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Tag: Election 2020

  • Obama, campaigning in Georgia, warns of threats to democracy

    Obama, campaigning in Georgia, warns of threats to democracy

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    COLLEGE PARK, Ga. (AP) — Former President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail Friday in Georgia, using his first stop on a multi-state tour to frame the 2022 midterm elections as a referendum on democracy and to urge voters not to see Republicans as an answer to their economic woes.

    It was a delicate balance, as the former president acknowledged the pain of inflation and tried to explain why President Joe Biden and Democrats shouldn’t take all the blame as they face the prospects of losing narrow majorities in the House and Senate when votes are tallied Nov. 8. But Obama argued that Republicans who are intent on making it harder for people to vote and — like former President Donald Trump — are willing to ignore the results, can’t be trusted to care about Americans’ wallets either.

    “That basic foundation of our democracy is being called into question right now,” Obama told more than 5,000 voters gathered outside Atlanta. “Democrats aren’t perfect. I’m the first one to admit it. … But right now, with a few notable exceptions, most of the GOP and a whole bunch of these candidates are not even pretending that the rules apply to them.”

    With Biden’s approval ratings in the low 40s, Democrats hope Obama’s emergence in the closing weeks of the campaign boosts the party’s slate in a tough national environment. He shared the stage Friday with Sen. Raphael Warnock, who faces a tough reelection fight from Republican Herschel Walker, and Stacey Abrams, who is trying to unseat Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who defeated her narrowly four years ago.

    Obama will travel Saturday to Michigan and Wisconsin, followed by stops next week in Nevada and Pennsylvania.

    For Obama personally, the campaign blitz is an opportunity to do something he was unable to do in two midterms during his presidency: help Democrats succeed in national midterms when they already hold the White House. For his party, it’s an opportunity to leverage Obama’s rebound in popularity since his last midterm defeats in 2014. Their hope is that the former president can sell arguments that Biden, his former vice president, has struggled to land.

    Biden was in Pennsylvania on Friday with Vice President Kamala Harris and plans to be in Georgia next week, potentially in a joint rally with Obama and statewide Democratic candidates. But he has not been welcomed as a surrogate for many Democratic candidates across the country, including Warnock.

    “Obama occupies a rare place in our politics today,” said David Axelrod, who helped shape Obama’s campaigns from his days in the Illinois state Senate through two presidential elections. “He obviously has great appeal to Democrats. But he’s also well-liked by independent voters.”

    Obama tried to show off that reach Friday. The first Black president drew a hero’s welcome from a majority Black audience, and he offered plenty of applause lines for Democrats. But he saved plenty of his argument, especially on the economy, for moderates, independents and casual voters, including a defense of Biden, who Obama said is “fighting for you every day.”

    He called inflation “a legacy of the pandemic,” the resulting supply chain disruption and the Ukraine war’s effects on global oil markets — a sweeping retort to Republican attempts to cast sole blame on Democrats’ spending bills.

    “What is their answer? … They want to give the rich tax cuts,” Obama said of the GOP. “That’s their answer to everything. When inflation is low, let’s cut taxes. When unemployment is high, let’s cut taxes. If there was an asteroid heading toward Earth, they would all get in a room and say, you know what we need? We need tax cuts for the wealthy. How’s that going to help you?”

    Biden has sought to make similar arguments, and was buoyed this week with news of 2.6% economic growth in the third quarter after two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

    Yet Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist, said Obama is better positioned to convince voters who haven’t decided whom to vote for or whether to vote at all.

    “If it’s just a straight-up referendum on Democrats and the economy, then we’re screwed,” Smith said. “But you have to make the election a choice between the two parties, crystallize the differences.”

    Obama, she said, did that in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections “by winning over a lot of working-class white voters and others we don’t always think about as part of the ‘Obama coalition.’”

    Obama left office in January 2017 with a 59% approval rating, and Gallup measured his post-presidential approval at 63% the following year, the last time the organization surveyed former presidents. That’s considerably higher than his ratings in 2010, when Democrats lost control of the House in a midterm election that Obama called a “shellacking.” In his second midterm election four years later, the GOP regained control of the Senate.

    Still, Bakari Sellers, a prominent Democratic commentator, said Obama’s broader popularity shouldn’t obscure how much his “special connection” with Black voters and other non-white voters can help Democrats.

    The Atlanta rally brought Obama together with Warnock, the first Black U.S. senator in Georgia history, and Abrams, who’s vying to become the first Black female governor in American history.

    In Michigan, Obama will campaign in Detroit with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is being challenged by Republican Tudor Dixon, and in Wisconsin he’ll be in Milwaukee with Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, who is trying to oust Republican Sen. Ron Johnson. Each city is where the state’s Black population is most concentrated. Obama’s Pennsylvania swing will include Philadelphia, another city where Democrats must get a strong turnout from Black voters to win competitive races for Senate and governor.

    With the Senate now split 50-50 between the two major parties and Vice President Kamala Harris giving Democrats the deciding vote, any Senate contest could end up deciding which party controls the chamber for the next two years. Among the tightest Senate battlegrounds, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are three where Black turnout could be most critical to Democratic fortunes.

    Axelrod said Obama’s turnabout from his own midterm floggings to being Democrats’ leading surrogate is, in part, a rite of passage for any former president. “Most of them — maybe not President Trump, but most of them — are viewed more favorably after they leave office,” Axelrod said.

    Notably, during Obama’s presidency, former President Bill Clinton was the in-demand heavyweight surrogate, especially for moderates trying to survive Republican surges in 2010 and 2014.

    Axelrod said Obama and Clinton have a similar approach.

    “What Clinton and Obama share is a kind of unique ability to colloquialize complicated political arguments of the time, just talk in common-sense terms,” Axelrod said. “They’re storytellers.”

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    Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

    ___

    This story has been corrected to show Abrams, not Kemp, is trying to unseat the governor.

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  • EXPLAINER: Why does The Associated Press call US elections?

    EXPLAINER: Why does The Associated Press call US elections?

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    Why has The Associated Press tallied votes and declared winners in U.S. elections since the middle of the 19th century? Because no one else does.

    Unlike the case in other democracies, the Founding Fathers didn’t establish a national clearinghouse for counting the vote, and the states all do it a little differently.

    So every U.S. election night, The Associated Press counts the nation’s votes, tallying millions of ballots and determining which candidates have won their races. It’s been done that way since 1848, when the AP declared the election of Zachary Taylor as president.

    Here’s the rundown on the AP’s role in election race calling:

    How did the AP get this job?

    Basically, no one wanted to wait for weeks to find out who won elections.

    The Founding Fathers set up the Electoral College — a series of state elections to pick the president — to empower states in terms of their own elections processes. But they didn’t stand up a centralized entity to count every citizen’s vote.

    Instead, each state determines its own voting rules, laws and procedures, including when polls close, which means counting doesn’t happen all at once.

    “Once we split it into 50 parts, with 50 sets of rules, it’s a big job to try to compile all of that,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. “Especially if you’re aiming to get a timely report out.”

    News organizations began tallying votes themselves, including the AP, which AP Election Decision Editor Stephen Ohlemacher said began with “our own version of the Pony Express,” gathering vote totals from far-flung areas in the 1848 election. As technology evolved, so did that process, with AP eventually transmitting vote counts by teletype to centralized race-calling operations on the East Coast.

    Even in general elections, states used to vote on different days, until the advanced technology of knowing how other places had voted led to the practice of a single Election Day.

    U.S. television networks began doing their own analyses in the 1960 race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, examining data and calling winners one state at a time.

    AP now uses a network of thousands of stringers and vote center clerks who take feeds, scrape official state websites for data and electronically add up votes across the country.

    There is a national elections entity, the Federal Election Commission, which regulates some aspects of federal elections, like administering and enforcing federal campaign finance laws, and financing of federal campaigns. But the FEC has no oversight over election results, laws or vote counting.

    Have there been problems?

    Yes. In 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune famously splayed “Dewey Defeats Truman” across the front page when early numbers made it look like Thomas Dewey was ahead. The tide turned, and President Harry S. Truman defied pollsters by scoring an upset victory.

    In 2000, the major TV networks and the AP called Florida for Democrat Al Gore, relying largely on Election Day polling. As the votes were counted everyone reversed course. The networks declared that Republican George W. Bush had carried the state, only to later retract that decision, too.

    The AP held off on making the second call, deeming the race too close. More than a month later, a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court stopped a recount and locked in Bush’s narrow victory.

    “It was a very tense situation,” Ohlemacher said. “Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to not make a call.”

    By two decades later, the AP’s process had further evolved, and in 2020, the AP was 99.9% accurate in all the race calls it made and perfect in declaring winners in the presidential and congressional races in each state.

    Does anyone want to change this?

    There were criticisms after the contentious 2020 presidential election, which saw challenges to the results from then-President Donald Trump and his allies in a number of states where he lost. After the AP and the major networks called the presidential race for Democrat Joe Biden, Trump tweeted: “Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be?”

    Touting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the days after the election, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani pointed out that the media have no official role in deciding who becomes the U.S. president.

    That’s true, but it doesn’t appear there are any major moves to change that system.

    And while control of the U.S. House and Senate are hotly contested in this year’s midterm elections, the fact that a presidential race isn’t on the ballot could alleviate concerns about the media’s role, Edmonds said.

    “The question about who will control the House or Senate, that almost rises to the level of who will be elected president, though,” he said.

    There are still formalities after counts and calls

    Winners may have been called, and concessions may — or may not — have been made, but voting itself is over when polls close on Election Day. There’s still more work to do, as local election officials count and verify results through the canvass and certification process.

    That means that race calls are made before results are official. But the AP only declares a winner when it’s certain that the candidate who’s ahead in the count can’t be caught.

    ___

    Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

    ___

    Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

    Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

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  • Biden says of candidate Fetterman: ‘John IS Pennsylvania’

    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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  • Biden zeroes in on economic message as campaign winds down

    Biden zeroes in on economic message as campaign winds down

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    SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — President Joe Biden zeroed in Thursday on economic issues as he fine-tuned his closing argument in upstate New York for voters trying to cope with raging inflation and fears of a recession heading into the Nov. 8 election.

    Biden’s visits to a congressional battleground in Syracuse and then to Philadelphia on Friday are part of a strategic two-step crafted for a persistently unpopular president: promote his administration’s accomplishments at official White House events while saving the overt campaigning for states where his political power can directly bolster Democratic candidates.

    The White House of late has paid outsize attention to Pennsylvania, where Democrats are aggressively contesting a Republican-held Senate seat to help offset potential losses in other marquee Senate races.

    “The previous president left a string of broken promises in places like Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio, where promised investments in jobs and manufacturing never materialized,” Biden said, criticizing former President Donald Trump and Republicans for their economic policies. “On my watch, ‘Made in America’ isn’t just a slogan, it’s a reality.”

    Biden got a boost on the news Thursday that the economy grew at a better-than-expected 2.6% annual rate from July through September, overcoming inflation and interest rates and snapping two straight quarters of economic contraction.

    “For months, doomsayers have been arguing that the U.S. economy is in a recession and congressional Republicans have been rooting for a downturn,” Biden said in a statement. “But today we got further evidence that our economic recovery is continuing to power forward. This is a testament to the resilience of the American people.”

    Biden jogged over to reporters before he left for New York and said it was a “Great economic report today – GDP report — things are looking good.”

    In Syracuse, Biden showcased a significant investment by the U.S.-based company Micron, one of the largest microchip manufacturers in the world. The company has credited a new law boosting domestic production of semiconductors for its new facility that will create 50,000 jobs, which will pay an average of $100,000 a year.

    “This is going to be massive,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told Biden, showing off a model of what the facility would look like in 20 years. “This is going to be the largest investment in semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.”

    Biden called it the “largest American investment of its kind, ever, ever, ever in our history” and said the announcement was “the latest example of my economic plan at work.”

    He warned against GOP proposals that he said would raise drug prices for older people and cut taxes on corporations. Biden also cited comments by Republicans suggesting they would use the debt limit as leverage in negotiations with the White House should they retake the majority in Congress.

    “They’re determined to cut Social Security, Medicare and they’re willing to take down the economy over it,” Biden said.

    Publicly, the White House and senior Democratic leaders express optimism that they’ll defy traditional midterm headwinds and retain control of Congress. But in private, there is angst that the House will be lost to Republicans and that control of the Senate is a coin flip.

    It’s a position that Democrats point out is far more favorable than earlier in the election cycle — particularly before the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade ended constitutional protections for abortion and upended the political landscape — yet many in the party are nonetheless bracing for the loss of at least one chamber.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was captured on camera Thursday delivering a mixed assessment of the Senate map to Biden when he landed in Syracuse, expressing optimism about Nevada and the situation in Pennsylvania after John Fetterman’s debate performance Monday set off alarm bells among national Democrats. But Schumer raised his concerns about the state of the race in Georgia.

    “It looks like the debate didn’t hurt us too much in Pennsylvania as of today, so that’s good, and basically we’re picking up steam in Nevada,” Schumer was heard telling Biden. “The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia. It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker.”

    But Schumer added that Democrats were performing well in early voting in Georgia, where incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock is aiming to hold off the Trump-backed challenger.

    The president has had a steady uptick in travel in recent weeks, although he has avoided states such as Nevada and Arizona in which Democratic candidates prefer not to be tagged with the national party brand. He has appeared with a smattering of vulnerable House Democrats at official White House events in California and New York and raised campaign cash for candidates in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Oregon, as well as millions of dollars for the Democratic National Committee at fundraisers in Washington and elsewhere. He held a trio of virtual fundraisers Wednesday night for congressional candidates in Iowa, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

    A reception scheduled for Friday in Philadelphia with the state Democratic Party, which Vice President Kamala Harris will also attend, will mark Biden’s 15th visit to Pennsylvania during his presidency. Plans for a joint appearance in the state with former President Barack Obama are in the works for next week.

    Also next week, Biden is scheduled to headline a political rally Tuesday in Florida. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist has been publicly encouraging the president to campaign with him in a state that has increasingly trended toward Republicans in recent election cycles.

    Biden sought to use the Micron event to hammer home a closing message aimed at framing the contrast between the two parties’ economic agendas — an argument that the president began sketching out at a Democratic National Committee event earlier this week.

    “Everybody wants to make it a referendum, but it’s a choice between two vastly different visions for America,” Biden said of the midterms. “Democrats are building a better America for everyone with an economy that grows from the bottom up and the middle out, where everyone does well. Republicans are doubling down on their mega MAGA trickle-down economics that benefits the very wealthy.”

    He continued: “It failed their country before and will fail it again if they win.”

    In recent weeks, Biden has used the presidential bully pulpit considerably to promote Democratic accomplishments. But there’s some concern among Democrats that voters are not connecting economic growth in their communities often enough to what a Democratic-controlled government has completed during the first two years of Biden’s presidency.

    “I think we have to be far more aggressive,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. “We’re actually bringing jobs back, but we’re not going out enough and acknowledging people’s anger and fear and say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing.’”

    The Syracuse area is home to a House race for a seat being vacated by moderate Republican Rep. John Katko, a critical pickup opportunity for Democrats in a district that Biden won by more than 7 percentage points in 2020. Biden’s visit could also give a boost to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose reelection contest against Republican Lee Zeldin has tightened in recent weeks.

    Cabinet officials are fanning out nationwide to promote the administration’s economic message. For instance, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen traveled to Cleveland on Thursday to talk about Biden’s manufacturing agenda with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. The retirement of his Republican colleague, Sen. Rob Portman, has led to another critical Senate race, this one between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Ryan.

    According to a White House tally, through Friday, members of Biden’s Cabinet will have gone to 29 states and Puerto Rico on 77 separate trips, with about half focused on amplifying Biden’s economic message.

    —

    AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms.

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  • How do states ensure dead people’s ballots aren’t counted?

    How do states ensure dead people’s ballots aren’t counted?

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    How do states ensure dead people’s ballots aren’t counted?

    Election officials regularly check death records. In many states, vital statistics agencies send them monthly lists of people who have died, which officials use to update voter registration files.

    Election clerks may also check for voter deaths through other means, such as coordinating with motor vehicle departments to track canceled driver’s licenses, searching for published obituaries or processing letters from the deceased person’s estate.

    Even if a dead voter’s ballot mistakenly gets mailed, signature verification and voter fraud laws create additional safeguards against anyone else filling it out and submitting it. Voters who forge dead relatives’ signatures on ballots can face fines, probation or prison. And in some states, absentee voting requirements such as witness signatures or notarization add an extra barrier to prevent this rare form of voter fraud.

    After the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump and his supporters claimed thousands of votes had been cast fraudulently on behalf of dead voters, even naming specific deceased people whose ballots were supposedly counted.

    But these claims, which spread in many states including Arizona, Virginia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, were found to be false.

    When Arizona’s attorney general investigated claims that 282 dead people’s ballots were cast in 2020, he found just one case was substantiated.

    When Republican lawmakers in Michigan investigated a list of over 200 supposedly dead voters in Wayne County, they found just two. The first was due to a clerical error in which a son had been confused with his dead father and the second involved a 92-year-old woman who had submitted her ballot early, then died four days before the election.

    Whether or not a vote like hers counts depends on state law.

    At least 11 states — nine by statute and two based on attorney general opinions — prohibit counting votes from absentee voters who cast a ballot, then die before Election Day, while nine states specifically allow it, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Other states are silent on the matter.

    Election integrity groups scouring voter files often mistake a living voter for a deceased voter if they have similar names, birthdays or hometowns, resulting in false fraud claims, said Jason Roberts, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    “You might think it’s weird that someone with the same name and the same date of birth died, but it’s actually not that strange when you think about a 350 million person country,” Roberts said. “It happens a lot.”

    There are occasional instances of voter fraud by impersonating a dead person. For example, a Las Vegas man admitted voting his dead wife’s ballot in 2020 and received a fine and probation for the crime. A Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty to voting his dead mother’s ballot in 2020 was sentenced to five years of probation.

    However, Roberts said, only a handful of people try this type of fraud each election, making it “very, very rare.”

    ___

    The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at FactCheck@AP.org. Read more here:

    How are mail-in and absentee ballots verified?

    Am I allowed to drop off a ballot for someone else?

    Can noncitizens vote in U.S. elections?

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  • Jan. 6 trial highlights missed warnings before Capitol siege

    Jan. 6 trial highlights missed warnings before Capitol siege

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — In a telephone call days after the 2020 election, Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes urged followers to go to Washington and fight to keep President Donald Trump in office.

    A concerned member of the extremist group began recording because, as he would later tell jurors in the current seditious conspiracy trial of Rhodes and four associates, it sounded as if they were “going to war against the United States government.”

    That Oath Keeper contacted the FBI, but his tip was filed away. He was only interviewed after Rhodes’ followers stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

    The defendants are charged with plotting to stop the transfer of presidential power, and their trial is raising more questions about intelligence failures in the days before the riot that appear to have allowed Rhodes’ anti-government group and other extremists to mobilize in plain sight.

    “You don’t have to have been invited to a secret meeting of the Oath Keepers … to know that the Oath Keepers presented a threat,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program.

    It’s unclear to what extent authorities were tracking Rhodes and his militia group before Jan. 6. But it has since become apparent that authorities had plenty of intelligence warning that some Trump supporters were planning an assault to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

    Despite that, police left unprepared on the front lines were quickly overwhelmed by the mob that engaged in hand-to-hand combat with officers, smashed windows and poured into the Capitol.

    Additional details emerged this month when the House committee investigating the attack disclosed messages showing that the Secret Service was aware of plans for Jan. 6 violence.

    Jurors in the Washington trial, which is expected to last several more weeks, have received a trove of evidence from prosecutors. That includes Rhodes’ secretly recorded call on Nov. 9, 2020, encrypted messages and surveillance footage from the Virginia hotel where the Oath Keepers stashed weapons for a “quick reaction force” that could quickly run guns into the capital if they were needed.

    Much of the evidence, however, has come in the form of statements and writings that Rhodes made publicly in the weeks before Jan. 6. They show how the former U.S. Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate was openly broadcasting his desire to overturn the election and threatening possible violence to attain that goal.

    Days after the election on Nov. 3, 2020, Rhodes announced on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ “Infowars” show that his group was already mobilizing to stop the transfer of power.

    “We have men already stationed outside of D.C. as a nuclear option in case they attempt to remove the president illegally, we will step in and stop it,” Rhodes said.

    Jurors also watched video of a speech Rhodes gave in December 2020 in Washington, where thousands of Trump supporters came to rally behind the then-president’s election lies. Rhodes urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives presidents wide discretion to decide when military force is necessary, to call up a militia and “drop the hammer” on the “traitors.”

    “He needs to know from you that you are with him, that if he does not do it now while he is commander in chief, we’re going to have to it ourselves later, in a much more desperate, much more bloody war. Let’s get it on now while he is still commander in chief,” Rhodes told the crowd.

    That day, Rhodes attracted the attention of a U.S. Capitol Police special agent who was doing counter-surveillance monitoring and had recently read a news article about the group. Rhodes was wearing a black cowboy hat, an eyepatch and an expired congressional badge from when he was a staffer for then-U.S. Rep. Ron Paul in the late 1990s. The agent took a photo and sent it to colleagues. Rhodes was also wearing a black cowboy as he roamed the exterior of the Capitol building as Oath Keepers entered on Jan. 6.

    Two weeks before the Capitol riot, Rhodes published an open letter to Trump on the Oath Keepers’ website, suggesting that his followers may need to “take to arms” if Trump doesn’t act over what he viewed as a stolen election.

    Rhodes and his associates are the first Jan. 6 defendants to stand trial on seditious conspiracy charges. On trial with Rhodes are Thomas Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia; Kenneth Harrelson of Titusville, Florida; Jessica Watkins of Woodstock, Ohio; and Kelly Meggs of Dunnellon, Florida.

    Abdullah Rasheed, the Oath Keeper member who recorded Rhodes’ call on Nov. 9, 2020, told jurors that that he tried to reach out to the FBI and others to share his concerns about Rhodes’ rhetoric. When asked whether anyone called him back, Rasheed responded: “Yeah, after it all happened.”

    An FBI agent acknowledged on the stand that the bureau first received a tip about the call in November 2020. Pressed by a defense lawyer about why the FBI didn’t investigate at the time, another agent said the FBI receives thousands of tips a day. The tip wasn’t ignored, but was “filed away for possible future reference,” the agent said.

    The Nov. 9 call appears to have been to discuss plans for a “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington that would happen days later, not the Jan. 6 insurrection. But Rhodes throughout the meeting repeatedly tells his followers to prepare for violence, instructing them at one point to make sure Trump knows they are “willing to die for this country.”

    Defense lawyers are not challenging many of the facts in the case, but say prosecutors have twisted the defendants’ intent. The lawyers have acknowledged the group had a “quick reaction force” stationed outside of Washington, but say it was a defensive force to be used only in the event of attacks from left-wing antifa activists or if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act.

    The defense team has hammered on prosecutors’ lack of evidence of any specific plan to attack the Capitol before Jan. 6. Rhodes’ lawyers say their client will testify that all his actions were in anticipation of Trump calling up a militia under the Insurrection Act. Trump never did that, but Rhodes’ lawyers say what prosecutors have alleged is seditious conspiracy was merely lobbying a president to use a U.S. law.

    Prosecutors recently showed jurors jurors a map pointing to where Rhodes made several stops to purchase guns and other gear on his trip from Texas to Washington before the riot. He spent thousands of dollars on weapons, including a AR-rifle, ammunition, sights, mounts and other items, according to records shown to jurors.

    Rhodes and the others are not charged with violating gun laws. Authorities have acknowledged there is no evidence that any of the weapons stashed at the Virginia hotel that housed the “quick reaction force” were brought into the District of Columbia.

    “So the armed rebellion was unarmed?” defense lawyer James Bright asked an agent.

    “The armed rebellion was not over,” the agent responded.

    _____

    Richer reported from Boston. Associated Press reporter Michael Kunzelman contributed to this report.

    ___

    For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege

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  • Biden juggling long list of issues to please Dem coalition

    Biden juggling long list of issues to please Dem coalition

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden wants to tame inflation. He wants Congress to protect access to abortions. He wants to tackle voting rights. And he’s taking on China, promoting construction of new factories, addressing climate change, forgiving student debt, pardoning federal marijuana convictions, cutting the deficit, working to lower prescription drug prices and funneling aid to Ukraine.

    Biden is trying to be everything to everyone. But that’s making it hard for him to say he’s focused on any single issue above all others as he tries to counter Republican momentum going into the Nov. 8 elections.

    “There’s no one thing,” Biden said Wednesday when questioned about his top priority. “There’s multiple, multiple, multiple issues, and they’re all important. … We ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. You know, that old expression.”

    Biden’s exhaustive to-do list is a recognition that the coalition of Democratic voters he needs to turn out Election Day is diverse in terms of race, age, education and geography. This pool of voters has an expansive list of overlapping and competing interests on crime, civil rights, climate change, the federal budget and other issues.

    The Republican candidates trying to end Democratic control of Congress have a far more uniform base of voters, allowing them to more narrowly direct messaging on the economy, crime and immigration toward white voters, older voters, those without a college degree and those who identify as Christian.

    In the 2020 election, AP VoteCast suggests, Biden drew disproportionate support from women, Black voters, voters younger than 45, college graduates and city dwellers and suburbanites. That gave Biden a broader base of support than Republican Donald Trump and it also is a potential long-term advantage for Democrats as the country is getting more diverse and better educated.

    But in midterm elections that normally favor the party not holding the White House, it requires Biden to appeal to all those constituencies.

    “Coherence and cohesion have always been a challenge for the modern Democratic Party that relies on a coalition that crosses racial, ethnic, religious and class lines,” said Daniel Cox, a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “It takes considerable political talent to maintain a coalition with diverse interests and backgrounds. Barack Obama managed to do it, but subsequent Democrats have struggled.”

    Biden devoted his public remarks this past Tuesday to abortion, Wednesday to gasoline prices, Thursday to infrastructure and Friday to deficit reduction, student debt forgiveness and historically Black colleges and universities. In most of his public speeches, Biden says he understands the pain caused by consumer prices rising 8.2% from a year ago and that he’s working to lower costs.

    Cox said there are signs that Biden’s 2020 coalition is fracturing, with younger liberal voters not that enamored with him, and he does not appear to have done much to shore up Hispanic support.

    But compared with 2016, when Trump won the presidency, Biden made relative progress with one prominent bloc that generally favors Republicans: white voters without a college degree, as he won 33% of their votes compared with 28% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to a 2021 analysis by the Pew Research Center.

    Keeping those voters in the Democratic coalition could be essential for maintaining control of the Senate.

    Biden has traveled repeatedly to Pennsylvania, campaigning on Thursday for Senate nominee John Fetterman with the goal of picking up a seat in the state. Fetterman, with his sweatshirts and shorts, exudes a blue-collar image, a contrast with the Republican nominee, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who rose to fame as a TV show host.

    “Democrats need to hold on to as much of that bloc as possible, especially in key whiter states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

    The test for Democrats is how to address broader concerns about the economy and inflation that affect everyone, while also highlighting the specific issues that could energize various segments of their base.

    That can involve trade-offs.

    As Republicans have made crime a national issue, Biden’s message that he backs the police could help with those white voters. But it could also turn off younger voters in Senate races in Georgia and Florida who believe the police are part of the problem on civil rights, said Alvin Tillery Jr., a professor at Northwestern University and director of its Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy.

    Tillery said he doesn’t know how the president can bridge those differences, though Biden could be in a better position to focus on the policing overhaul that Democrats tried to negotiate with Republicans — only to be unable to reach a consensus that would be able to clear a GOP filibuster.

    “Maybe they’ve blunted some Republican attacks, but they’ve also softened support for people who turned out for them in the 2020 election,” Tillery said. “I don’t know how they solve for that, except to say they need to be more vigorous in saying the things they wanted to achieve were blocked in the Senate.”

    Tillery added the overarching challenge might be that people view inflation as a domestic phenomenon, rather than a global one. Republicans are blaming high prices on Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief from 2021, whereas recent months have also shown that inflation is a worldwide trend driven in part by the aftermath of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, causing prices for energy and food to rise.

    “The reality is — like all presidents — he is a victim of things beyond his control,” Tillery said. “Inflation is a problem globally. It’s much worse in other parts of the world, but he can’t message that way.”

    ___

    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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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

    ___

    Ad misleads on treaty regulating global arms trade

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden just announced that he is adding the U.S. as a signatory to the United Nations “Small Arms Treaty,” which would “establish an international gun control registry” in which other countries can “track the ‘end user’ of every rifle, shotgun, and handgun sold in the world.”

    THE FACTS: There is no “U.N. Small Arms Treaty.” A separate U.N. agreement, the Arms Trade Treaty, regulates the international trade of a range of weapons, but does not track domestic gun sales. The false claim about an “international gun control registry” was shared in a Facebook advertisement by a gun rights group stoking fears about threats to the Second Amendment. The group, the “American Firearms Association,” claims in its Facebook ad that Biden “has just announced that he is adding America as a signatory to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty, setting the stage for a full ratification vote in the U.S. Senate.” “The U.N. Small Arms Treaty would establish an international gun control registry, allowing Communist China, European socialists, and 3rd World dictators to track the ‘end user’ of every rifle, shotgun, and handgun sold in the world,” continues the post, which links to a petition asking for users’ contact information. The post calls on supporters of the Second Amendment to oppose the treaty. But there is no treaty called the “U.N. Small Arms Treaty,” and the treaty that is being referenced does not record private gun sales in any country, experts say. The actual treaty, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, deals not only with small arms such as rifles and pistols, but battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships and more, the AP has reported. The U.N. in 2013 adopted the treaty to keep weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists and human rights violators. The treaty prohibits countries that ratify it from exporting conventional weapons if they violate arms embargoes, or if they promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. It does encourage its parties to maintain national records regarding exports of conventional arms and says such records should include the “end user.” But that’s a recommendation about recording exports that a country makes to another country, not gun sales to individuals within a country, said Jennifer Erickson, an associate professor of political science and international studies at Boston College. Experts note that the treaty was written to explicitly make clear it has no bearing on domestic gun rights or sales. The treaty’s preamble, for example, states that the agreement is “Reaffirming the sovereign right of any State to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory, pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system.” The U.N. has “no gun control registry in terms of private ownership, whatsoever,” Erickson said. Erickson said the U.S. government already uses “end-use” monitoring by recording where it sends weapons. “There is only in the Arms Trade Treaty a focus on cross-border transfers, so not domestic sales or ownership,” said Rachel Stohl, vice president of research programs at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank focused on international security. “It’s really looking at sales between governments. And it applies to the entire range of conventional weapons, not just small arms and light weapons.” The U.S. signed the treaty in 2013, though the Senate never ratified it — which means the country is a signatory of the agreement, but not an official party and bound by it. In 2019, Trump announced that he was revoking the country’s status as a signatory, though that move was symbolic. The U.N. still lists the U.S. as a signatory to the treaty, though in a footnote online it acknowledges that, in a July 2019 communication, the U.S. said it did not intend to become a party to the treaty and that it has no legal obligations in relation to it. Contrary to the ad’s claim, Biden has not yet taken any action to reverse the U.S.’s public position on the treaty, Stohl said. An inquiry to one of the directors of the American Firearms Association was not immediately returned.

    — Associated Press writer Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia contributed this report.

    Baseless claims about safety of mRNA vaccines circulate online

    CLAIM: Humans and other mammals injected with an mRNA vaccine die within five years.

    THE FACTS: There is no scientific evidence to suggest humans or other mammals given an mRNA vaccine die within five years, experts told the AP. Social media users are reviving concerns that mRNA-based vaccines, including those that are used to combat COVID-19, are extremely deadly. “No mammal injected with mRNA has ever survived longer than 5 years. The die-off has begun,” one user on Twitter wrote in a post that’s been liked or shared more than 17,000 times. But there’s no scientific proof that the mRNA vaccination shortens life expectancy or has led to mass die offs in humans or other mammals since research began on them decades ago, experts told the AP “Nothing of the scale suggested has happened,” Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told the AP. “The vast majority of the millions who have been injected are doing just fine.” Vaccines utilizing messenger RNA, or mRNA, teach cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response that protects a person from becoming seriously ill from a disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The molecule was first discovered in the early 1960s and research into its uses in medical treatment progressed into the 1970s and 1980s, according to Johns Hopkins University’s School of Public Health. A flu vaccine based on mRNA was tested on mice in the 1990s, but the first vaccines for rabies and influenza weren’t tested on humans until recently. Kuritzkes said no deaths from those vaccines were reported in those trials. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people worldwide have been inoculated against COVID-19 in the last couple of years and reports of death after vaccination remain rare. Healthcare providers are required to report any death after a COVID-19 shot to the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. More than 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S. from December 2020 through last week, according to the CDC. During that time, there have been more than 16,500 preliminary reports of death, or 0.0027% of those that have received a COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, the CDC has identified just nine deaths causally associated with rare blood clots caused by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is not mRNA based like those produced by Pfizer and Moderna. Kuritzkes also notes that mRNA only lasts in the body for a short period of time before rapidly degrading, making it unlikely that it would cause long term effects. “The fact that we’re just now getting to the five-year mark for some of the earliest studies is not evidence that people die from the vaccines,” he said. “Just evidence that five years have yet to elapse for many trials. Sort of like saying nobody who voted in the 2020 presidential election has lived more than five years.”

    — Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.

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    Video of traffic at the Finnish-Russian border misrepresented

    CLAIM: Video shows lines of cars waiting at the Russian-Finnish border after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of reservists on Wednesday amid the war in Ukraine.

    THE FACTS: The video was filmed at the Vaalimaa border crossing point between Russia and Finland on Aug. 29, weeks before Putin announced the partial mobilization of Russian reservists to Ukraine. Following Putin’s announcement, social media users misrepresented a video showing traffic at the border crossing point in Finland, about a three hour drive from St. Petersburg, Russia. The original video, which was posted to YouTube and TikTok on Sept. 19, shows a long line of cars at the border crossing point. Social media users then took the clip out of context, falsely claiming that it captured Russians fleeing to Finland. “#Breaking: just in – The traffic jam at the border with#Russia/#Finland has pilled up to 35KM and is rising by the hour, it is the only border who is still open for Russian civilians with shengen visas, after#Putin announced he will send 300.000 new troops to#Ukraine,” a tweet with more than 2.7 million views falsely claimed. Igor Parri, the TikTok user who posted the original video confirmed to The Associated Press in an email that he filmed it on Aug. 29. He sent the AP the original video to verify that he filmed it and noted that the video “was just depicting the quite typical line” at the border. The Finish border authority on Wednesday publicly responded to the claims circulating widely on social media, noting that traffic conditions at the border remained normal. “Situation at Finnish Russian border is normal, both at green border and in border traffic,” Matti Pitkäniitty, a senior official with the Finnish border authority wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. “Just talked to our officers in charge. There is normal queuing in border traffic…” Pitkäniitty then tweeted on Thursday that traffic from Russia was at a “higher level than usual,” but was comparable to weekend traffic. In a statement to reporters on Thursday, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said that the country was considering ways to reduce Russian transit to Finland, after Putin’s announcement. Putin’s announcement on Wednesday sparked anti-war demonstrations across the country that resulted in almost 1,200 arrests, the AP reported. Some Russians rushed to buy plane tickets to flee the country.

    ___

    Florida ranks 48th in teacher pay, not 9th

    CLAIM: When the Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took office, Florida ranked 26th in the nation for teacher pay. Today the state ranks 9th in teacher pay.

    THE FACTS: Florida most recently ranked 48th in the nation in average public school teacher pay and was ranked 47th when DeSantis took office, according to the National Education Association, which compiles the data annually. The Florida Republican Party misled social media users this month when it posted on its verified Twitter and Facebook accounts that the state was among the best in the nation for teacher pay. “When Governor DeSantis took office Florida ranked 26th in the nation for teacher pay, today we are 9th,” the party wrote. “Every year he fights to ensure Florida teachers get the support and funding they need.” However, national salary data contradicts those numbers. The National Center for Education Statistics and several other online sources for such data get their salary information from the NEA, the nation’s largest teacher’s union, which compiles most of its data from state education departments. NEA data shows that in the 2018-2019 school year, when DeSantis entered office, Florida ranked 47th in the nation for average public school teacher pay, giving teachers an average annual salary of $48,314. It ranked 48th in the 2020-2021 school year, giving teachers an average of $51,009. The state is estimated to continue to rank 48th for the 2021-2022 school year, according to Staci Maiers, an NEA spokesperson. The governor’s press office in a news release in March touted the 9th-in-the-nation ranking, but referred to starting salary, rather than average teacher salary. “In 2020, the average starting salary for a teacher in Florida was $40,000 (26th in the nation), and with today’s funding, it will now be at least $47,000 (9th in the nation),” the release said. Those numbers also aren’t an exact match for the NEA’s data, which show that in the 2019-2020 school year, Florida ranked 29th in the nation for average public school teacher starting salary, according to Maiers. Estimates for the 2020-2021 school year show Florida ranking 16th in the nation on this benchmark. And based on the data from that school year, which is the most recent data available, a $47,000 starting salary would place Florida at 11th in the nation, not 9th. Cassandra Palelis, press secretary for the Florida Department of Education, explained that the press release from March featured previous data from the NEA, which was later updated. She said Florida’s estimated starting salary for the 2022-2023 school year is more than $48,000 per year, which would rank 9th in the nation according to NEA data. The Florida Republican Party didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment.

    — Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

    ___

    Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck

    ___

    Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck

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  • Jan. 6 panel subpoenas Trump, shows startling new video

    Jan. 6 panel subpoenas Trump, shows startling new video

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee voted unanimously Thursday to subpoena former President Donald Trump, demanding his personal testimony as it unveiled startling new video and described his multi-part plan to overturn his 2020 election loss, which led to his supporters’ fierce assault on the U.S. Capitol.

    With alarming messages from the U.S. Secret Service warning of violence and vivid new video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders pleading for help, the panel showed the raw desperation at the Capitol. Using language frequently seen in criminal indictments, the panel said Trump had acted in a “premeditated” way ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, despite countless aides and officials telling him he had lost.

    Trump is almost certain to fight the subpoena and decline to testify. On his social media outlet he blasted members for not asking him earlier — though he didn’t say he would have complied — and called the panel “a total BUST.”

    “We must seek the testimony under oath of January 6′s central player,” said Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the committee’s vice chair, ahead of the vote.

    In the committee’s 10th public session, just weeks before the congressional midterm elections, the panel summed up Trump’s “staggering betrayal” of his oath of office, as Chairman Bennie Thompson put it, describing the then-president’s unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

    While the effort to subpoena Trump may languish, more a nod to history than an effective summons, the committee has made clear it is considering whether to send its findings in a criminal referral to the Justice Department.

    In one of its most riveting exhibits, the panel showed previously unseen footage of congressional leaders phoning for help during the assault as Trump refused to call off the mob.

    Pelosi can be seen on a call with the governor of neighboring Virginia, explaining as she shelters with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and others that the governor of Maryland has also been contacted. Later, the video shows Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP leaders as the group asks the Defense Department for help.

    “They’re breaking the law in many different ways,” Pelosi says at one point. “And quite frankly, much of it at the instigation of the president of the United States.”

    The footage also portrays Vice President Mike Pence — not Trump — stepping in to help calm the violence, telling Pelosi and the others he has spoken with Capitol Police, as Congress plans to resume its session that night to certify Biden’s election.

    The video was from Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker.

    In never-before-seen Secret Service messages, the panel produced evidence that extremist groups provided the muscle in the fight for Trump’s presidency, planning weeks before the attack to send a violent force to Washington.

    The Secret Service warned in a Dec. 26, 2020, email of a tip that members of the right-wing Proud Boys planned to outnumber the police in a march in Washington on Jan. 6.

    “It felt like the calm before the storm,” one Secret Service agent wrote in a group chat.

    To describe the president’s mindset, the committee presented new and previously seen material, including interviews with Trump’s top aides and Cabinet officials — including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia — in which some described the president acknowledging he had lost.

    Ex-White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin said Trump once looked up at a television and said, “Can you believe I lost to this (expletive) guy?”

    Cabinet members also said in interviews shown at the hearing that they believed that once legal avenues had been exhausted, that should have been the end of Trump’s efforts to remain in power.

    “In my view, that was the end of the matter,” Barr said of the Dec. 14 vote of the Electoral College.

    But rather than the end of Trump’s efforts, it was only the beginning — as the president summoned the crowd to Washington on Jan. 6.

    The panel showed clips of Trump at his rally near the White House that day saying the opposite of what he had been told. He then tells supporters he will march with them to the Capitol. That never happened.

    “There is no defense that Donald Trump was duped or irrational,” said Cheney. “No president can defy the rule of law and act this way in our constitutional republic, period.”

    Thursday’s hearing opened at a mostly empty Capitol complex, with most lawmakers at home campaigning. Several people who were among the thousands around the Capitol on Jan. 6 are now running for congressional office, some with Trump’s backing. Police officers who fought the mob filled the hearing room’s front row.

    The House panel said the insurrection at the Capitol was not an isolated incident but a warning of the fragility of the nation’s democracy in the post-Trump era.

    “None of this is normal,” Cheney said.

    Along with interviews, the committee is drawing on the trove of 1.5 million pages of documents it received from the Secret Service, including an email from Dec. 11, 2020, the day the Supreme Court rejected one of the main lawsuits Trump’s team had brought against the election results.

    “Just fyi. POTUS is pissed,” the Secret Service message said.

    White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, recalled Trump being “fired up” about the court’s ruling.

    Trump told Meadows “something to the effect of: ‘I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out,’” Hutchinson told the panel in a recorded interview.

    Thursday’s session served as a closing argument for the panel’s two Republican lawmakers, Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who have essentially been shunned by Trump and their party and will not be returning in the new Congress. Cheney lost her primary election, and Kinzinger decided not to run.

    The committee, having conducted more than 1,000 interviews and obtained countless documents, has produced a sweeping probe of Trump’s activities from his defeat in the November election to the Capitol attack.

    Under committee rules, the Jan. 6 panel is to produce a report of its findings, likely in December. The committee will dissolve 30 days after publication of that report, and with the new Congress in January.

    At least five people died in the Jan. 6 attack and its aftermath, including a Trump supporter shot and killed by Capitol Police.

    More than 850 people have been charged by the Justice Department, some receiving lengthy prison sentences for their roles. Several leaders and associates of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been charged with sedition.

    Trump faces various state and federal investigations over his actions in the election and its aftermath.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Jill Colvin, Kevin Freking and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

    More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump

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  • Trump super PAC reserves millions in airtime in key states

    Trump super PAC reserves millions in airtime in key states

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is finally opening his checkbook, reserving millions of dollars in airtime for ads to bolster his endorsed candidates in key midterm races just one month before Election Day.

    Trump’s newly-formed MAGA Inc. super PAC will begin airing ads Saturday in Nevada, Georgia and Arizona, according to Medium Buying, an ad tracking firm. The group is already airing ads in Pennsylvania and Ohio, home to two of the most consequential and competitive Senate races in the country.

    The Georgia spending is particularly notable, coming as Trump’s hand-picked Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s campaign has been rocked by reports alleging he encouraged and paid for an ex-girlfriend’s 2009 abortion. Walker, a longtime football icon, backed a national ban on abortion during his primary, and has said he does not believe in exceptions even in cases of rape, incest or when the health of a pregnant woman is at risk.

    The Trump ad set to air in Georgia, which was shared with The Associated Press, does not include any mention of Walker. Instead it focuses on his rival, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, and tries to cast Warnock and his party as too extreme.

    “From D-Day to drag queen story time, America has lost its way,” its narrator says. “Chaos at the border. Crime in our neighborhoods. A collapsing economy. Biden and Warnock did that,” it claims.

    In total, the super PAC appears to have spent close to $5 million on its initial investment. That includes $954,000 in Georgia, $512,000 in Nevada and $1.16 million in Arizona, according to Medium Buying, in addition to $1.34 million in Ohio and $829,000 in Pennsylvania, according to AdImpact, another ad tracking firm.

    MAGA Inc. spokesman Steven Cheung declined to say how much additional spending Trump had planned beyond the initial reservations. “We’re not going to telegraph our spending but it’s a significant buy,” he said.

    The super PAC’s first wave of ads are all negative spots aimed at turning voters off the Democratic rivals of Trump-endorsed candidates. The first attacked Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman, who is running against Republican nominee Mehmet Oz, by portraying Fetterman as soft on crime.

    “John Fetterman wants ruthless killers, muggers and rapists back on our streets,” it charges, labeling the lieutenant governor “dangerous.”

    The second targeted Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan for voting with his party as a member of Congress, using footage from a speech in which he joked that he would “suck up a little bit” to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, “his future boss.” Ryan, who is running against Trump-endorsed Republican JD Vance, has run as centrist trying to win back the Rust Belt voters who have soured on the party in recent years.

    The ads released so far notably do not feature or even mention Trump, who remains a deeply divisive figure, but one who is extremely popular with the Republican base.

    Trump had been under growing pressure to finally start spending on midterm races after playing an outsize role in the primaries and pushing his favored candidates. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in particular, had urged candidates with Trump’s support to ask him to open his checkbook heading into the race’s final stretch.

    The notoriously thrifty former president’s Save America PAC, his main fundraising vehicle since leaving office, ended August with more than $90 million in the bank. Trump aides have discussed transferring a portion of that money to MAGA Inc., which could later be used to support a presidential campaign should Trump decide to run again, though campaign finance experts are divided on the legality of such a move.

    Trump has continued to tease another presidential run, telling supporters at a rally in Warren, Michigan, last weekend, “We’ll be talking about great things hopefully in the not so distant future.”

    “Oh I think you’re going to be happy,” he went on to say. “But first we have to win a historic victory for the Republican Party this November.”

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  • 2nd man convicted in Whitmer plot gets 4 years in prison

    2nd man convicted in Whitmer plot gets 4 years in prison

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    A man who pleaded guilty to conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s governor in 2020 was granted a major break Thursday and sentenced to four years in prison.

    Kaleb Franks was rewarded for testifying for prosecutors at two trials. His sentence was longer than the term given to another man who was the first to plead guilty but it still carried a significant benefit.

    Franks “made the right decision and came clean. That’s encouraging,” U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker said.

    Franks was among six anti-government extremists who were charged in federal court with conspiracy and other crimes. Investigators said the group’s goal was to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and incite a U.S. civil war — the “boogaloo” — before the 2020 presidential election.

    “I would like to start by saying I’m sorry to the governor and her family,” Franks said in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

    “I understand that this experience had to have been very traumatizing and difficult,” he said. “I’m ashamed and embarrassed of my actions, and I regret every decision that I made.”

    The group considered Whitmer, a Democrat, and other elected officials to be tyrants who were infringing on constitutional rights, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when businesses were shut down, people were told to stay home and schools were closed.

    Franks, 28, participated in a key step in the conspiracy: a ride on a rainy night to scout Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan. She was not there at the time.

    He testified that he had hoped to be killed by police if a kidnapping could be pulled off at some point. The FBI, however, had undercover agents and informants inside the group.

    “I was going to be an operator,” Franks said last spring. “I would be one of the people on the front line, so to speak, using my gun.”

    Prosecutors said Franks’ cooperation was important because it backed up critical testimony from Ty Garbin, who pleaded guilty a year earlier and was sentenced to just 2 1/2 years in prison.

    “It really was invaluable to have the testimony of an insider,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler told the judge, referring to Franks.

    When the hearing began, his sentencing guidelines suggested a minimum prison term of 12 years. But Jonker reduced the range at the government’s request and settled on a much lower figure. Franks will get credit for two years in custody.

    An email seeking comment was sent to Whitmer’s staff. In August, after the convictions of ringleaders Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., she said the plot was a “disturbing extension of radicalized domestic terrorism.” Two other men, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, were acquitted in April.

    “They didn’t just want to kidnap her,” Kessler said in court Thursday. “The plot that Mr. Fox and Mr. Croft really wanted to do was to put (Whitmer) on trial, kill her and begin a second civil war. What’s really frightening about that is just how prevalent those kind of views have become.”

    Meanwhile, 120 miles (190 kilometers) away in Jackson, Michigan, a jury heard a second day of testimony in the trial of three members of a paramilitary group who were also arrested in 2020. Joe Morrison, Pete Musico and Paul Bellar are not charged with directly participating in the plot but are accused of assisting Fox and others.

    ___

    White reported from Detroit.

    ___

    Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwritez

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  • FACT FOCUS: Gaping holes in the claim of 2K ballot ‘mules’

    FACT FOCUS: Gaping holes in the claim of 2K ballot ‘mules’

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    A film debuting in over 270 theaters across the United States this week uses a flawed analysis of cellphone location data and ballot drop box surveillance footage to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election nearly 18 months after it ended.

    Praised by former President Donald Trump as exposing “great election fraud,” the movie, called “2000 Mules,” paints an ominous picture suggesting Democrat-aligned ballot “mules” were supposedly paid to illegally collect and drop off ballots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

    But that’s based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data, which is not precise enough to confirm that somebody deposited a ballot into a drop box, according to experts.

    The movie was produced by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and uses research from the Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote, which has spent months lobbying states to use its findings to change voting laws. Neither responded to a request for comment.

    Here’s a closer look at the facts.

    CLAIM: At least 2,000 “mules” were paid to illegally collect ballots and deliver them to drop boxes in key swing states ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

    THE FACTS: True the Vote didn’t prove this. The finding is based on false assumptions about the precision of cellphone tracking data and the reasons that someone might drop off multiple ballots, according to experts.

    “Ballot harvesting” is a pejorative term for dropping off completed ballots for people besides yourself. The practice is legal in several states but largely illegal in the states True the Vote focused on, with some exceptions for family, household members and people with disabilities.

    True the Vote has said it found some 2,000 ballot harvesters by purchasing $2 million worth of anonymized cellphone geolocation data — the “pings” that track a person’s location based on app activity — in various swing counties across five states. Then, by drawing a virtual boundary around a county’s ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofits, it identified cellphones that repeatedly went near both ahead of the 2020 election.

    If a cellphone went near a drop box more than 10 times and a nonprofit more than five times from Oct. 1 to Election Day, True the Vote assumed its owner was a “mule” — its name for someone engaged in an illegal ballot collection scheme in cahoots with a nonprofit.

    The group’s claims of a paid ballot harvesting scheme are supported in the film only by one unidentified whistleblower said to be from San Luis, Arizona, who said she saw people picking up what she “assumed” to be payments for ballot collection. The film contains no evidence of such payments in other states in 2020.

    Plus, experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters — not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby.

    “You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you’re stretching it a lot,” said Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. “There’s always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this.”

    What’s more, ballot drop boxes are often intentionally placed in busy areas, such as college campuses, libraries, government buildings and apartment complexes — increasing the likelihood that innocent citizens got caught in the group’s dragnet, Striegel said.

    Similarly, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone might be visiting both a nonprofit’s office and one of those busy areas. Delivery drivers, postal workers, cab drivers, poll workers and elected officials all have legitimate reasons to cross paths with numerous drop boxes or nonprofits in a given day.

    True the Vote has said it filtered out people whose “pattern of life” before the election season included frequenting nonprofit and drop box locations. But that strategy wouldn’t filter out election workers who spend more time at drop boxes during the election season, cab drivers whose daily paths don’t follow a pattern, or people whose routines recently changed.

    In some states, in an attempt to bolster its claims, True the Vote also highlighted drop box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. However, there was no way to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose cellphones were anonymously tracked.

    A video of a voter dropping off a stack of ballots at a drop box is not itself proof of any wrongdoing, since most states have legal exceptions that let people drop off ballots on behalf of family members and household members.

    For example, Larry Campbell, a voter in Michigan who was not featured in the film, told The Associated Press he legally dropped off six ballots in a local drop box in 2020 — one for himself, his wife, and his four adult children. And in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office investigated one of the surveillance videos circulated by True the Vote and said it found the man was dropping off ballots for himself and his family.

    ___

    CLAIM: In Philadelphia alone, True the Vote identified 1,155 “mules” who illegally collected and dropped off ballots for money.

    THE FACTS: No, it didn’t. The group hasn’t offered any evidence of any sort of paid ballot harvesting scheme in Philadelphia. And True the Vote did not get surveillance footage of drop boxes in Philadelphia, so the group based this claim solely on cellphone location data, its researcher Gregg Phillips said in March in testimony to Pennsylvania state senators.

    Pennsylvania state Sen. Sharif Street, who was there for the group’s testimony in March, told the AP he was confident he was counted as several of the group’s 1,155 anonymous “mules,” even though he didn’t deposit anything into a drop box in that time period.

    Street said he based his assessment on the fact that he carries a cellphone, a watch with a cellular connection, a tablet with a cellular connection and a mobile hotspot — four devices whose locations can be tracked by private companies. He also said he typically travels with a staffer who carries two devices, bringing the total on his person to six.

    During the 2020 election season, Street said, he brought those devices on trips to nonprofit offices and drop box rallies. He also drove by one drop box up to seven or eight times a day when traveling between his two political offices.

    “I did no ballot stuffing, but over the course of time, I literally probably account for hundreds and hundreds of their unique visits, even though I’m a single actor in a single vehicle moving back and forth in my ordinary course of business,” Street said.

    City election commission spokesman Nick Custodio said the allegations matched others that had been debunked or disproven after the 2020 election.

    “The Trump campaign and others filed an unprecedented litany of cases challenging Philadelphia’s election with dubious and unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, all of which were quickly and resoundingly rejected by both state and federal courts,” Custodio said.

    ___

    CLAIM: Some of the “mules” True the Vote identified in Georgia were also geolocated at violent antifa riots in Atlanta in the summer of 2020, showing they were violent far left actors.

    THE FACTS: Setting aside the fact that the film doesn’t prove these individuals were collecting ballots at all, it also can’t prove their political affiliations.

    The anonymized data True the Vote tracked doesn’t explain why someone might have been present at a protest demanding justice for Black deaths at the hands of police officers. The individuals who were tracked there could have been violent rioters, but they also could have been peaceful protesters, police or firefighters responding to the protests, or business owners in the area.

    ___

    CLAIM: Alleged ballot harvesters were captured on surveillance video wearing gloves because they didn’t want to leave their fingerprints on the ballots.

    THE FACTS: This is pure speculation. It ignores far more likely reasons for glove-wearing in the fall and winter of 2020 — cold weather or COVID-19.

    True the Vote’s researcher claimed in the movie that voters in Georgia started wearing gloves to prevent their fingerprints from touching ballot envelopes after two women in Yuma, Arizona, were indicted on Dec. 23, 2020 for alleged ballot harvesting in that state’s primary election. But the Arizona indictment didn’t mention anything about fingerprints.

    Voting in Georgia’s Jan. 5, 2021, Senate runoff election occurred during some of the coldest weeks of the year in the state, and when COVID-19 was surging.

    In fact, the AP in 2020 documented multipleexamples of COVID-cautious voters wearing latex gloves and other personal protective equipment to vote.

    In a similarly speculative allegation, the film claims its supposed “mules” took photographs of ballots before they dropped them into drop boxes in order to get paid. But across the U.S., voters frequently take photos of their ballot envelopes before submitting them.

    ___

    CLAIM: If it weren’t for this ballot collection scheme, former President Donald Trump would have had enough votes to win the 2020 election.

    THE FACTS: This alleged scheme has not been proven, nor do these researchers have any way of knowing whether any ballots that were collected contained votes for Trump or for Biden.

    There’s no evidence a massive ballot harvesting scheme dumped a large amount of votes for one candidate into drop boxes, and if there were, it would likely be caught quickly, according to Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Iowa.

    “Once you get just a few people involved, people start to reveal the scheme because it unravels pretty quickly,” he said.

    Absentee ballots are also verified by signature and tracked closely, often with an option for voters themselves to see where their ballot is at any given time. That process safeguards against anyone who tries to illegally cast extra ballots, according to Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and the director of the Elections Research Project.

    “It seems impossible in that system for a nefarious actor to dump lots of ballots that were never requested by voters and were never issued by election officials,” Burden said.

    ___

    This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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  • McConnell backs post-Jan. 6 revisions to elections law

    McConnell backs post-Jan. 6 revisions to elections law

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday he will “proudly support” legislation to overhaul rules for certifying presidential elections, bolstering a bipartisan effort to revise a 19th century law and avoid another Jan. 6 insurrection.

    The legislation would clarify and expand parts of the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which, along with the Constitution, governs how states and Congress certify electors and declare presidential winners. The changes in the certification process are in response to unsuccessful efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to exploit loopholes in the law to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden, and the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters as Congress counted the votes.

    “Congress’ process for counting the presidential electors’ votes was written 135 years ago,” McConnell said. “The chaos that came to a head on Jan. 6 of last year certainly underscored the need for an update.”

    McConnell made the remarks just before the Senate Rules Committee voted 14-1 to approve the bill and send it to the Senate floor, where a vote is expected after the November election. The only senator to vote against the legislation was Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, one of two senators to stand and object to Biden’s certification last year.

    The GOP leader’s endorsement gave the legislation a major boost as the bipartisan group pushes to pass the bill before the end of the year and ahead of the next election cycle. Trump is still pushing false claims of election fraud and saying he won the election as he considers another run in 2024. McConnell’s support for the law could put him even more at odds with Trump, who frequently berates the GOP leader and has encouraged Republicans to vote against it.

    The House has already passed a more expansive bill overhauling the electoral rules, but it has far less Republican support. While the House bill received a handful of GOP votes, the Senate version already has the backing of at least 12 Republicans — more than enough to break a filibuster and pass the legislation in the 50-50 Senate.

    As he announced his support, McConnell noted that Democrats also objected to legitimate election results the last three times that Republicans won the presidency. “The situation obviously called for careful, methodical and bipartisan work,” he said, noting that the bipartisan group that negotiated the bill worked on the language for months.

    McConnell called the House bill a “non-starter” in the Senate because of the bipartisan compromise on the Senate language. “We have one shot to get this right,” he said.

    Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Rules panel, expressed a similar sentiment. The Senate legislation is the bill that “will achieve a strong bipartisan consensus,” she said.

    Cruz, who stood with Trump as he made false claims of fraud in 2020, called the legislation a “bad bill” and said it would make it harder for Congress to challenge fraudulent elections. He questioned why any Republican would support it.

    The bill is all about “Democratic rage” at Trump, Cruz said.

    Cruz was the lone dissenter. Among the Republicans who voted for the bill after McConnell’s statement was Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith — one of only eight senators to oppose Biden’s certification in January 2021. Missing the committee vote was GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Trump’s ambassador to Japan who was in Tokyo attending the state funeral of former Prime Minster Shinzo Abe.

    Senators made minor tweaks to the legislation at Tuesday’s meeting but kept the bill largely intact. The bill, written by Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, would make clear that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in the certification process, tighten the rules around states sending their votes to Congress and make it harder for lawmakers to object.

    The changes are a direct response to Trump, who publicly pressured several states, members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence to aid him as he tried to undo Biden’s win. Even though Trump’s effort failed, lawmakers in both parties said his attacks on the election showed the need for stronger safeguards in the law.

    If it becomes law, the bill would be Congress’ strongest legislative response yet to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, in which hundreds of Trump’s supporters beat police officers, broke into the Capitol and interrupted the joint session as lawmakers were counting the votes. Once the rioters were cleared, the House and Senate rejected GOP objections to the vote in two states. But more than 140 Republicans voted to sustain them.

    Differences between the House and Senate bills will have to be resolved before final passage, including language around congressional objections.

    While the Senate bill would require a fifth of both chambers to agree on an electoral objection to trigger a vote, the House bill would require agreement from at least a third of House members and a third of the Senate. Currently, only one member of each chamber is required for the House and Senate to vote on whether to reject a state’s electors.

    The House bill also lays out new grounds for objections, while the Senate does not.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

    ___

    This story has been corrected to reflect that Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., did not participate in the committee vote because he was in Tokyo attending the state funeral of former Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe.

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  • Progressive Democrats frustrated with 2022 primary losses

    Progressive Democrats frustrated with 2022 primary losses

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    NEW YORK (AP) — With less than two months until the midterm elections, progressive Democrats are facing a test of their power.

    Their party is heading into the final stretch of the campaign with a robust set of legislative accomplishments that include long-term progressive priorities on issues ranging from prescription drug prices to climate change. But the left has also faced a series of disappointments as Democratic voters from Ohio to Illinois to Texas rejected high-profile progressive challengers to moderates or incumbent members of Congress during the primary season.

    The frustration is particularly acute in New York, where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated one of the highest-ranking congressional Democrats four years ago, injecting fresh energy among the party’s most liberal voters. This year, however, New York City Democrats chose Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who is more of a centrist, over several progressive rivals, including freshman Rep. Mondaire Jones. About 30 miles north in the Hudson River Valley, a powerful establishment candidate, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, defeated a state lawmaker running to his left and backed by Ocasio-Cortez.

    Those setbacks have raised fresh questions about the progressive movement’s standing among Democrats. Progressive leaders urge against reading too much into those losses, particularly in New York, where repeated elections this summer after a redistricting battle left some voters disoriented or disengaged.

    “New York was just a mess,” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “It was like the timing of the redistricting maps. I mean, that’s not a situation that’s going to get repeated a lot.”

    Progressives have notched notable victories this year. In Oregon, Jamie McLeod-Skinner ousted moderate Rep. Kurt Schrader. Activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost topped a crowded field of Democrats in Florida and is poised to become the youngest member of Congress. And labor organizer Summer Lee edged out an establishment-backed candidate in Pennsylvania.

    But those wins risk becoming the exception rather than the rule as moderates have repeatedly asserted their strength in recent years. President Joe Biden won his party’s nomination in 2020 after overcoming challenges from more liberal contenders including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

    In New York City, Eric Adams defeated several rivals from the left for the party’s mayoral nomination last year with an explicit critique of progressives, including Ocasio-Cortez. And New York Gov. Kathy Hochul easily dispatched a more liberal rival during this summer’s primary.

    “Progressive” has long been a squishy label for Democrats. It generally refers to the party’s left flank but has been embraced by rank-and-file liberals as well as those much further left on the spectrum, including self-described democratic socialists like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

    The term “progressive” was even the subject of the first 2016 Democratic presidential debate between Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with Sanders suggesting Clinton was not sufficiently progressive and Clinton disputing that and calling him the “self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism.”

    Some candidates championed by progressives have grappled with the label this year.

    “No, I’m just a Democrat,” left-leaning Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman said in a May interview with NBC when he was asked if he is a progressive. He said his positions were considered progressive six years ago but “now there isn’t a single Democrat in this race or any race that I’m aware of that’s running on anything different. So that’s not really progressive. That’s just where the party is.”

    Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who won a Democratic congressional primary in May and was endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told Politico that she’d been labeled a progressive but knows most of the Democratic voters in the Dallas-area seat where she’s running identify as moderates or conservatives.

    Crockett said that means she won’t align with members of the further-left subset of progressives in the House known as the “Squad,” which includes Ocasio-Cortez and has been known for challenging the party’s establishment.

    “I’ve got to be very cognizant. Honestly, I love so many members of the ‘Squad’ and I think that they do right by their districts,” Crockett said. “I think in my district, while they don’t self-identify as progressive, they love a lot of the things that I stand for.”

    New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the chair of the House Democratic caucus and a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said “there’s a difference between the socialist machine and mainstream progressives.”

    Jeffries, speaking to reporters in a roundtable interview a few days before New York’s August primaries, said Democrats whose legislative records are “deeply progressive” still face criticism from “online virtue signalers” because they are not further left.

    “There are some forces on the left that want to define ‘progressive’ as ‘You bend the knee and we tell you what to do, and if you fail to fall in line, you’re a machine Democrat or a corporate sellout.’ That’s a joke,” he said.

    Jeffries said the left had some success taking out more traditional Democrats in 2018 and 2020 as Democratic frustrations with President Donald Trump translated into energy for insurgent campaigns. But Jeffries said that once Biden won the White House and his Democratic-controlled Congress began passing legislation, Democratic voters were no longer looking for insurgency.

    “At a certain point in time, voters want results, particularly when Democrats have been entrusted with majorities,” he said. “And that is what we have been delivering.”

    Bill Neidhardt, a progressive Democratic strategist who worked for liberal former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, said that while there have been noted losses in recent contests, the Democratic Party’s left flank has seen bright spots.

    “It’s not a perfect record, but it never is in elections. I would challenge anyone to show me one of those,” Neidhardt said.

    Neidhardt said progressives in Congress can point to growing political power, such as Biden’s recent student loan debt forgiveness plan or Democrats’ new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, tackling climate change and capping prescription drug costs.

    “That’s got the progressives’ fingerprints all over it,” he said.

    Though Fetterman has shrugged off the progressive label, Neidhardt said the Pennsylvanian opposing Republican Mehmet Oz might help progressives see one of their biggest coups yet. Fetterman and Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes are running in two hotly contested U.S. Senate seats that Democrats hope to flip while hanging onto their thin majority in that chamber.

    “Who’s going to defeat Ron Johnson? Who’s going to defeat Dr. Oz? It’s going to be progressives,” he said.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • False claims, threats fuel poll worker sign-ups for midterms

    False claims, threats fuel poll worker sign-ups for midterms

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    ATLANTA (AP) — Outraged by false allegations of fraud against a Georgia elections employee in 2020, Amanda Rouser made a vow as she listened to the woman testify before Congress in June about the racist threats and harassment she faced.

    “I said that day to myself, ‘I’m going to go work in the polls, and I’m going to see what they’re going to do to me,’” Rouser, who like the targeted employee is Black, recalled after stopping by a recruiting station for poll workers at Atlanta City Hall on a recent afternoon. “Try me, because I’m not scared of people.”

    About 40 miles north a day later, claims of fraud also brought Carolyn Barnes to a recruiting event for prospective poll workers, but with a different motivation.

    “I believe that we had a fraudulent election in 2020 because of the mail-in ballots, the advanced voting,” Barnes, 52, said after applying to work the polls for the first time in Forsyth County. “I truly believe that the more we flood the system with honest people who are trying to help out, it will straighten it out.”

    Barnes, who declined to give her party affiliation, said she wants to use her position as a poll worker to share her observations about “the gaps” in election security and “where stuff could happen afterwards.”

    Nearly two years after the last presidential election, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines. Numerous reviews in the battleground states where former President Donald Trump disputed his loss to President Joe Biden have affirmed the results, courts have rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies, and even Trump’s own Department of Justice concluded the results were accurate.

    Nevertheless, the false claims about the the 2020 presidential contest by the former president and his supporters are spurring new interest in working the polls in Georgia and elsewhere for the upcoming midterm elections, according to interviews with election officials, experts and prospective poll workers.

    Like Rouser, some aim to shore up a critical part of their state’s election system amid the lies and misinformation about voting and ballot-counting. But the false claims and conspiracy theories also have taken hold among a wide swath of conservative voters, propelling some to sign up to help administer elections for the first time.

    The possibility they will play a crucial role at polling places is a new worry this election cycle, said Sean Morales-Doyle, an election security expert at The Brennan Center for Justice.

    “I think it’s a problem that there may be people who are running our elections that buy into those conspiracy theories and so are approaching their role as fighting back against rampant fraud,” he said.

    But he also cautioned that there are numerous safeguards to prevent a single poll worker from disrupting voting or trying to manipulate the results.

    The Associated Press talked to roughly two dozen prospective poll workers in September during three recruiting events in two Georgia counties — Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta and where more than 70 percent of voters cast a ballot for Biden, and Forsyth County north of Atlanta, where support for Trump topped 65 percent.

    About half said the 2020 election was a factor in their decision to try to become a poll worker.

    “We don’t want Donald Trump bullying people,” said Priscilla Ficklin, a Democrat, while taking an application at Atlanta City Hall to be a Fulton County poll worker. “I’m going to stand up for the people who are afraid.”

    Carlette Dryden said she showed up to vote in Forsyth County in 2020 only to be told that she had already cast a mail-in ballot. She said elections officials let her cast a ballot later, but she suspects someone fraudulently voted in her name and believes her experience reflects broader problems with the vote across the country.

    Still, she said her role was not to police voters or root out fraud.

    “What I’m signing up to do is to help others that are coming through here that may need assistance or questions answered,” she said.

    Georgia was a focus of Trump’s attempts to undo his 2020 election defeat to Biden. He pressured the state’s Republican secretary of state in a January 2021 phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state and seized on surveillance footage to accuse the Black elections worker, Wandrea Moss, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, of pulling out suitcases of fraudulent votes in Fulton County. The allegation was quickly knocked down, but still spread widely through conservative media.

    Moss told the House Jan. 6 committee that she received death threats and racist messages.

    At a farmer’s market in the politically mixed suburb of Alpharetta north of Atlanta, Deborah Eves said she was concerned about being harassed for working at a voting site but still felt compelled to sign up.

    A substitute teacher and Democrat, Eves visited a recruiting booth set up by Fulton County officials next to stands selling single origin coffee, honey and empanadas.

    “I feel like our government is ‘we the people, and ’we the people’ need to step up and do things like poll working so that we can show that nobody’s cheating, nobody’s trying to do the wrong thing here,” she said.

    Allison Saunders, who worked at a voting site for the first time during the state’s May primary, said she believes Moss and Freeman were targeted because they are Black. Saunders, a Democrat, was visiting the farmer’s market with her son.

    “More people that look like me need to step up and do our part,” said Saunders, who is white. “I think it’s more important to do your civic duty than to be afraid.”

    Threats after the 2020 election contributed to an exodus of full-time elections officials around the country. Recruiters say they have not seen a similar drop in people who have previously done poll work — temporary jobs open to local residents during election season. But some larger counties around the country have reported that they are struggling to fill those positions.

    Working the polls has long been viewed as an apolitical civic duty. For first-time workers, it generally involves setting up voting machines, greeting voters, checking that they are registered and answering questions about the voting process.

    Elections staff in the U.S. generally do not vet the political views of prospective poll workers deeply, although most states have requirements that seek to have a mix of Democratic and Republican poll workers at each voting location.

    Forsyth County’s elections director, Mandi Smith, said she was not worried about having people who believe the last presidential election was fraudulent serve as poll workers. The county provides training that emphasizes the positions are nonpartisan and that workers must follow certain rules.

    “It’s a very team-driven process, as well, in the sense that there are multiple poll workers there and you are generally not working alone,” she said.

    Ginger Aldrich, who attended the county’s recruiting event, said she knows people who believe the last election was stolen from Trump. Their views made her curious about what she described as the “mysterious” aspects of the voting process, such as where ballots go after they leave the voting site.

    “There’s going to be some people that are unscrupulous, and they are going to spend all this time figuring out how to beat the system,” said Aldrich, who is retired.

    While she believes there is fraud in elections, she said she was willing to use her experience as a poll worker to try to convince people that there were no problems in her county with the midterm elections.

    ___

    Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics

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  • NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

    NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week

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    A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

    ___

    Posts misrepresent Biden 2020 campaign committee filing

    CLAIM: President Joe Biden has officially filed for reelection with the Federal Election Commission.

    THE FACTS: Biden has not formally filed for reelection, social media users are misrepresenting an updated administrative document that was recently filed with the FEC by his principal 2020 presidential campaign committee. “BREAKING REPORT: (NOT PARODY) Joe Biden Has Officially Filed to RUN FOR RE-ELECTION in 2024,” one Twitter user wrote on Tuesday. The tweet was shared over 1,900 times. “Joe Robinette Biden has just officially filed for Reelection with the Federal Election Committee today – running again with Kamala Harris as his Vice President,” an Instagram user wrote, also on Tuesday. But Biden has not officially declared his candidacy for reelection, according to FEC filings. Biden’s principal campaign committee for the 2020 general election, titled Biden for President, filed a statement of organization form on Tuesday. But this form is different from a statement of candidacy form, which would indicate a candidate is officially running. “These claims that he’s declared for 2024 are flatly untrue based on these filings,” said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The new filing amended the committee’s statement of organization to “reflect new treasurer information,” said Judith Ingram, a spokesperson for the FEC. Presidential candidates file statements of candidacy for election cycles that they are participating in, and Biden has not filed such a form for the 2024 election cycle, she said. A Democratic National Committee official confirmed that the campaign committee’s filing is “not a re-election filing.” “This is just updating the form to change the treasurer name because the former treasurer is taking a government job,” the official said in an email. A candidate filing by the Biden campaign on the FEC website would be the “clearest indicator that Biden has ‘officially’ launched a reelection campaign,” Barry Burden, founding director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Elections Research Center, wrote in an email to the AP. But this hasn’t happened yet. Candidates can also become official candidates in the eyes of the FEC if they raise or spend more than $5,000, according to the agency. The 2020 Biden campaign committee is still active to process minor financial transactions, which is similar to what other presidential campaigns have done, according to Burden.

    — Associated Press writer Josh Kelety in Phoenix contributed this report.

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    UK didn’t change guidance on COVID vaccines and pregnancies

    CLAIM: The U.K. government recently changed its COVID-19 vaccine guidance to advise against Pfizer’s shot for pregnant and breastfeeding people.

    THE FACTS: The guidance has not changed. Social media users are misrepresenting a section of a summary report about Pfizer’s shot that was published by the U.K.’s medical regulatory agency in 2020. Posts circulating widely in recent days spread the false assertion that Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot isn’t safe for pregnancies and wrongly claimed that the U.K. government has conceded as much. “The UK now admits it’s not safe for pregnant women to get the vaccine,” reads a tweet that garnered more than 1,300 likes. But the U.K. government is in support of, not against, vaccinating pregnant people, health officials confirmed. The social media posts pointed to a screenshot of a “Toxicity conclusions” section from an online report titled, “Summary of the Public Assessment Report for COVID-19 Vaccine Pfizer/BioNTech.” That report was published by the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in 2020 as part of the vaccine’s initial authorization process and was last updated on Aug. 16. The “Toxicity conclusions” section suggested that those who were pregnant or breastfeeding not be vaccinated, but also said that the recommendations “reflect the absence of data at the present time and do not reflect a specific finding of concern.” However, that specific section was reflective of what was known nearly two years ago when the vaccine was first rolling out — and before additional data became available. “The text referred to in social media posts comes from the Public Assessment Report (PAR) which reflects our assessment at the time of approval for the vaccine (2 December 2020),” the MHRA said in a statement provided to The Associated Press. “Since then new data has come to light (both non-clinical and post-authorisation ‘real world’ data) which supports the updated advice on vaccinating those who are pregnant and breastfeeding.” An archived version of the same page from December 2020 also confirms that the “Toxicity conclusions” section has remained the same. The MHRA specifically notes elsewhere online that the COVID-19 vaccines, including Pfizer’s, are safe for those who are pregnant and breastfeeding. Dr. Victoria Male, a lecturer in reproductive immunology at Imperial College London, told the AP that the confusion appeared to stem from the Aug. 16 update to the Pfizer documents. But that change dealt with information on booster shots, she said, as a note on a connected page indicates. Male also said that the U.K. government’s advice on COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancies hasn’t changed. “Since April 2021, the UK government has offered the COVID vaccine during pregnancy,” Male said in an email. “Since December 2021, pregnancy has been considered a priority condition for vaccination, because we know that COVID infection in pregnancy can cause stillbirth and preterm birth, and that vaccination protects against these and is safe in pregnancy.” An independent advisory group, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, recommended in July that pregnant people who have been previously vaccinated be offered an autumn booster.

    — Associated Press writers Angelo Fichera in Philadelphia and Sophia Tulp in New York contributed this report. ___

    Video shows water tanker for bank, not Mississippi governor’s mansion

    CLAIM: A video shows a tanker truck outside the governor’s mansion in Jackson, Mississippi, supplying the residence with water amid the city’s water crisis.

    THE FACTS: The tanker, which is parked across the street from the governor’s mansion, is there as a standby solution for the headquarters of a bank at that location. In the six-second video, the tanker can be seen parked on North West Street in downtown Jackson before the camera pans across the street to the governor’s mansion. The widely-shared clip has sparked outrage among social media users as the city works to restore water pressure, while many residents remain reliant on water distribution centers. “There is currently no running water in Jackson, Mississippi,” one Twitter user wrote. “The heat index is over 100 degrees. Schools are closed. People can’t cook, clean, drink, or bathe. But at least @tatereeves has a giant water truck providing him with clean water at the governor’s mansion.” The tweet garnered nearly 8,000 shares and nearly 18,000 likes. But the water tanker is for the headquarters of Trustmark Bank, located across the street from the governor’s mansion, according to Danny Shows, president and CEO of 4D Solutions, the emergency preparedness company that provided the vehicle. He told the AP that “by no means” was the tanker delivering water to the governor’s mansion. Shows explained that the water tanker is a back-up solution for the building, in case Jackson’s downtown area completely loses water pressure. Melanie Morgan, director of corporate communications and marketing for Trustmark, confirmed that the bank brought in the water tanker for its building “out of abundance of caution.” She told the AP that the tanker does not contain potable drinking water and is intended for building services such as air conditioning and restroom facilities. “We’ve engaged a contractor to bring in the tanker for us in order to keep our building operational,” Morgan said, adding that the bank wants to be able to relieve pressure on the city’s water system if necessary. She confirmed that the water tanker remains at the bank’s headquarters next to the governor’s mansion, but said that because the building still has “more than adequate water pressure,” the tanker has not yet been used. Shelby Wilcher, Tates’ press secretary, wrote in an email to the AP that the water tanker “is not supporting the Governor’s Mansion or any other state assets.” She added that the residence gets its water from the Jackson water system and that many businesses have brought in their own tankers. Jackson’s water system partially failed early this week due to flooding that exacerbated long-standing problems in one of the city’s two water-treatment plants, the AP reported. Reeves declared a state of emergency in Jackson on Tuesday, while President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Mississippi as a whole the same day.

    — Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report. ___

    New York law doesn’t ban minors from buying whipped cream

    CLAIM: A New York law that aims to crack down on nitrous oxide abuse makes it illegal for anyone under age 21 to purchase a can of whipped cream.

    THE FACTS: The law doesn’t apply to store-bought, disposable whipped cream cans, meaning customers of any age can still legally purchase canned whipped cream in New York stores without having to show identification. Social media users, news outlets and operators of grocery and convenience stores have in recent days misinterpreted a year-old New York law aimed at cracking down on recreational use of the gas nitrous oxide. Commonly called laughing gas, nitrous oxide is used as a sedative in some medical situations and can also be used as a whipping agent for culinary purposes. However, the gas is also often inhaled from metal cartridges — so-called “whippits” — to induce a euphoric effect, despite serious health risks. The New York law, which went into effect in November, attempted to make it harder for minors to access such cartridges by prohibiting New York businesses from selling the small, gas-containing metal capsules to anyone under 21. But language in the bill describing the cartridges as “whipped cream chargers” led to widespread confusion. “New York recently passed a state law that prohibits anyone under age 21 to purchase a can of whipped cream,” wrote one popular Twitter account. The post linked to a news article making the same claim, and was shared nearly 5,000 times. The claim was further spread through headlines and stories in dozens of news outlets as some grocery store operators recently began enforcing what they believed was language that required them to ask for identification before selling whipped cream canisters, such as Reddi-wip, to customers. However, the law doesn’t apply to these types of canisters, Sen. Joseph Addabbo, the Democrat who sponsored the bill, confirmed to the AP. “Anyone can buy, without being carded or ID’d, a can of Reddi-wip or any other canister of whipped cream,” Addabbo told the AP. “What a minor can’t buy is the two-inch whipped cream charger, or cartridge that is filled with nitrous oxide.” The bill amends New York general business law, and adds a new section that defines the term “whipped cream charger” as “a steel cylinder or cartridge filled with nitrous oxide, that is commonly used in a whipped cream dispenser.” Reusable whipped cream dispensers, like the ones found in restaurants or coffee shops, are powered by such metal cartridges. But those chargers are not found inside the disposable whipped cream cans that are sold in most grocery stores. Disposable whipped cream cans contain a combination of cream and nitrous oxide that’s expelled under pressure through the bottle’s nozzle.

    — Sophia Tulp

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