yeah, I do.
Scott Pelley: Name one.
Mark Finchem: Yuma County, 25,000 ballots.
Scott Pelley: What happened?
Mark Finchem: Same fingerprints on those ballots for five individuals. So where’d that go? Where’s that evidence? I know it’s been turned over to the attorney general’s office. I know that the FBI field office actually did the prints.
That’s false according to the FBI. Yuma County told us that no one in law enforcement fingerprinted 25,000 ballots. Finchem often says that evidence is with Attorney General Brnovich, implying that something big is coming.
Mark Finchem: In fact, he has a mountain of evidence that’s sitting in his office.
But Brnovich told us his investigation is essentially over.
Mark Brnovich: We, as prosecutors, deal in facts and evidence. And I’m not like the clowns that throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.
Scott Pelley: Clowns?
Mark Brnovich: Clowns. Did I say that? Yes, I think that there are a lot of clowns out there that– they saw what they wanted to see. What is that Simon and Garfunkel line that– “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”? There’s a lotta that going on.
It’s going on in the top Arizona races where the Republican for governor is a denier.
Kari Lake on June 27, 2022: We had a fraudulent election, a corrupt election, and we have an illegitimate president sitting in the White House.
Mark Brnovich: It’s like a giant grift in some ways.
Scott Pelley: A grift, a swindle, is what you’re saying?
Mark Brnovich: Yes.
Scott Pelley: All of these accusations, the case in Yuma—scaremongering. The Brian Watson email—scaremongering. You called Arizona the epicenter of fraud, it’s scaremongering. It’s not the fraud that is breaking people’s faith in our elections, it’s people like you.
Mark Finchem: So you say. But when we look at the violations of state statute, this is the epicenter of the problem.
Nationwide, 190 election deniers are running for the U.S. House and 14 for the U.S. Senate, according to the Brookings Institution. Mark Brnovich lost his primary to a denier and so did Rusty Bowers, which may come as a relief.
Post-election, Trump supporters and conspiracy spinners laid siege to Bowers’ home up to three times a week. He had to fend them off—a man with a pistol—demonstrators in their own armored car.
And at the state capitol, on January 6, 2021, they came with rifles and a guillotine. In Arizona, when belief in the vote eroded, this is what filled the void.
Scott Pelley: Has the Republican Party that you’ve known all your life been hijacked?
Rusty Bowers: It’s a large group of them that is doing the hijacking. I just don’t think it’s a majority. Its effectiveness as a party and its legitimacy in public discourse is grossly undermined by how they’ve acted in this state.
Produced by Aaron Weisz. Associate producer, Ian Flickinger. Broadcast associate, Michelle Karim. Edited by Warren Lustig.
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ICYMI: A look back at Sunday’s 60 Minutes
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<br /> ICYMI: A look back at Sunday’s 60 Minutes – Belief in the Ballot, Pathogen X, David Sedaris – CBS News
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Two Arizona Republicans on their fight for election facts
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In Arizona, the race for the governorship and battle to oversee the state’s elections are tight two weeks from election day. The latest polls indicate that Republican Kari Lake is narrowly leading Democrat Katie Hobbs to become the state’s next governor. Hobbs, Arizona’s current Secretary of State, will be succeeded by either Democrat Adrian Fontes or Republican State Rep. Mark Finchem.
In both races, the Republican nominees disputed the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election on the campaign trail. As 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley reported on Sunday, to date, no credible evidence has been presented in Arizona to substantiate claims of widespread voter fraud.
The person responsible for investigating election fraud allegations in Arizona is Attorney General Mark Brnovich. Brnovich, a lifelong Republican, voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and told 60 Minutes his office thoroughly investigated leads that were sent to his office.
“There was no one in this country who wanted to find evidence of fraud more than I did,” Brnovich said to Pelley. “But I thought it was important to systematically go through and say ‘no’ this is the facts, this is the evidence, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but when you’re an actual prosecutor, when you’re the actual government, there’s a higher obligation—you can’t afford to be sloppy.”
Brnovich told 60 Minutes that his office investigated allegations of: dead people voting, injected votes in Pima county, and many more claims made about the 2020 election. The attorney general said none of the investigations revealed widespread voter fraud in Arizona.
This conclusion was echoed by the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Bill Gates. In his position as chairman, Gates is responsible for helping oversee elections in Arizona’s most populous county. The lifelong Republican told 60 Minutes that election deniers should learn about the vote counting process.
“I’ve no problem with people raising questions,” Gates explained to 60 Minutes. “What I have a problem with is people raising questions in bad faith. And when we clearly answer those questions, and when we debunk those conspiracy theories, those election deniers continue to spread lies. That’s what I have a problem with.”
Following the 2020 Election, Maricopa County hired two companies certified by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission to conduct a forensic audit of the ballot tabulation equipment. They published the independent evaluations online. The audit found that the machines were accurate, never connected to the internet, and showed no evidence of tampering.
In order to establish transparency during the 2022 midterms, the Maricopa County Elections Department has live video feeds for the public to watch the election process unfold. That includes streams of ballot drop boxes and tabulation centers.
Gates told 60 Minutes he wants to avoid an election cycle that bears similarities to 2020 and hopes the transparency measures Maricopa County is taking give people confidence in the accuracy of the 2022 midterms, regardless of the outcome.
“This democracy is in peril,” Gates said. “We need to have an election that people can feel good about and confident. And that’s why my colleagues and I are out here telling the truth, telling the details of our election system. [And] all of the safeguards that we have in place, all of the tests, all of the audits, so that people can have confidence. Because unfortunately, people who don’t know much about elections continue to spread falsehoods, and that is tearing at the foundations of our democracy.”
You can watch Scott Pelley’s full report on the 2022 midterm elections in Arizona below.
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What time do polls close in your state for the 2022 election?
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More than 122 million Americans voted in the 2018 midterm elections, the highest number of voters for a non-presidential year since 1978, according to Pew Research Center. This year, early voting has already started in several states.
In Georgia, the secretary of state’s office says early ballots are being cast at a record pace, with more than one million votes submitted in the first nine days of early voting. “One in five active voters have already gotten their vote in, and we will hit the 2-million-mark next week,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Friday.
Early voting rules vary by state. To learn more about whether you can vote early and how to do it, go to vote.org.
If you are voting on Election Day, poll closing times vary by state. If you are waiting in line when the polls close, stay in line, because you still have the right to vote.
Below is a list of poll closing times in each state on Nov. 8, 2022:
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Biden says of candidate Fetterman: ‘John IS Pennsylvania’
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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — If a president’s most precious commodity is time, there is no place more valuable politically for the White House this midterm year than Pennsylvania.
An energized President Joe Biden returned Friday to the Keystone State, his 15th visit since he took office, this time to attend a fundraiser with Vice President Kamala Harris and other leaders to boost Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman, gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro and other Pennsylvania Democrats.
The president laid out the stakes immediately, cautioning the Nov. 8 midterm elections were “not a referendum, it’s a choice, a choice between two vastly different visions of America.”
“Democracy is on the ballot this year,” he went on. “Along with your right to choose, and your right to privacy. And the amazing thing is they’re saying it out loud.”
The Pennsylvania seat has for months been the most likely pick-up opportunity for Democrats in the evenly-divided Senate, but as prospects darken for Democratic incumbents elsewhere, a win here is becoming an even more urgent insurance policy for the party to cling to Senate control.
“It’s not hyperbole to suggest all eyes are on Pennsylvania,” Biden said.
The White House has showered attention on the Keystone State — Biden’s birthplace — in the final weeks before the election, and officials are preparing for another visit next week. Harris told the crowd the party needs to pick up just two more seats to pass major Democratic agendas on abortion rights and voting rights.
“Two more seats,” Harris said, putting up two fingers. “Just two more seats. One of them, right here.”
The Friday event came three days after Fetterman — recovering from a stroke earlier this year that he says nearly killed him — had a shaky showing in his sole debate against Republican Mehmet Oz. He spoke smoothly before the crowd in his trademark hoodie and jeans, saying he wanted to bring all Americans the same kind of quality health care that saved his life.
“So I may not say everything perfectly sometimes, but I’ll always do the right thing if you send me to Washington, D.C.,” he said to a standing ovation.
The dinner at the Pennsylvania Convention Center is the state party’s biggest fundraiser of the year, and party officials said the $1 million raised is the most ever for the dinner. Attendees included U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, and U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, for whom Biden headlined a virtual fundraiser earlier this week.
In his remarks, Biden focused his attacks against congressional Republicans, honing in on GOP plans to raise prescription drug costs, cut Medicare and Social Security, and pass a nationwide abortion ban. Republicans, if they win, will get rid of the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions, energy tax credits and the corporate minimum tax of 15%, he warned.
“That’s their plan, among other things. It’s reckless, it’s irresponsible, it’ll make inflation much worse. It will badly hurt middle class Americans,” the president said.
In the Senate race, polls show a close race between Fetterman and Oz. The Democrat’s debate performance shocked some viewers and sowed concerns among party leaders. A day later, he delivered a smooth 13-minute stump speech in Pittsburgh as his campaign tried to downplay Tuesday’s performance, saying Fetterman has always been lousy at debates and that the closed-captioning system he used as an aid was faulty.
Ravi Balu, a dentist who is the party’s vice chair in Westmoreland County, in western Pennsylvania, heard from a number of friends who were worried or surprised by Fetterman’s performance. He said he told them that, whatever Fetterman’s lingering issues from the stroke, that he will recover and will always be more “relatable” to regular people than Oz.
“It’s a thing he took a big risk on,” Balu said. “But I also think he got a lot of the sympathy from people.”
The White House stressed again this week that Biden – through his personal conversations with the lieutenant governor – believes Fetterman is physically capable to serve in public office, and cited analyses from independent medical experts who have said his halting speech did not indicate an issue with his cognitive functions.
“John IS Pennsylvania,” Biden said Friday, adding: “John leaves nobody behind.”
Biden viewed parts of the Tuesday night debate and “thought Lt. Governor John Fetterman did great,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in an e-mail Friday.
In the meantime, Fetterman’s campaign and national Democratic groups are directing attention elsewhere and pouring money into TV ads with a debate clip of Oz in which he says “I want women, doctors, local political leaders” to decide the fate of a woman’s right to an abortion.
The statement — which spread rapidly across social media immediately after the debate — was meant to frame Oz’s opposition to a federal ban that would pare back abortion access in Pennsylvania, even though he opposes abortion. But Democrats say it’s proof that Oz wants politicians in doctors’ offices and exam rooms with women.
Biden brought up the moment on Friday, and his puzzled look over the comments were greeted with a huge laugh from the crowd.
“You heard it right: ‘local political leaders,’” he said. “Look the bottom line is this, if Republicans gain control of Congress and pass a national ban on abortion, I will veto it. But if we elect to the Senate two more Democrats and keep control of the house, we’re going to codify Roe v. Wade in January so it’s the law of the land.”
Biden’s approval ratings are sagging in Pennsylvania similarly to the rest of the nation, begging the question of whether his presence is good for Democrats in a year when Republicans have political winds at their back.
But Biden won heavily in 2020 in Philadelphia and its four suburban “collar” counties — including winning over Republican moderates — and that boosted him to victory over former President Donald Trump.
The Democratic president likely remains popular there.
Democratic political strategist Mark Nevins said that energizing voters in Philadelphia and its heavily populated suburbs — home to one in three registered Pennsylvania voters — “is a cornerstone to a Democratic win in Pennsylvania in the Senate race and in the governor’s race, and frankly in some of these suburban races as well.”
Even if there is some debate about whether Biden can help on the campaign trail, “the one area that’s a constant is his ability to help raise funds. Presidents can help there. There’s no debate that they’ll take the help of a president in fundraising in these very costly races,” said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.
Biden also has treated Pennsylvania as something of a home base.
It’s where he spent part of his childhood, it’s where he’s campaigned countless times for himself and other Democrats and it’s where Democrats called him “Pennsylvania’s third senator” during his 36 years in the Senate from next door in Delaware.
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Group can monitor Arizona ballot drop boxes, US judge rules
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PHOENIX (AP) — A federal judge Friday refused to bar a group from monitoring outdoor ballot boxes in Arizona’s largest county where watchers have shown up armed and in ballistic vests, saying to do so could violate the monitors’ constitutional rights.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Liburdi said the case remained open and that the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans could try again to make its argument against a group calling itself Clean Elections USA. A second plaintiff, Voto Latino, was removed from the case.
Liburdi concluded that “while this case certainly presents serious questions, the Court cannot craft an injunction without violating the First Amendment.” The judge is a Trump appointee and a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization.
Local and federal law enforcement have been alarmed by reports of people, including some who were masked and armed, watching 24-hour ballot boxes in Maricopa County — Arizona’s most populous county — and rural Yavapai County as midterm elections near. Some voters have complained alleging voter intimidation after people watching the boxes took photos and videos, and followed voters.
Arizona law states electioneers and monitors must remain 75-foot (23-meter) from a voting location.
“Plaintiffs have not provided the Court with any evidence that Defendants’ conduct constitutes a true threat,” the judge wrote. “On this record, Defendants have not made any statements threatening to commit acts of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”
The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans said it was disappointed.
“We continue to believe that Clean Elections USA’s intimidation and harassment is unlawful,” it said, shortly before filing an appeal.
Liburdi issued his ruling two days after a hearing on the first of two similar cases. The attorney for Clean Elections USA had argued that such a broad restraining order would be unconstitutional.
A second lawsuit involving charges of voter intimidation at drop boxes in Arizona’s Yavapai County has since been merged with the first one.
Sheriff’s deputies are providing security around the two outdoor drop boxes in Maricopa County after a pair of people carrying guns and wearing bulletproof vests showed up at a box in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa. The county’s other 24-hour outdoor drop box is at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in downtown Phoenix, which is now surrounded by a chain link fence.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, has called on voters to immediately report any intimidation to police and file a complaint with his office. Arizona’s secretary of state this week said her office has received six cases of potential voter intimidation to the state attorney general and the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as a threatening email sent to the state elections director.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona has vowed to prosecute any violations of federal law but said local police were at the “front line in efforts to ensure that all qualified voters are able to exercise their right to vote free of intimidation or other election abuses.”
“We will vigorously safeguard all Arizonans’ rights to freely and lawfully cast their ballot during the election,” the office said Wednesday. “As the several election threat-related cases pending federal felony charges from alleged criminal activity arising out of our State show, acts which cross the line will not go unaddressed.”
Tensions were heightened Friday afternoon outside the drop box in Mesa, where one voter drove up on a motorcycle, deposited his ballot, then made an obscene gesture at an Associated Press photographer and a local TV news crew stationed in a parking lot across the street. The journalists identified themselves as working news media to a second man who drove by later in an SUV. He told them he was filming them and would report them to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
Meanwhile, the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, an Arizona state agency, voted unanimously Thursday to have its legal counsel seek a court order if necessary to stop the monitoring group from using the “Clean Elections” name. The commission created in 1998 to provide voters with nonpartisan elections information said it has been barraged with angry calls from people confusing it with the monitoring group.
The second lawsuit that was folded into the first case involves ballot boxes in Arizona’s Yavapai County, where the League of Women Voters alleges voters have been intimidated by Clean Elections USA, along with The Lions of Liberty and the Yavapai County Preparedness team, which are associated with the far-right anti-government group Oath Keepers.
Luke Cilano, a Lions of Liberty board member, said the organization had dropped its “Operation Drop Box” initiative on Wednesday “due to being lumped in with people who don’t adhere to the law and our rules of engagement.”
Cilano said the “official stand down order” to all members was in response to the pending litigation.
“Our goal is not to scare people and keep them from voting,” he said. “We love our country very much.”
Cilano said The Lions of Liberty is in no way associated with Clean Elections USA. He said his group is connected to the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, but the team was not involved in ballot box monitoring.
Similar groups around the United States have embraced a film that has been discredited called “2000 Mules” that claims people were paid to travel among drop boxes and stuff them with fraudulent ballots during the 2020 presidential vote.
There’s no evidence for the notion that a network of Democrat-associated ballot “mules” has conspired to collect and deliver ballots to drop boxes, either in the 2020 presidential vote or in the upcoming midterm elections.
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Associated Press photographer Ross D. Franklin contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections
Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.
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