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Tag: Elections

  • State Supreme Court wins shaped by abortion, redistricting

    State Supreme Court wins shaped by abortion, redistricting

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    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Republicans have claimed key victories in state Supreme Court races that will give them an advantage in major redistricting fights, while Democrats notched similarly significant wins with help from groups focused on defending abortion access.

    The expensive fights over court control in several states in Tuesday’s election highlight just how partisan the formerly low-key judicial races have become. Observers say they’re a sign of what to expect as legal battles over abortion, voting rights and other issues are being fought at the state level.

    “Nothing about this election suggests to me that we’re going to see these races quiet down anytime soon,” said Douglas Keith, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, which tracks spending in judicial races.

    About $97 million was spent on state Supreme Court elections during the 2019-2020 election cycle, according to the Brennan Center. Once this year’s numbers are tallied, spending records are expected to be shattered in some of the 25 states that had races targeted by groups on the right and the left.

    One of the biggest players was the Republican State Leadership Committee, which focused heavily on the court races in North Carolina and Ohio.

    “Republican wins in the Tarheel State and Buckeye State ensure that the redistricting fights ahead in those states within the next decade are ruled on by strong conservatives who will follow the Constitution and don’t believe it’s their role to draw maps from the bench,” said Dee Duncan, president of the committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative.

    North Carolina’s court flipped from a 4-3 Democrat majority to 5-2 Republican Tuesday night. The court in recent years has issued decisions favoring the Democratic majority in cases involving redistricting, criminal justice, education funding and voter ID laws.

    At least $15 million was spent on those races, with more than $8 million from two super PACS — one on the left that focused primarily on abortion and one on the right that focused on crime. Despite the outside groups’ involvement, candidates ran on a similar platform of keeping personal politics out of the courtroom.

    “Now, we’ll be watching to make sure that the justices sitting in those seats follow through on those promises,” said Ann Webb, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

    In Ohio, Republicans maintained their 4-3 majority on the court, with two GOP justices fending off challenges and a sitting Republican winning her bid for chief justice. The state’s GOP governor, Mike DeWine, will appoint a justice to fill the resulting vacancy.

    The results may expand the conservative bent of the court even further, with cases regarding the state’s six-week abortion ban and redistricting on the horizon. Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who did not seek reelection, has sided with court’s three Democrats on high profile cases.

    But Democratic groups working to protect abortion rights ramped up efforts to defend seats after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and saw victories in several other parts of the country.

    In Illinois, which is surrounded by states with abortion bans that took effect after Roe was overturned, groups pushing to retain the state’s Democrat court majority had warned a GOP takeover could result in similar threats to access.

    “I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t think abortion was the critical issue in these races,” Terry Cosgrove, president and CEO of Personal PAC, an abortion rights group that spent nearly $3 million supporting the Democrats in the races.

    In Michigan, Democrats maintained their 4-3 majority on the Supreme Court after incumbent justices from opposing parties who had split on a key abortion ruling won reelection. Michigan’s high court races are officially nonpartisan, though the state’s political parties nominate candidates.

    Democratic-backed Justice Richard Bernstein, who voted with the court’s majority to put an abortion rights amendment on the ballot, won reelection along with Republican Justice Brian Zahra, who voted against it. Voters approved the measure Tuesday.

    “The Michigan Supreme Court election was critical especially since we didn’t know what the status of (the abortion rights amendment) would be,” said Ashlea Phenicie, communications director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Michigan, which spent nearly $1 million on the races.

    Kansas voters kept all six state Supreme Court justices who were on the ballot for separate yes-or-no votes on whether they remained on the bench another six years. The state’s most influential anti-abortion group, Kansans for Life, pushed to remove five of them, largely over the court’s 2019 decision declaring access to abortion a “fundamental” right under the Kansas Constitution.

    Two of the six court members on the ballot were part of the 6-1 majority in that 2019 decision. Voters also retained the court’s most conservative member, the only dissenter in the 2019 abortion decision.

    Republican bids for court seats failed in even some of the most conservative parts of the country.

    Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller defeated Joseph Fischer, a Republican lawmaker who sponsored the state’s “trigger law” ending abortion following Roe’s reversal. Fischer also was the lead sponsor of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment that voters rejected Tuesday.

    Supreme Court Justice Robin Wynne in Arkansas, which has had some of the most contentious judicial races over the years, fended off a challenge from District Judge Chris Carnahan, a former executive director of the state Republican Party.

    Arkansas’ court seats are nonpartisan, but Carnahan had touted himself as a conservative and had the endorsement of the state GOP. A group formed by a Republican lawmaker ran TV ads calling Wynne, who served as a Democrat in the state Legislature in the 1980s, a liberal.

    An unprecedented partisan pitch by Montana Republicans to install a party loyalist on that state’s Supreme Court also fell short, with Justice Ingrid Gustafson defeating challenger James Brown, who had the backing of Gov. Greg Gianforte and other top Republicans. The unusually expensive campaign came as the court is preparing to hear challenges over Montana’s abortion restrictions and voting access.

    Gustafson called her win a sign that voters were more interested in experience than ideology.

    “The people in Montana think our judiciary is doing a good job and it is a very, very small minority that has some sort of other agenda,” she said.

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    Associated Press writers Hannah Schoenbaum in Raleigh, North Carolina; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Kentucky; Ed White in Detroit, Michigan; and Amy Beth Hanson in Helena, Montana 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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  • McMullin loss in Utah raises independent candidacy questions

    McMullin loss in Utah raises independent candidacy questions

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    SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah Democrats’ decision to back an independent rather than nominate a member of their own party to take on Republican Mike Lee transformed the state’s U.S. Senate race from foregone conclusion to closely watched slugfest.

    Independent Evan McMullin, an anti-Trump former Republican best known for his longshot 2016 presidential bid, attracted millions in outside spending in his campaign against Lee. He forced the second-term Republican to engage with voters more than in prior elections and emphasize an independent streak and willingness to buck leaders of his own party.

    Ultimately, though, it wasn’t even close. Lee is on his way to a double-digit win.

    That’s spurring a debate: Did Democrats’ strategy create a blueprint to make Republicans campaign hard, compete for moderates and expend resources in future races? Or does the sizeable loss prove that Republicans’ vice grip is impenetrable in the short term, no matter the strategy?

    The answers could contain lessons for both red and blue states unaccustomed to competitive elections.

    Some Democrats say supporting McMullin was worth it — it shifted the political conversation, made the race competitive and forced Lee to spend almost double what he spent in his 2016 campaign. But other Democrats say the strategy hurt down-ballot candidates who didn’t have a strong top-of-the-ticket contender to help boost them.

    “Building my bench in that sense is going to be so much harder. How do I convince candidates, going forward, that the Democratic Party will support them?” said Katie Adams-Anderton, Democratic Party chair in Utah’s second largest county.

    Utah is among the fastest growing states, and Democrats hope they will be able to compete as the electorate becomes younger and more urban. Yet Republicans currently hold both Senate seats and all four congressional seats, occupy every statewide office, and this week expanded their supermajorities in the Legislature.

    Four years after running for U.S. Senate herself, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson supported Democrats’ decision to back McMullin. She credits it with making Lee sweat. Though McMullin lost, she said, coalescing behind an independent benefited voters by making the race competitive. She hopes putting Lee on his heels will influence how he governs and votes in the U.S. Senate.

    “This was a unique moment, and I actually do think we’ve lost an opportunity by not electing Evan to help break up some of the hardened partisanship,” she said, noting that whether backing an independent was a good strategy depended largely on circumstances.

    Votes remain to be counted, but Lee is on track to defeat McMullin by double digits. That’s a narrower margin than his 41 percentage-point victory in 2016 over grocery store clerk Misty Snow but wider than McMullin’s team anticipated.

    McMullin won 100,000 more votes than Utah Democrats’ four congressional candidates did collectively, but preliminary results don’t suggest his campaigning against the two-party system energized voters enough to substantially buoy turnout.

    Independents have won Senate races in Vermont and Maine, yet in deeply red states like Utah, party politics remain entrenched and important to voters.

    To put together a fragile coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents, McMullin focused closely on threats to democracy. Rather than campaign on traditional midterm election issues, he attacked Lee’s November 2020 text messages to Trump’s White House chief of staff about ways to challenge President Joe Biden’s victory.

    Both Lee and Democrats skeptical of his candidacy criticized McMullin for being unclear on issues such as abortion or infrastructure spending.

    “You say you want to put country over party. I respect that,” Lee said at an October debate, addressing McMullin. “But parties are an important proxy for ideas. You see, because it’s ideas more than parties that tell the people how you will vote.”

    Kael Weston, the Democrat Senate candidate who lost the party’s backing when it lined up behind McMullin, acknowledged it would have been difficult for a Democrat to defeat Lee. But he said McMullin’s focus came at the expense of local concerns, such as water or the closure of rural post offices. Focusing on those kinds of issues is the path to making elections competitive in red states, not becoming “Republican lite,” he said.

    Though outside spending from Democratic-donor funded PACs and conservative groups like Club for Growth reflect how the race was more competitive than usual, Weston said, McMullin’s attempts to distance himself from Biden and Democrats hurt Democrats who were lower on the ballot.

    “If all you see for three months is, Joe Biden is evil and Democrat is a four-letter word, that has an effect,” he said, noting the anti-McMullin television ads might have hurt Democratic candidates for statehouse seats.

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  • Democrat Katie Hobbs keeps lead in race for Arizona governor

    Democrat Katie Hobbs keeps lead in race for Arizona governor

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    PHOENIX (AP) — The release of ballots on Saturday from Arizona’s largest county netted Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake a few thousand votes, but she’s still trailing Democrat Katie Hobbs by tens of thousands of ballots.

    Hobbs led Lake by 1.6 percentage points after the release of roughly 85,000 votes from Maricopa County. Approximately 270,000 ballots remain uncounted statewide, and Hobbs leads by about 35,000 votes.

    Data analysts from both parties believe the count will eventually shift in Lake’s favor, but it’s not yet clear whether she will pick up enough votes to overtake Hobbs. Republicans have watched anxiously since Tuesday as Hobbs has defied their expectations and increased her lead each day, including Saturday when combined with results from the rest of the state.

    About 50 conservative protesters gathered outside the fence around Maricopa County’s election tabulation center in downtown Phoenix at midday Saturday to draw attention to their concerns about the slow pace of the vote count. Protracted counts are the norm in Arizona, where a record number of people returned mail ballots on Election Day.

    A few protesters wore ballistic vests or carried handguns as a number of county sheriff’s deputies nearby guarded the complex.

    Arizona was central to former President Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election and cast doubt on the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who won his race Friday, pressed to move past false claims of a fraudulent election that have shaped the state’s politics for the past two years.

    “After a long election, it can be tempting to remain focused on the things that divide us,” Kelly said Saturday in a victory speech at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix. “But we’ve seen the consequences that come when leaders refuse to accept the truth and focus more on conspiracies of the past than solving the challenges that we face today.”

    Kelly’s victory Friday combined with a win Saturday by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada means Democrats will retain control of the Senate for the next two years.

    Kelly won after distancing himself from Biden and building an image as an independent lawmaker not beholden to his party. He cast himself in the mold of his predecessor, the late Republican John McCain, whose seat Kelly won in a special election two years ago. His victory this year gives him a full six years starting in January.

    “Sen. McCain embodied everything it was to be a leader at a time when our state and our country remain divided,” Kelly said.

    Kelly’s opponent, Republican Blake Masters, did not concede, saying in a statement that his team will make sure every legal vote is counted.

    “If, at the end, Senator Kelly has more of them than I do, then I will congratulate him on a hard-fought victory,” Masters said. “But voters decide, not the media; let’s count the votes.”

    The AP declared Kelly the winner after the release of results from 75,000 ballots in Maricopa County made clear Masters could not make up his deficit.

    Hours earlier, Masters said on Fox News that Maricopa County, which is by far the largest in the state, should stop counting ballots and start over because election officials had inadvertently mixed counted and uncounted ballots.

    Megan Gilbertson, a spokeswoman for the county elections department, confirmed ballots were mixed at two vote centers but said there are contingencies to reconcile each batch and get an accurate count. She said that similar mistakes have been made before and that the process has been in place for decades and is overseen by observers from both parties.

    “There is no legal process in place to stop counting and start over,” Gilbertson said. “At Maricopa County, we follow the laws as they are written.”

    Outside the elections building in Phoenix, some protesters carried American flags, campaign signs for Lake or signs with slogans such as “Kari Lake Won,” “Count The Votes” and “Hobbs is a Cheat.”

    Sheriff Paul Penzone said he pulled deputies from around the county and from other assignments to protect the ballots and the people counting them. Noting the protest was prompted by a tweet from a state lawmaker, Penzone urged elected officials not to summon demonstrators to the elections building.

    Aaron Kotzbauer, a 52-year-old Republican from the Phoenix suburb of Surprise who voted for Lake and the other GOP candidates, said he protested at the elections office after Trump lost in 2020 and came again Saturday to “see if we could get some sunshine to disinfect the Maricopa County election center.”

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    Associated Press writer Bob Christie contributed to this report.

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    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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  • Trump vs. DeSantis: A simmering rivalry bursts into view

    Trump vs. DeSantis: A simmering rivalry bursts into view

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have been on a collision course from the start.

    Eyeing the Florida governor as his most formidable foe within the Republican Party, the former president has sought to keep DeSantis in his place, often noting the role his endorsement played in lifting the relatively obscure congressman to the leader of one of America’s largest states.

    DeSantis, for his part, has long praised Trump and mimicked his style, but has notably declined to put aside his own White House ambitions as the former president prepares to seek his old job again. In the clearest sign of tension, the two held dueling Florida rallies in the final days of this year’s midterm elections. At his event, Trump unveiled his new derisive nickname for DeSantis, calling him Ron DeSanctimonious.

    The simmering rivalry between the Republican Party’s biggest stars enters a new, more volatile phase after the GOP’s underwhelming performance in what was supposed to be a blockbuster election year. DeSantis, who won a commanding reelection, is increasingly viewed as the party’s future, while Trump, whose preferred candidates lost races from Pennsylvania to Arizona, is widely blamed as a drag on the party.

    That leaves Trump in perhaps his most vulnerable position since he sparked the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As he moves forward with plans to announce a third presidential bid on Tuesday, Trump is turning to a playbook that has served him through decades of personal, financial and political turmoil: zeroing in on his enemies’ perceived weaknesses and hitting them with repeated attacks.

    “This is how President Trump fights,” said Michael Caputo, a longtime adviser who worked on Trump’s first campaign.

    In the days since Tuesday’s election, Trump has made racist remarks about Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, another potential Republican presidential candidate, saying his name sounds Chinese. He’s blasted coverage from Fox News, which, like much of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, has shifted its tone on Trump in recent days. But much of his vitriol is directed at DeSantis, a sign of the threat Trump perceives from the Florida governor.

    In a lengthy statement, Trump knocked DeSantis as an “average REPUBLICAN governor with great Public Relations” and voiced fury that DeSantis has not publicly ruled out challenging him.

    The approach recalls Trump’s strategy in 2016, when he cleared a field of nearly a dozen rivals with a scorched-earth approach that included insulting his then-rival Ted Cruz’s wife’s appearance and claiming that his father may have played a role in John F. Kennedy’s assassination. (Cruz later became a top ally in Congress.)

    His attacks only become more ruthless when he found himself against the wall. After the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump used vulgar language to brag of sexual assault, he responded by inviting the women who accused his rival Hillary Clinton’s husband, the former president, of rape and unwanted sexual advances to a presidential debate.

    “The strategy worked in 2016, no doubt about it. The difference now, and I say this with all respect for Ron DeSantis, he’s never entered the ring with a pugilist like Donald Trump,” said longtime Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, who ran his 2016 primary campaign. “Mike Tyson has an old saying: Everyone had a plan until you get punched in the face.”

    The question is whether the insults will land differently when it comes to DeSantis. Among many of Trump’s most loyal backers, DeSantis is seen as a member of the same team. In interviews over the last year at Trump’s rallies and other conservative gatherings, Trump supporters often said they see DeSantis as Trump’s natural successor. Many voiced disbelief that the two men would ever run against each other because they seem so closely aligned.

    DeSantis’ allies expect the governor to make a presidential announcement after the state legislative session, which ends in May. Until then, they expect him to focus on governing and avoid engaging directly with Trump, as he has done this week.

    Regardless of when a formal presidential campaign is announced, DeSantis’ supporters are encouraging him to take advantage of the interest he’s generating at the moment. Some point to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a cautionary tale, noting he generated widespread attention in 2012 as a potential presidential candidate. He demurred, and by the time he sought the White House in 2016, the energy had shifted to Trump.

    “If you want to run for president, you’ve got to take your shot when it presents itself,” said Matt Caldwell, a vocal DeSantis ally in Florida.

    DeSantis won reelection by a nearly 20-point margin, performing well even in many longtime Democratic strongholds. That victory, his supporters say, demonstrates the extent of his political appeal beyond the GOP’s hardcore base, which stands in contrast with Trump. Caldwell noted that DeSantis’ coalition included Latinos and suburban voters, voting blocs that Trump has largely alienated.

    “The coalitions he’s built, the bridges he’s built, the voting groups that never touched a Republican before have now embraced Republicans and Republicanism in the form of the DeSantis administration,” said Brian Ballard, a longtime Florida lobbyist who served as DeSantis’ inaugural chairman and also raised millions for Trump. “He is certainly a leader and someone that I think has demonstrated the type of coalition building that we need to win back the White House.”

    Above all, Republican strategists say voters are looking for a winner.

    Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, who has vacillated on Trump over the years, said many of his listeners are ready for DeSantis.

    “They love Trump, thank him, wish him well and are ready to part ways,” Erickson said. “Trump voters like Trump because they like winners who fight. That’s exactly how they perceive DeSantis. The only guy between the two who is a loser is Trump.”

    Sensing weakness, some Republican establishment insiders have begun a series of preliminary conversations about how to use their resources to stop Trump in 2024, realizing that a crowded primary field might simply divide the electorate and allow Trump an easier path to the nomination. There is little sign the Republican establishment is ready or able to unify behind DeSantis or any single Trump alternative, however, even as some prominent Republicans begin to openly decry Trump as a political liability.

    Other potential 2024 candidates, meanwhile, are waiting in the wings, with some hoping Trump and DeSantis will bloody each other so badly that voters will be eager for a less pugilistic alternative.

    Sarah Longwell, a Trump critic who leads the Republican Accountability Project, said she’s for “anybody but Trump” in 2024, but she’s not necessarily excited about DeSantis.

    “I hope there is a robust Republican primary,” Longwell said. “I certainly want every Republican to run against Trump. But I also think the Republican Party can and should do better than a cheap imitation of Trump, which is what I think Ron DeSantis is.”

    Next week, DeSantis will be among several 2024 Republican prospects gathering in Nevada for a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. The guest list includes former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and term-limited Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Trump declined an invitation.

    The Republican Jewish Coalition’s primary benefactor, Miriam Adelson, has vowed to stay neutral in the 2024 Republican primary, even after the group aggressively supported Trump in the last election.

    Hogan, a fierce Trump critic for years, is increasingly expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination himself.

    “Going forward, there is going to be a battle between whether we are the party that stands for common-sense conservative leadership, or whether we are the party than answers to the whims of one person,” Hogan told The Associated Press. “I am sick and tired of the losing and grifting. It’s time to get back to winning.”

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

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  • Anti-government protest held in Albania over rising costs

    Anti-government protest held in Albania over rising costs

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    TIRANA, Albania — Thousands of Albanian opposition supporters on Saturday protested the country’s cost-of-living crisis, blaming it on the center-left government.

    Opposition supporters gathered in front of the main government building, shouting that Prime Minister Edi Rama of the ruling Socialist Party should resign.

    The protest was mostly peaceful but at the end some broke the police line and sprayed red paint on the main doors of the government building. Others lit candles to memorize two people killed by police in the last years.

    Police intervened and at least one protester was taken away.

    Albania has seen an 8% price hike this year, especially for basic food and fuel following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Opposition supporters have also blamed Rama for the thousands of young men who leave the country each year in search of a better life.

    Rama says his Cabinet has kept inflation low compared to double-digit inflation elsewhere in Europe, and has noted that government subsidizes electricity for families and small businesses.

    The protest was organized by the opposition center-right Democratic Party and attended by its leader Sali Berisha, a 78-year-old former president and prime minister, and former President Ilir Meta, now leader of the leftist Freedom Party.

    Albania holds a municipal election in May.

    Berisha called on Albanians to support the opposition, which has pledged to double wages and pensions if it gets back into power.

    But his party has been plagued by infighting after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last year barred Berisha and his close relatives from entering the U.S. for “corrupt acts that undermined democracy” during his 2005-2013 tenure as prime minister.

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  • Mishaps, distrust spur Election Day misinformation

    Mishaps, distrust spur Election Day misinformation

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    Voters casting ballots in Tuesday’s pivotal midterms grappled with misleading claims about glitchy election machines and delayed results, the final crest of a wave of misinformation that’s expected to linger long after the last votes are tallied.

    In Arizona, news of snags with vote tabulators spawned baseless claims about vote rigging, which quickly jumped from fringe sites popular with the far-right to mainstream platforms. It didn’t matter that local officials were quick to report the problem and debunk the theory.

    In Pennsylvania, election officials pushed back on baseless claims that delays in counting the vote equate to election fraud. But the conspiracy theory spread anyway, thanks in part to former President Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and other prominent Republicans who have amplified the idea.

    There was lots of other misinformation too: false claims about ballots cast by non-citizens or pre-filled registration forms; hoaxes about voting machines and tales of suspicious Wi-Fi networks at election offices. In some cases, the false claims provoked responses including calls for violence against local officials.

    The states and facts involved were all different, but most of the misinformation aimed at voters this year had the same drumbeat: American elections can no longer be trusted.

    “People were looking for things to go wrong to prove their preconceived notions that the election was rigged,” said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan organization that tracks misinformation. ”And there are always things that go wrong.”

    If 2020 is any guide, many of the claims the emerged Tuesday will persist for days, weeks and even years, despite efforts by election officials, journalists and others to debunk them.

    There was a sharp uptick in social media posts Monday and Tuesday claiming Democrats would use delays in vote tallying to rig elections throughout the country, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a firm that tracks disinformation.

    Some of the posts originated on websites popular with Trump supporters and adherents of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.

    The increased popularity of mail ballots is one reason why results can take a while. In key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, election officials cannot begin counting mail ballots until Election Day, guaranteeing delays.

    “We have never certified an election on election night,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections for Common Cause, a non-profit group that has been tracking election misinformation. “This is nothing new. It’s just people trying to undermine faith in elections.”

    Misinformation about voting and elections has been blamed for a widening political divide, decreased trust in democracy and an increased threat of political violence like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    The same false claims fueled the campaigns of candidates who reject the outcome of the 2020 election, including Republican gubernatorial candidates Kari Lake in Arizona and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. Several GOP nominees for secretary of state positions overseeing elections have also said they supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and remain in power.

    Though not on the ballot, Trump helped spread many of the leading false claims on Tuesday. Using his TruthSocial platform, he amplified the conspiracy theories from Pennsylvania and Arizona. “Another big voter tabulation problem in Arizona,” he wrote. “Sound familiar???”

    The false claims seen in 2022 are likely to stick around and become part of the misinformation facing voters in the presidential election, said Morgan Wack, a University of Washington disinformation researcher and part of the Election Integrity Partnership, a collaborative research group focused on election misinformation.

    “We will almost certainly see this again in 2024,” Wack said.

    Most major social media platforms announced plans to combat election misinformation and provide voting resources to users. It was a different story on fringe platforms like Gab, where misinformation and even threats of violence were easy to spot Tuesday.

    Twitter was of particular concern to disinformation researchers given its new owner, Elon Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist who has spread misinformation himself.

    One analysis of bots and fake accounts on Twitter found a significant increase in discussion of election fraud in the week before the election. The number of automated or fake accounts posting about “stolen elections” doubled in the sample reviewed by researchers at Cyabra, an Israeli tech firm.

    Officials with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Tuesday they were monitoring for foreign attempts to sow doubt about the election but saw no evidence the efforts were paying off.

    Russia, China and Iran have all mounted disinformation operations targeting U.S. politics and will likely increase their efforts ahead of 2024, according to Craig Terron, director of global issues at Insikt Group, a division of the Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.

    Terron said the Kremlin likely sees such meddling as justified, given U.S. support for Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.

    “Immediately after the US midterm elections, and into 2023 and beyond, the Russian government will very likely attempt to plan and execute malign influence efforts,” Terron wrote in an email to the AP. “In particular, we expect to see campaigns aimed at undermining the next two years of President Biden’s term.”

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    AP writer Haleluya Hadero in New York contributed to this report.

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

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    Arizona officials correct false claims about ballot issues

    CLAIM: When ballots were rejected by tabulators at some voting locations across Maricopa County on Election Day, an alternate solution for voters to drop ballots in a secure drop box onsite resulted in the ballots getting shredded, thrown in the trash, or marked for Democrats.

    THE FACTS: Ballots submitted in this way were counted just as absentee ballots or mail-in ballots are, according to county officials. They weren’t discarded or altered. When a printing problem caused tabulators to reject ballots in at least 70 of 223 polling sites in Arizona’s largest county on Tuesday, county officials offered a few alternate solutions. Voters could wait and try another machine, cancel their vote and go to another vote center, or drop their ballot in a secure drop box referred to as “door 3” or “box 3.” Some social media user falsely claimed that using this drop box would allow county officials to rig those votes by manually changing them or discarding them. However, county elections department spokesperson Megan Gilbertson explained that ballots placed in these drop boxes were machine-counted at the central tabulation center in downtown Phoenix, just as all mail-in and absentee ballots are. At the end of the voting day, a bipartisan team collected all the voted ballots from voting centers, sealed them and transported them by truck to the tabulation center for counting. This is the same process used for early voting and is the same methodology used on Election Day by most counties, including Pima County and Yavapai County, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said in a statement Tuesday.

    — Associated Press writers Josh Kelety in Phoenix and Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

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    Clip shows poll worker in Wisconsin, not ‘cheating’ in Philadelphia

    CLAIM: Video shows masked man at polling site “cheating” in front of cameras in Philadelphia.

    THE FACTS: The video shows a poll worker in Madison, Wisconsin, on Tuesday. He was initialing ballots to be handed out to voters, a standard procedure mandated by state law, according to the county clerk. Social media users on Election Day distorted a clip of the Madison poll worker doing his job to falsely claim it showed election fraud in Philadelphia. The video, which aired on Fox News on Tuesday, shows a man wearing a cloth face mask flipping through ballots and writing on them. “Masked man cheating in front of the cameras on the mainstream media,” read a widely shared tweet with the video. But the original footage shows the video was filmed in Madison, not Pennsylvania. Immediately before Fox News showed the clip in Madison, the network showed the exterior of Philadelphia’s East Passyunk Community Center with a graphic labeling that location. The broadcast then showed the clip of the poll worker and changed the location in the label to Madison. Social media versions of the video cropped out the location. A reverse-image search of the building’s interior revealed that the clip was filmed at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, which served as a polling location for Tuesday’s election. Scott McDonell, the Dane County clerk, said the man is a poll worker, and the video shows him initialing ballots before they were handed out to voters. He was also circling the ward in which the ballots were issued. It’s part of the process of preparing the ballots for voters, McDonell said. Another poll worker also initialed the ballots before they were handed to voters. “You need to have those signatures to show that two people saw the blank ballot and handed it to the voter,” McDonell said. “This is a standard operating procedure. It’s done in public so that anyone can watch it. It’s mandated by state law. It’s a check and balance on the system.” Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and the director of the Elections Research Project, agreed that the video showed standard procedures for poll workers in Madison. Wisconsin election law explains that at polling places with paper ballots, two inspectors “shall write their initials on the back of each ballot and deliver to each elector as he or she enters the voting booth.” Philadelphia’s city commissioner on Twitter debunked the false claims that the video showed a polling site in his city. Nick Custodio, deputy commissioner with Philadelphia’s elections board, told the AP that Philadelphia does not use paper voting booths such as those shown in the video, and that the “I voted” stickers in the video also do not match those used in Philadelphia.

    — Associated Press writers Arijeta Lajka and Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report with additional reporting from Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia.

    ___

    No voters turned away over Detroit absentee ballot glitch

    CLAIM: Voters in Detroit were prevented from casting ballots on Election Day after officials mistakenly said they’d already voted by absentee ballot.

    THE FACTS: No eligible voters were prevented from casting a ballot at Detroit polling locations that experienced the data glitch on Tuesday morning, state and city officials confirmed. As voters nationwide went to the polls, there was heightened focus on voting problems and irregularities. One of the places election watchers sounded the alarm early on was the battleground state of Michigan. “People are showing up to vote in Detroit only to be told that they already voted via absentee ballots and are being turned away,” wrote one Twitter user. “Citizens are being told they voted already absentee,” wrote Kristina Karamo, a Republican candidate for Michigan secretary of state, in widely shared posts on Twitter and Facebook. Former President Donald Trump also amplified the claims on Truth Social. But state and city officials said the issue stemmed from an election software problem and was quickly resolved without anyone being disenfranchised. Corwin Smidt, a political science professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, said the situation demonstrated the voting system worked properly. “It certainly slowed down voting there, but the reasons for the slowdown were that the system caught an error, and that error was then fixed,” he wrote in an email. Liette Gidlow, a history professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who focuses on U.S. politics and voting rights, agreed. “Minor technical glitches are not unusual in any precinct because administering elections is a complex business,” she wrote in an email. Detroit’s elections department said the problem was caused by computer software used by election workers to check in voters as they entered the polling location. The agency said the program wrongly flagged some residents as having requested an absentee ballot, which would make them ineligible to cast a ballot in-person. Matthew Friedman, a department spokesperson, said the issue was resolved within an hour and all eligible residents were able to vote. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, whose office assisted the city in addressing the issue, also stressed that no voters were disenfranchised. “In all circumstances, eligible voters were able to vote,” the office said in a statement. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which observed the voting process, said it spoke with multiple city election officials and was satisfied with the response. Spokespersons for Trump and Karamo did not respond to messages seeking comment.

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

    ___

    CLAIM: A Pennsylvania judge ruled that ballots received up until Nov. 14 will count in the 2022 midterm elections.

    THE FACTS: Pennsylvania ballots, including mail-in and absentee ballots, must be received by county election offices by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 8, to be counted, according to the state’s Department of State. As voters went to the polls on Tuesday, misleading information about Pennsylvania’s vote-counting deadlines gained traction. “This just in: Pennsylvania Judge allows ballots to count that are received up until November 14th,” read one post. “This is unconstitutional.” The message, shared in several Instagram posts, is a screenshot of a tweet that was later deleted. The Twitter user who first posted it acknowledged in a follow-up that the information was incorrect. Existing law requires that Pennsylvania voters’ ballots be received by county election workers by Nov. 8, the Department of State explains. Unlike some other states, Pennsylvania allots no extra time for mail-in ballots — what counts is the day the ballot actually made it to election officials, not when the ballot was postmarked. The Twitter user who first made the claim said in a follow-up post that the court case he was referring to was a recent decision by a Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court. However, the case in question has nothing to do with ballot submission deadlines. It concerned the cross-checking procedure that Pennsylvania uses to prevent duplicate votes from being counted, according to Kevin Feeley, spokesperson for the Philadelphia City Commissioners, which oversees elections in the city. The city had sought to delay that process until after the initial ballot count, in an effort to get ballots counted more quickly. He said that no duplicate votes had been found in the last three elections. The court granted the city the right to delay the reconciliation process, but the judge in the case was “highly critical” of the idea, Feeley said. So the City Commission opted Tuesday to revert to doing reconciliation as usual. Feeley confirmed that the case did not mean voting can occur through Nov. 14.

    — Associated Press writer Graph Massara in San Francisco contributed this report with additional reporting from Melissa Goldin in New York.

    ___

    Large numbers of mailed ballots not evidence of election fraud

    CLAIM: A candidate winning an election with a majority of mailed ballots is proof of fraud.

    THE FACTS: There is no evidence that mail-in voting has historically caused widespread voter fraud, and fraud related to mail-in voting is exceedingly rare, the AP has reported. Some on social media have posited that if a candidate who receives a significant chunk of their votes through mail-in voting wins, their victory is inherently fraudulent. An Instagram post features results reporting that incumbent Kelly Skidmore, a Democrat, beat Dorcas Hernandez, a Republican, in the race for state representative in Florida’s 92nd House District. It shows Skidmore with 57.51% of the vote, including 31,405 mailed ballots, and Hernandez with 42.9% and 10,297 mailed ballots. “This is what textbook election theft via vote by mail ballot looks like,” the post states. The numbers in the Instagram post are from the state’s unofficial results, as published online by county boards of elections. However, the fact that some candidates are reported as having won after receiving a majority of mailed ballots does not prove election fraud. Claims that mail-in voting has caused widespread voter fraud in the past are unsubstantiated, according to reporting by the AP. After reviewing every potential case of voter fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the AP found far too few to affect the outcome of the 2020 election. Additionally, an AP survey of state election officials across the U.S. found that the expanded use of drop boxes during the 2020 race did not lead to cases of fraud that could have impacted the results. Different states have different ballot verification protocols, but all states vet mailed and absentee ballots. Every state requires voters to sign their ballots. Some have additional precautions, like having bipartisan teams compare the signature on the ballot with one on file, requiring the signature on the ballot to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign the ballot. Other forms of verification can include requiring proof of voter registration, a copy of an ID, a driver’s license number or a Social Security number. Ballot security features and ballot sorting at election offices would help weed out any counterfeits. There are harsh penalties for voter fraud by mailed ballot, such as a fine, prison time or both.

    — Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin and Ali Swenson in New York contributed this report.

    ___

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  • FACT FOCUS: Did late night Michigan voting lines show fraud?

    FACT FOCUS: Did late night Michigan voting lines show fraud?

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    Michigan saw record turnout for a midterm election this week, with control of the governor’s office and referendums on abortion and voting rights in the balance.

    But with a heightened focus on voting problems and irregularities nationwide, Ann Arbor became a target for false information following reports of long lines of voters waiting to cast ballots late into the night Tuesday in the college community.

    Elections officials, government watchdog groups and other experts, however, said the election process was carried out according to state law.

    Here are the facts.

    CLAIM: City officials in Ann Arbor were registering new voters and allowing them to vote long after the polls closed on Election Day.

    THE FACTS: The false claim gained traction after a Republican candidate for Michigan secretary of state issued a lengthy statement on social media singling out the vote in Ann Arbor — a liberal bastion that’s home to the University of Michigan — as proof of election malfeasance.

    “We will not tolerate the lawlessness of the Ann Arbor city clerk,” Kristina Karamo wrote in her Election Day tweet, which has since been liked or shared more than 1,200 times.

    The Trump-endorsed Republican, who ended up losing to incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, doubled down on her claims Thursday in a tweet that was also widely shared.

    “The Ann Arbor clerk is engaging in mass Election Crimes. Illegally registering people after 8pm,” another Twitter user wrote, echoing the false claim. “They are arrogantly breaking the law.”

    But Michigan state law allows any person in line when polls close at 8 p.m. to register to vote and to cast a ballot, election officials and experts told The Associated Press this week.

    “Although we say the polls are open until 8pm in MI, if you are in line before 8pm and stay in line you can vote,” Sharon Dolente, a senior advisor for Promote the Vote, wrote in an email. “The same is true if you need to register to vote first, in order to vote.”

    Promote the Vote, a coalition that includes the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union, coordinated an Election Day hotline and had hundreds of observers at polling locations throughout the state on Tuesday.

    Dale Thomson, a political science professor at the University of Michigan in Dearborn, agreed, noting that Michigan voters in 2018 approved same-day registration, meaning voters can enroll up to and including on Election Day.

    The Michigan Department of State, which oversees elections statewide, confirmed with Ann Arbor officials that all voters registered after 8 p.m. had been in line before polls closed and that each person was provided a document to verify that, said Jake Rollow, an agency spokesperson.

    “Eligible American citizens have the constitutional right to register to vote and vote, and if they are in line at the 8 p.m. deadline on Election Day, they must be allowed to do so,” he wrote in an email.

    Joanna Satterlee, a spokesperson for the city of Ann Arbor, said the waiting voters were handed a “ticket” in the form of a blank application to vote.

    Only those in line holding the application were permitted to register and vote, she said. Staff were also present to ensure no one joined the lines after 8 p.m.

    Satterlee said the city didn’t have a count for how many votes were cast by those waiting in line past 8 p.m. on Tuesday, but that the last ballot was issued shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday.

    She said the three voting locations impacted were City Hall and two sites on the University of Michigan campus, where hundreds of waiting voters were seen wrapped up in donated blankets and sipping on hot cocoa as temperatures dropped below 45 degrees.

    The U.S. Department of Justice, which posted election monitors in other Michigan cities, declined to comment, and Karamo’s campaign didn’t respond to messages this week.

    But the secretary of state’s office said it will work with city officials, university administrators and student leaders in Ann Arbor and other college communities to “identify and implement practices to prevent such situations” going forward.

    Michigan State University on Friday said it experienced similarly long voting lines, with the last ballot cast on its East Lansing campus at 12:09 a.m. Wednesday.

    “Unfortunately, long lines in some locations, most often university towns, have been a challenge in Michigan for years,” said Dolente. “This was true before same day registration was adopted. Promote the Vote looks forward to working with election officials to prevent it from happening in the future.”

    ___

    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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  • Misinformation and the midterm elections: What to expect

    Misinformation and the midterm elections: What to expect

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    Conspiracy theories about mail ballots. Anonymous text messages warning voters to stay home. Fringe social media platforms where election misinformation spreads with impunity.

    Misinformation about the upcoming midterm elections has been building for months, challenging election officials and tech companies while offering another reminder of how conspiracy theories and distrust are shaping America’s politics.

    The claims are fueling the candidacies of election deniers and threatening to further corrode faith in voting and democracy. Many of them can be traced back to 2020, when then-President Donald Trump refused to accept the outcome of the election he lost to Joe Biden and began lying about its results.

    “Misinformation is going to be central to this midterm election and central to the 2024 election,” said Bhaskar Chakravorti, who studies technological change and society and is the dean of global business at the Fletcher School at Tufts University. “The single galvanizing narrative is that the 2020 election was stolen.”

    A look at key misinformation challenges heading into the 2022 election:

    MISLEADING CLAIMS ABOUT VOTING

    Political misinformation often focuses on immigration, crime, public health, geopolitics, disasters, education or mass shootings. This year, it’s mostly about voting.

    Claims about the security of mail ballots have grown in recent weeks, as have baseless rumors about noncitizens voting. That’s in addition to claims about dead people casting ballots, ballot drop boxes being moved or wild stories about voting machines.

    Trump, a Republican, attacked the legitimacy of the election even before he lost. He then refused to concede, spreading lies about the election that inspired the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. His contention was rejected in more than 60 court cases and by his own attorney general, William Barr.

    Together, these misleading claims about the nation’s electoral system have led some Republicans to say they’re going to hold onto their mail ballots until Election Day — a move that could slow down the count.

    Others vow to monitor the polls to prevent cheating, leading to concerns about intimidation and even the possibility of violence at election sites.

    Tech companies say they’ve implemented new policies and programs designed to ferret out misinformation.

    “We’ve seen hundreds of elections play out on our platforms in recent years and we’ve been applying lessons from each one to strengthen our preparations,” Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said in a statement.

    Yet critics say the volume of false claims spreading now shows there’s more to be done, such as better enforcement of existing rules or government regulations requiring more aggressive policies.

    “This is no longer a new problem,” said Jon Lloyd, senior adviser at the nonprofit Global Witness, which last week released a report showing that TikTok failed to remove many advertisements that contain election misinformation. Big social media platforms, he said, “are still simply not doing enough to stop threats to democracy.”

    MISTAKES WILL HAPPEN — WHILE CLOCK IS TICKING

    Elections involve the combined efforts of tens of thousands of people working under pressure. Mistakes are expected, which is why there’s a robust system of checks and balances to ensure errors are found and corrected.

    Taken out of context, stories about glitchy voting machines, mixed-up ballots or even “suspicious” vehicles arriving at election centers can become fodder for the next election fraud myth.

    And with so much work to do at such a fast pace, election workers, local officials and even the media can have little time to push back on such claims before they go viral.

    In Georgia in 2020, a water leak at a site where ballots were being counted was used to spin a far-fetched tale of ballot rigging. In Arizona, the choice of pens given to voters filling out ballots led to similarly preposterous claims.

    To avoid falling for a misleading claim, consult multiple sources including local election offices. Any significant voting irregularity will be covered by multiple news outlets and addressed by election officials. Be skeptical of claims from second-hand sources, said Shaye-Ann McDonald, a behavioral researcher at Duke University who studies ways to improve resistance to misinformation.

    The most viral misinformation often elicits anger or fear that motivates readers to repost it before they’ve had time to coolly consider the underlying claim.

    “When you read about something that provokes a strong emotion, that should be a warning sign,” McDonald said.

    A MULTILINGUAL CHALLENGE

    Just before the 2020 election, Spanish-language Facebook ads falsely claimed Biden, a Democrat, was a communist. On other platforms, posts warned Latinos in the U.S. not to vote at all.

    Misinformation in non-English languages is a particular concern cited by researchers who say the major platforms — most of them U.S.-based — are focused on content moderation in English. Automated systems written to detect misinformation in English don’t work as well when applied to other languages.

    “As bad as they (tech companies) are moderating content in English, they’re even worse when it comes non-English languages,” said Jessica Gonzalez, co-CEO of Free Press, a nonprofit that works on issues of racial justice and technology.

    MISINFORMATION BY TEXT?

    While misinformation about elections spreads easily on big social media platforms like Facebook, it also has taken root on a long list of less familiar platforms: Gab, Gettr, Parler and Truth Social, Trump’s platform.

    Meanwhile, TikTok has emerged as a key network for younger voters — and the politicians who want to reach them. The platform, owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance, has created an election center to connect users with trustworthy information about elections and voting. But nonetheless misinformation persists.

    The problem isn’t limited to social media. The number of false claims transmitted by text and email has steadily increased in recent years. Last summer, Democratic voters in Kansas received misleading texts telling them a yes vote on an upcoming referendum would protect abortion rights; the opposite was true.

    MUSK AND TWITTER

    Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter just weeks before the 2022 election upended that platform’s plans for combating misinformation ahead of the midterms.

    Musk quickly fired the executive who had overseen content moderation. Over the weekend he posted a tweet advancing a baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, before deleting it.

    Musk has called himself a free speech absolutist and had said he disagreed with the decision to boot Trump from the platform for incitement of violence on Jan. 6, 2021.

    He has said that a content moderation committee will examine possible revisions to Twitter’s rules but that no changes would be made until after the election.

    “We’re staying vigilant against attempts to manipulate conversations about the 2022 US midterms.” Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, tweeted Tuesday.

    THREATS FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC

    Russian efforts to interfere in U.S. elections go back years, and there are indications that China and Iran are stepping up their game.

    Tech companies, government officials and misinformation researchers say they’re monitoring for such activity ahead of the midterms. But the misinformation threat posed by domestic groups may be far greater.

    ____

    Follow the AP’s coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation. Follow the AP for full coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics. 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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  • Why was I given a provisional ballot?

    Why was I given a provisional ballot?

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    Why was I given a provisional ballot?

    Provisional ballots are issued to voters at a polling location when there are eligibility questions that prevent them from casting a regular ballot on Election Day.

    “They are a fail-safe method to ensure that everyone who is registered to vote gets to cast a ballot,” says Charles Stewart III, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Lab in Boston.

    The ballots, which are sometimes known as “challenge” or “affidavit” ballots, are currently offered in all but three states — Idaho, Minnesota and New Hampshire. Those states, however, offer same-day registration, which allows residents to both register to vote and cast a ballot on Election Day.

    Each state sets its own guidelines for when provisional ballots are required and how they’re processed.

    The most common reasons they’re offered include when an election official challenges a voter’s eligibility or when a voter’s name isn’t found on the list of eligible voters, they lack proper identification or do not reside in the precinct in which they’re attempting to vote, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which publishes a nationwide analysis following every general election.

    Provisional ballots are set aside for review after polls close on Election Day, but the delay in counting them has led to confusion and allegations of voter fraud in recent elections.

    Former President Donald Trump and other election skeptics, for example, questioned why vote counts in some states continued to grow long after polls closed in 2020.

    Some have also suggested that being required to fill out a provisional ballot means someone else has already fraudulently voted in your place and that your vote won’t ultimately be counted.

    But all provisional ballots are reviewed by election officials in every election, says the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan research group that serves lawmakers across the country. If a ballot is deemed legitimate, it will be counted, regardless of how wide the margin of victory in an election might be, the organization said.

    Election officials are also required to inform voters whether their provisional ballot was counted and the reason if it’s rejected. This is usually in the form of a toll-free telephone number or an online tool.

    As provisional ballots are verified, they’re added to the final tally, Stewart said.

    “If all you do is compare the vote totals from election night to the totals with the provisional ballots added, it might look like someone has been stuffing the ballot box,” he said in an email. “Instead, people who voted on Election Day are simply having their vote counted after Election Day.”

    Provisional ballots represent an increasingly small share of all votes cast, comprising less than 1% of all votes in 2020, down from 1.4% in 2016 and 1.7% in 2012, the two most recent presidential elections, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s most recent analysis.

    Overall, roughly 1.7 million provisional ballots were cast nationwide in 2020, of which about 78% were ultimately counted and about 21% were rejected, the commission found.

    ___

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

    What happens if a ballot is damaged or improperly marked?

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

    Can noncitizens vote in U.S. elections?

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  • Police: No powder in envelope reported by candidate’s office

    Police: No powder in envelope reported by candidate’s office

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    Police say there was no powder in an envelope that was opened at the Phoenix campaign headquarters of Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona

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  • Democrat Mark Kelly Wins Arizona Senate Race Against Blake Masters

    Democrat Mark Kelly Wins Arizona Senate Race Against Blake Masters

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    Incumbent Senator Mark Kelly has defeated Republican Blake Masters in the Arizona Senate race—a crucial win for Democrats who hope to maintain control of the upper chamber. After winning a special election last cycle to fill the remainder of late senator John McCain’s term, Kelly, a former astronaut and Naval aviator, will now serve his first full term. 

    With Kelly’s win in Arizona, Democrats are just one seat away from keeping their majority in the Senate, with all eyes toward  Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Raphael Warnock in Georgia.

    Arizona was never seen as a sure bet; the state has become a highly competitive swing state in recent years amid an influx of new residents in the state’s growing metropolitan areas. Still, Democrats running statewide face significant hurdles, with Republicans making up the state’s largest voting bloc. 

    Kelly came out on top thanks to a war chest in campaign funds; he raised more than $73 million, compared to just under $10 million for Masters, according to recent Federal Election Commission filings. Some Republican groups, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s Senate Leadership Fund, cut spending in the race to shift resources to contests deemed more gettable for the GOP.

    At roughly this time last year, Arizona was seen as one of the GOP’s top pickup opportunities in the 50-50 Senate, given the political and economic headwinds for Democrats. But Masters, a Peter Thiel protégé with zero political experience, proved to be a poor general election candidate. After surviving a bitter primary contest—thanks to an endorsement from Donald Trump and $14.5 million in funding from Thiel—Masters spent much of the general election backtracking from his past hardline positions, including his billing as a “100% pro-life” candidate.

    In contrast, Kelly championed abortion rights throughout the general, making a campaign promise to codify abortion protections established by Roe v. Wade, the ruling struck down by the Supreme Court earlier this year. (Arizona’s current abortion laws ban most procedures from taking place after 15 weeks of pregnancy—a standard that Masters said he would support nationwide—while a a more stringent ban is being litigated in the state.)

    On immigration, one of the GOP’s top rallying points in Arizona, Kelly positioned himself to the right of his party’s leadership. During the race’s only debate, he called for the Biden administration to heighten border security by renovating border fences and recruiting additional Border Patrol agents to Arizona.

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  • Mark Kelly wins Arizona Senate race, bringing Democrats one seat away from majority, NBC News projects

    Mark Kelly wins Arizona Senate race, bringing Democrats one seat away from majority, NBC News projects

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    U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and his wife former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, daughters Charlotte, Samantha and son in law Mark Sudman wave during his election night rally at the Rialto Theatre on November 08, 2022 in Tucson, Arizona.

    Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

    Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly will hold on to his U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, pushing Democrats closer to retaining control of the Senate, NBC News projected.

    Kelly was leading Republican candidate Blake Masters, who was former President Donald Trump’s pick in the key swing state, by almost six percentage points with 85% of the votes in as of Friday night. With Kelly’s win, Democrats need just one of the two seats in Nevada or Georgia that haven’t been called yet.

    In Nevada, Republican candidate Adam Laxalt was ahead by 1 percentage point with 88% of the votes counted as of Friday morning. Georgia’s Senate race is headed to a runoff election on Dec. 6 between GOP candidate Herschel Walker and incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, who was leading by more than a percentage point.

    Kelly raised and spent vastly more than venture capitalist Masters, bringing in over $81.8 million and spending over $75.9 million through mid-October. Masters, by comparison, raised $12.3 million and spent just $9.7 million over the same time frame, according to data compiled by the Federal Election Commission.

    The Arizona Democrat campaigned on a platform of bipartisanship and promoted his willingness to work across the aisle with Republicans. He was elected to the Senate in 2020 to finish the term of Republican Sen. John McCain, who died of an aggressive form of brain cancer.

    Kelly recently distanced his stance on immigration from the Biden administration when he came out against the decision to end Title 42. The policy, which began during the Trump administration, prevented migrants from entering the country due to Covid.

    The Arizona Democrat has also pushed hard for border security. He recently referred to the influx of migrants at the southern border as “a mess” during a debate.

    “When the president decided he was going to do something dumb on this and change the rules that would create a bigger crisis, I told him he was wrong. So I pushed back on this administration multiple times,” Kelly said in October.

    But Kelly was also a chief negotiator in the CHIPS and Science Act, a key component of President Joe Biden’s economic policies that was signed into law in August.

    A former NASA astronaut and Navy pilot, Kelly is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a gunshot wound to the head in 2011.

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  • Bahrain says websites attacked before parliamentary election

    Bahrain says websites attacked before parliamentary election

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Bahrain said Saturday hackers targeted websites in the island kingdom just hours before a planned parliamentary election.

    The Interior Ministry did not identify the websites targeted, but the country’s state-run Bahrain News Agency could not be reached online nor could the website for Bahrain’s parliament.

    “Websites are being targeted to hinder the elections and circulate negative messages in desperate attempts that won’t affect the determination of citizens who will go to the polling stations,” the Interior Ministry said.

    Screenshots taken by internet users showed a picture after the hack claiming it was carried out by a previously unknown account called Al-Toufan, or “The Flood” in Arabic. Social media accounts associated with Al-Toufan said the group targeted the parliament’s website “due to the persecution carried out by the Bahraini authorities, and in implementation of the popular will to boycott the sham elections.”

    A banned Shiite opposition group and others have called on voters to boycott the election.

    Bahraini officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The attack happened just hours ahead of parliamentary and municipal elections in Bahrain. Voters will pick the 40 members of the lower house of Bahrain’s parliament, the Council of Representatives. The parliament’s upper house, the Consultative Council, is appointed by royal decree by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

    Bahrain is in the midst of a decade-long crackdown on all dissent after the 2011 Arab Spring protests, which saw the island’s Shiite majority and others demanding more political freedom.

    Since Bahrain put down the protests with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, it has imprisoned Shiite activists, deported others, stripped hundreds of their citizenship and closed down its leading independent newspaper.

    Bahrain, about the size of New York City, is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

    ———

    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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  • Ahead of Xi meeting, Biden calls out China

    Ahead of Xi meeting, Biden calls out China

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    PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — U.S. President Joe Biden offered a full-throated American commitment to the nations of Southeast Asia on Saturday, pledging at a Cambodia summit to help stand against China’s growing dominance in the region — without mentioning the other superpower by name.

    Chinese President Xi Jinping wasn’t in the room at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, summit in Phnom Penh. But Xi hovered over the proceedings just two days before he and Biden are set to have their highly anticipated first face-to-face meeting at the G20 summit in Indonesia.

    The Biden White House has declared Xi’s nation its greatest economic and military rival of the next century and while the president never called out China directly, his message was squarely aimed at Beijing.

    “Together we will tackle the biggest issues of our time, from climate to health security to defend against significant threats to rules-based order and to threats against the rule of law,” Biden said. “We’ll build an Indo-Pacific that is free and open, stable and prosperous, resilient and secure.”

    The U.S. has long derided China’s violation of the international rules-based order — from trade to shipping to intellectual property — and Biden tried to emphasize his administration’s solidarity with a region American has too often overlooked.

    His work in Phnom Penh was meant to set a framework for his meeting with Xi — his first face-to-face with the Chinese leader since taking office — which is to be held Monday at the G20 summit of the world’s richest economies, this year being held in Indonesia on the island of Bali.

    Much of Biden’s agenda at ASEAN was to demonstrate resistance to Beijing.

    He was to push for better freedom of navigation on the South China Sea, where the U.S. believes the nations can fly and sail wherever international law allows. The U.S. had declared that China’s resistance to that freedom challenges the world’s rules-based order.

    Moreover, in an effort to crack down on unregulated fishing by China, the U.S. began an effort to use radio frequencies from commercial satellites to better track so-called dark shipping and illegal fishing. Biden also pledged to help the area’s infrastructure initiative — meant as a counter to China’s Belt and Road program — as well as to lead a regional response to the ongoing violence in Myanmar.

    But it is the Xi meeting that will be the main event for Biden’s week abroad, which comes right after his party showed surprising strength in the U.S. midterm elections, emboldening the president as he headed overseas. Biden will circumnavigate the globe, having made his first stop at a major climate conference in Egypt before arriving in Cambodia for a pair of weekend summits before going on to Indonesia.

    There has been skepticism among Asian states as to American commitment to the region over the last two decades. Former President Barack Obama took office with the much-ballyhooed declaration that the U.S. would “pivot to Asia,” but his administration was sidetracked by growing involvements in Middle Eastern wars.

    Donald Trump conducted a more inward-looking foreign policy and spent much of his time in office trying to broker a better trade deal with China, all the while praising Xi’s authoritarian instincts. Declaring China the United States’ biggest rival, Biden again tried to focus on Beijing but has had to devote an extraordinary amount of resources to helping Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion.

    But this week is meant to refocus America on Asia — just as China, taking advantage of the vacuum left by America’s inattention, has continued to wield its power over the region.

    Biden declared that the ten nations that make up ASEAN are “the heart of my administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy” and that his time in office — which included hosting the leaders in Washington earlier this year — begins “a new era in our cooperation.” He did, though, mistakenly identify the host country as “Colombia” while offering thanks at the beginning of his speech.

    “We will build a better future, a better future we all say we want to see,” Biden said.

    Biden was only the second U.S. president to set foot in Cambodia, after Obama visited in 2012. And like Obama did then, the president on Saturday made no public remarks about Cambodia’s dark history or the United States’ role in the nation’s tortured past.

    In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon authorized a secret carpet-bombing campaign in Cambodia to cut off North Vietnam’s move toward South Vietnam. The U.S. also backed a coup that led, in part, to the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, a bloodthirsty guerrilla group that went on to orchestrate a genocide that resulted in the deaths of more than 1.5 million people between 1975 and 1979.

    One of the regime’s infamous Killing Fields, where nearly 20,000 Cambodians were executed and thrown in mass graves, lies just a few miles outside the center of Phnom Penh. There, a memorial featuring thousands of skulls sits as a vivid reminder of the atrocities committed just a few generations ago. White House aides said that Biden had no scheduled plans to visit.

    As is customary, Biden met with the host country’s leader at the start of the summit. Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, has ruled Cambodia for decades with next to no tolerance for dissent. Opposition leaders have been jailed and killed, and his administration has been accused of widespread corruption, according to human rights groups.

    Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said Biden would “engage across the board in service of America’s interests and to advance America’s strategic position and our values.” He said Biden was meeting with Hun Sen because he was the leader of the host country. 

    U.S. officials said Biden urged the Cambodian leader to make a greater commitment to democracy and “reopen civic and political space” ahead of the country’s next elections.

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    Jonathan Lemire

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  • Abortion played key role in 2022 midterm elections; two races could determine Senate control — live updates

    Abortion played key role in 2022 midterm elections; two races could determine Senate control — live updates

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    Washington — Abortion access proved to be a powerful force in the 2022 midterm elections, lifting Democrats in battleground states and helping to weaken the anticipated Republican wave into a ripple. In the five states where the issue was directly on the ballot, every contest leaned in favor of protecting abortion rights — even in heavily Republican states like Kentucky and Montana.

    These outcomes help answer one of the central questions of the midterm campaign: whether fervor over the fall of Roe v. Wade in the summer could last through November. 

    It’s now been three days since the elections, and number of races have not yet been called, as ballots continue to be counted. Senate control is a toss-up, and the House of Representatives is leaning Republican, according to CBS News estimates.

    Senate contests in Arizona and Nevada are still undecided, and Georgia’s Senate race between incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and his GOP challenger, Herschel Walker, is going into a runoff on Dec. 6. 

    Republicans need to pick up two out of the three seats in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada to win control of the Senate, according to CBS News projections. 

    Alaska’s Senate race also remains a toss-up, but the top two candidates are both Republicans, meaning the outcome won’t impact the partisan makeup of the Senate. Since neither candidate received 50% of the vote, the race will go to its ranked-choice process, with results expected in two weeks.   

    Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who is currently trailing Democrat Katie Hobbs, accused state election officials of “slow-rolling” the vote count.  Bill Gates, the chairman of the board of supervisors in Maricopa County, the state’s largest, pushed back against that accusation on Thursday, saying that counting was always going to take “several days.” Gates added, “Quite frankly it is offensive for Kari Lake to say these people behind me are slow-rolling this when they are working 14 to 18 hours.”

    Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is in a toss-up race to hold onto her seat against Democratic challenger Adam Frisch in what had been considered a safe GOP seat, but her lead has been increasing. On Thursday morning, with 99% of the vote in, she was ahead by over 1,100 votes.

    Full results and projections for every House, Senate and governor’s race can be found in the CBS News Election Center.

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  • Popular Istanbul mayor on trial, could face political ban

    Popular Istanbul mayor on trial, could face political ban

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    ISTANBUL — A Turkish court resumed the trial of Istanbul’s mayor Friday on charges of insulting members of Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council, a case critics allege is an attempt to remove a key opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from the political scene.

    Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, faces up to four years in prison if found guilty of the charge and could also be barred from holding office. The court in Istanbul might deliver its verdict on Friday.

    Imamoglu was elected to lead Turkey’s largest city in March 2019. His win was a historic blow to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, which had controlled Istanbul for a quarter-century. The party pushed to void the municipal election results in the city of 16 million, alleging irregularities.

    The challenge resulted in a repeat of the election a few months later. Imamoglu won again, that time with a comfortable majority.

    His trial is based on accusations that he insulted members of the electoral council with a Nov. 4, 2019 statement in which he described canceling legitimate elections as “foolishness.”

    The mayor denies insulting members of the council, insisting his words were a response to Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu calling him “a fool” and accusing Imamoglu of criticizing Turkey during a visit to the European Parliament.

    Government critics regard the trial as an attempt to prevent the popular mayor from running against Erdogan in presidential and parliamentary elections currently scheduled for June 2023.

    If convicted, Imamoglu could lose his post as mayor and be replaced by someone close to Erdogan’s ruling party.

    Several mayors from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, who were also elected in 2019, were removed from office over alleged links to Kurdish militants and replaced by state-appointed trustees.

    Dozens of HDP lawmakers and thousands of party members were arrested on terror-related accusations as part of a government crackdown on the party.

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  • We may not know who controls the U.S. Senate until December; House could be decided much sooner

    We may not know who controls the U.S. Senate until December; House could be decided much sooner

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    The question of which political parties control one or both chambers of Congress for the next two years could take until early December to sort out.

    But whether Republicans have managed in the midterm elections to narrowly wrest majority control away from Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives could be resolved within the coming days as ballots are processed in 11 states.

    Republicans are projected to win 221 seats in the House, three more than the 218 needed to take the majority, while Democrats look like they will win 214 seats, according to NBC News. That estimate has a margin of error of seven seats. And election officials are still counting ballots in at least 31 races.

    And that result could be dragged out even further if one or more of the House races is so close it triggers a recount.

    As of Thursday, two days after polls closed around the nation, three seats in the Senate had yet to have winners projected by NBC News.

    All three of those seats, in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, are currently held by Democrats.

    The outcome of those races will determine if Democrats retain the slimmest possible majority in the Senate, with the potential to actually increase the majority slightly.

    While the results of Senate races in Arizona and Nevada could both be known by next week, Georgia is headed to a run-off special election on Dec. 6 because of the failure of either major-party candidate to garner more than 50% of the vote.

    Currently, there are 48 Democratic senators and two independents who caucus with them, compared with 50 Republican senators who make up the remainder of the chamber.

    Democrats hold the majority there since Vice President Kamala Harris, a fellow Democrat, has the power to break ties as president of the Senate.

    To maintain that control starting in January, Democrats need to win at least two of the three elections that haven’t been called yet.

    But the party gained some breathing room after Pennsylvania’s Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated GOP contender Dr. Mehmet Oz for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, who’s retiring.

    “Like all of you, I’m just watching and waiting for them to finish counting the votes,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, told reporters Thursday. McConnell is favored to become majority leader, again, if Republicans win at least two of the remaining Senate races

    In Arizona, incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly had 51.4% of the votes cast as of Thursday, compared with 46.4% of the votes held by Blake Masters, his Republican challenger, who was trailing him by more than 95,000 votes.

    NBC News reported that 76% of the expected votes were in Arizona as of Thursday afternoon, with 670,000 ballots remaining.

    Arizona’s count tends to be slower than other states because of the need to verify the signatures of voters who dropped off so-called early ballots on Election Day. About 290,000 early ballots, which could have been turned in before Election Day, were submitted that day — an increase of 115,000 of the number of ballots seen that day in 2020.

    The results of several tens of thousands of early ballots that were delivered by hand to Maricopa County polling sites on Tuesday are expected to be released Thursday night.

    In Nevada, Republican challenger Adam Laxalt was leading Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, by 49.4% to 47.6%. NBC estimated that 84% of the expected vote had been counted, with a 165,713 ballots remaining.

    Nevada’s race could take several more days to resolve. Most of the votes were submitted by mail, and ballots that were postmarked by Election Day can be counted if they arrive by 5 p.m. PT Saturday,

    Clark County, Nevada, which is the nation’s 11th largest county by population, in a statement Thursday pushed back on claims by former President Donald Trump that cast doubt on the vote-counting process there.

    “We have heard his outrageous claims, but he is obviously still misinformed about the law and our election processes that ensure the integrity of elections in Clark County,” the county said. “First, we could not speed up the process even if we wanted to.”

    The county pointed out that by law it has to “check each signature on every mail ballot envelope, and if one does not match what is in our records, we are required by law to give that voter until 5 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 14, to cure their signature.”

    “In addition, there are provisional ballots to process, and we will not be able to complete that task until we receive reports from the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office on Wednesday, Nov. 16. This process ensures that individuals do not vote twice in Nevada,” the statement said.

    In Georgia, the run-off on Dec. 6 was set after incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, received 49.6% of the vote, compared to 48.3% by his Republican challenger Herschel Walker, the former pro and college football star, while a third candidate got just over 2% of the votes. Georgia law requires a runoff of the top two candidates if no one gets more than 50% of the vote.

    Warnock, who is seeking his first full term, won a special election runoff for the seat in January 2021, along with Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Their double victory gave Democrats majority control of the Senate.

    The largest number of uncalled House seats are in California, where 15 races have yet to be called as of Thursday afternoon.

    Nevada has three uncalled House races.

    Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington state each have two uncalled House races.

    Alaska, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, and New York each have one uncalled House race.

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  • Democrats see successes in battles for state legislatures

    Democrats see successes in battles for state legislatures

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    Democrats saw successes in legislative chambers across several battleground states in the midterm elections Tuesday, flipping a few of them to Democratic control while stopping Republicans from winning supermajorities in others.

    In Wisconsin, Republicans needed to net five seats in the Assembly and just one in the Senate to reach a two-thirds supermajority — a major development that would have expanded the power of Republicans in the Legislature to override vetoes by Democratic Governor Tony Evers, who was reelected Tuesday. While Republicans flipped the seat they needed for a supermajority in the state Senate, Democrats held on in the Assembly and prevented a supermajority there. Republicans need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to be able to override Evers’ vetoes.

    Evers, a lifelong educator who upset Republican Governor Scott Walker in 2018, often refers to himself as the “goalie” against the Republican-controlled Legislature. He has vetoed a record 126 bills, stopping the Legislature from expanding gun rights, limiting abortions, blocking schools from anti-racism instruction and banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates. 

    He has also blocked more than a dozen voting laws from Wisconsin Republicans: one measure  would have made it more difficult to obtain mail ballots; another would have prohibited election officials from correcting information on absentee ballots; and one would have reduced the power of the state’s bipartisan elections commission. 

    “Key Democratic victories today in Wisconsin may have prevented the MAGA GOP from completely overriding the state’s election system,” said Jessica Post, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the campaign arm for Democratic state legislative candidates. 

    “Wisconsin’s GOP has not been coy with their intentions, and despite every advantage, Republicans were unable to muster the numbers to completely unleash their regressive agenda on Wisconsin,” she added.

    In Michigan, where Democratic incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was reelected Tuesday, Democrats flipped both the state House and Senate giving the party a “trifecta” for the first time since 1984. The state was a huge target for the DLCC, who spent $2 million in the state to help down ballot Democrats. In total, $24.8 million was spent on advertisements for Democratic state legislative candidates in Michigan, according to AdImpact. 

    “These results show that millions of Michiganders trust Democrats to protect abortion, build an economy that works for everyone, and reject GOP hate,” said Post.

    This is the first decade Michigan’s independent redistricting commission has been used, and Democrats in the state have credited it as one reason they’ve been able to make gains in these chambers. 

    Prior to that, Republican majorities were drawing the lines going back as far as 2000.

    In Pennsylvania, with four races still left to call as of Thursday morning, Democrats were just two seats away from flipping the state House. If they do so, it would be the first time Democrats would control the state House since 2010. State Rep. Joanna McClinton would become the first Black woman to serve as speaker in the state.

    Minnesota’s Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party also gained full control of the Legislature by maintaining the state House and flipping the state Senate. The Republican State Leadership Committee, which oversees legislative races as well as state Supreme Court and secretary of state races, had Michigan and Minnesota on its target list, but also expanded its map earlier this year to force Democrats to play in Oregon and Wasington. 

    By Wednesday morning, the GOP had not flipped any state legislatures. But Republicans did win state Supreme Court races in Ohio, holding their 4-3 majority and replacing a retiring swing vote conservative judge with a more reliable one. Republicans also flipped two state Supreme Court seats in North Carolina and now hold a 5-2 majority in the state.

    Their wins there could have implications for redistricting this decade.

    Republicans also secured a supermajority in North Carolina’s state Senate, though they fell short of a supermajority in the state House. 

    In a statement, RSLC communications director Andrew Romeo pointed to the $130 million dollars of Democratic spending on ads in these legislative battlegrounds, and Republican victories in North Carolina, Iowa and South Carolina. 

    “With minimal gains at the federal level, the Republican power we held and gained last night in the states will be all the more important for stopping Joe Biden’s disastrous agenda. We know that last night was just the beginning of the radical left’s full-throated assault that they will mount against our GOP-majorities in the coming decade, and the fight to stop socialism in the states continues,” he added. 

    Aaron Navarro

    Aaron Navarro is an associate producer for the political unit at CBS News, focusing on House and gubernatorial campaigns as well as the census and redistricting.

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