Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas declares victory in 10th District
Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas declared victory over attorney Grace Yoo in his race to represent a Koreatown-to-Crenshaw district on the Los Angeles City Council, setting the stage for a return to City Hall after an 18-year absence.
While returns were still being tabulated, Ridley-Thomas held a commanding lead over his opponent Wednesday, with 61.4% of the vote compared with Yoo’s 38.6%.
Holly Mitchell wins seat on L.A. County Board of Supervisors
Holly Mitchell wins seat on L.A. County Board of Supervisors
State Sen. Holly Mitchell wins the L.A. County Board of Supervisors 2nd District seat, which spans southwest from Culver City to Carson.
Mitchell will not only assume a four-year term on the board, which acts much like a five-headed executive with broad control to create social programs, build medical clinics and appropriate money, but is generally expected to stay in the position for the next 12 years, as supervisors rarely lose a race once elected.
In recent months, following a summer of protests and a national reckoning on racism, the candidates have focused far more resources on highlighting their records on criminal justice reform and building skepticism among voters about which candidate is being most forthright.
With several successful female candidates, GOP makes small gain in the House
WASHINGTON — Democratic control of the House was never realistically in question in 2020, but Democrats’ and pundits’ prediction that they would increase their margins by five to 20 seats by making inroads into President Trump’s strongholds didn’t pan out.
Instead, Republicans exceeded expectations, netting at least six seats. That included defeating one of the few remaining rural Democrats in the House, Minnesota’s Rep. Collin Peterson, the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.
But the biggest victory might have been for Republican women, who secured at least five seats, bringing the GOP closer to its pre-2018 numbers. There are currently 13 Republican women and 88 Democratic women in the House, according to Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics.
Wisconsin has a track record of extremely close presidential contests
In the last three presidential elections, Wisconsin has gone to the winning candidate. The Badger State is looking crucial again, with votes still to be counted to see if Joe Biden can maintain the wafer-thin lead he took over President Trump in the tabulation early Wednesday.
Wisconsin has a track record of extremely close races for president, most recently in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton by fewer than 23,000 votes. Trump scored 47.22% of the tally and Clinton 46.45%, crumbling the “Blue Wall” that Democratic candidates had traditionally relied on in the Midwest.
In 2004, when George W. Bush was running for reelection, challenger John Kerry bested him by only about 11,400 votes in Wisconsin, but Bush went on to win a second term anyway. Four years before that, Bush narrowly lost to Vice President Al Gore as well, by a mere 5,700 votes, but became president because of a Supreme Court ruling.
In this century, only the 2008 and 2012 presidential races in Wisconsin were decisively won, both times by Barack Obama, first against John McCain and then against Mitt Romney.
Obama’s running mate, of course, was Biden.
GOP Sen. Susan Collins holds lead in Maine, but race is tight
PORTLAND, Maine — The costliest political race in Maine history didn’t conclude on election day: Neither Republican Sen. Susan Collins nor Democratic Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon were able to declare victory.
Ballots were still being counted to determine a winner in the hard-fought contest, one of several that were crucial in determining whether Democrats would be able to take control of the Senate.
“We’re doing really well, but I know it’s not over until it’s over,” Collins told reporters late Tuesday in Bangor before calling it a night.
Gideon, for her part, did not appear before reporters at a Portland hotel but issued a statement saying she was grateful to her supporters.
“It’s clear this race will not be called tonight, and we are prepared to see it through to the finish. Over the coming days, we will make sure that every Mainer has their voice heard in this election,” she said.
The Senate race was the most expensive in Maine history, with Gideon raising nearly $70 million, more than double the $27 million that Collins raised. But that didn’t include so-called dark money. All told, more than $120 million was spent by both candidates and their allies on advertising.
With most but not all votes counted, Collins held a slim majority, but it was too early to declare a winner.
Further complicating the picture is Maine’s ranked-choice voting system. If no candidate wins a majority of first-place votes, then there need to be additional tabulations, aided by computers, in which last-place candidates are eliminated and votes reallocated to ensure a majority-vote winner.
Northern battleground states prove their importance once again
The fate of the presidency hung in the balance Wednesday morning as President Trump and Joe Biden dueled over three familiar battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that could prove crucial in determining who wins the White House.
It was unclear when or how quickly a winner could be determined. A late burst of votes in Wisconsin gave Biden an extremely narrow lead, but it was still too early to call the race. Hundreds of thousands of votes were outstanding in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
By Tuesday night’s end, the margins were exceedingly tight, with the candidates trading wins in other battleground states across the country. Trump picked up Florida, the largest of the swing states, while Biden flipped Arizona, a state that has reliably voted Republican for decades.
Neither candidate has yet reached the 270 electoral college votes needed to capture the White House.
In an extraordinary move from the White House, Trump issued premature claims of victory and said he would take the election to the Supreme Court to stop the counting. It was unclear exactly what legal action he might try to pursue.
Biden, appearing in front of supporters in Delaware, urged patience, saying the election “ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”
With many ballots still outstanding, Nevada is too close to call
LAS VEGAS — Early results showed Joe Biden with a slim lead over President Trump in Nevada, but it was too early to declare a winner in the race Wednesday with a large number of ballots yet to be counted.
The Nevada secretary of state’s office said a new batch of results would be released Thursday after 9 a.m. Mail-in ballots received on election day had not yet been counted, along with any mail ballots postmarked no later than Nov. 3 that arrive over the next week and any provisional ballots.
The number of outstanding mail ballots is difficult to estimate, the elections office said, because Nevada opted to automatically mail ballots to all active registered voters this year, and it’s hard to predict how many will choose to return them.
No Republican presidential candidate has carried Nevada since 2004, but the state has remained a battleground. Trump fell just shy of winning Nevada and its six electoral college votes four years ago, and this year he campaigned hard in the state hoping for better luck.
Democrats and Joe Biden’s campaign said that while they have been successful in recent elections in Nevada, they weren’t taking anything for granted this year.
By Tuesday evening, shortly before polls closed, turnout in Nevada was already 8% higher than all of 2016.
With Milwaukee counted, Biden takes razor-thin lead in Wisconsin
Joe Biden moved past President Trump to take a razor-thin lead in Wisconsin early Wednesday after the state counted mail-in votes from the overwhelmingly Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee.
A victory in the state could help Biden find a path to the 270 electoral college votes required to win the presidency. Other key states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia, where Biden currently trails, were still waiting to count votes from significantly pro-Democratic cities that could tip the balance away from Trump.
Votes were still being counted in Wisconsin, and the state was still too close to call early Wednesday after the crop of Milwaukee votes was tallied. As of about 2 a.m. Pacific time, Biden led 1,582,605 votes to Trump’s 1,574,461, an extremely narrow advantage of 49.4% to 49.1%.
Democrats’ hopes for capturing a Senate majority fade
WASHINGTON — Democrats’ hopes of sweeping to a Senate majority faded as marquee contests stretched into overtime early Wednesday and some of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents remained in contention while the vote counts dragged on.
Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, whose defeats had been considered essential building blocks of a new Democratic majority, held narrow leads over their opponents in nearly complete results. If they eke out wins, Democrats’ path to a majority would all but vanish.
Given the races remaining to be called, perhaps the best Democrats could achieve is a 50-50 split, which would give them a majority only if Joe Biden won the presidential election and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, then became vice president and presided over the Senate as its tie-breaker.
Democrats had headed into election day favored to win a slight majority in the Senate, but returns were mixed early on as polls closed across the country.
News Analysis: No blue wave — or winner — as election outcome waits on a long count
WASHINGTON — As the country settles in for a prolonged count to determine the winner of the 2020 election, this much is clear: Democratic hopes for a wave of votes that would sweep away barriers to progressive policy changes have suffered a significant setback.
Joe Biden continues to have a strong chance of winning the presidency by carrying the big industrial states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Arizona, where he holds a strong lead. The party will also retain control of the House.
But in the final weeks of the campaign, favorable polls and a flood of campaign money had raised Democratic hopes of a significantly larger victory, one that would decisively repudiate the Trump-era Republican Party, expand Democrats’ House majority, give them clear control of the Senate and open the way to passage of long-stalled legislation on voting rights, climate change, immigration reform and other Democratic priorities.
Instead, the election results so far have proved the continued strength not only of President Trump, but of the country’s deeply entrenched partisan divide. Democratic hopes of a Senate majority dwindled through the night, raising the likelihood that even if he’s elected, Biden will face a divided Congress as well as a Supreme Court with a conservative majority that was strengthened last month with the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Biden publicly expressed confidence Tuesday night while Trump accused Democrats and the media of trying to “disenfranchise” his supporters.
Peaceful protests in Portland, Ore., and Seattle
PORTLAND, Ore. — Protesters marched in Portland and Seattle on Tuesday night, calling for racial justice as election results came in.
In Seattle, two groups of demonstrators took to the streets. Speakers said that as president, neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden would do enough to protect the lives of Black and Indigenous people.
On Portland’s east side, Black speakers and performers appeared on a stage in front of a few hundred people who began a march about 7 p.m. “No cops, no prisons, total abolition,” protesters chanted.
Also on Tuesday, lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice asked a judge to put an emergency hold on his order limiting crowd control by federal officers during protests to a nine-block area in downtown Portland.
U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman issued the injunction Monday, finding that federal officers had infringed on protesters’ rights.
Biden campaign reacts to Trump’s claims of fraud
Joe Biden’s campaign manager called President Trump’s comments at the White House statement “a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”
“The president’s statement tonight about trying to shut down the counting of duly cast ballots was outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect,” Jen O’Malley Dillon said of Trump’s claims that the election outcome would be fraudulent if ballots continued to be tallied.
“It was unprecedented because never before in our history has a president of the United States sought to strip Americans of their voice in a national election,” she said in a statement. “Having encouraged Republican efforts in multiple states to prevent the legal counting of these ballots before Election Day, now Donald Trump is saying these ballots can’t be counted after Election Day either.”
Wisconsin governor says election ends when every vote is counted
‘I think the president is confused,’ election law expert says
LAS VEGAS - “I think the president is confused, if you want to treat it charitably,” election law expert Edward Foley said after watching President Trump’s statement from the White House.
“What he describes doesn’t match the reality of the legal process as it applies to counting votes. The votes will be counted in each and everyone of these states.
”Trump falsely claimed the pending election outcome was “a fraud on the American public” and called for a stop to the counting of the remaining ballots. “He doesn’t have any role to play in that as a candidate. And the office of the presidency doesn’t have any role to play in that,” said Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, where he directs its election law program.
As a candidate Trump could file lawsuits if he has a legal claim, Foley said, “but you can’t just try to stop the counting of votes because you don’t want them counted.”He also called Trump’s conception of the role of the Supreme Court as “mistaken.”
“There’s a chance the Supreme Court could get involved on a narrow category of ballots that might have some questionable validity, but it’s not in anyway inevitable that that small slice of ballots would be outcome determinate in any of these states,” he said. “The Supreme Court is not going to stop the counting of votes in general. There wouldn’t be any legal basis for that.”
Governor vows: ‘Pennsylvania will have a fair election and we will count every vote’
President Trump makes baseless claim of fraud, calls for counting of remaining ballots to stop
President Trump addressed supporters at the White House and said he would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the continued counting of ballots to “stop a major fraud in our nation”.
“This is a fraud on the America public, this is an embarrassment on our country. We were getting ready to win this election — frankly we did win this election. So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation … so we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all the voting to stop, we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”
Trump, speaking after 2 a.m. to a packed room of maskless supporters, sounded disappointed as he alluded to an early projection from Fox News calling Arizona for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a pickup that could clear Biden’s path to victory.
“We were getting ready for a big celebration, we were winning everything, and then all of a sudden it was just called off,” Trump said.
Citing “millions” of votes cast in his support in several states, Trump said “a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people” as states continue to count ballots in narrow contests, including in major Democratic strongholds in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Trump listed off voting statistics from Ohio, Texas and Florida, which have been called in his favor by media observers. He then implied that continued vote counts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, where remaining votes are expected to show Democratic pickups, would illegitimately tilt the election away from him.
“It’s a very sad moment, to me it’s a very sad moment,” Trump said. “We will win this, and as far as I’m concerned, we have. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
Trump calls on Supreme Court to stop counting in undecided, cliff-hanging presidential race
President Trump delivered a hazy claim of victory early Wednesday morning over Democratic challenger Joe Biden even as millions of votes remained to be counted, calling on the Supreme Court to “stop a major fraud in our nation” and hand him the presidential election.
In an extraordinary 2:30 a.m. appearance at the White House, Trump called the pending outcome “a fraud on the America public” and “embarrassment on our country.”
“We were getting ready to win this election -- frankly we did win this election,” he said, citing victories in some states that had yet to be decided. “So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all the voting to stop, we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”
Biden wins Arizona
Joe Biden won Arizona on Tuesday, becoming just the second Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1948.
President Trump won four years ago with just 48% of the vote, and Democrats made a major effort to flip the Grand Canyon State, counting on a growing Latino population, an influx of newcomers from places like California and resistance to Trump among voters in the sprawling Phoenix suburbs.
The last Democrat to carry Arizona was Bill Clinton, who scratched out a win with 47% in support in 1996.
Arizona has 11 electoral votes. It takes 270 to be elected president.
GOP Sen. Daines keeps Senate seat in Montana
GOP Sen. Steve Daines has won his bid for reelection in Montana, beating back a surprisingly strong challenge in a solidly Republican state.
His victory over Gov. Steve Bullock moved Republicans a step closer to retaining their majority in the Senate, where they now have a 53-47 advantage.
Bullock, who won reelection as governor in 2016 even as Trump won the state by 20 percentage points, failed to repeat that feat of ticket-splitting success against the GOP incumbent in a state where Trump has remained very popular.
But Daines had a tougher than expected challenge from Bullock, who ran unsuccessfully for Democrats’ presidential nomination. He bested Daines in fundraising and was boosted by praise for his handling of the state’s coronavirus crisis.
Voters approve Proposition 17, giving Californians who are on parole from prison the right to vote
Voters have approved Proposition 17, giving Californians who are on parole after being convicted of a felony the right to vote in future elections.
The measure restores the vote to some 50,000 parolees by changing the state Constitution, which disqualified people with felony convictions from voting until their incarceration and parole are completed.
Watch President Trump address the nation
President Trump speaks to the nation. As some tightly contested battleground states continue to count ballots, the president has gone onto Twitter to make unsubstantiated claims about the legitimacy of the election, claims that were flagged by the social media company.
Voters reject Proposition 20, which proposed new property crime punishments and limits on parole
Voters rejected Proposition 20, a California initiative that sought to toughen sentencing in criminal cases and reduce the number of prison inmates eligible for early parole.
Voters reject Proposition 21, which would have allowed local governments to apply new rent controls
California voters have rejected Proposition 21, which would have allowed cities and counties to apply rent controls to housing more than 15 years old. The measure’s defeat marks the second time since 2018 that voters have opted against expanding rent control.
Twitter flags Trump’s election night tweet as misleading
When President Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday night to share his opinion that “they” are “trying to STEAL the election,” Twitter was ready.
Within 15 minutes of the post going up at 9:49 Pacific time, the president’s tweet had been flagged with a noticeable disclaimer, stating “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic processes.” The warning label included a link to “learn more” that led to detailed company policy for flagging and slowing the spread of misinformation.
Beneath the president’s message, Twitter also appended a notice linking to the same policies.
Prop. 23, which would have imposed new regulations on dialysis industry, fails
A $100-million effort to impose new regulations on the dialysis industry was defeated Tuesday.
Proposition 23 would have required dialysis clinics to employ at least one doctor who would be on site whenever patients are receiving treatment. Supporters of the measure, including the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, said dialysis clinics were putting profits over patient care by not having a doctor available in the event of complications or an emergency.
Trump wins Texas
President Trump won Texas on Tuesday, extending a 44-year Republican winning streak.
Trump won the state handily four years ago, but polls suggested Democrat Joe Biden had a reasonable shot at an upset. A victory would have killed Trump’s reelection chances and been a political game-changer if it signaled a lasting realignment in a state that is foundational to the GOP.
Texas has 38 electoral votes. It takes 270 to be elected president.
Biden urges patience, says he’s on track to win the election
WILMINGTON, Del. — Joe Biden made brief remarks to his supporters at a drive-in rally in his hometown, urging them to be patient and “keep the faith.”
“I’m here to tell you I believe that we’re on track to win this election,” he said early Wednesday morning local time. Biden projected confidence that key states in the upper Midwest and southwest will end up in his column. The loudest cheers in the crowd came when the former vice president said he would win Pennsylvania, his birthplace.
The crowd, which had been intensely focused on monitoring results on their phones and via MSNBC projected on the big screen, seemed to relish Biden’s optimism, responding with claps and honks for their favored candidate.
Immediately after Biden left the stage, Tom Ross turned to his companions and announced, “I feel better.”
“It was good to hear it directly from him,” explained Ross, 52, a former chair of the Delaware state GOP. Biden promised that he and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, who did not appear onstage, would have more to say later on Wednesday.
Detroit records high voter turnout — a key to past Democratic victories in Michigan
DETROIT — Turnout in this overwhelmingly Democratic city is expected to meet or exceed the 53% that helped place Barack Obama in the White House in 2008.
City Clerk Janice M. Winfrey said Tuesday evening that she expects turnout to be between 53% and 55% and that vote counting was on pace to be complete by Wednesday evening. David Baxter, an election consultant for the city, said the turnout suggested that the city’s voters were highly motivated.
“Fifty-three percent is probably the highest turnout that we’ve had in more than 20 or 30 years in Detroit,” he said. When Obama won Michigan again in 2012, the Detroit turnout was 51%. But when it fell to 48% in 2016, Donald Trump won the state.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who had earlier predicted that an official tally of the vote would be completed Friday, said processing absentee ballots has been going faster than expected. If Detroit completes its tally Wednesday, the state will likely be able to offer a fairly complete unofficial tally soon afterward, she said.
“I expect we’ll have a very clear picture, if not a final picture, of the unofficial results from Michigan in the next 24 hours,” she told reporters at Ford Field, one of the places ballots were being counted in Detroit.
The time to tally the vote is impacted by the record-breaking number of voters who cast absentee ballots. Benson said that for the first time in state history, the number of Michigan residents who voted early — 3.3 million — exceeded those casting their ballots in person on election day — between 2 million and 2.5 million.
GOP Sen. Ernst fends off strong challenge to keep Iowa Senate seat
Republican Joni Ernst has won the Senate race in Iowa, securing reelection to a second term after a surprisingly competitive campaign.
Ernst’s victory over Democratic businesswoman Theresa Greenfield moved Republicans a step closer to retaining their majority in the Senate, where they now have a 53-47 advantage.
The contest drew national attention because Ernst’s unexpectedly tough race was seen as a warning sign of the toll Trump’s political struggles were taking even on once-strong incumbents.
Trump wins Florida
President Trump won Florida on Tuesday, maintaining his grip on a state crucial to his hopes for reelection.
Four years ago, Trump eked out a win in the country’s most populous battleground with just 49% of the vote.
Florida has 29 electoral votes. It takes 270 to win the White House.
Trump wins Iowa
President Trump won Iowa on Tuesday, his second straight victory in a state that tilted Democratic until 2016.
Iowa sided with Democrats in six of seven presidential elections, but Trump won in a landslide four years ago.
The Hawkeye state has six electoral votes. It takes 270 to win the White House.
In Santa Ana mayor’s race, a shot at history with a Bolivian American candidate
A cheer went up at 8:06 p.m. among the 30-plus people outside Festival Hall in downtown Santa Ana as the first results came in for Orange County’s local elections.
Everyone’s man for Santa Ana mayor, Councilman, was in the early lead over his next-closest competitor.
The race was historic even before the polls closed. Six candidates were running to replace the termed-out Miguel Pulido, who had served for 26 years, one of the longest mayoral reigns in a major American city. And Sarmiento was running as perhaps the first-ever Bolivian American mayoral candidate in the United States.
“We did the research, and I think I‘m it,” said Sarmiento, 56, who was already the first-ever Bolivian American council member. “There’s just almost none of us in American politics.”
Sarmiento came to Santa Ana in 1965 as a 1 year old and joked that he’s now “more comfortable with tortillas and tacos than salteñas and chuño,” referring to two classic Bolivian dishes.
He eventually carved out a niche as a three-term councilman in Santa Ana, one of the most Latino big cities in the U.S. But the mayoral race was an uphill battle.
His opponents include Santa Ana Councilman Jose Solorio and former Councilwomen Claudia Alvarez and Cecilia Iglesias. Alvarez got developer money; Solorio received the backing of the city’s power police union. And Iglesias — whom voters recalled this past summer — was the only Republican in the race.
But Sarmiento’s longtime advocacy for housing affordability and pushing to break an ICE contract with Santa Ana to house detainees in the city jail earned him a vigorous contingent of young santaneros as supporters.
Those activist helped Bernie Sanders win Orange County during the California primary but had felt politically adrift when Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination.
In Sarmiento, they found their man.
“Those youth saw that the electoral process could result in fundamental change,” said Sarmiento, who endorsed Sanders. “And no disrespect to my opponents, but they never caught on to that.”
His supporters munched on tacos and ceviche as Sarmiento gave a brief speech thanking everyone for their support. “It looks like we’re doing good,” said the soft-spoken lawyer In Spanish. “We can’t sing victory just yet, but hopefully almost.”
Watch President Trump address the nation
Biden wins Minnesota
Joe Biden won Minnesota on Tuesday, extending the longest Democratic winning streak in the country.
Minnesota has backed the Democrat for president in every election since Richard Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972. President Trump had hoped to snatch the state away from Biden after losing by fewer than 45,000 votes, a 2% margin, in 2016.
Minnesota has 16 electoral votes. It takes 270 to win the White House.
GOP lawmakers in Pennsylvania trying to block thousands of votes from being counted
PHILADELPHIA — Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania are trying to block the counting of thousands of presidential election ballots that arrive in county offices on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
A state Supreme Court ruling upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court declared that ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 or with illegible postmarks must be counted in the presidential election if they are received by local election offices by Friday afternoon.
GOP lawmakers are furious at Pennsylvania’s Democratic secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar, for instructing county election officers to tally those ballots, even though she she has ordered them segregated and counted separately in case the U.S. Supreme Court grants the Republicans’ renewed request to invalidate them.
State Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati and Majority Leader Jake Corman called on Boockvar to resign, saying she was trying “to weaken the state’s voting system and damage the integrity and confidence in our elections.”
“As leaders, we simply cannot stand by and allow Kathy Boockvar’s blatant disregard for the legislative process and the law to continue,” they said in a joint statement.
Boockkvar responded that “they’re the ones that should resign for not having allowed Pennsylvania and this nation to start pre-canvassing ballots early, as 46 other states across the country have done. We would be getting results a lot sooner if they had,” she said.
Pennsylvania law bars election officials from starting the time-consuming procedure of processing ballot envelopes until the morning of an election, which could delay its results for at least several days.
With millions of Pennsylvania voters casting ballots by mail for the first time this year, election officials around the state called on the GOP-controlled Legislature and the Democratic governor to change the law, but they failed to reach an agreement.
With the nation now in suspense over the slow ballot count in Pennsylvania, a state that could decide the presidential election, Boockvar cast the Republicans’ moves as part of the GOP’s broader efforts to suppress votes.
“Look, they don’t like the late counting of ballots, because they don’t like anything that allows more eligible voters to be enfranchised,” Boockvar said. “So let’s be clear about that.”
Trump wins Ohio
President Trump won Ohio on Tuesday, a state vital to his chances of winning reelection, according to Fox News and NBC News.
No Republican has ever been elected president without carrying Ohio. Although Trump won handily four years ago, polls suggested a closer contest this time, and Democrat Joe Biden made a last-ditch effort to seize the Buckeye State and cripple the president’s campaign.
Ohio has 18 of the 270 electoral votes it takes to win the White House.
Prop. 17, which would allow felony parolees to vote, jumps out to lead in early election returns
SACRAMENTO — Californians convicted of felonies but who are on parole would be allowed to vote in future elections under a ballot measure, Proposition 17, that was garnering support from voters in early election returns on Tuesday.
The measure would restore the vote to some 50,000 parolees by changing the state Constitution, which disqualifies people with felony convictions from voting until their incarceration and parole are completed.
Proposition 17’s supporters include the California Democratic Party; Sen. Kamala Harris, Democratic nominee for vice president; and Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), who authored the measure.
Prop. 25, which would abolish California’s cash bail system, trails in early returns
SACRAMENTO — A ballot measure that would abolish California’s cash bail system was trailing in early election returns Tuesday.
Proposition 25 would replace the use of money bail as a condition for getting out of jail while awaiting trial with a system allowing release by judges based on a determination of public safety or a defendant’s flight risk.
If the ballot measure passes, the new system would take effect on Oct. 1, 2021, a delay meant to allow time for the courts to develop new rules and procedures.
A close race on Proposition 15 to loosen California’s business property tax rules
SACRAMENTO — The fate of Proposition 15, an effort to remove high-value business properties from the low-tax protections enacted by California voters more than four decades ago, was unclear in early election returns on Tuesday, the culmination of an expensive and fierce campaign over how much to spend on government services and the economic impact of raising taxes.
The ballot measure was supported by a razor-thin majority with more than 8 million ballots counted, a lead that was far from certain with millions of votes left to count.
The ballot measure seeks to curtail the rules governing property taxes that were established by Proposition 13 in 1978, which set the annual levy at 1% of a property’s value and allows only small adjustments to the assessed value until there is a change in ownership. Those strict limits apply to all property owned in California — both homes and businesses.
Proposition 15 would create a separate set of tax rules for commercial and industrial property holdings worth $3 million or more. County tax assessors would be required to revise the value of those business properties to reflect current market prices, increasing the total taxes paid.
Prop. 20, which would toughen sentencing in criminal cases, rejected by voters
SACRAMENTO — Proposition 20, a California initiative that would toughen sentencing in criminal cases and reduce the number of prison inmates eligible for early parole, was rejected by state voters on Tuesday
The measure by law enforcement and prosecutors hit the ballot just as the Black Lives Matter movement was drawing new attention to demands for change in the criminal justice system to reduce incarceration and its disproportionate effect on people of color.
The initiative would add 22 crimes, including felony domestic violence, rape of an unconscious person and human trafficking of a child, to the list of offenses that make prison inmates ineligible for early parole under a previous initiative approved by voters in 2016.
The ballot measure voted on Tuesday also would increase penalties for repeat shoplifters and members of organized theft rings, and collect DNA samples from adults convicted of some misdemeanors.
New for 2020: A drive-in Biden-Harris election night party
WILMINGTON - The coronavirus pandemic has influenced every facet of this presidential campaign, and the Democrats’ election night party was no exception.
Instead of packing into a ballroom to imbibe and take in results, Biden-Harris supporters drove their cars to a Wilmington, Del., parking lot, a socially distanced approach to watching the returns on big screen and take in a soundtrack of Sam Cooke and Lady Gaga songs.
Richard Rollo, a 48-year-old attorney from Wilmington whose wife worked for Joe Biden decades ago, projected cautious optimism, saying he was prepared for a long night of waiting.
“I think [Biden’s] going to give a speech tonight that says ‘stay calm,’” said Rollo, whose vote for the former vice president on Tuesday was the first he had ever cast for a Democrat.
For Kathy Caudle of Pike Creek, the chance to attend an election night party, no matter how unconventional, was a “one-in-a-lifetime” experience.“To be able to celebrate this event here in this little state of Delaware is just amazing,” said Caudle, 66.
California voters leaning toward new internet privacy law in early results
California voters might rewrite the rules of the internet Tuesday with Prop. 24, which if passed would impose new restrictions on data collection and boost enforcement of privacy regulations.
Early results released by the secretary of state’s office after the polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday showed 58.6% of voters supporting the measure, and 41.4% opposing, with 11.4% of precincts partially reporting and millions of ballots remaining to be counted. The final results may not become clear for days or weeks to come.
The ballot measure seeks to reinforce and redefine parts of the California Consumer Privacy Act, a 2019 law that gave state residents new rights as to how companies collect and use their personal information. Prop. 24 would close several loopholes in that law and make it easier in some circumstances for people to opt out of having their data collected or processed.
Prop. 19, which gives new property tax breaks to older homeowners, is leading in early returns
A new property tax break for older California homeowners, easing their tax burdens if they move, is leading in early returns Tuesday night.
Should the results hold and Proposition 19 succeeds it would mean that those 55 and older will be able to blend the taxable value of their old home with the value of a new, more expensive home they purchase, resulting in property tax savings that could reach thousands of dollars a year.
Prop. 18, which would allow some 17 year olds to vote, too close to call in early election returns
SACRAMENTO — Proposition 18, which would allow 17-year-olds to vote in primary and special elections if they turn 18 before the next general election, was too close to call early Tuesday night as elections officials across California continue to tally ballots.
If the proposed amendment to the state Constitution is approved, California would join at least 18 other states that allow some 17-year-olds to cast ballots, from red states such as Kentucky and Mississippi to blue states that include Illinois and Maryland.
California initiative to expand rent control trails in early returns
A bid to expand rent control in California is trailing in early returns Tuesday night.
Should the results hold and Proposition 21 fails, it would mean that once again landlord groups have convinced voters that stricter limits on rent hikes are not a solution to California’s housing affordability problems. A statewide ban on most new forms of rent control would remain in effect.
Landlords won a similar battle in 2018 when voters turned down the Proposition 10 rent control initiative. Like that campaign, total fundraising for Proposition 21 eclipsed $100 million. Landlord groups, notably large real estate investment trusts Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential and AvalonBay Communities, outraised supporters of Proposition 21 more than 2-to-1. Nearly all the more than $40 million behind the Yes on 21 campaign came from the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which similarly funded the failed 2018 initiative.
Demonstrators outside White House in waiting mode
WASHINGTON - Demonstrators wandered listlessly outside the White House as it became clear that the night would not deliver the clear repudiation of President Trump that they hoped for.
India Travis, 32, a hairdresser, sat on the sidewalk with a friend watching CNN on her phone.
“If Biden won, I wanted to be here and around people,” she said.Now she wasn’t so sure.“I felt more confident in the beginning than I do now,” Travis said. “But there’s still hope.”
Last-minute California voters beat the closing bell
Sean Murphy of Irvine registered to vote with 30 minutes to spare. He rode down the street from where he was staying to the Main Street Branch Library in Huntington Beach on his bike, its blue wheels contrasting with the darkened sky.
The 19-year-old restaurant worker didn’t feel too strongly on his vote. In fact, he wasn’t even planning on voting. He changed his mind at 7 p.m. only after he realized he could still vote.
“I felt like I should vote to make a positive difference,” he said, saying he’d cast his ballot for Joe Biden. “I don’t like either candidate but I felt like Biden was the lesser of two evils.”
Jessica DeCastro, 24, of Huntington Beach also cast her vote with minutes to spare.
DeCastro backed Trump for his experience as a businessman. The mortgage worker had been too busy to cast her ballot earlier, and pushed it to the final minutes.
“I’m just glad to have gotten my vote in on time,” she said.
Prop. 23 aimed at dialysis industry trailing in early results
SACRAMENTO — A $100-million effort to impose new regulations on the dialysis industry appeared to be heading for defeat in early results Tuesday.
Proposition 23 would require dialysis clinics to employ at least one doctor who would be on site whenever patients are receiving treatment. Supporters of the measure, including the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, said dialysis clinics were putting profits over patient care by not having a doctor available in the event of complications or an emergency.
Opponents, however, argued the measure was the latest attempt by SEIU-UHW to weaponize the ballot box to try to force the dialysis industry to spend millions to defend itself when the union’s real interest is getting clinic workers to unionize. The dialysis industry put more than $100 million into fighting the measure, saying the unnecessary added cost would lead to dialysis clinics closing, which would put patients at risk.
Proposition 16 to allow government affirmative action programs trailing in early returns
SACRAMENTO — A statewide ballot measure that would allow affirmative action programs to be reinstated in California trailed in early election returns Tuesday night.
Under Proposition 16, public universities would be allowed to consider race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin to address diversity in admissions and other programs. Both state and local governments also would be allowed to consider those factors when hiring government employees and awarding government contracts.
The proposition, placed on the ballot by the Democrat-controlled California Legislature, would repeal Proposition 209, a highly controversial measure approved by voters in 1996 that barred affirmative action programs in the state.
Uber, Lyft carry lead over opposition in early Prop. 22 results
The $200-million Proposition 22 campaign led by Uber and Lyft was ahead in early election results as of Tuesday evening, but it remains too early to tell if the companies will succeed in their effort to seek an exemption from California employment law and continue treating workers as independent contractors.
The fight is the one of the most closely watched ballot measure contests in the country and has been the costliest in state history.
A win for the app-based companies has the potential to create a new campaign paradigm, with companies sidestepping government and spending large sums of money to sway voters with traditional advertisements and more unconventional direct marketing to customers. The measure’s failure could prove the power of California labor unions, underdogs in the race with far fewer financial resources than their foes.
“Yes on 22” held an edge over the opposition with 62% of the vote compared to 38% of the first 1.8 million ballots counted. The ballot measure needs to earn more than 50% of the vote to become law.
Prop. 14 narrowly leading in early results on stem cell bond
SACRAMENTO — A ballot measure to authorize $5.5 billion in new funding for stem cell research was narrowly leading in early returns Tuesday.
Proposition 14 asked voters to approve an infusion of cash for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, known as CIRM, for stem cell studies and trials. California voters created CIRM in 2004 after approving a bond measure that year for $3 billion. CIRM used that bond money for research grants, new laboratories and training programs, but unallocated funds ran out last year, prompting supporters of the agency to return to taxpayers for additional money.
Democrat Mark Kelly rides fundraising success to Arizona Senate win
Democrat Mark Kelly has won the Senate race in Arizona, ousting GOP Sen. Martha McSally from a seat she won by appointment less than two years ago.
The victory by Kelly moved Democrats a step closer to winning a majority in the Senate, where Republicans now hold a 53-47 advantage.
McSally, who lost a 2018 bid for the Senate, was appointed in 2019 to temporarily fill the seat once held by the late GOP Sen. John McCain. She had to run this year in a special election to hold the seat for the remainder of his term.
The race drew national attention because Kelly was one of Democrats’ star recruits. He consistently beat McSally in polling and was one of the party’s strongest fundraisers.
Delaware elects country’s first transgender state senator
Democrat Sarah McBride won a state Senate race on Tuesday in Delaware, and would become the first openly transgender state senator in the country when sworn in.
McBride defeated Republican Steve Washington to win the seat that became open following the retirement of the longest-serving legislator in Delaware history.
She won in a heavily Democratic district stretching from northern Wilmington to the Pennsylvania border, and joins several other transgender legislators around the country but will be the first transgender state senator.
“I think tonight’s results demonstrate what I’ve known my entire life, which is that the residents of this district are fair-minded, and they’re looking at candidates’ ideas and not their identity,” McBride said Tuesday night. “It is my hope that a young LGBTQ kid here in Delaware or really anywhere in this country can look at the results and know that our democracy is big enough for them, too.”
McBride interned at the White House under former President Barack Obama and made history at the 2016 Democratic National Convention as the first openly transgender person to speak at a major party convention.
Arizona voters OK recreational pot, joining other states
Arizona voters on Tuesday decided the state should join others across the nation that have legalized recreational marijuana in a repudiation of the state’s Republican leadership. A ballot measure for a new tax on the wealthy to fund education was too early to call.
Voters approved Proposition 207 four years after they narrowly defeated a marijuana legalization proposal. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and fellow Republicans in the Legislature have refused to change Arizona’s tough marijuana laws.
Recreational marijuana sales will become legal when election results are certified in about a month. Retail sales could start in May and people can grow their own plants. People 21 and older can possess up to an ounce (28 grams) of marijuana or a smaller quantity of “concentrates” such as hashish.
Voters in New Jersey, South Dakota and Montana also had pot legalization measures on their ballots.
Biden wins California
Joe Biden won California on Tuesday, keeping California in the Democratic column for the eighth presidential campaign in a row.
President Trump lost the state four years ago by 30 percentage points and more than 4 million votes and never seriously competed against the former vice president and his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris.
California, which last had a competitive general election campaign for president in 1988, has 55 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
Polls close in California. Now the counting starts. It will take weeks
Polls have closed in California. Follow along as results trickle in for presidential, congressional, state legislative and local races.
How long will it take to know results?
For most of the last decade, the wait for final results has lasted for close to a month as new election laws have expanded voter access and the number of ballots cast has increased.
It may be frustrating for those waiting to declare victory, but it’s how California elections have been designed to work.
Within days of when ballots were mailed to voters in early October, they’ve been flooding back to county election offices. But there are strict limits on what local officials can do with those ballots before the election is officially over.
Prior to the close of the polls at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3, ballots can be readied for counting by checking signatures on envelopes, removing ballots from the envelopes and then scanning them to ensure no stray marks were made. But the actual vote tally must wait until election night.
The first results Californians see are those from ballots that arrived early and those cast at voting locations on election day. Ballots that arrived too late for election officials to do all the prep work have to wait. And all of this means results can take several days.
‘I’m nervous about Florida.’ Young Black Floridians gather for watch party in Miami
MIAMI - As election returns showed Joe Biden underperforming in Miami-Dade County, dozens of mostly young and Black Floridians gathered for an election night watch party at an outdoor event space in Overtown, a historically Black neighborhood in Miami.
The event was hosted by the Black Collective, a two-year-old nonprofit aimed at uniting members of the African diaspora in Miami.
“Growing up in the’ 90s, we knew what it meant to be divided as Black people,” said Francesca Menes, the co-founder and board chair of the group.
Menes, who is of Haitian and Dominican descent and grew up in the city’s Little Haiti neighborhood, said that despite the divisions within the Black community, outside forces, like the police, don’t differentiate.
“So we said we need to create an intentional space, not a Haitian space, a Jamaican space, a Bahamian space, a Black space to understand that in this country we are Black first,” she said.
The group doesn’t endorse candidates, but has spent this election cycle encouraging people to vote and educating community members by canvassing, texting and releasing a voter guide — in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole — on what’s on the ballot and what powers different elected officials have.
About three dozen people attended the socially distanced event. A projector switched between silently displaying CNN, MSNBC and the results of the Miami-Dade local elections. A DJ played R&B, funk and hip hop hits from the last few decades. Some guests watched the results, but most were socializing or making use of a healing space in the back of the venue.
Kilan Bishop, a 29-year-old post-doctoral researcher from Miami said she attended the event because she wanted to be around people who’d have a similar reaction to the results. Bishop voted for the Biden-Harris ticket on Tuesday, but said her reaction if they won would be “tempered enthusiasm.”
“That is really what I wanted to be around, those who would acknowledge that a Democratic win tonight is one step, but it’s not the step,” Bishop said.Still, a Biden presidency would be “leaps and bounds” ahead of a second Trump term, Bishop said. As the early results in the state came in, especially from Miami-Dade, it wasn’t clear if the state would help Biden get there.
“Regardless of looking at the results, I’m nervous about Florida,” Bishop said. “I feel like the eight years that I’ve been here nothing has ever made sense. I’ve seen so many races swing in unexpected ways.”
Ex-Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville takes Alabama Senate seat
Republican Tommy Tuberville has won the Senate race in Alabama, reclaiming a seat in a ruby red state that the GOP lost three years ago in a scandal-driven fluke.
Tuberville defeated Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbent, Sen. Doug Jones, moving Republicans a step closer to retaining their majority in the Senate, where they now have a 53-47 advantage.
Tuberville’s career as football coach at Auburn University helped propel his candidacy in a football-crazed, heavily Repubican state.
Jones, a former federal prosecutor, won a 2017 special election after then-Sen. Jeff Sessions was picked for President Trump’s Cabinet. He scored his unlikely victory after his GOP opponent, former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore, faced allegations of sexual assault and misconduct involving underage girls when he was younger. Moore denied the allegations.
More polls close in the West, including Nevada and Oregon
A few more states have closed their polls, including Idaho (Mountain time zone), Iowa, Montana, Nevada, Oregon (Mountain time zone) and Utah.
Lindsey Graham rides Trump loyalty to reelection win in South Carolina
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham has won his bid for reelection in South Carolina, beating back a surprisingly strong challenge in a solidly Republican state.
Graham’s victory over Jaime Harrison, a former state Democratic Party chair, moved Republicans a step closer to retaining their majority in the Senate, where they now have a 53-47 advantage.
The race drew national attention because Graham had drawn the ire of Democrats nationwide — and kudos from conservatives — for his vigorous defense of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Democrats had argued that Graham was a political opportunist because he had flipped from being one of President Trump’s harshest critics to one of his closest allies. Harrison, who is Black, energized the state’s large African American electorate and broke fundraising records with donations from across the country.
But Graham’s loyalty to Trump helped him consolidate the support of conservatives who had regarded him with suspicion in the past.
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This Republican drove 100 miles to support voters in a Democratic Milwaukee precinct, but he ended up lonely
MILWAUKEE, Wis. - Tried and true Republican Daniel Zinnen drove 100 miles north from the Chicago suburbs Tuesday to help on election day in Wisconsin. His mission: to help assure Republican President Trump served only one term.
Zinnen remains a Republican, though he feels the president has dragged the party away from its roots of fiscal conservatism, family values and sober management. So Zinnen sat on a street corner outside the French Immersion School, a Milwaukee public school that served as a polling place Tuesday.
He came planning to supply food, water and moral support to the dozens, maybe hundreds, of voters he expected to line up to vote in the heavily Democratic working class neighborhood in the city’s northside.
One problem: Not many people came to vote, all day long. So the 58-year-old administrator at a Chicago-area park district did his best to encourage passersby to go vote. He is pretty sure he had some success at that.
Zinnen said he never supported Trump in 2016 and turned against him even more during the former reality show star’s presidency.“He’s the most corrupt and unlawful president we’ve probably ever had,” said Zinnen.
Asked how much it meant to him to help defeat Trump, the leader of his erstwhile party, he said: “I traveled a hundred miles to stand here to try and ensure the validity of the election here in Wisconsin, to try to make sure that happened. I did what I could.
”But with no voters in line and no one needing a snack, Zinnen pulled up his Biden-Harris placard, hefted his bag of mostly un-taken snacks and walked off into the night. He said he would seek out another polling place, hoping to support more voters. And hoping his party’s president would go down to a solid defeat.
Marchers in North Carolina push the importance of getting people to voting locations
GRAHAM, N.C. — On Saturday, law enforcement in Graham, a small city between Durham and Greensboro, responded to a nonviolent march to early voting polls with pepper spray and multiple arrests.
On Tuesday, many of the same activists and community leaders present at the first march led several hundred people from a local church to a polling place and ultimately to the Alamance County Historic Courthouse, the site some of them had been pepper sprayed or arrested.
As night fell, the multiracial coalition chanted, sang and prayed in unity. Behind them, on the other side of a monument commemorating confederate soldiers, a much smaller counter-protest waved confederate flags, called for “four more years” for President Trump, and met the main protest’s chants of “Black lives matter” and “trans lives matter” with their own shouts of “white lives matter” and “confederate lives matter.”
Law enforcement was present in large numbers around the courthouse. The day’s events for the marchers started in the parking lot of Graham’s Wayman Chapel AME church. Organizers passed around facemasks, protective goggles and snacks.
“The mission for Saturday did not happen because of the interference of the police and the sheriff’s office, so today is fulfilling that mission,” said Spencer Blackwell, the vice president of Alamance Alliance for Justice, which has been organizing antiracist demonstrations and registering voters in the area since the summer.
“That mission was to march to the polls.”Blackwell, 24 and a middle school teacher in Greensboro, was also at the Saturday march, where he helped children and elderly attendees escape the pepper spray.
“I believe these things had to happen, because it really brought a light on the things that we deal with, especially here in the city of Graham,” Blackwell said. “We deal with a lot of racism; prejudice; harshness from the police whenever we hold events.”
One voted for Trump, the other for Biden. But this mother and daughter are closer than ever
Graciela Murillo was watching the news Tuesday on Telemundo — just as she does every morning — when she made an announcement: She wanted to go vote.
“Damé una pelota para votarla,” Murillo, 86, told her daughter Sonia, 53, confusing the Spanish word for “ballot,” which is “boleta,” with “ball.” “Give me a ball to vote! Yo quiero Donald Trump.”
So after breakfast and lunch — coffee, buttery bread and a sandwich for Graciela, scrambled eggs for Sonia — the mother-daughter duo drove down the street from their Boyle Heights home to the Wabash Recreation Center to vote for the first time together.
Democrat John Hickenlooper rides Trump resistance to win in Colorado Senate race
Democrat John Hickenlooper has won the Senate seat in Colorado, beating GOP Sen. Cory Gardner in a state where hostility to President Trump is running high, according to projections by NBC News and Fox News.
The victory by Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, moved Democrats one step closer to winning a majority in the Senate, where Republicans now hold a 53-47 advantage.
The campaign drew national attention and was seen as a top prospect for Democrats because Gardner was one of just two Senate Republicans who were running for reelection in states Hillary Clinton won in 2016.
Democratic leaders had worked hard to recruit Hickenlooper as a Senate candidate after he abandoned his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Some Nevada polling sites to stay open an hour longer
LAS VEGAS - In Clark County, Nev., 30 vote centers will stay open until 8 p.m. to comply with a court order handed down Tuesday afternoon.
The morning of election day, 29 votes centers opened after 7:10 a.m. because of technical issues, according to Clark County Election Department spokesperson Dan Kulin.
The Trump campaign and the Nevada Republican Party on Tuesday filed a joint lawsuit demanding the Clark County Registrar allow polls in certain locations to remain open for any voter in line prior to 8 p.m. instead of 7 p.m.
The list included Sun City MacDonald Ranch Community Center where some voters waited three hours because of technical glitches.
A late rush to cast their ballots in Midway City
With election day coming to a close, 23-year-old Daisy Miranda rushed to the Midway City Community Center in Orange County. The dental worker’s long shifts over the last few weeks prevented her from turning in her signed ballot. At 5 p.m., there was a short line, but most voters walked right in.
“I voted in 2016, but there’s so much more at stake this election,” the Midway City resident said. “I’ve had my ballot signed for weeks now.”
In a matter of minutes Miranda was on her way.
Tammy Tran, 40, was in the same boat. She had been waiting to turn in her ballot because she wanted to stay up to date on the news to make the most informed decision.
“I waited to turn it in, because I wanted to experience this historic day. Now it’s the end of the day, people are getting off of work, and there’s only three hours left,” Tran said.
The mother of two knew there was a lot on the line. A Vietnamese American, she said fear and tension percolated throughout her community leading up to election day.
“I’m an immigrant, and I never felt afraid to go out, but what worries me the most about this election and the next 10 years is that people are openly racist, and they’re proud of it.... It’s scary. I’m scared for my kids,” the Southern California Edison employee said. “It’s not just tension, it’s fear.”
Tran cast a vote for Biden but emphasized that her decision was to back Sen. Kamala Harris, who could be the first Black and Asian vice president. Tran’s daughter Annalise will have her fifth birthday in two days, making her an “election baby,” and this year’s birthday wish is for Harris to make history.
“Four years ago, when we didn’t get a chance to see the first woman president, that was devastating for me; we canceled her birthday party. So this year, we’re excited to see the opportunity for a woman to get voted into office,” the moderate Democrat said.
After her quick trip to the polls, Tran went to pick up her daughter and return home to watch the election results.
“There will always be a generational divide, but I think the environment we’re in, we have politicians that feed that and want that to happen,” she said.
He said he was voting for Trump. His mother blocked his number.
CHANDLER, Ariz. — His mother blocked his number on her phone. His family won’t talk to him. It’s because he supports President Trump.
“I’ve lost so many friends because I support Trump,” said Michael McInerny, 25, who cast his vote as the sun set at the Environmental Education Center in the right-leaning Phoenix suburb of Chandler.
He said people have accused him of being a white supremacist, “even though I’m Hispanic, which I find quite comical.”
McInerny, who grew up in a Democratic household and liked President Obama, said he doesn’t always feel comfortable with Trump’s rhetoric either - especially his remarks about people of color and immigrants. But he believes the president has been unfairly cast as a villain by his detractors and the press.
“I don’t vote based on party -I vote based on policy,” he said. Trump’s efforts to curtail migration and human trafficking across the border with Mexico seem sound to him.”We should critique presidents but we also should give them credit when it’s due,” McInerny said.
He believes Trump will prevail as election results come in but fears that if the president does win re-election, Americans who dislike Trump will cause civil unrest.
Given the smoldering political climate, McInerny, the new father of a 7-month-old girl, worries about the country’s future.
Houston voters cast ballots at the bar
HOUSTON — Buddy’s, a gay bar and restaurant in Houston’s LGBTQ-friendly Montrose neighborhood, became a polling place on election day with 14 booths. By the time the polls closed, 154 people had voted at the bar, and dozens were still sipping cocktails outside, where the bass was thumping as speakers blasted “We Are Family.”
“We call it voting in the front, party in the back,” owner Christopher Barry said as he stood on the back patio. Patrons sipped drinks at socially distanced tables as workers set up a stage for a DJ set to start once the polls closed.
Some patrons said they were scared about what would happen election night. Days earlier, they said a Trump supporter had to be escorted from the bar after antagonizing regulars. Earlier Tuesday, a pickup truck with a Trump flag swerved at a drag queen walking across the street.
Some patrons, who normally walked between gay bars in the neighborhood, drove instead. Bartenders warned them to be safe.
“All we can do is provide a safe space, civility and humanity regardless of the results,” said Barry, who survived COVID-19 along with several of his staff who contracted the virus. The restaurant was temporarily shut down this summer.
Massage therapist Joseph Chabot, 36, said he voted at the bar because he was scared to approach his usual polling place in the neighborhood, which had become the scene of dueling Biden and Trump protests Tuesday.
“You don’t want to go to [that] place you’ll be accosted,” he said, referring to his normal polling place. His friend Craig Sanford, 52, a store manager, voted early for Biden and joined the group at the bar Tuesday night figuring there was safety in numbers.
“I wouldn’t come out here by myself. We had to look out for each other,” he said as they stood near the outdoor bar finishing beers and cinnamon-flavored shots. “There’s a lot of anxiety.”
A dozen officers called for “pushing match” after political discord spills into street at Houston polling site
HOUSTON — A popular Houston polling place became a battleground Tuesday as dozens of Biden and Trump supporters staked out opposite sides of the street in a liberal enclave, occasionally crossing for several altercations that drew the sheriff, police chief and at least a dozen officers.
On Tuesday afternoon, a white man crossed from the Trump side of the street and approached several Black women holding “Biden-Harris” signs in front of the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in the Montrose neighborhood.
Joyden ONeil, 20, a freshman at Purdue University who works at Walmart, said she was holding a sign for the Democratic ticket when the man approached her from across the street to decry Biden’s stance on abortion rights.
“He got to tapping and poking people, and then he pushed me,” said Sekeria Frazier, 20, a freshman at Alabama A&M University, who was wearing a T-shirt commemorating George Floyd.
Thomas Donohoe, 77, a retired industrial electrician from the eastern refinery-town suburb of LaPorte, drove in to join the protest after he was alerted by the Houston Trump Train group. He said that after listening to Biden supporters curse, he crossed the street. He was quickly surrounded by Biden supporters and retreated.
Sheriff’s deputies initially approached the man, but he walked away. A police report was taken.
Jose Casares, 32, an Amazon warehouse worker who switched from Democrat to Republican to vote for Trump in this election, crossed the street carrying a Trump flag to argue face-to-face with Biden supporters. He was escorted back to the other side by police as Biden supporters chanted, “Send him back!”
Casares said he had switched parties because he’s Christian and was inspired by Trump’s opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns that closed churches. “I couldn’t go to church. To me, that’s a spiritual war,” Casares said.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo arrived soon after and said the location was the only polling place where opposing groups had staked out territory Tuesday. He called the incident “a pushing match.”
More polls close in key states, including Arizona, Colorado and Wisconsin
The polls have closed in a number of states, including Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming (Mountain time zone) and Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin (Central) and New York (Eastern).
Biden takes New York
At 51, a Milwaukee voter casts his first-ever ballot — against a man he said ‘made the presidency like a circus’
Leon Love of Milwaukee cast the first vote of his life for Joe Biden on Tuesday.(James Rainey / Los Angeles Times)
MILWAUKEE — Leon Love had seen plenty of elections come and go. He followed politics closely enough but never made the time to cast a ballot.
Ever.
Love, 51, who lives on Milwaukee’s predominantly Black northside, felt too busy to even vote for Barack Obama, a man whom he greatly admired.
But four years of President Trump got Love to do Tuesday what he had not done before — register and cast his first vote against the incumbent, who, he said, “has made the presidency like a circus.
Love feels Trump gives no credence to the real suffering of Black men at the hands of police.
“We finally have the world’s attention on this issue, and I don’t think Donald Trump leads [on police conduct], and that’s a problem,” he said.
Love has also seen friends and family fall seriously ill with COVID-19 but doesn’t see Trump taking the pandemic seriously.
“He could have gotten on top of it a lot quicker,” Love said. “And he lies. A lot. You know what I’m saying?”
Love felt he had to register his displeasure at the ballot box this time, before Trump undoes the rest of President Obama’s legacy — particularly the Affordable Care Act, which expanded healthcare to millions of Americans.
The lifelong Milwaukee man, who voted in the auditorium of the French Immersion School, called Biden “just more level, more solid.”
“Who would pick Trump to run the country for four more years? He’s got everybody divided. It’s a disaster. We definitely have to make it right.”
L.A. students turn into political pundits
Although students in an Advanced Placement Government class at Cleveland Charter High School are just months away from being able to vote, they turned into young pundits Tuesday. Teacher Danielle Aucoin had assigned them a research project analyzing competitive House and Senate races.
Tuesday was their big day to show their understanding of polling, campaign finance and the influence of media and interest groups. Here is Zachary Meyer’s take on the Alabama Senate race and Republican challenger Tommy Tuberville: “His whole platform is ‘I agree with President Trump.’ He’s really just playing to demographics, not coming up with any unique ideas or solutions.”
Whatever their opinions, Aucoin hoped the project challenged students’ critical thinking skills to make them informed voters in the next presidential election.
Even some fifth-graders took election day seriously in their virtual classrooms. “True or false,” teacher Angel Cervantes asked her class at Morningside Elementary School in San Fernando.
“In presidential elections, the person who gets the most votes wins?” On the count of three, they displayed their written answers on Zoom. Then students were given a chance to persuade classmates to vote for their candidate of choice.
Natalie Barragán, long-haired and confident, spoke for Biden: “He won’t lie about deadly viruses,” she said.
Those in favor of President Trump emphasized the 2nd Amendment. For homework, the fifth-graders will color in a U.S. map, keeping track of the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the presidency.
“But don’t overdo it,” Cervantes said. “I don’t want you up past your bedtime.”
Trump wins Indiana as it stays in GOP presidential column
Indiana has gone for President Trump again as the state remained in the Republican presidential column.
The home state of Vice President Mike Pence wasn’t in much doubt as Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign paid little attention to the state that has gone for Republican candidates in 12 of the last 13 presidential elections.
Trump won Indiana by 19 percentage points in 2016 over Hillary Clinton.
Mariachi bands and YouTube celebs: Voting at Dodger Stadium on election day
Their reasons for coming to Dodger Stadium varied from making sure their vote would count to casting a ballot at a highly Instagrammable polling place.
Of course, on the final day of anything, procrastination is a factor.
Then, there was the spectacle. And for that, the venue did not disappoint on election day.
In suburban Phoenix, a Trump supporter recalls her mother’s citizenship oath
PHOENIX — Melody Whetstone had already voted early, but she came out to a suburban polling station on election day to wave a Trump sign.
From her perspective as a financial consultant, President Trump is the best person to steer the economy, safeguard democracy and keep the military out of unnecessary wars.
Whetstone, 53, said her vote also reflected the American values she was raised on: equality, freedom and respect for the law.
The daughter of an U.S.-born father who served in the Army and a Korean immigrant mother, she recalled her mother’s quest to become a citizen.
“She spent day after day learning the language so she could go in front of the judge and answer the citizenship questions — in English,” Whetstone said.
The dream came true in 1976, with Whetstone standing at her mother’s side while she recited her oath.
At the polling station, the Living Word Church in the Phoenix suburb of Ahwatukee, a steady stream of voters file past Whetstone, who wore an army-green cap with “Peace” written on it.
She said she understands that many Americans consider Trump divisive and dishonest.
But she maintained hope that people can “agree to disagree” and remain civil in the days after the election.
“I have a lot of friends who disagree with my stances, and that’s OK,” she said. “It’s always a very healthy discussion.”
Mother and son who survived school shooting cast votes for Biden
One morning last November, Susan Cranz dropped her son off at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita and began to drive home.
Minutes later, she saw teenagers running up the road screaming. At first, she said, she thought it was the cross-country team goofing around.
It was another school shooting.
Cranz’s son, Jonathan, survived the attack. Now, he’s 18 and a first-time voter. The two voted early for Biden, she said Tuesday, because they believe stronger gun control is nonnegotiable.
“That shooting destroyed this town. No one says, ‘How are you?’ It’s only, ‘How are you holding up?’” Cranz said. “I’ve seen this firsthand: You cannot give kids a blanket and a support dog and think they’re ever going to be OK.”
Nevada governor decries Republican lawsuit to stop processing of some mail-in ballots
LAS VEGAS — Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak on Tuesday afternoon decried the GOP filing an emergency motion asking for the state Supreme Court to halt the processing of some mail-in ballots in Clark County.
“They’re knocking on courthouse doors. We’re knocking on Nevada doors,” Sisolak said in an interview with The Times. “I’m confident that the judges are going to understand and interpret the way we have: Every vote should count.”
“You shouldn’t have to make a choice between your health, when we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and casting your vote,” he said. “That’s why we have so much mail in.”
The Nevada Republican Party did not reply to requests for comment about the lawsuit.
This Newport Beach couple voted for Biden, then took a road trip
Ann Merin went to the same private school as Ivanka Trump. Her best friend from high school is a senior official in the Trump administration. Her father-in-law has known the Kushner family through real estate circles since the 1980s. So throughout the early years of Trump’s presidency, Merin, a Democrat in Newport Beach, said she tried to give the president a fair shot.
But when the pandemic struck, her husband — an emergency room doctor — began to see an onslaught of coronavirus patients. Meanwhile, the president was promoting “magical thinking,” she said. “Every day that my husband left for work, I sat in my house, shaking and crying,” Merin said. “We are exhausted.”
Merin said she has seen enough of politicians who “empower themselves by promoting divisiveness and ignoring the death toll.”
She and her husband cast their votes in this year’s presidential race for Democrat and former Vice President Joe Biden, who they believe will make courageous choices to unify the country.
Then they drove to Zion National Park in Utah with their dog, Jackson, for a week of hiking and rest.
Biden cruises to home-state victory over Trump in Delaware
Former Vice President Joe Biden scored a home-state victory over Republican President Trump on Tuesday in Delaware.
Biden’s win was not unexpected. Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans in Delaware. They also constitute the entire congressional delegation and control all branches of state government going into the election.
The victory gives Biden Delaware’s three electoral votes.
While Biden spent much of this year campaigning virtually from his Greenville home because of the coronavirus, Trump never visited the state. In 2016, Trump lost in Delaware to Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Biden first ran for president in 1987 but dropped out before the first contests of the 1988 primary campaign amid reports of plagiarism in political speeches and while he was in law school at Syracuse University. Jesse Jackson went on to win Delaware’s Democratic caucuses that year.
Biden also sought the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination but dropped out of the race after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses with only 1% of the vote. He nevertheless remained on the Democratic primary ballot in Delaware and garnered almost 3% of the vote, well behind former President Obama and runner-up Clinton.
This year, however, marked a milestone for Biden, who was finally able to notch a presidential election victory in his home state.
Before going up against Trump on Tuesday, he won the state’s July presidential primary over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Sanders and Warren both suspended their campaigns months before the primary, but their names remained on the ballot because they did not officially withdraw as candidates in Delaware by the deadline.
Detroit man regrets sitting out 2016, casts vote to help Biden win Michigan
DETROIT — Travey Watson, 22, didn’t vote four years ago because he couldn’t get time off work, and he has regretted it ever since.
“A lot of us in Detroit, a lot of us in Michigan didn’t vote the last time, so I feel like I had to this time,” said Watson, after casting his ballot for Democrat Joe Biden at the Greater Christ Baptist Church.
“I like that he’s a Democrat,” Watson said. “I think he’s the first step to change in the country.”
Watson worked as a housekeeper in Shelby Township during the 2016 election and is now a supervisor. He said he wasn’t surprised that President Trump won the state because of all the support he saw for Trump in the community where he works.
“It is not as diverse as Detroit, and it’s a lot of Trump supporters,” he said.
But he is optimistic that Biden will carry the state this year.
“A lot of young people that didn’t vote the last time are voting this time, so I’m hoping for the best,” Watson said.
Trump again wins Mississippi, with its 6 electoral votes
JACKSON, Miss. — President Trump has won in Mississippi, with its six electoral votes.
Mississippi’s red voting history meant that neither Trump nor former Vice President Joe Biden campaigned heavily in person in the state, which went strongly for Trump in 2016. During that election, Republican Trump won 58% of the vote, compared with Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 40%.
Trump visited Tupelo in November 2019 to help campaign for Tate Reeves’ gubernatorial race. Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. also appeared in the state last fall to support Reeves. Before that, Trump visited Mississippi in 2018 in the run-up to the U.S. Senate election to support Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Biden visited Jackson ahead of the Mississippi presidential primary in March of this year, speaking at a predominantly African American church and a historically black university, Tougaloo College. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s only African American and Democratic statewide officeholder, introduced Biden at both events.
Mississippi has voted Republican in every presidential race since 1980. Every statewide official is Republican except for Thompson, who represents the state’s only majority-Black district. Both houses of the Mississippi Legislature are controlled by Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell holds his Kentucky seat
Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has won a seventh term in Kentucky.
The 78-year-old McConnell defeated Democrat Amy McGrath, a retired Marine combat pilot who challenged him as a political outsider. McConnell is the longest-serving Republican leader in Senate history.
As President Trump’s top ally on Capitol Hill, McConnell led efforts to defend the president during his impeachment acquittal in the Senate.
He also worked with Trump on a tax overhaul and orchestrated the Senate confirmation of more than 200 judicial appointments, including Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
McGrath also lost a race for a House seat in 2018.
Trump again carries South Carolina in presidential election
COLUMBIA, S.C. — President Trump again won the state of South Carolina, maintaining his solid support in the state during his first term.
Trump defeated Democratic nominee Joe Biden to win the state’s nine electoral votes.
Trump won South Carolina handily in 2016, getting 55% of votes cast to Hillary Clinton’s 41%, and the state had been assumed to be safely in his 2020 win column. Its early primary status makes the state a must-stop destination for both Republicans and Democrats, but South Carolina has rarely seen much in terms of general election campaigning in recent years.
Biden’s victory in the Feb. 29 South Carolina primary started a wave of wins that helped cement his status as the Democrats’ nominee. South Carolina Republicans opted not to hold a primary, an early sign of their support for Trump’s reelection.
The administration did participate by proxy in several of the state’s down-ballot races, endorsing U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s reelection and the campaign of Republican Nancy Mace in the 1st District congressional race.
South Carolina hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign.
Orange County investigates report of fake polling site, complete with ‘I Voted’ stickers
Orange County officials said Tuesday that they were investigating reports that someone established a fake voting center in Westminster, accepted ballots and handed out phony “I Voted” stickers.
Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said the incident was under investigation by his office and the Orange County district attorney’s office, so he couldn’t comment further. At about 3 p.m., he said officials were “on scene and active right now.”
Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said “there was some kind of operation there and we are looking at it and the law. My investigators are there, we know who they are and we took all their identifications.”
Polls close in 21 states
The polls have just closed in 21 states, including Florida (Central time zone), Michigan (Eastern time zone), Texas (Central time zone) and Pennsylvania. Voting has also ended in Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas (Central time zone)), Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (Eastern time zone), Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota (Central time zone), Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota (Central time zone), Tennessee and Washington, D.C.
All things considered, it’s been a relatively peaceful day of voting (so far)
Boringness is not an inherently bad thing. Sometimes nothingness is a virtue. Especially this year.
On their final day of voting, millions of Americans proceeded to their local polling places without a problem as of Tuesday afternoon as fears of potential voter violence or intimidation largely failed to materialize amid one of the most heated presidential elections in American history.
As with many elections, there were a few isolated incidents. There was what police described as a “pushing match” between Democratic and Republican demonstrators outside one poll in Houston, witnessed by a Times reporter. In Charlotte, N.C., police reported arresting one voter who had loitered outside his polling place with a legally carried gun and who returned after being banned by a precinct official. He was charged on suspicion of trespassing.
Misleading claims of voter fraud spread in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state
Pennsylvania, a battleground state, was targeted online with record levels of vote-by-mail misinformation leading up to the election, according to one research group.
Of the 1.1 million total posts circulating voting-by-mail misinformation that media intelligence firm Zignal Labs counted, Pennsylvania rose to the top of the list with 227,907 mentions — more than double the mentions in the next state on the list, Ohio.
A case study of how false or misleading claims are spreading about the state and the way local officials and tech platforms attempt to combat election misinformation played out with a Trump surrogate.
Early Tuesday, a video circulated on Twitter seeming to show a Republican poll watcher in Philadelphia who was prevented from entering a voting site.
It was apparently first tweeted by Will Chamberlain, editor of the conservative magazine Human Events, and boosted by Mike Roman, the Trump campaign’s national election day operations director, and the official Twitter account of Philadelphia’s GOP. “DEMOCRAT ELECTION OFFICIALS BANNING TRUMP POLL WATCHERS IN PHILLY. This is happening all over the City. The steal is on!” Roman tweeted. His claims distorted the facts.
Kevin Feeley, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia City Commissioners, said the video depicted an isolated incident that was the result of the worker managing that voting site misinterpreting election rules. “It was an honest mistake” that was quickly corrected, he said, and not part of a wider operation to keep out Republican watchers. Roman, who has a history of making unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and rigging in elections, didn’t stop with just the one tweet.
The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office flagged as “deliberately deceptive” another claim by Roman — that alleged illegal campaigning occurring at voting sites. Twitter placed a warning message atop another tweet by Roman that baselessly claimed people were stuffing ballot boxes in Philadelphia. “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process,” Twitter’s label reads.
Twitter also labeled a post by Mike Coudrey, a marketing company CEO and a conservative media personality. Coudrey has amplified claims that a poll worker named Sebastian Machado in Erie threw out more than 100 pro-Trump ballots. Twitter also took down a widely circulated tweet by Trump supporter Courtney Holland that made the same allegation. Erie County election officials have reportedly disputed the claim, saying there is no poll worker or registered voter in the county by that name.
Coudrey also said voter machines were out of service in Scranton, implying malicious activity. Election officials said there was a glitch with one of the machines, but it was resolved by 9 a.m. and the machine had been running smoothly all day.
Despite the efforts of the tech platform, a hashtag amplifying claims of alleged voter fraud gained traction on Tuesday in Pennsylvania. #StopTheSteal spiked from a few dozen mentions at 8 a.m. to more than 2,000 over 15 minutes at 8:15 a.m., with the video of the Republican poll worker pushed by Roman.
As of around noon #StopTheSteal had been tweeted nearly 13,000 times, according to Zignal Labs.
Alone at the polls, a woman casts a vote for those who cannot
Marbella Valencia, 24, is the only person in her family eligible to vote. Her parents are from Mexico and in the country without legal status; her younger siblings are too young.
On Tuesday, the Santa Ana resident felt the weight of her constitutional duty. “I feel pressure to vote on their behalf,” she said of her parents.
While she said her parents don’t understand much about elections in this country, she said they instilled in her the importance of participating.
They implored her to vote. “It’s a benefit that you have as a United States citizen.… You have to vote for your community,” Valencia recalled them saying. Valencia, who wore a face mask speckled with miniature Mickey Mouses when she dropped off her ballot at Santa Ana College just before lunch, said she was motivated to vote largely by President Trump’s tough stance on legal and illegal immigration.
For the last three years, her husband has been waiting to be issued a visa to join her in the U.S. Valencia blames the Trump administration for the slow pace of processing the paperwork. “I feel like there are more consequences to voting now than even last year,” Valencia said.
She said she feels anxious about this election and is mentally preparing herself, should Trump win a second term.
“We know what to expect, at least,” she said. “So I’m just ready for anything at this point.”
Worries about a second term for Trump motivate a first-time voter
HOUSTON — Wearing scrubs as he headed to the polls after work, Dr. Chris Thang had to wade through crowds of Biden and Trump supporters to cast his vote.
“The country is pretty divided,” said the 34-year-old oral surgeon, surrounded by chanting protesters and police keeping a watchful eye on the crowd.
Thang, a Houston native, said he and his sister voted for Biden because “he just seems like a good person.” Their parents, “staunch Republicans,” voted for Trump, he said.
Thang had never voted before, but this election he was concerned for America’s future under Trump.
“It just doesn’t look like he has America’s best interests,” Thang said, adding that Trump “has emboldened people and made hate more normal.”
“If it was close and I didn’t vote, I would feel really bad about it,” he said.
Joe Biden wins the state of Virginia
Democrat Joe Biden has won the state of Virginia. He was awarded its 13 electoral votes on Tuesday.
Democrat Hillary Clinton won Virginia over Republican Donald Trump in 2016, helped in part by her choice of running mate: Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.
Virginia has grown increasingly liberal over the last four years, and as a result of the 2019 election, Democrats now control every branch of government in the state.
Salvadoran immigrant in Beverly Hills casts his first-ever vote — for Trump
Beverly Hills hairdresser Fabricio Haas-Winkelman came to the United States from El Salvador almost two decades ago.
On Tuesday he will cast his first ballot — for Donald Trump.
Haas-Winkelman, 46, said Trump’s immigration policy is his primary motivation.
Several of his cousins who tried to travel to the United States illegally have disappeared, he said, and four more years of a border crackdown would protect other Salvadorans from the same fate.
“I don’t see racism,” Haas-Winkelman said. “I just see my people risking their lives.”
What exactly is a swing state?
A swing state, also known as a battleground state, is a state that could be reasonably won by either Democrats or Republicans.
The states that could decide the presidential election this year include Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In 2016, President Trump carried Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by less than 1 percentage point. He won Florida by about 1 point, and Arizona and North Carolina by about 4 points. This year, Trump has been mostly trailing Biden in swing state polls, but it’s close.
Follow along with live results here.
Got other questions about the election? Ask us here, and we’ll do our best to answer.
At Orange County polling centers, opposing views and strong feelings
Dominque Thomas, a first-time voter from Santa Ana, had planned to skip this election.
But when the 18-year-old college sophomore stepped out of his chemistry class at Santa Ana College on Tuesday morning, he got the following text from his mom: “Happy Tuesday. I know you are busy at school. But quick … request — please vote.
Thomas, who described himself as of Mexican and African American descent, said he was reluctant to vote because he didn’t care for either presidential candidate. “I personally had a hard time deciding,” Thomas said.
“One of them is very divisive — Trump — and the other one — Biden — I just don’t agree with too much on certain issues.” But his mother’s prodding and the convenience of having a polling place at the campus gym made it easy. He cast his vote for Biden. “Societal pressure” was a factor in why he voted, Thomas said. “But the main reason I voted is … to say that I at least tried to make an impact.”
About eight miles away at the Deerfield Community Center in Irvine, Carlos Otiniano, 38, and Xiomara Duenas, 30, emerged in the early afternoon from a voting center with their 2-year-old daughter, Melody. They took a family selfie to mark the occasion.
The couple said they are Biden voters hurt by the economic devastation of COVID-19 and what they view as President Trump’s ineffectual handling of the crisis.
Otiniano was a quality-control worker in the food manufacturing industry but lost his job six months ago. “Why aren’t masks being sent out in the mail?“ Otiniano said, adding that Trump has downplayed the seriousness of the virus. “It’s all from the top down. If the president’s joking about it, why would people take it seriously?”
Duenas is a nurse. Her hours have been cut, and COVID-19 has infected her coworkers. “People don’t think it’s going to happen to them,” she said.
Eric Garcia, 50, arrived to vote at the community center with a Trump flag flying from his car, a Make America Great Again face mask and a Keep America Great cap.
He said he drives an oil truck and felt the Trump administration has been good to the oil industry. He said his wages increased under Trump and believes policies to curtail reliance on foreign oil have promoted peace. “He’s proven that he knows what he’s doing,” Garcia said of the president. “Biden to me is just a yes-man, and he’ll do whatever the left wing wants him to do.”
Mike Diep, 62, also cast his ballot at the community center. He said he voted for Biden in hopes that the former vice president will unify a fractured country.
“Our country is now so chaotic,” Diep said. “There’s too much hate. Far-right violent groups. Far-left violent groups. People don’t respect other people’s point of view.”
Diep said he sees Trump as a divisive figure. “I don’t like Biden personally because he’s too old, but hopefully he can unite the people,” Diep said.
Carol Galigher, 68, said Republicans are more careful with the use of taxpayer dollars, and she voted for Trump. “His experience in life has prepared him to run the largest company in the world,” she said.
Above all, she is hoping no mayhem attends the election. “I just don’t want there to be any stupidness,” she said. “There are a lot of people with strong views. That’s why we have elections.”
Joe Biden captures Vermont’s 3 electoral votes
BERLIN, Vt. — The Associated Press has called Vermont for Democrat Joe Biden, giving the former vice president the state’s three electoral votes.
Earlier Tuesday, Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott said he cast his ballot for Biden, the first time in his life he voted for a Democrat for president.
Scott had said for some time that he wouldn’t be voting for his fellow Republican, President Trump, but he hadn’t made up his mind about who he would be voting for. He had promised to reveal his choice after voting.
“As many of you knew, I didn’t support President Trump. I wasn’t going to vote for him,” Scott said outside his polling location. “But then I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough for me to just not vote. I had to vote against. So again it’s — I put country over party, which again wasn’t an easy thing to do in some respects.”
Scott voted in person in a state in which more than 80% of the number of Vermonters who voted in the 2016 presidential election had already cast their ballots for president, governor, the U.S. House representative and other statewide and local races.
Trump wins Kentucky, as expected
President Trump has won Republican-leaning Kentucky.
The Bluegrass State delivered its eight electoral votes for the Republican president as Trump defeated Democrat Joe Biden in Kentucky.
The outcome was never in doubt, reflected by the absence of presidential campaigning in the state as both candidates focused on swing states.
Republicans have long dominated federal elections in Kentucky, including at the top of the ticket in presidential elections. No Democrat has carried Kentucky since Bill Clinton in 1996.
Trump carried Kentucky by 30 percentage points four years ago against Democrat Hillary Clinton, and his popularity remained strong in the state during his term.
Kentucky’s GOP congressional delegation remained steadfast in supporting Trump, mirroring the president’s popularity with their constituents.
In Washington, D.C., block party feel emerges near BLM mural near White House as polling wraps
WASHINGTON — As the end of voting approached Tuesday evening in Washington, D.C., demonstrators were gathered downtown, roads were closed off for blocks, and black metal security fences surrounded the White House complex.
Offices and restaurant windows were covered in plywood for protection against potential unrest.
Most people congregated around the Black Lives Matter mural that was painted on 16th Street nearby after protests over the killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, earlier this year. During that time, President Trump used police force to clear the area outside the White House while he posed for photos outside a church.
But on Tuesday night, there was more of a block-party feel. A group wearing yellow sweatshirts emblazoned with “Count the Votes” gave a dance performance.
First polls close, including in key state of Georgia
The polls have just closed in the battleground state of Georgia and parts of Florida. South Carolina, Virginia, Vermont and most of the polls in Indiana and Kentucky have also closed. Stick with the Times for live results.
Atlanta woman credits Trump for stimulus, but skips voting: “God is my president.”
ATLANTA — After Bree Cloud wrapped up her day shift cutting meat and cheese at a Kroger deli, she was not thinking about Trump vs. Biden, the fate of two U.S. Senate seats in Georgia or whether the state flipped blue.
“I don’t trust the politicians,” said the 26-year-old as she stood outside the West End MARTA transit station. “My mom and my grandma be mad at me, but I don’t care.”
Cloud, who lives on the west side of Atlanta, didn’t feel she had a say in the fate of the nation as she waited to pick up her toddler. “God is my president,” she added. “We go to sleep and wake up with the president.”
President Trump, she said, doesn’t care about people, but she gave him credit for at least one thing: “I only like Trump because he gave us money,” she said, referring to the pandemic stimulus check. “I’m still looking for the second one.”
Parolee’s clean slate doesn’t come in time to cast ballot for Trump
Sergio Garcia’s parole officer called on election day with the news: He’d be off parole by the end of the week — but not soon enough to cast his vote for Donald Trump.
The 30-year-old Hollywood resident was crushed. He has long supported the president for his economic and immigration policies, attending weekly Beverly Hills Trump rallies draped in Mardi Gras beads and a rainbow flag. “Im LGBTQ, I’m Latino — and Donald Trump has never done a single thing to remove my rights,” Garcia said.
Teary-eyed, Garcia recorded a video on his iPhone from outside the Los Angeles polling place where his partner and a friend were casting their ballots.
“I really wish I could vote right now,” he said into the camera, his hair styled back and a tattoo dedicated to his mother spread across his chest. He sighed deeply. “Next election, huh?”
Homeless bus driver shuttles shelter residents to polling places to vote
Anthony Terry, who lives at the Anaheim Emergency Shelter, spent election day serving a greater civic duty than he anticipated. It was the Salvation Army shuttle driver’s day off, but the right to vote was of utmost importance to him.
The 63-year-old sent in a ballot in support of Joe Biden three weeks ago. On Tuesday, he shuttled other homeless residents from the Anaheim shelter to polling centers.
Normally, his services are requested only to take residents to get food, buy necessities or attend appointments. For the first time, he brought his peers to vote.
“This week, I’ve made five trips to voting centers,” Terry said. “It feels good to help.” He brought Jorje San Roman, 42, to the Honda Center.
San Roman needed time to educate himself on the propositions and candidates. Most of his knowledge came from TV ads and news broadcasts. When he began to fill out his ballot, though, not much looked familiar to him. Still, the first-time voter knew he wanted to vote for Joe Biden, that much was sure.
He has been drifting from shelter to shelter for the last few years and he had hoped that a Biden presidency would make it easier for him to get the resources he needs.
“I like the way he thinks,” San Roman said. “I feel like he would get me a job.”
In Orange County, voters say there is a lot at stake
In Orange County, reminders that it was election day were not hard to find.
Motorists entering the county on the southbound 405 saw Trump supporters holding banners announcing their allegiance to the president.
Major landmarks such as the Irvine Civic Center were serving as polling places.
Even at a taco truck in Santa Ana, where a street musician crooned “Lo Mucho que te Quiero” (“How Much I Love You”), the election was not far from people’s minds.
Orange County was once a bastion of conservatism, but its politics have evolved as it becomes more racially diverse and as highly educated voters rebel against the Republican Party.
In 2016, the county broke for Hillary Clinton. Two years later, Democrats swept all seven congressional seats.
Former police officer, construction worker in Atlanta makes decision after being torn between Biden, Trump
ATLANTA — Roddrick Miller, a 39-year-old Black construction worker who lives in Atlanta, struggled for months with deciding who to vote for.
A former police officer who voted for Clinton in 2016, Miller said he had mixed feelings about Trump. He liked that the president spoke plainly and credited him with creating more jobs, but said he was too arrogant.
Biden, on the other hand, was too unsure. He felt the former vice president wasn’t an effective senator and didn’t help people in his community.
He criticized the behavior of both candidates during the first presidential debate as they resorted to heckles and name-calling. “Both of them are kind of childish,” Miller said. “They both work for the conservative and rich folk rather than the hard-working people.”
Two weeks ago, Miller made up his mind. “Your vote counts. In the long run, you don’t want to regret voting for someone you didn’t believe in.” Today he spent the day putting up Sheetrock.
Judge orders sweep of postal facilities after 300,000 mail ballots not shown as delivered
A federal judge has ordered U.S. Postal Service inspectors to sweep postal facilities Tuesday in several locations — including in six battleground states — to ensure that any mail-in ballots left behind are immediately sent out for delivery.
The order came after the Postal Service said in court filings that nearly 300,000 ballots had been scanned into the U.S. mail system since Oct. 24 but had not been scanned again to show they had been delivered — including more than 11,000 in Pennsylvania, nearly 16,000 in Florida and more than 6,000 in Michigan.
On-time performance for mail ballots has also dropped significantly in recent days, falling off by more than 5 percentage points over a nine-day period, from 94.7% last Wednesday to 89.59% Monday, the agency said.
The last-minute order on Tuesday by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington, D.C., directed the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service to inspect facilities in central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, south Florida, Arizona and a few other locations by 3 p.m. Eastern.
The order is part of one of several lawsuits against the Postal Service over cost-cutting measures that slowed mail delivery this year and raised concerns that mail-in ballots would not be delivered on time.
The Sikh Center of Orange County has a unique place as voting center
For the last four days, 83-year-old Nindy Mahal has been in charge of hospitality for poll workers at the Sikh Center of Orange County, where he sits on the board of directors.
He turns on the lights, brews tea and coffee, and lingers around to troubleshoot anything before shuffling back to his Santa Ana home, which is within walking distance.
It’s a ritual he has enjoyed since 2008, when the place of worship first served as a voting precinct in the overwhelmingly Latino city. The Sikh Center is unique among Southern California’s hundreds of voting centers.
It’s just one of two in the region that houses a religious group that isn’t a church, mosque or synagogue. (The other is a Hindu temple in Norwalk.)
“We take great pride in this,” said the retired CEO, citing his religion’s tradition of hospitality and the assimilation ethos of his fellow Punjabi Indian immigrants in this country. He waved toward a line of people who waited to enter the Sikh Center’s gurdwara, or temple. “These are all my neighbors. We recognize each other during these days.”
The 2020 election has seen Indian American concerns play a part in the presidential race like none before. President Trump and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, hosted mega-rallies for each other in their respective home countries in 2019 and this year.
On the Democratic side, vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is the daughter of an Indian immigrant and has spoken about how her maternal grandfather helped to influence her politics.
The Sikh Center’s 400 or so members haven’t discussed politics much during the few get-togethers they’ve had during the coronavirus crisis, Mahal said. But congregants — the majority of them white-collar workers — definitely have a favorite candidate.
“People associate success with Donald Trump,” he said. Mahal isn’t particularly fond of Trump, especially regarding his restrictive immigration agenda.
“He’s a unique person but a bigmouth,” he said from the Sikh Center’s library. “I wish [Vice President] Mike Pence would replace him and tweak some of his programs.” Nevertheless, he and his wife both voted for Trump via mail.
“Biden just seems to want to do nothing but handouts,” he said.
As for the history-making role of Harris? Mahal laughed: “Good for Kamala, but no.”
What’s the difference between the popular vote and the electoral college vote?
The popular vote for president is simple: It’s the total number of Americans who vote. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 65.8 million total votes from across the U.S.; Donald Trump had 62.9 million.
But the electoral college is more complicated and is how the presidential winner is determined.
Every state has a proportional number of electoral college votes based on the size of its congressional delegation. There are a total of 538 electoral college votes. California is the largest state by population and therefore has the most members of the U.S. House, 53, and two members of the U.S. Senate (like every other state), for a total of 55 electoral votes. All eyes this week are on states like Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) and Florida (29).
OK, you’re wondering, why are there 435 members of the House, plus 100 senators, but 538 total electoral votes? Something doesn’t add up. Well, Washington, D.C., has three electoral college votes but does not have voting members of the House or Senate. (That’s a whole other thing.)
For a candidate to win electoral college votes from a given state, he or she must receive the most votes in that state. In 2016, for example, Trump got 44,292 more votes than Clinton in Pennsylvania and therefore won the state’s 20 electoral votes.
Two states — Maine and Nebraska — award electoral votes by congressional district as well as statewide. That means candidates could split votes there, depending on their performance in parts of the states.
The candidate who amasses 270 electoral college votes or more is the winner. (270 is one more than half the total 538.)
You can follow live election results here.
If you have other questions about the election, ask us here. We’ll do our best to find answers.
In Broward County, Fla., passion and a plan to announce early votes
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — For the relatively small number of Fort Lauderdale voters who waited until election day to cast their votes, there was a pleasant surprise at polling places: no long lines.
On Tuesday afternoon, half a dozen cars were lined up at the Broward County supervisors office to drop off ballots. At the Coral Ridge Mall polling place in Fort Lauderdale, the only crowds were volunteers for the two campaigns. And at the Holiday Park Social Center, the sole line consisted of dozens of people waiting for COVID-19 tests.
In Broward County, where Fort Lauderdale is located, more than 800,000 of the county’s nearly 1.3 million registered voters cast their ballots by mail or during the early voting period that ended Sunday. The county has 577 precincts spread across 385 polling places, which could have accommodated up to 700,000 voters, according to a spokesman for the elections office.
The county is expecting a fraction of that turnout — about 140,000 to 150,000 — to show up on election day. The elections office budgeted for an 80% turnout overall and expects to get close, said Peter Antonacci, the Broward County supervisor of elections.
“Because of the virus, so much has been front-loaded,” Antonacci said in an interview.
Leonard Heal-Rodriguez, a 59-year-old Joe Biden volunteer, was campaigning for the former vice president outside the Holiday Park Social Center polling place — far enough to meet legal requirements. He said he moved some of the signs pointing toward the polling place to where cars were lining up for COVID-19 testing, because voters — expecting a wait — were getting into the wrong line.
“I swear we haven’t had more than 100 people show up, and I’ve been here since 7 o’clock,” he said just before 1 p.m.
Heal-Rodriguez said people are wrong to assume Florida would choose President Trump again.
“I’m Cuban, I’m gay, I’m a parent — there’s so much that I’m involved with, and groups that I’m involved with that I can pretty much tell you that it’s more positive than you would think, including the Cubans,” he said. “I’m pretty confident that we got this.”
A few miles away, 70-year-old retiree Ronnie Dennis said she’d seen similarly low numbers at the Coral Ridge Mall, where she’d been campaigning for Trump since 6 a.m. The Fort Lauderdale resident said there were more lines during the early voting period, when she also volunteered.
Dennis, a longtime Republican, stood with a Trump flag, a boat hat decorated with Trump pins and buttons and a Trump T-shirt. She said she thought the president would do well in the state because his supporters are passionate.
“I think the people that are Trump supporters are very enthusiastic,” she said. “This isn’t a passive thing for us, this is a true love of the person, and even though he’s not perfect, we think that he’s really acting in our best interest.”
Whichever way the state goes, most of results should be in Tuesday night. Antonacci, the Broward County elections supervisor, said his office will announce the results of all the early voting in the county, as well all the vote-by-mail ballots that were processed as of noon Tuesday, when polls close.
“The results of 800,000 ballots will be announced at 7 o’clock tonight, so you will get a very good idea of what things look like in Broward,” he said.
At ‘Trump Corner’ in Fresno, a billboard supporting the president stays up despite vandalism
FRESNO — Lately, people have been calling an intersection on the outskirts of town “Trump Corner” because of the billboard that Bill Shubin, 81, put up on the lot of his cement block company.
Someone splattered the sign with paint. For months it — and the vandalism — have towered over the area of light industry, trucking schools and crowded trailer parks just before the city becomes agricultural fields.
Shubin said whoever threw the paint must have been a baseball player with a good arm.
“They must have had fun because that was quite a throw over the fence and up that high,” he said. “Makes it more eye-catching anyway.”
Shubin is the son of immigrants who fled Russia for Iran in 1933. He was born in Iran and moved to Fresno in 1951. He has no problem with anything President Trump says about immigrants.
“He didn’t say anything bad about anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
He and his wife voted by mail. They and most of their extended family voted for Trump, and Shubin says he’s sure Trump is going to win.
“I’m listening to the media. It looks good,” he said.
Some Michigan residents were told they risked arrest if they voted, officials say
DETROIT — Michigan election officials announced additional misinformation attempts affecting voters in the state Tuesday evening.
The Michigan Department of State received reports of voters in Flint and Grand Rapids receiving live calls warning that, if they had a warrant out for their arrest, they could get arrested if they went to vote, said Jake Rollow, spokesman for the department.
“Criminal history does not impact your right to vote in Michigan,” he said, adding the department put out the message on social media. “We don’t have any sense of how widespread those are, but we’ve been trying to correct that information as we see it or hear about it.”
Earlier in the day, the department said it had received reports of voters in Flint receiving robocalls urging them to vote — on Wednesday. And voters in Dearborn reported receiving texts about ballot problems. The state attorney general’s office is investigating those voter misinformation efforts.
Despite the reports of misinformation attempts, fears about widespread voter intimidation failed to materialize.
“I would knock on wood, but it seems like we’re having a fairly calm election day,” Rollow said.
A first-time voter in Atlanta didn’t want to be voiceless any longer
ATLANTA — Aarrie Blackman awoke with a start. It was 3 a.m., and her tabby cat, Mr. Frenchie, was zooming in and out of the bedroom. It almost felt like a sign, on election day, that she had no excuse to not vote.
The 27-year-old Black unemployed Atlantan had never voted before. In 2016, she figured Donald Trump had no chance of winning and she wasn’t really drawn to Hillary Clinton. But the last year has made her pay closer attention to politics.
Just before the coronavirus spread across Atlanta, she quit her job with a real estate company that made money off pre-foreclosed homes. She was tired of working for a company that preyed on people in her community. Now her boyfriend was picking up the financial slack.
Blackman worried about her mother, who worked as a nurse in a COVID-19 clinic at a military base in Washington. Blackman didn’t think the nation could stand four more years of Trump.
“This man is just so incredibly dangerous for America,” she said. “All the deaths and overwhelmed hospitals…. I don’t think our infrastructure is built to handle it. Our infrastructure is built to make money. It’s not built to protect and serve those they should.”
Within her circle of friends, there was a very strong feeling that nothing would change and neither Joe Biden nor Trump were for all Americans. Many asked her why she was voting for Biden. “He’s just as bad,” they told her. A lot of them didn’t have any faith in the system.
Before the pandemic, Blackman had never really followed the news. But now she couldn’t stop. “The more I read, and the more I learn, the more I realize just how voiceless we can become when we just become so cynical that we don’t want to do anything at all,” she said.
Still, the idea of going to a polling station felt daunting, because of the pandemic, concerns about violence, and long lines. Pittman Park Recreation Center made national news in 2018 after a shortage of voting machines forced it to stay open hours after the official closing time.
But on Tuesday, there were no voters outside. Just a throng of poll observers, poll watchers, safety ambassadors and volunteers handing out breakfast bars.
A woman directed Blackman to a desk and everything felt safe and sterile, she said. After signing a form to cancel her mail-in absentee ballot, which had never arrived, she was handed a voter card and a stylus.
She marked Biden’s name on the voter machine.
Walking out of the polling station, she felt oddly proud, like when she sang the national anthem at the YMCA when she was a child. Back when her heart could actually feel pride in the nation.
She could go home knowing she had done her part. She had shown up.
They’re too young to vote, but they are working at the polls. ‘It’s our future’
Jasmine Hercules, 17, may not be old enough to vote, but she’s still determined to make a difference. The high school senior woke at 4:30 a.m. to prepare for a 15-hour shift as a student poll worker at Del Records in Bell Gardens.
Taking on the three-day assignment required permission from her teachers to miss virtual classes. While contacting them, she also took the opportunity to remind each of her instructors to vote.
“It’s kind of cheesy, but one vote at a time,” Jasmine said. She’s not alone among her group of friends in caring about the election.
“We all like to use our social media platforms to inform people,” she said, explaining that she’d already posted a few times on Instagram, putting up information about voting and different candidates. She follows a number of political accounts, but she’s also been looking to some of her favorite celebrities — including Billie Eilish, Jordyn Woods, Kylie Jenner and Zendaya — for voting content to share.
Sitting at the other end of a folding table layered with election information was fellow high school volunteer Sarah Jauregui, 16, wearing a track and field jacket with her name embroidered on it and black Converse sneakers. Sarah said she felt motivated to take on election duties because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that it had put older people — who are typically over-represented as poll workers — at particular risk.
“It’s our future,” she said, “even though we can’t vote yet.”
Biden may not address supporters until ‘there’s something to talk about’
WILMINGTON — Joe Biden, back in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., raised the possibility of not making remarks on election night.
“If there’s something to talk about tonight, I’ll talk about it,” he told reporters. “If not, I’ll wait till the votes are counted the next day.”
Biden shrugged off the possibility that President Trump may claim an early victory on Tuesday night.
“No matter what he does, no matter what he says, the votes are going to be counted,” he said.
As to how the contest will go, Biden gave a hint of optimism.
“I’m superstitious about predicting what an outcome will be before it happens,” he said. “But I’m hopeful.”
He is confident about strong turnout numbers, particularly among young voters, women and older Black voters in key states such as Georgia and Florida.
“You can’t think of an election in the recent past where so many states are up for grabs. The idea I’m in play in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida — I mean, come on.”
Biden predicted he could win the presidency without Ohio, which traditionally supports the winner.
“The only thing you know is that traditions are made to be broken,” he said.
Biden will watch the election returns Tuesday night at home with his family. Supporters are gathering outdoors at the Chase Center in Wilmington.
‘Black Voters Matter’ extolled at South Los Angeles polling place
At the Forum in Inglewood, there was a steady stream of voters Tuesday. Many said they wanted to make it an event by visiting the Rams stadium for the first time.
After casting her ballot for Joe Biden, Allison Brown of Lakewood stopped to pose for photos with the Rams’ mascot near the exit.
Brown, who was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Black Voters Matter,” said she wanted to send a message at the polls.
“I could’ve worn a lot [of shirts] ... Lakers ... or Dodgers today. But this is a very important year to vote,” the 59-year-old said. “We’ve been through so much, and I feel like we could’ve had a leader to make better decisions. I think we have an opportunity to make some major, major changes by people who I feel really care about the people.
“I’m trying to encourage other people to vote and remind them of how important it is because we’ve got people dying.”
These voters at Florida State University worry about a second term for Trump
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — At the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center at Florida State University, a steady stream of voters, many of them students, cast their ballots Tuesday.
Sophia Fauni, 22, did not have to wait long after a brisk walk to the civic center around noon.
Just like during the presidential election in 2016, Fauni voted for the Democratic ticket. Even though she is one vote, she said she felt her voice mattered.
“Also I’m angry,” she said. “I don’t like our current president ... the current administration doesn’t exactly share my beliefs.”
The nearly four years under President Trump, a Republican, have been “upsetting,” she said, and many of her friends, who are people of color and members of the LGBTQ community, have felt similarly disappointed.
Fauni said her family members are Republicans who disapprove of her support for Democrats. When Trump won the presidency in 2016, her father took a long sip from a Trump mug when she returned home from college, she said.
“We’ve made our peace, kind of,” she said. She said she did not ask her family if they were supporting him this election cycle.
This year, she said she is worried about what will happen if Trump is reelected.
“I want to think everything is going to be OK, but I don’t know,” she said. “If our president can say he can go to New York and shoot people and say he’s going to be elected again, then what else can he do? And what else can people that support him do?”
Devyn Adler, 20, a first-time voter, shared a similar sentiment. The biology student, who also voted for former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, said she has heard speculation about a second civil war. The possibility of Trump serving a second term concerned her.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more riots, more rallies and more destruction” following the results, Adler said.
Sisters stick out a 3-hour wait in their Nevada retirement community to vote for Trump
HENDERSON, Nev. — Rubria Toscano, 74, and Martha Melcher, 67, showed up at 7 a.m. to vote, but because of technical glitches at the polling site, the sisters ended up waiting three hours.
There were issues with the kiosks and getting people into the register to get their cards, according to one election worker at Sun City MacDonald Ranch Community Center.
On Twitter, former Nevada Atty. Gen. Adam Paul Laxalt uploaded a video of an election worker, who was offering up alternative locations if people wanted to go elsewhere but said she didn’t know “what they may be experiencing as far as delays.”
Toscano and Melcher watched as the line stretched for blocks and many other voters gave up and left. But they didn’t want to get in another line, so they decided to wait until everything was fixed.
In the end, they said, the result was “fabulous.” Voting, Melcher said, is a civic duty.
“We voted, we used our voices,” said Melcher, who wore a red hat, where she’d proudly placed her sticker.
The sisters, Colombian immigrants, cited the current political diviseness in the U.S. and the feeling of resentment they got from others over their politics views.
They are Republican and voted for Trump, who they said was fearless and a businessman. They said his personality didn’t matter.
“What we want is for all of this to end,” Toscano said, “to know who is going to be president.”
“Whoever it is,” Melcher said, “we’re going to support them with a lot of love.”
‘We need four more years. We just do’
SOUTHGATE, Mich. — Jay Downen docked his tugboat along the banks of the Detroit River at lunchtime to cast his ballot.
“I always vote on my break on election day,” said Downen, 59, who has operated vessels in the Great Lakes region for nearly three decades. “It’s my routine.”
He voted for President Trump on Tuesday, hoping for a second term for the man he also supported in 2016.
“The economy has been great. He’s not beholden to anyone,” Downen said of Trump. “We don’t need to go back to having typical politicians in the White House.”
Downen said he believed the current administration would eventually get the COVID-19 pandemic under control.
“This takes time,” he said. “The president is doing his best.”
Downen ran down a list of reasons he’s backing Trump.
“The 2nd Amendment, toughness, pride for the USA,” he said. Then he looked at his phone and had to hurry back to his boat.
“We need four more years,” he said. “We just do.”
How many votes were cast in 2016, and how does that total compare with 2020 so far?
In the 2016 election, 128,838,342 votes were cast. In this election, roughly 100 million Americans voted before election day Tuesday. So voters are on track to turn out in unprecedented numbers.
Michael McDonald, a University of Florida expert on voting, predicted that more than 160 million voters might cast ballots this year, or 67% of the total number of eligible Americans. That would be 15% more than in 2016 and, by a significant margin, the largest voter turnout in modern U.S. history.
In California, about 8.4 million mail-in ballots were cast in 2016. As of Tuesday morning, Californians had cast more than 12 million ballots, which accounts for 55% of the state’s registered voters.
House music thumps as Dems try to flip Arizona, make state a less ‘lonely place for Democrats’
MESA, Ariz. — Kevin Ellsworth, 51, enjoyed the live DJ thumping house music outside of the convention center in Mesa to entertain the long line of voters. Ellsworth voted Friday for Joe Biden but decided to come out to support others.
“People are watching Arizona for the first time ...ever,” he joked about the battleground state. Ellsworth, a teacher, said, “If it goes blue, that’s going to be very exciting for a lot of us. It’s been red for so long.”
He added: Mesa “can be a lonely place for Democrats.”
For the man promising to restore ‘the soul of the nation,’ there’s soul food
PHILADELPHIA — Joe Biden, continuing to rally voters across the battleground of Pennsylvania, dropped in on in an election day tradition in this city Tuesday afternoon: a soul food buffet luncheon with local politicians.
Biden stopped at Relish, a soul food and jazz joint in northwest Philly, where Rep. Dwight Evans hosts the invitation-only gathering. The Democratic presidential candidate was greeted by roughly 25 supporters, some of whom called him “President Biden.”
“Philly’s the key!” Biden told his fans. “Philly is the key!”
At a later vote-canvassing kickoff in the West Oak neighborhood, Biden cheered the high turnout so far, especially among women, who make up 54% of the electorate. “Look: The country is ready. We’re going to have more people come this year than any time in American history,” he said.
Biden slammed President Trump, saying, “The president’s got a lot of things backward. One of them is he thinks he gets to decide who votes. Well, guess what? We get to decide who’s president!”
‘I feel helpless.’ Two Wisconsin Trump voters stymied by ID laws
FRANKLIN, Wis. — Voting rights advocates have criticized Wisconsin’s election rules, charging that Republican lawmakers are trying to make it harder to cast a ballot.
But on election day in one Milwaukee suburb, it was two supporters of Republican President Trump who found themselves tripped up — in their case by the state’s refusal to accept driver’s licenses from other states as proper identification.
Randy and Tara Robinson offered up first their Idaho and Virginia licenses, then utility bills and other paperwork, but were told they needed to contact another state office to obtain temporary identification. Otherwise they would not be able to vote.
“I feel helpless,” said Randy Robinson, 45, who runs food concessions for a minor league baseball team. “ I was ready to do my part, but now I might not be able to. It’s very upsetting to me.”
The couple said they had not been told about the need for a Wisconsin ID when they first contacted elections officials. They were hurrying to get temporary identification so their ballots would count.
“This is a real identification. I swear. It’s not fake,” Robinson said, showing his Idaho license.” He was trying to cast his first vote in a presidential election. He’d set out previous elections because he thought a youthful arrest for a minor offense disqualified him.
“We would’ve gotten Wisconsin driver’s licenses if we had known,” said Robinson, who is concerned his business would be hurt if Joe Biden put America on a stricter COVID-19 lockdown. “They say ‘Vote, make your voice heard.’ And I absolutely want to have my voice heard. If I can.”
Philadelphia voter backs Trump, citing the president’s support for police
PHILADELPHIA — Chris Salvatore of northeast Philadelphia gave a simple reason for voting Tuesday to reelect President Trump: “He backs the police.”
Many neighbors of the 51-year-old state government employee are police officers and firefighters. She was unnerved by the vandalism and violence that erupted in other parts of Philadelphia last week after city police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man.
“Who knew if they were going to our area and demolish everything around here,” said Salvatore, a Republican who voted at Somerton United Methodist Church. If Democrat Joe Biden defeats Trump, she said, “it would just be worse.”
Salvatore did have one complaint about Trump: “The tweets are a bit much.”
Campaigns compete for Latino votes — and mariachis
LAS VEGAS — The pep talk came to the accompaniment of a mariachi group, Alma del Sol, outside the Democrats’ “Voter Activation Center” in east Las Vegas, the musicians dressed in blue to match the Biden-Harris signs affixed to chairs in front of them.
People arrived to pick up materials for last-minute voter canvassing: campaign literature and buttons, masks, gloves and disinfectant. Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak and Nevada Democratic Party Chairman William McCurdy II cheered them on.
“We know that the work that we do today is going to be the work that is going to make the difference in this election,” McCurdy said, for a president who would “build bridges,” not walls.
“We’re the party of opportunity, equality, a better life for all of us,” he added. “We love to celebrate our diversity.”
The mariachi group had played in the past for Obama and Clinton campaign events. Frank Elizondo, who runs the group with his son Juan, said someone from the Trump campaign had reached out to them, but “we don’t work for the Republicans.”
Nevada Assemblyman Edgar Flores, recalling his shock four years ago at Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton, said, “This year we took nothing for granted; we took no vote for granted.”
Flores wore the black boots his father bought him in Juarez and asked him to wear on election day. Flores’ father, originally from Zacatecas, became a U.S. citizen last year and recently cast his ballot in the early-voting period. Afterward, he sent his son a photo of his voting sticker, featuring the Las Vegas Strip skyline alongside the Statue of Liberty, in red, white and blue.
“Mijo,” he wrote. “Ya se hizo.” He did it.
TikTok star questions Houston voters after they cast ballots, plants seed for Kanye 2024
HOUSTON — A self-described TikToker and half a dozen 20-somethings wearing “Kanye 2020” shirts, shoes and hats filmed themselves Tuesday questioning voters outside a polling place in suburban Houston.
“Did you vote for Kanye?” Blake Messick, 21, of Houston shouted to a voter as she left, looking mystified. Messick has 689,900 followers and 20.1 million likes on the social media platform.
The whole thing started as a joke, said Messick, a student at the University of Houston, until he and his friends became supporters after hearing West on Joe Rogan’s podcast. For Messick, it came down to this: “You going to vote for two old men or the guy who wrote ‘Hold My Liquor’?”
He dismissed those who saw voting for West as a vote for Trump, because “he doesn’t support Trump anymore.”
Classmate Deniz Sipahi, 22, wearing Kanye-designed Adidas sneakers, said, “The country is at a point where it needs innovation… He’s ready to be a leader.”
Their friend Tari Awdi, 20, a Houston electrician, said he was disillusioned by both parties and by reports of voter suppression. “You’re just choosing a temporary fix with Biden or Trump,” he said. “This whole ‘choose a team” mindset — we’re tired of that.”
Messick said voting for West wasn’t just a social media stunt. They want Kanye to run in 2024: “We’re planting a seed.”
In North Carolina, a vote for Biden’s energy and pandemic plans
RALEIGH, N.C. — Chris Vermillion, 38 and an engineering professor at North Carolina State, said he voted for Joe Biden for the former vice president’s “logical energy policy, logical science-driven policy in response to the pandemic.”
Vermillion said that “in spite of Republicans trying to convince me otherwise — he is not just a puppet of the far left and in fact has a mind of his own.”
Biden’s climate plan takes the best parts of the progressive Green New Deal while dropping aspects he views as “not reasonable,” Vermillion said.
“I don’t think he thought of that all on his own,” Vermillion said of the plan. “I think he listened to scientists, and I suspect that he would probably do the same in regard to other policy.”
Trump and Biden hold radically different views on environmental policy and climate change. Here’s what voters can expect from the next president.
Mail-in ballots flagged for rejection hit 21,000; Black, Latino voters rejected at higher rate
In Nevada, about 4,000 votes cast by mail so far won’t be counted unless voters can explain discrepancies between their ballot signatures and registration forms.
In Florida, the same is true for nearly 4,000 voters in three populous counties.
And in North Carolina, nearly 8,000 mail-in ballots have been flagged for rejection, many because they lack a witness signature.
As electoral workers begin processing votes across the country this election day, more than 60 million will be mail-in ballots that can be rejected if they have not been properly submitted. The rejection rate reached 1.4% in the 2018 general election and 1% in 2016, which proved decisive in some close races.
An early snapshot of rejection rates reported thus far in Nevada, Florida, North Carolina and other battleground states show a mixed picture: Although overall rejection rates are generally lower than in past elections, the votes of Black people and Latinos are being rejected at higher rates than those of white Americans.
Harris tells Michigan voters the ‘day ain’t over’
DETROIT -- Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris swung into Michigan Tuesday afternoon to urge supporters to head to the polls and take nothing for granted.
“We want to remind everybody obviously that the polls close at 8 o’clock tonight and it’s important that everyone votes, and of course that the path to the White House and the path to determining who will be the next president of the United States, without question, runs through Michigan,” Harris told reporters after stepping off her plane. “So I’m just here to remind people in Detroit that that they are seen and heard by Joe and me, and also that they may actually decide the outcome of this race.”
President Trump unexpectedly won Michigan in 2016 by less than 11,000 votes. Democrats have invested significant time and money to ensure a repeat does not occur this year, notably by trying to encourage turnout among Black voters who previously supported President Obama in large numbers, but sat out the 2016 election.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Harris have a notable lead in polls over Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Turnout also appears likely to shatter records – 3.1 million Michaganders cast early absentee ballots, three times as many as in 2016, according to the Michigan secretary of state.
Harris warned against complacency.
“Listen, the day ain’t over,” said Harris, who headed to Sheet Metal Workers Local 80 in Southfield, Mich., for a canvass kickoff after arriving in Detroit. “[R]ight now I’m just here to remind people to vote because the election is still happening right now. It’s not over.”
In Pennsylvania, worries over a ‘horrible’ election give way to easy voting — with live cello music
MEDIA, Penn. - Sean Mellody does not mince word when it comes to describing this election: “It’s been horrible.”
Nevertheless, he was enthusiastic in casting his vote for former Vice President Joe Biden in Media, a suburb outside of Philadelphia. He had received a mail-in ballot but decided to vote in person instead, just to be certain his vote would could.
Mellody, who works in an accounting firm, said this was the first time he ever felt so concerned about the voting process. He saved the voting rights helpline number in his phone, just in case he encountered problems.
He had no reason to fear: his polling place at a local community center was cheerful and organized, complete with someone playing live cello to entertain those in the short line.
“It was cordial and easy – that’s how it should be,” said Mellody, 45.
Election day is off to a breezy start in California: fast lines, no major problems
California kicked off election day with brisk lines, peppy poll workers and rave reviews from voters, many of whom are calling it their “best voting experience ever.”
“Voting is going smoothly across California this morning,” said Sam Mahood, a spokesman for the secretary of state. “We have been urging Californians to vote early this year, and they responded in record numbers.”
Indeed, more than 12.8 million Californians had already cast their votes ahead of Tuesday, including almost 3 million Angelenos. But many still flocked to the polls on Tuesday, if only for the classic election day experience.
“I like going in there and being in that environment where I’m with other people voting — it just makes me feel very inspired,” said Mark Yoshida, who cast his ballot at the La Mirada Public Library on Tuesday morning. “I was expecting a little more chaos, just because it is election day. I was kind of hoping to see a little more drama.”
In Detroit, Trump’s handling of COVID-19 brings her to the poll
DETROIT — Pediatrician Lisa Random mailed in her absentee ballot several days ago, only to be informed by the city’s clerk office that she forgot to sign it. So on Tuesday, she went to the city election department’s downtown office to make sure her vote counted.
“It’s a very critical, important election in terms of electing our president, and also in the city of Detroit, all the other issues that are on the ballot,” said the 50-year-old.
Random is a registered Democrat, though she said she agrees with some of the Republican Party’s values. But she said could not vote for President Trump because of how he has handled the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been devastating in Michigan and has killed more than 232,000 people in the U.S.
“He does not base his information on science, and as a physician, I think that’s important,” Random said. “You’re as strong as those that you surround yourself with.”
Texas college student said he was turned away, despite registering twice to vote
HOUSTON — Jose “Ajay” Opena, 19, of Houston was hoping to vote for the first time on Election Day. Instead, he said he was turned away from the polls in suburban Houston by an election judge who said he wasn’t registered.
“What can I do?” Opena said he asked poll workers. He registered on-site, but that would only allow him to vote in the the next election.
“I feel like they cheated me of my vote,” he said.
Opena said he had registered to vote in early September and when he didn’t hear back, applied again in late September. When his parents and 18 year-old sister received registration cards in the mail last month, he phoned elections officials. “They said it could be mixed up in the mail and not to worry about it,” he said.
He had wanted to vote for Biden, as his sister did Tuesday. He wasn’t sure who his parents voted for – he suspected for Trump.
In deep blue L.A., two voters express divergent views of Trump
As she cast her vote Tuesday, Betty Jimenez thought of migrant children still separated from their parents.
The 62-year-old Democrat, who emigrated from El Salvador more than three decades ago, said she could imagine their young voices asking the same question day after day: “Where is my mother?”
Another phrase — this one from Donald Trump speaking about the pandemic in late January — echoed through her thoughts as well: “We have it totally under control.”
“People are dying!” she said in Spanish. “Where is the control?”
Jimenez, who retired recently after working for years in several L.A. restaurants and factories, has been holed up indoors through the pandemic. She misses her relatives in Las Vegas but hasn’t seen them since February. It’s too risky, she says, given her age.
When Jimenez arrived at the polling station at Shatto Recreation Center in Koreatown on Tuesday morning, there was no line, so she had walked directly inside. Outside, signs warned
voters to stay six feet from one another.
A high school history teacher was conducting a “virtual field trip” for his students, broadcasting live and asking students if they had any questions for voters.“We need a new president,” Jimenez said, smiling after she voted for Joe Biden.
“Someone who knows the pandemic is real.”She finds Trump deeply hypocritical. He insults Latinos, she said, while relying on them as employees at his hotels.
“We lift this country up,” she said, “and he wants to destroy it.”
She can’t stand how the president has conducted his campaign, she said, adding that she was frustrated by his comments at a recent rally implying he may try to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
“His campaign has been a circus,” she said.
As a transgender woman, Jimenez said, she feels deeply grateful for her life in the U.S., where she said she has always felt a lot of support. It’s painful, she added, to watch Trump sow division.
“Never in my life have I seen a president like him.”
In Westlake, Rodrick Butler had a different take on the president.“Donald!” he said, proudly. “I voted for Donald Trump.”
The 21-year-old Angeleno, who recently moved from Victorville and is studying criminal justice, said he knows some of his friends will disagree, but he believes the president deserves another term.“I think he’ll work it out,” he said.
Butler, who identifies as an independent, added that he thinks much of the criticism Trump receives is unwarranted.
No car, but she’s got a vote
LAS VEGAS — Olga Marcos, 74, arrived at William K. Moore Elementary School at 5 a.m. Tuesday though the polls wouldn’t open for another two hours.
She had walked 15 minutes to the school, because she doesn’t have a car. She brought a small chair and a plastic bag with a Biden campaign flyer that read, “Dime con quien andas y te diré quien eres” -- “Tell me who you’re with and I’ll tell you who you are.”
She brought it for reference so she could ask a worker for help, to make sure she correctly voted for Joe Biden. Marcos emigrated from Guatemala in 1970, to provide a better life for her three children, now grown. Fifty years later, she said, “I’m still an immigrant.”
Though she disagreed with some of Biden’s stances -- she opposes abortion rights, for example – she said she had faith that he would help people like her: “He’s given a lot of hope to Latinos.”
Balking at removing their Trump gear to vote, a Nevada family decries loss of friends over the election
HENDERSON, Nev. — At 9:20 a.m. there were around 100 people waiting in line outside of the Sun City MacDonald Ranch Community Center.
That included Joanne Ross, who was decked out in a red “Nevada for Trump” hat and a flag scarf and mask. The retiree wore a red shirt and red, white and blue Skechers.
The 61-year-old had come with her husband, her daughter and her daughter’s fiance; she said they were casting ballots in person so they could be sure their votes would be counted.
“My husband and I are devout Christians,” she said Ross, who lives in Las Vegas, but was voting in Henderson, where her daughter lives. “For us there’s no choice. We can’t vote for somebody who supports late term abortion.”
“I’m afraid what’s going to happen if Joe Biden wins,” she said of the former Vice President, a practicing Catholic.
President Trump is the only president who “shows any type of faith and seems sincere about it,” Ross said, adding that he sticks to his promises.
“He’s been doing what he said he was going to do,” she said. “That’s why we elected him.”
But her voice broke and she grew teary eyed as she talked about what her support of Trump had cost her: friends she’s had for more than 20 years.
“They all of a sudden look at you differently because of the way that you vote and the things that you support, which isn’t anything they haven’t known about you for the last 20 years or more,” Ross said. “These are people you’ve cared about and loved on for years and all of a sudden because you support a person who believes the things that you believe .... now you’re just not good enough anymore? It’s heartbreaking.”
“It’s devastating really. It changes the whole dynamics of your life,” she said.
The family was told at least five times that they would need to remove their Trump gear before entering the center. They all wore hats that showed their support for Trump.“We’re not campaigning, we’re standing in line waiting to vote,” Ross said.
“The hats, that’s campaigning,” an election worker told her.
Eventually, after another worker came by and warned them, everyone except for Ross took off their hats.“They can’t send me away, that’s voter suppression,” Ross told her family.
“I’d rather vote than wear a hat,” her future son in law said.Eventually another poll worker came by and told her it’d be fine for her to wear the hat until she entered the building.
Ethiopian immigrant bemoans boarded-up buildings in downtown D.C.
WASHINGTON - Aklilu Yoseph shook his head Tuesday as he gestured toward some boarded-up buildings in downtown Washington, D.C., some even fortified with sandbags. Businesses and office buildings in the nation’s capital are taking precautions against the risk of possible protests after election results are announced.
“This is the United States!” he said. “This cannot be.”
Yoseph, 49, who immigrated from Ethiopia 25 years ago, said the U.S. was starting to look more like the “mess” he fled.
“I pray, I pray … that things change,” he said, adding he was worried that many Americans take for granted the freedoms and liberties that many in his native Ethiopia do not enjoy.
What happens if there’s a tie or no clear winner in the electoral college?
First of all, an electoral college tie or inconclusive result is highly unlikely. But here’s what it would take to get to that point.
There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs in the presidential contest, and in order to win, a candidate has to get at least 270 of them — just over 50%, since 538 divided by 2 is 269. If no presidential candidate receives 270 votes, whether the totals are tied or not, it triggers a “contingent election,” and the 12th Amendment tasks the newly elected House of Representatives with resolving who the next president will be.
Democrats control the House and are expected to retain control into the next term, so you’d think this scenario would lead to an automatic Biden win, but that’s not necessarily true. Congressional representatives get divided into 50 House delegations, one per state, and each delegation gets one vote. Members do not have to vote for the candidate who won their state. It’s a complicated system. Read this piece by The Times’ Sarah D. Wire for more on how it works, and how there’s a long-shot chance we could wind up with a President Nancy Pelosi.
Do you have other election questions? Ask us, and we’ll do our best to get answers.
Voters cast ballots in Magic Castle inner sanctum
Entry to the Magic Castle in Hollywood has long been a hot ticket, usually limited to members and their guests.
But on Tuesday morning, the mysterious halls of “the most unusual private club in the world” were open to anyone looking to participate in the democratic process.
After taking a few selfies in front of an “I Voted at the Magic Castle” sign, Bill O’Donnell said he had been “excited to take a peek inside.”
The 46-year-old television line producer had worked with Magic Castle members in the past and even snagged a few invitations but never made it through the doors of the castle on the hill.
Inside, social distancing stickers lined the floors, with velvet ropes separating the entrance and exit routes.
Voters walked down a hallway lined with posters from magic shows, then cast their ballots amid ornate decorations in the mansion’s downstairs “Inner Circle.” Voting machines were set up on what appeared to be the dance floor.
Is in-person voting safe?
Although everyone should remain wary of the continued threat posed by the coronavirus, officials say there are procedures and processes in place to make in-person voting as safe as possible.
Tips to cast your ballot safely: Wear a face covering, practice physical distancing and bring hand sanitizer. To avoid crowds, you can always drop off a completed mail-in ballot at the official drop boxes, which are open until 8 p.m. on election day.
As far as voter intimidation, during a briefing last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti reiterated that there was “no intelligence” suggesting any sort of plot to carry out violence or voter intimidation at L.A. polls. But he said the city and the LAPD were ready for whatever might come and were prepared to protect voters. Other law enforcement agencies also have plans in place.
Do you have other questions about the election? Ask us, and we’ll do our best to get answers.
No election day slowdown in ICE deportations of Central American children
WASHINGTON — Election day isn’t stopping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting Central American kids from Texas.
On Tuesday, as millions of voters went to the polls across the country, ICE sent a flight from San Antonio to Guatemala, with two men and 43 unaccompanied minors, 25 boys and 18 girls, according to Guatemala’s migration agency.
The Trump administration has continued the deportation flights despite countries closing their borders amid the global pandemic and evidence that the practice has exported the coronavirus to other nations.
Trump visits Virginia campaign headquarters, says of the uncertain outcome: ‘Losing is never easy, not for me’
WASHINGTON — President Trump, still hoarse after days of nonstop rallies, visited his campaign headquarters in northern Virginia on Tuesday afternoon, thanking staff and talking up his election chances.
“I’m not thinking about concession speech or acceptance speech,” he said, admitting that “losing is never easy, not for me.”
Trump also predicted that if he was reelected he would bring the country together despite his record of divisiveness.
“Success brings people together,” he said, before singling out the media, which he frequently demonizes.
“You people were not really convincible,” he said.
Santa Ana poll worker: ‘It’s cool to see how the sausage is made’
As he guided voters to their proper spot, Katahdin Rendino was as chipper as an amusement park worker. In fact, his job was not dissimilar. The first-year student at UC Irvine School of Law was volunteering as a poll worker at the Discovery Cube, a children’s museum in Santa Ana.
People distanced themselves from others with the help of green stickers on the ground, emblazoned with dinosaur claws, that read, “Healthy, Smart and 6 Feet Apart.”
“Are you here to vote in person or drop off a ballot?” Rendino asked again and again, his voice cascading through the lobby despite the black mask over his face.
The 25-year-old was volunteering in an election for the first time — partly to knock some pro bono hours off his schoolwork but also to partake in “history.”
“It’s an important election, no matter who you’re voting for,” Rendino said as he hurried away to offer someone a mask.
Voting was brisk at the Discovery Cube, with an equal number of people dropping off ballots and voting in person. Asked to share his mood about the state of America in light of a contentious election, Rendino’s eyes lighted up.
“Optimistic,” he said, chasing down another wandering voter. “It’s cool to see how the sausage is made.”
Judge orders sweep of postal facilities for leftover ballots
A federal judge has ordered U.S. Postal Service inspectors to sweep postal facilities on Tuesday in several locations — including in six battleground states — to ensure that any mail-in ballots left behind are immediately sent out for delivery.
The last-minute order on Tuesday by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington, D.C., directs the law enforcement arm of the Postal Service to inspect facilities in central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, south Florida, Arizona and a few other locations between 12:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. Eastern time.
FBI investigating anonymous robocalls urging voters to ‘stay safe, and stay home’
WASHINGTON — The FBI and federal elections officials are looking into robocalls urging voters to stay home. Voters in several states have been receiving the anonymous calls, according to elections officials in Nebraska, where a complaint about the calls first emerged Tuesday morning. The anonymous robocalls tell voters, “Now is the time to stay home. Stay safe, and stay home.”
“Not only in our state, but also in Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia, voters are getting the same robocalls,” said Cindi Allen, a spokeswoman for Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen. Evnen’s office contacted officials at the FBI and Federal Elections Commission, who are looking into the anonymous calls. “These calls are coming from local numbers,” Allen said. “It’s obviously a burner phone and they are using local numbers so people will be more likely to answer.”
Evnen’s office has put out a statement reassuring voters the polls are open and safe. “Our polling places across the state are open,” it said. “Our voters and our poll workers will be kept safe.”
Pelosi: Democrats are prepared if Trump challenges election results
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged Democrats were prepared in case President Trump challenged the results of the election.
“We are ready legally, constitutionally, congressionally, in every way, to protect our democracy for any skulduggery that the president may try to introduce into this,” Pelosi (D-San Francisco) told reporters Tuesday morning. “But be assured that our democracy will survive. I don’t like saying that. I don’t like having to do that. But if that’s what the president wants to do, go onto that battlefield, we’re ready.”
Democratic groups such as the state organizations and national groups that have been working to elect Democrats to the House and Senate have put $10 million into litigation efforts, according to Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Both Bustos and Pelosi said they expected House Democrats to expand their majority but were reluctant to be held to an exact estimate.
“I think we’re going to see some wins in these deep red districts,” Bustos said, “that over time you’re going to see going from ruby red to purple to even blue, and I think that will be the story out of tonight’s election.”
Still, they see many House races sitting on a knife’s edge and predict many races may not be called immediately.
“This is an election day that may end up looking like an election week,” Bustos said.
In Los Feliz, a festive atmosphere as voters trickle in
Poll workers at the Elysian Masonic Temple in Los Feliz were anticipating big crowds Tuesday morning.
During the February primary, election day lines had wrapped around the building. But at about 9 a.m. Tuesday, two hours after the polls opened, a total of 75 to 100 voters had trickled in, fewer than expected — likely because many people cast their ballots early, said lead poll worker Anthony Mihalo.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, every registered voter in California received a ballot by mail. More than half, or 11.2 million, had returned those ballots by Monday morning, according to Political Data Inc.
The Masonic Temple polling station has attracted a steady stream of voters, if not a flood, since it opened Friday.
On Tuesday morning, supporters of Los Angeles City Council candidates David Ryu and Nithya Raman sat at tables outside, asking passersby if they had voted yet.
The mood was festive, with poll workers shouting congratulations to people emerging from the voting booths.
Crystal Boyd, 32, and Thais Francis, 30, recalled watching the 2016 election returns together as it became apparent that Donald Trump would grab a surprise victory.
On Tuesday, they stood side by side to cast their votes for Joe Biden. “Why would I vote for Donald Trump, or Kanye West?” asked Boyd, an actor.
“Settle for Biden,” said Francis, a screenwriter.
Both believe Biden will win the presidency but that the next four years will be a difficult slog as Democrats seek to reverse Trump’s actions. They equated the presidency to an open wound that will take time to heal. The two friends are both Black, and jail reform has been a major focus for them, they said, as well as empowering the Black community.
Biden campaign pleased that election day voting is running mostly ’smoothly’
WASHINGTON — The Biden campaign reported in an early afternoon briefing that it was pleased with how voting was going so far.
“By and large, voting is proceeding smoothly,” said Bob Bauer, a Biden campaign legal advisor. He said no major disruptions had been reported at polling places by noon on the East Coast, and the campaign was pleased by how few mail-in ballots were rejected due to voter errors. “The rejection rates of ballots are falling well below what many believed would be the case,” Bauer said.
The Biden campaign also dismissed last-minute legal efforts by Republicans to have more ballots thrown out, saying they were unlikely to be looked on kindly by the courts. They are, Bauer said, “nothing people familiar with election law would take very seriously. The courts recognize this sort of last minute high jinks for what it is. They’re designed to generate the appearance of a cloud over the election. They have no merit.”
“We’re feeling at this point very good about the way the election is running,” Bauer said.
Reports of election misinformation by text message and robocall in Michigan
On the day before election day, one Dearborn, Mich., resident received a text with a worrying message: “URGENT ALERT: Due to a typographical error, Scantron ballots being used for the 2020 Election has swapped sensors. If you are intending on voting for Joe Biden, you must bubble in Trump and vice versa. –Federal Beruen [sic] of Investigation.”
The resident reported the text to the American Civil Liberties Union, which alerted the state’s office of the attorney general. Hours later, the attorney general’s office used its social media accounts to urge Dearborn voters to ignore the texts: “Do not fall for it, it’s a trick!” one tweet read.
Heightened scrutiny around election misinformation has focused mostly on technology platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. But false and misleading information can be spread in other ways as well.
In Michigan, the attorney general’s office is working with the secretary of state as well as the governor’s office to look into reports of false or misleading election information, and if necessary, alert voters, according to Kelly Rossman-McKinney, the communications director for the state’s attorney general, Dana Nessel.
“We did our best to nip it in the bud right away,” Rossman-McKinney said. “Dearborn has the largest Arab American population in the country and the largest anywhere in the world outside the Middle East.
“If you’re a relatively new voter or English is not necessarily your first language, you might take it as the real deal, which is why we issued an alert very quickly even though we couldn’t substantiate how many people received it,” she said. “Having the body of the text itself was sufficient for us to be concerned.”
The Dearborn text message is not the only misleading election information circulating in Michigan. The state’s office of the attorney general received reports of a robocall claiming lines at polling places were long and that residents should try to vote on Wednesday instead. “Obviously this is FALSE and an effort to suppress the vote,” Nessel tweeted. “No long lines and today is the last day to vote. Don’t believe the lies! Have your voice heard!”
It isn’t clear who is behind the text message or robocalls or how many people they reached. Rossman-McKinney said there would be a more in-depth investigation into the source of the robocalls “if necessary.”
“We’re not hesitant to go after illegal robocalls,” she said, referring to the recent investigation into, and felony charges her office filed against, conservative activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman alleging the duo used robocalls to intimidate Michigan voters so they wouldn’t send in absentee ballots.
Wait time at Georgia polling sites is just minutes, but computer glitch causes problems near Atlanta
ATLANTA — Long lines were expected in Georgia, a state that has been criticized for unreasonable wait times for voting.
But at 9:43 a.m., the average wait time in Georgia was four minutes, according to the secretary of state’s office. By 11 a.m., the office reported that the average wait time was three minutes and that no polling station in the state had a wait time of more than an hour.
There were early-morning problems south of Atlanta, in Spalding County, when a technical glitch caused computers at all polling locations across the county to shut down.
Provisional ballots were delivered to every location, but officials urged voters to expect longer lines until the issue was fixed.
“The problem is being worked on and hopefully will be resolved quickly,” the Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter. “Until the issue is fixed, paper ballots are being used at all locations.”
The county’s population is about 57% white and 35% black.
Shortly after 10 a.m., the Spalding County Board of Commissioners informed voters that the problem had been fixed and computers at polling stations in each precinct were back up and running.
In Fulton, the state’s most populous county, there were struggles before the polls opened to deliver election equipment on time. But the county’s elections director, Richard Barron, said all 255 polling stations opened on time. At most polling places, lines were short to nonexistent.
Largest county in Texas closes most drive-through voting
HOUSTON — All but one of 10 drive-through voting locations were closed on election day in the county surrounding Houston, a Democratic stronghold and the third-largest county in the U.S.
The decision by the county clerk came after a Republican activist and candidates sued to throw out 127,000 early drive-through votes, alleging the process was illegal.
State and federal courts upheld drive-through voting, but after a federal judge warned Monday that Texas law technically restricted voting to buildings, the county clerk chose to close nine drive-through polling places set up in tents on election day to ensure all votes could be counted.
At his boyhood home, Biden aspires to the big white one in Washington
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden visited his childhood home in Scranton, Pa., and, with the encouragement of its current resident, memorialized this election day with a message on the living room wall.
“From this house to the White House with the grace of God. Joe Biden 11-3-2020.”
It was just like old times for Biden, as he made multiple stops in his Pennsylvania hometown. Dozens of people stood across the street from his former home, almost all wearing masks. But social distancing went out the window when he arrived and was completely surrounded by screaming supporters.
“He’s right there! Oh, my God! That’s my future president.” said Mardan Daurilas, a 19-year-old first-time voter.
Anne Kearns, the current occupant of the former Biden family home, told him when he arrived there, “I watch ya all the time.... I’m so proud of you.”
Michigan voters have cast triple the number of absentee ballots as in 2016
DETROIT — The number of absentee ballots — 3.1 million — that have been cast in Michigan as of Tuesday morning is triple the number submitted in 2016, said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
“That’s an extraordinary number,” she said, after casting her absentee ballot outside the Detroit Pistons Performance Center. “To be at 3.1 million the morning of election day is an extraordinary vote of confidence in our absentee system and our clerks around the state.”
There had been concerns about voter intimidation occurring at polling places, but Benson said, as of late Tuesday morning, her office had not heard of any problems across the state.
She also noted that all of the precincts in Detroit and Flint had opened on time and were fully staffed, the first time anyone in her office could recall that happening.
“We have not seen long lines; we have not seen crowding. We have seen a steady stream of voters come through our precincts throughout the day,” Benson said. “So far, so good.”
Making their voices heard in Nevada, where the race is tight
LAS VEGAS — Randall Norvell, 58, was the 11th person in line to vote outside William K. Moore Elementary School on Tuesday morning. What he’d heard about ballots being dumped drove him to vote in person.
“It just feels more like it’ll get counted,” said Norvell, who planned to head to his plumbing job afterward.
Norvell has been a registered Republican since he signed up for the draft. He’s voting for Trump, “and I’m proud.”
The main issues he’s concerned about are the economy and unemployment. The plumbing business he works for has taken a hit from the pandemic, with some workers taking furloughs to save other people’s jobs.
The Colorado transplant thinks the election will be close once again in Nevada. He said he felt relieved to have arrived before the line “went way back to the street.”
A couple of people behind Norvell was Desiree Garcia, 18, who had dragged along two friends. Garcia wore blue sweatpants, and one of her friends wore pajama pants.
“We literally just woke up,” Garcia said.
She said her main concern was racism and the feeling that Trump “doesn’t take that seriously.” Garcia’s family immigrated from Mexico.
“Hopefully our vote makes some kind of difference,” she said. A Trump win, she said, would affect access to abortion and health insurance.
“A lot of the way Trump represents himself — I don’t want him to represent the country,” she added.
Hand sanitizer, alcohol wipes and a vote for Trump in El Paso
EL PASO — In this high-desert border city, which is suffering one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the country, election volunteers at a local elementary school squirted copious amounts of anti-bacterial gel onto the hands of incoming voters and cleaned voting machines with alcohol wipes.
Mario Falcón, a 26-year-old father of two, cast his vote for President Trump.
Falcón was born in the U.S. but spent most of his childhood across the border in Juarez. Now living in El Paso and working at a Sam’s Club, he is the only member of his family who can vote.
His mother is a permanent resident, and his wife was born in Mexico and does not have legal status in the U.S. He knows a lot of people might expect him to support Joe Biden and acknowledges that Trump has said and done things that might be perceived as anti-Latino.
But for Falcón, the race came down to one thing: the economy. He dislikes Obamacare, and likes Trump’s tax cuts.
“I know some people find him kind of racist,” Falcón said. “But he hasn’t done anything that affects my economy. I understand that he might be a little bit against Hispanics, but he hasn’t done anything against me.”
Biden visits childhood hometown of Scranton on election day
Joe Biden neared the end of his presidential campaign with a quick stop Tuesday morning in his birthplace, Scranton, Pa., where he greeted dozens of supporters outside a union hall and declared through a megaphone, “It’s good to be home.”
He joked about the reported 5-0 vote count tallied in his favor in Dixville Notch, N.H., the first town in the country to count its votes. “Based on Trump’s notion, I’m going to declare victory tonight,” he said.
The site was the location of a canvass kickoff to mobilize and pump up campaign volunteers and staff before they set out door-knocking for Biden.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) appeared with Biden and said, “Today is the day that we show how much we appreciate what he’s done.”
“Thanks for stepping up,” one man yelled to Biden.
After his brief remarks, Biden spoke to a man who approached him, Joe Gilbooley of Scranton, who said he told the former vice president about a family friend, Susan Corbett, who is dying of cancer and is a big Biden supporter. Gilbooley said Biden told him he was going to call Corbett.
Pennsylvania, one of the biggest prizes up for grabs, goes to the polls
PHILADELPHIA — Many eyes will be on Pennsylvania, whose rich bounty of electoral college votes made it a major stop for both President Trump and Joe Biden in the final days of the campaign.
Home health aide Melissa Davis lined up behind a few dozen people at a Philadelphia church on Tuesday to vote for Biden, because she’s sick of Trump.
“Since President Trump has been in, we’ve experienced depression, pandemic and racism, and I for one, I’m sick of it,” the 41-year-old Democrat said before casting her ballot at Holsey Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia’s Germantown area.
She sees Biden as “the lesser of two evils,” but likes that he doesn’t give off the kind of “sneakiness” that many politicians do.
“He says what’s on his mind,” she said. “No filter. I can appreciate that.”
Philadelphia is expected to go for Biden, but Trump has ardent supporters in other parts of the state.
Philadelphia nurse Christina Marrero believes Trump is “psychotic.”
“I think he’s absolutely nuts,” Marrero, 35, said as she waited to vote in the blustery morning chill. “He’s absolutely racist. He’s just not a good person.”
Marrero has skipped every presidential election since 2008, when Barack Obama inspired her to cast a ballot.
But “I just can’t do another four years with Trump,” she said. “Anybody has to be better than that.”
For this Wisconsin voter, Trump and Biden present ‘an embarrassing choice’
FRANKLIN, Wis. — Casting his ballot at City Hall in this Milwaukee suburb, Joshua Liegler spoke for Americans who felt like neither major party candidate presented a tremendous hope for the future of America.
Liegler, 42, said he had preferred candidates who were defeated in the Democratic primaries, such as Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and businessman Andrew Yang. He declined to say whom he settled on for president Tuesday.
“I walked in today full of disdain and not wanting to check either box,” said Liegler, a construction worker. “I think it’s an embarrassing choice to have to make, if these are two are the two best people we have for the forward face of our government. I wouldn’t want either one to lead even a company that I would work for. So that makes it tough.”
Liegler said he didn’t want to reveal his pick because of all the animosity in the air over the election.
Millions of votes have been cast early in North Carolina
RALEIGH, N.C. — Duct-tape X’s mark the places voters should stand at a safe social distance from one another while waiting to enter the Bulla Youth Center in this Southern city to cast their ballots. But early Tuesday morning, with only a trickle of voters, the markers were unnecessary.
Alexa Schuman-Werb, 36, a local public schoolteacher, said she came to vote a straight Democratic ticket. Her support for Joe Biden in particular was a rejection of how “anti-science” the Republican Party had become on issues such as COVID-19 and climate change, she said.
“I’m feeling anxious but hopeful,” Schuman-Werb said. “I think we all are still a little shellshocked about what happened in 2016, but I’m really hopeful that we’ll turn things around.”
North Carolina has already seen 4.5 million votes cast, either at early-voting sites or through the mail, state Atty. Gen. Josh Stein said during a brief visit to the Bulla Youth Center.
“That’s 95% of the entire 2016” tally in North Carolina, Stein said.
Polls open in California
Voters in California are heading to the polls Tuesday, their last chance to cast a ballot in the general election.
The polls close at 8 p.m. Here’s where to find vote centers near you.
Check out our voting checklist to make sure you’re all set, and see how The Times is covering election day.
Floridians start hitting the polls
MIAMI — Voters began trickling into polling stations in Florida, a state that could well decide the race Tuesday.
Viv Bichachi, 33, and her husband, Joel Bichachi, 38, voted early Tuesday morning at a quiet polling place in Miami’s Legion Park.
Both cast their ballots for President Trump.
Viv said she voted for President Obama in 2008, but she chose Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 and has backed GOP candidates ever since. As her lifestyle and career changed, so did her politics, she said.
“Probably getting a little more informed, too ... getting more involved in researching and doing things that I thought was best for myself and my community, my family.”
Joel said he backed Trump over Joe Biden because the president is “about capitalism, not socialism and communism.” His parents fled Cuba, and, while growing up, he was told that the Democratic Party leans more toward those ideologies.
“You kind of see it with Biden raising the taxes as much as he’s gonna be,” he said. “So I just feel that Donald Trump is the best candidate right now.”
More than a dozen people lined up before 7 a.m. to vote at Shiloh Baptist Church in Parramore, a historically Black neighborhood west of downtown Orlando.
Many of them said they came out in person because they were worried that their votes would not be counted otherwise.
“I just don’t trust mail-in voting because I’ve seen all the news on the post office delays,” said Darryl Shephard, 51, who woke up early to walk over from his nearby home to vote for Biden. “I would usually take the day off, but today it should not be that bad because of the people who have already voted, so I can go to work later this morning.”
Shephard said his vote for Biden was “less of a vote against Trump” and “more a vote for “the legacy of President Barack Obama.”
“Biden worked close with Obama. Even if he didn’t have the same ideas always as Obama, they worked together, and I want to support that,” Shephard said.
On Fox, Trump criticizes the network’s election coverage
WASHINGTON — The president is ending his campaign with complaints that his favorite television network didn’t treat him as well “this season.”
President Trump, sounding hoarse and groggy Tuesday morning after Monday’s cross-country tour with five rallies in four states, called later than expected into “Fox & Friends” for an election day pep talk and therapy session. The hosts handed him softball questions and continually reminded voters to get to the polls.
Despite the fawning treatment during the 35-minute interview, Trump complained that Fox had been airing too many rallies featuring former President Obama supporting his former vice president — and Trump’s rival — Joe Biden.
“Fox puts him on more than anybody else, which is sort of shocking to me because Fox has changed a lot,” he said.
“It’s one of the biggest differences, this season compared to last,” Trump went on. He followed up with more television lingo, saying that Biden “is not prime-time.”
Trump, down in many national and state polls, gave a mostly upbeat assessment of his chances for reelection, pointing to his “tremendous crowd sizes,” which flout public health warnings over spread of the coronavirus. But he sounded a bit less than certain.
“I look at it as being a very solid chance of winning,” he said. “I don’t know what the chances are. I don’t know how they rate the chances, but I think we have a very solid chance of winning.”
With Arizona a battleground state, voters line up in Phoenix
PHOENIX — More than 30 voters waited in predawn darkness at Burton Barr Central Library, near downtown Phoenix, moments before the polling site opened at 6 a.m., as two Democratic poll observers looked on.
Perhaps because of the early hour, the mood was relaxed, with voters quietly standing in line, safely spaced about six feet apart.
More than 1.63 million people had already cast early ballots by Sunday, according to election officials here in Maricopa County, the largest in the Phoenix metropolitan area. That number exceeded the county’s total number of voters in 2016 by 20,000.
Trump voter John DeVille said he had no doubt that President Trump would once again come out on top in battleground state Arizona — and easily win reelection.
“It’s a done deal,” said DeVille, 52, who was among the first in line at the library. “I’m kind of tired of the phrase ‘silent majority,’ but I feel like there are a lot of supporters out there who aren’t very vocal, for fear of retribution.”
It’s plain sailing for one voter at previously troubled Atlanta polling station
ATLANTA — Brittany Smith, a 30-year-old massage therapist, was relieved to see no line when she walked up to Pittman Park Recreation Center in the Atlanta neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
The polling station, which serves a predominantly Black community, made national news in 2018, staying open hours after the official closing time because of a shortage of voting machines.
But early Tuesday morning, there were more poll watchers, reporters and volunteers outside than voters.
Smith walked straight into the polling station and voted for Biden because she was concerned about racial injustice and wanted to improve the morale of the country. But she also admitted she was motivated by societal pressure and guilt.
Every day, she said, her girlfriends asked her if she had voted.
Biden attends church in Delaware before final campaign stops in Pennsylvania
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden started his day Tuesday by attending Mass at St. Joseph’s Church in Wilmington, Del., with his wife, Jill, and two of their granddaughters.
After leaving church, he visited the grave of his son Beau, who died of cancer at age 47 in 2015 and is often cited by Biden as an inspiration to him in seeking the presidency.
Biden is expected to make one last swing Tuesday to the battleground state of Pennsylvania, with campaign stops in Scranton — the city where he was born — and Philadelphia.
Nearly 100 million voters have cast their ballots before election day
WASHINGTON — As election day dawned, 99.7 million people had already voted by mail-in and early in-person ballots, according to tabulations of state-reported data by Michael McDonald, a University of Florida expert on voting.
That early vote total is more than 72% of the entire vote total in 2016.
In four states — Washington, Hawaii, Montana and Texas — more ballots were cast early than those states’ entire 2016 vote totals.
In California, 12 million voters have already cast their ballots, representing about 82% of the votes cast there four years ago, according to McDonald.
Boarded-up stores across L.A. reflect an anxious, unprecedented election day
Michael Williams stepped out of his apartment in downtown Long Beach on Monday to buy a couple of midday Red Bulls for himself and his girlfriend. He was unsettled, thinking of an image he saw on Twitter of a man waiting for election results holding an AK-47. Now he noticed the streets were eerily empty — and the shopkeepers were boarding up for election day.
He watched in disbelief and texted photos to his friends in North Carolina. “This is disturbing,” he recalled thinking.
In this historic year of plague, fire and unrest in California, the notion that the United States electoral process could devolve into disarray and violence has cranked up the anxiety even more, with people hoarding food, some buying their first guns, others stocking up on ammunition.
The sound of that tension could be heard from Rodeo Drive to Santa Ana in the rattle of compressors and the thwack-thwack of nail guns. Thick plywood was going up over shop windows and doors, just as it was in San Francisco and San Diego, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami and Dallas, as if the entire nation were bracing for a single enormous hurricane.
After four years of upheaval, election day gives voters their say
After a campaign of enormous consequence — waged amid a deadly pandemic, an economic collapse and a raw debate over race and justice — Americans on Tuesday will render their verdict on the most divisive and tumultuous four years in modern history.
At bottom, the contest amounts to a referendum on President Trump, his provocative behavior and the upheaval that has turned off more than half the country, polls show, while delighting supporters who welcome the shock to the political system.
“We could say it’s the pandemic, it’s the economic crash, it’s racial justice, it’s a Supreme Court nomination just days before an election,” said Amy Walter, an analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, ticking off seismic events of the last year, which also included Trump’s impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to dig up dirt on Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“All of those things have had an impact,” Walter said. “But at its core, this election is about the same thing ... which is Donald Trump and your opinion of him.”
Iran’s supreme leader mocks election — quoting Trump
TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader mocked the U.S. election in a televised address Tuesday, quoting President Trump’s own baseless claims about voter fraud as Tehran marked the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.
“The incumbent president, who is supposed to hold the elections, says this is the most-rigged U.S. election throughout history,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, ignoring the fact that individual U.S. states actually run the vote. “Who says this? The sitting president who is arranging the elections himself. His opponent says Trump intends to widely cheat. This is American democracy.”
Khamenei, 81, added that the result of the vote “is none of our business, meaning it won’t influence our policy at all. Our policy is clear and well-calculated, and people coming and going will have no impact on it.”
But the stakes are actually high for the Islamic Republic.
Another four years for Trump could see his maximum-pressure campaign further expand as it crushes the Iranian economy and stops Tehran from openly selling its crude oil abroad. Biden, meanwhile, has said he would consider re-entering Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018.
Khamenei, 81, spoke as the COVID-19 pandemic — which has hit Iran hard — forced authorities to cancel a planned commemoration of the Nov. 4, 1979, takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. That started a 444-day hostage crisis that transfixed America and still affects relations between Washington and Tehran today.
Tradition: 2 New Hampshire towns cast nation’s first votes on election day
DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. — Two tiny New Hampshire communities that vote for president just after the stroke of midnight on election day have cast their ballots, with one of them marking 60 years since the tradition began.
The results in Dixville Notch, near the Canadian border, were a sweep for former Vice President Joe Biden, who won the town’s five votes. In Millsfield, 12 miles to the south, President Trump won 16 votes to Biden’s five.
Normally, there would be a big food spread and a lot of media crammed into a small space to watch the voting, said Dixville Notch’s town moderator, Tom Tillotson, last week. But that’s no longer possible because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also hard to observe the 60th anniversary of the tradition, which started in November 1960.
“Sixty years — and unfortunately, we can’t celebrate it,” he said.
A third community with midnight voting, Hart’s Location, suspended the tradition this election because of coronavirus concerns. It decided to hold voting from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. The White Mountains town started the early voting in 1948 to accommodate railroad workers who had to be at work before normal voting hours. The practice eventually stopped in 1964 but was brought back in 1996.
The communities also vote just after midnight in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, which was Feb. 11. That almost didn’t happen this year in Dixville Notch because one person moved away, leaving the remaining four residents short of the minimum volunteers needed to handle various election responsibilities. That was remedied when a developer working on renovations of the now-closed Balsams resort, where the voting tradition began, moved in.
For years, voting was held in a wood-paneled room filled with political memorabilia at the Balsams, which closed in 2011. Some of those items were brought to the setting for Tuesday’s vote, a former culinary school on the property.
Trump ends campaign in Grand Rapids again, hoping to recapture his 2016 magic
WASHINGTON — President Trump began his final rally of the 2020 campaign in Grand Rapids, Mich., the same place where he ended his unlikely bid for the White House four years earlier.
Taking the stage one minute before the clock struck midnight, ushering in election day, the president made it clear he was hoping to capture that old mojo and pull off what might be an even more unexpected victory.
“We left around one o’clock in the morning,” Trump said, recalling the end of his 2016 campaign. “We came home late and then we watched a beautiful victory and we’re going to have another beautiful victory tomorrow.”
We want to do it just like last time,” he continued, expressing confidence he would again win Michigan. “But give me a little more margin than last time.”
Four years ago, Trump won Michigan by just 10,704 votes, en route to bulldozing through Hillary Clinton’s presumed “blue wall” of Midwestern states.
But now polls show Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. While Biden closed out his campaigning in Ohio and Pennsylvania on Monday, Trump held five rallies, the last three of which took him to Traverse City, Mich., Kenosha, Wis., and finally Grand Rapids.
At his final two stops, his fatigue was evident, although he relished the warm embrace of his supporters, enduring the biting cold and persistent technical problems on the stage in Kenosha to deliver a closing argument heavy on grievance, ad-libbed asides and lengthy reminiscences about his victory four years earlier.
“I think this will be just like four years ago,” Trump said in Grand Rapids, recalling election night news coverage showing Clinton supporters in tears. “Remember when they were all crying?”
He continued to attack Biden, although his scorn for his opponent again betrayed a frustration that the former vice president, who polls show with a significant national lead and a smaller, but sturdy edge in swing states, has proven to be a greater challenger.
Looking to reassure his supporters and perhaps himself that he was again on the verge of proving the polls wrong, Trump basked in the size and energy of the crowd, his supporters huddled together on an airport tarmac in the early morning hours to attend what could be the president’s final rally.
“This is not the crowd of somebody who’s going to lose the state of Michigan,” Trump said. “This is not the crowd of a second-place finisher.”
Actress Kerry Washington, Gov. Whitmer urge on Michigan voters
DETROIT — Actress Kerry Washington, who played Washington, D.C., fixer Olivia Pope on the hit political show “Scandal,” said on Monday that her fictional character can’t save the nation — only voters can if they head to the polls.
“People come up to me in times of a crisis, whether it was four years ago with the election or with the COVID pandemic now. They say, ‘Olivia Pope, I need you to fix this. Olivia Pope, please save the day,’” Washington told scores of Democrats gathered in a chilly campaign office parking lot.
“While I appreciate the reference, what I keep reminding people is that Olivia Pope is not real, right? We got in this situation because some people thought that a character on television could fix our problems and we see what that got us, right?” Washington said. “So what I want to remind you is that you all have more power than Olivia Pope. You are the fixer of your communities.”
Washington was the headliner of a voter canvassing kickoff in the 14th Congressional District, among the most Democratic-voting swaths of Michigan. Earlier, the crowd heard from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, Rep. Brenda Lawrence and other Democratic leaders.
Whitmer, whom President Trump has attacked over her restrictions aiming to stop the spread of the coronavirus, noted that the president was in Sterling Heights on Friday and complained about the chilly weather.
“Do you see any irony in the fact that the snowflakes were bothering Donald Trump yesterday?” she said to laughs, before turning serious in a state that Trump won by less than 11,000 votes in 2016. “We’ve got work to do my friends. This has been a long marathon, but we are in the last 20 yards. And in the last 20 hours of a marathon you don’t sit down and take a breath. You dig deep and run through the tape. And that’s what we’ve got to do.”
It’s Trump vs. Lady Gaga on election eve
PITTSBURGH — President Trump went on Twitter to attack Lady Gaga, the superstar musician who campaigned with Joe Biden in Pittsburgh, writing that she is “a proud member of ‘Artists Against Fracking,’” referring to the controversial oil-extraction method used in western Pennsylvania.
“I can tell you stories about Lady Gaga. I know a lot of stories,” the president said cryptically in Avoca, Pa. The singer fired back from behind a white piano at Biden’s closing rally, held in a parking lot at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, as supporters waved flags, honked horns and cheered.
“All the men with daughters and sisters and mothers ... now’s your chance to vote against Donald Trump, a man who believes his fame gives him the right to grab one of your daughters or sisters or mothers or wives by any part of their body,” she said, referring to a 2005 recording of Trump boasting of grabbing women’s genitals without their consent.
Pennsylvania Biden voter’s ratio of anxiety to energy ‘depends on the minute’
PHILADELPHIA — Mona Berman braved the brisk Philadelphia weather to attend Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ final drive-in rally because she wanted to mark the moment.
“It’s a feeling of the culmination of four long years,” Berman said.
That feeling, she said, is one of both anxiety and energy. The exact ratios of those emotions, she said, “depends on the minute.”
But the Philadelphia interior designer said she felt “very, very hopeful” that Democrats would prevail, in part because of how engaged people in her circle have been around the election. That included her son Edward, who joined her at the rally.
“I’ve never seen as many people interested. It’s all anybody talks about,” she said.
A first time voter in Arizona aims to be ‘part of the solution’
PHOENIX — Derek Odom, 27, took his 10-year-old son, Christopher Sheperd, with him to pick up Biden/Harris candy merchandise at a roadside kiosk in the West Valley section on Phoenix on Monday before going to vote for the first time in his life.
The reason was simple, Odom said. He’s had enough of President Trump’s dismissive rhetoric about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“He seems more worried about the campaign than helping us get through this,” said Odom, who considers himself an independent.
Friends ribbed Odom for not voting in 2016. He’d always felt that Americans’ lives would be the same no matter who was president. Friends accused him of being, “part of the problem.”
“So I decided to change it up,” he said. “I’m like OK, I’ll be part of the solution.”
‘Let’s fire Trump and I’ll hire Fauci.’ Biden goes on the attack at rally
PITTSBURGH — “I have a feeling we’re coming together for a big win tomorrow,” Biden said as he made his closing argument before a mass of cars in the parking lot of Heinz Field in Pittsburgh. “I don’t care how hard Donald Trump tries, there is nothing that is going to stop the people of this nation from voting.”
The rally was held in tandem with the Philadelphia closing event headlined by his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, underscoring the campaign’s emphasis on covering every inch of Pennsylvania in the final day before the election. The crowd in Pittsburgh watched on the Jumbotron as Harris and John Legend addressed the crowd in Philadelphia. And the Philadelphia audience watched as Biden spoke and Lady Gaga performed in Pittsburgh.
Lady Gaga played for the group from behind a white baby grand piano, in a white sweatshirt that said “Joe.” She riffed on her time living in Lancaster, Pa., her family in West Virginia, and her affinity for lacing up her Cabela’s boots. “I will not be told what I can and can not wear to endorse our future president,” she said, a reference to the social media storm triggered by her recent video in camouflage attire.
Biden closed by hitting all the points he has been hitting in recent days, berating Trump throughout the speech. He again took particular aim at Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 people in the United States.
“He knew it was worse than the flu, but he lied to us,” Biden said. “He kept telling us a miracle was coming. He had the gall to suggest that America’s doctors who have been at front lines of this crisis ... were falsely inflating the deaths due to COVID because they wanted more money. For God’s sake.”
“It’s a disgrace,” Biden said. As he did earlier in the day, Biden again took aim at Trump’s suggestion that the president would fire Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Biden said. “Let’s fire Trump and I’ll hire Fauci.”
Kamala Harris makes closing argument in battleground Pennsylvania
PHILADELPHIA — Kamala Harris, making her closing argument to Pennsylvanians on Monday night, set the stakes of the election at no less than the nation’s foundational principle. “In this election, let’s vote like our democracy depends on it,” the California senator said at a drive-in rally in Philadelphia.
The chilly evening brought out hundreds of cars to the parking lot of Citizen’s Bank Park, home of the Phillies, although many onlookers couldn’t help but hang out of their sunroofs or stand on the hoods of their cars to get a glimpse of Harris and featured performer John Legend. Also beamed on the big screens were scenes from Joe Biden’s simultaneous rally in Pittsburgh.
Harris projected optimism in her brief remarks to the crowd. “The energy out there is real, and it is inspiring,” she said. As she spent most of the day barnstorming Pennsylvania, she focused on her running mate, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, instead of their rival, President Trump.
Not so on Monday evening, where she denounced the president’s handling of the pandemic and the twin health and economic crises that arose from it. “We have witnessed the greatest failure of a presidential administration in America’s history,” she said.
And while many attendees cheered and honked in agreement when she asked who had already voted, she urged those who had not done so to vote as though they were guarding their lives.
“Remember this — your vote is your voice, and your voice is your power, “she said. “Don’t let anyone take your power from you.”
Trump amps up complaints about Pennsylvania absentee ballots, urges Supreme Court to ‘reconsider’ decision allowing extra time for count
WASHINGTON — President Trump, nearing the end of a five-rally final day of campaigning, amped up his complaints about allowing Pennsylvania three additional days to receive absentee ballots and suggested that the move could spark violence.
“The Supreme Court decision on voting in Pennsylvania is a VERY dangerous one,” Trump tweeted while flying Monday evening between Michigan and Wisconsin. “It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets.”
Twitter applied a warning message to the tweet, noting that “some” of the message “is disputed and might be misleading” and prevented users from sharing it. Experts have said there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in mail ballots.
Trump said later on the rally stage that he’d been watching cable news coverage of the Supreme Court ruling, which came last week, as he flew from Michigan to Wisconsin aboard Air Force One.
When he landed in Milwaukee, Trump spoke to reporters on the tarmac before driving to the rally site in Kenosha, Wis., and continued to complain about the ruling affecting Pennsylvania, where Republicans unsuccessfully sought to prevent the state from counting absentee ballots received up to three days after Nov. 3.
“I’m very concerned about Pennsylvania. Philadelphia is known for bad things happening,” Trump said.
“Bad things will happen, and bad things lead to other type things,” he continued. “It’s a very dangerous thing for our country.”
He went even further during the rally, complaining that he believes the election should be clear on Election Night — even though several elections, including 2016, were not — and claiming “there’s danger” in a delayed result.
“There’s a lot of shenanigans,” he said. “And then there’s a lot of bad things that can happen with the streets. You’re going to have a population that’s going to be very angry and you just can’t do that.”
It’s not clear what population he was referring to, and it’s possible his comments themselves could encourage violence and additional vigilantism.
Already, some of Trump’s own supporters have taken to the streets to intimidate voters at polling places. The FBI in Texas announced Sunday it was investigating a fleet of vehicles flying Trump flags that attempted to force a Biden campaign bus off a highway last week.
In the Pennsylvania case, the Supreme Court rejected the challenge unanimously but left itself room to reconsider the decision after election day.
“I hope the Supreme Court has the wisdom to change it,” Trump said, encouraging justices to listen to television commentators.
Trump’s complaints laying the groundwork for post-election legal challenges came as Democratic nominee Joe Biden took the stage for a rally in Pittsburgh and predicted “a big win tomorrow.”
At Kamala Harris rally, a Pennsylvania voter feels an Obama 2012 vibe
PHILADELPHIA — Mariah Jones has always been interested in politics. She can still remember the energy of the inauguration for President Obama’s second term.
But she was even more motivated to vote this year after witnessing “the corrupt, dishonest ways of Donald Trump.”
There’s another reason this year feels more charged: the memory of her father, Vance Gerald, who died from COVID-19 in March at age 61.
Jones, a 27-year-old physician assistant from Philadelphia, said the vibe at Sen. Kamala Harris’ final Monday rally in Philadelphia gave her hope about the election’s outcome.
“The sensation is the same as being at inauguration in 2012,” she said.
‘You’d think he was having coffee with Castro.’ Obama mocks Trump claims about Biden
MIAMI — President Obama returned to Miami on Monday to make a final plea to voters to show up at the polls and take their friends to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“I was here just a few days ago, but then I realized there’s still some folks who need to vote,” Obama told a crowd in and around about 250 cars. He held a similar drive-in rally for Biden in the city last week.
In Latino households and communities, disinformation about the presidential election is rampant. Many are trying to combat it online and in person.
Obama focused his remarks on healthcare, the economy and President Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 231,000 people in the U.S. He also pushed back on false claims from the Trump campaign, which is seeking to make inroads with Latino voters in the state, that former Vice President Biden, the longtime moderate, is a socialist.
“You’d think he was having coffee with Castro every morning,” Obama said. “I think we’d all know if he was a secret socialist by now.”
He also took a few jabs at his successor, mocking him for his focus on whose inauguration audience was larger. “What is his obsession with crowd size?” Obama said. “Does he have nothing better to worry about? Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid?”
‘I don’t want to be too optimistic.’ North Carolina voter still hopeful Biden flips her state
RALEIGH, N.C.— Katelyn McIntosh, 26, isn’t counting on a Democrat victory in the presidential race. But the environmental consultant for an engineering firm remains hopeful after voting early for former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I don’t want to be too optimistic, I guess, just because of what we saw four years ago.” McIntosh said.
“But I’ve been really impressed with all the early voter turnout and all the activism on TV and social media around voting.”
President Trump beat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in North Carolina by more than three percentage points in 2016, but the 2020 race has been tight. Trump trails Biden in the battleground state, according to polling averages.
Young people are driving record voting in Texas and other states
HOUSTON — Like plenty of young people in Texas, 19-year-old Carissa Timpf felt compelled to vote, even if it wasn’t easy. She requested an absentee ballot to vote by mail. But the University of Houston sophomore never got it.
So she plans to make the four-hour drive home to Fort Worth to cast her first vote in a national election. A good friend of hers will make the opposite journey; living in Forth Worth, she’ll drive four hours to vote at her polling place in Houston.
In 2020, the hours on the road seem worth it to Timpf, emblematic of thousands of other young voters across America, who are breaking records for early voting and are poised to potentially be decisive in the presidential race and a series of close congressional contests.
‘I swore an oath to fight for my country,’ says Biden canvasser in Phoenix
PHOENIX — Getting out the vote in Phoenix’s large Latino community is personal for Democratic canvasser Lucia Salinas, just as it is for Pedro Olmos, one of the people she connected with while knocking on doors in the city’s West Valley neighborhood.
Salinas, a 46-year-old airport worker, was laid off in March amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Then she lost her health insurance, just as she was diagnosed with diabetes. She and her husband resorted to visiting food banks and searching alleys for metal and other recyclables to help pay bills and supplement unemployment benefits, she said. Her mother, also diabetic, shared insulin with her because Salinas couldn’t afford it.
“Everything came like a big, hot bucket of water,” Salinas said. “I just felt like, ‘Why is this happening?’”
As tough as life has been, though, Salinas decided to volunteer with her Unite Here service employees union as a canvasser for presidential candidate Joe Biden. She wants Phoenix’s Latino community, which makes up about a third of the population, to turn out in big numbers to defeat President Trump, who she sees as a threat to workers’ rights and efforts to expand health insurance.
That means going out in her face shield and mask to energize the city’s young Latino voters.
On Monday, she visited the home of Olmos, 18, whose family she already knew. Then she drove him to drop off his ballot.
“Lucia was a big help,” Olmos said. “She really inspired me to vote.”
This is his first time voting and his reasons for doing so are also driven by hardship. Standing with Salinas outside his family’s home, Olmos, a U.S. citizen by birth, said his mother was recently deported to Mexico. “My family, we’ve been broken down about it so that’s why I’m voting — to try to make change,” Olmos said.
He wants a president who will fight for immigration reforms that will allow his family to reunite and he doesn’t see that happening with Trump if he’s reelected.
Salinas, who was born in Mexico, received her U.S. citizenship in 2010. “I swore an oath to fight for my country,” she said, “to make it better, not make it worse.”
Colombia’s far-right wing backs Trump, aiming to help him in crucial Florida vote
WASHINGTON — Even before his first trip overseas as president, Donald Trump met, quietly, with the Colombians.
They button-holed him in April 2017 at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where Trump often held court from the dining room.
A former president, Álvaro Uribe, sat at Trump’s table and lobbied against a new peace agreement that the Obama administration enthusiastically endorsed but that Colombia’s far right felt was too lenient toward the leftist guerrillas who fought Colombian governments for decades. Another former president, Andrés Pastrana, was also present.
A survivor. A funeral director. A marriage divided. How Americans’ COVID experiences shape their votes
In Wisconsin, a funeral home director who has watched the COVID-19 pandemic rip through her community can only blame President Trump.
In Texas, little can change one woman’s loyalty to the president — not even her own struggle for breath as she lay in a hospital bed.
In New Mexico, an underemployed firearms instructor plans to cast his vote as a rebuke to Democrats he says were overzealous in closing businesses.
In Arizona, a Joe Biden voter found political detente with his Republican wife as the lingering effects of infection continue to cause them pain.
Justice Department won’t do his bidding, Trump complains
WASHINGTON — President Trump has enlisted administration officials to help his campaign in unprecedented ways, dispatching them to swing states and demanding a coronavirus vaccine before the election is over. But he hasn’t always gotten what he wants. On Monday in Traverse City, Mich., he again appeared disgruntled that he wasn’t getting more help from the Justice Department and his intelligence agencies.
Complaining about unverified “spying” on his campaign four years ago, Trump said “someday, maybe, something is going to be done about it too.” In 2016, the FBI obtained a secret warrant to eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign advisor as part of a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the election.
“‘We don’t want to do anything prior to the election,’” Trump said, imitating unnamed people who have undoubtedly reminded him about Justice Department prohibitions on announcing politically charged cases shortly before a vote. “Well, what about me? They spied on my campaign before the election!”
Then he said his administration should release unspecified “reports” about the Russia investigation before the election, something he has threatened to do in the past, with no effect. “We have information you wouldn’t believe,” he said.
Wisconsin Trump voter says the president ‘surprised the heck out of me’
FRANKLIN, Wis. — President Trump has had some loyalists since his first campaign four years ago and others, like Don Hunjadi, who converted after watching the political novice in office.
Hunjadi, 57, who lives in Milwaukee’s Norway suburb, said he didn’t vote for Trump (or any other presidential candidate) four years ago. But, the novice politician “surprised the heck out of me,” he said.
“The stock market went to all-time highs, we were at historic lows for unemployment,” said Hunjadi, a retired firefighter, standing in a supermarket parking lot. “Anybody who wanted a job could have a job. He got the Supreme Court justices he wanted. I can’t complain about anything he has done.”
Hunjadi also thinks the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been overblown, with the business shutdowns and other restrictions doing more harm than good. He believes people are suffering because restrictions have curtailed access to necessary medical care, including screenings such as colonoscopies.
“I think that the damage we’re doing by what we’re doing is far outweighing the good,” said Hunjadi.
In Las Vegas, remembering the dead and hoping for change
LAS VEGAS — City Councilwoman Olivia Diaz was solemn as the names of 29 Mexican men and women were read near a Day of the Dead altar. The screen above read: In memory of those who died from COVID-19.
These were only those names known to the Mexican consulate in Las Vegas, where a small group had gathered Monday morning to honor their lives.
“This year, Day of the Dead does have more of a profound impact,” Diaz said. “I think living through a pandemic, death has been on the minds of a lot of people.”
Diaz voted in person with her husband at the East Las Vegas community center, worried about the scrutiny over mail ballots and wanting to ensure that her vote was counted. She voted for former Vice President Joe Biden.
On her mind when she voted was the response to COVID-19, which has killed more than 230,000 people in the U.S.
“I feel we didn’t really have clear directives coming down to us so that we could all be in lockstep about keeping our communities healthy and well,” she said. She also cited concerns over health disparities in the Latino community.
“I hope residents feel motivated to turn out for their families and for their well-being,” she said. “I think there’s so many families wanting change.”
Biden makes pitch to Black voters and calls Trump’s claims ‘malarkey’
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden made an 11th hour pitch to Black voters at a drive-in rally in Homewood, one of Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black neighborhoods, just before his marquee evening rally.
He derided President Trump’s claims to have done more for Blacks than any president but Abraham Lincoln. “Honk your horn if you think it’s a bunch of malarkey,” he said, greeted by a deafening chorus of car horns.
“Donald Trump has done more harm to Black Americans than any president in American history,” he said, pointing out that Trump had promoted the fiction than President Obama was not born in the U.S., and that he called California Sen. Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate and the first Black woman and the first South Asian woman to run on a major party ticket, a “monster.”
Trump and Biden voters await results, amid boarded-up storefronts
RALEIGH, N.C. — It’s hard to miss all the plywood in this city’s downtown, covering street-level windows on many of the storefronts for blocks around the state Capitol.
Locals say some of it — decorated with murals or spray-painted with slogans such as “Justice for George” Floyd and “Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free” — remains from past protests by Black Lives Matter supporters. Elsewhere the boards are largely untouched, newly added to protect against any election-related violence.
Ileigh Kuga, 24, a paralegal at Raleigh’s Beer Law Center, said her office was boarded up Saturday. Kuga voted early for President Trump, as she did in 2016. She said Trump has gotten a lot done, and cited his visit to North Korea and his success in getting Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court.
“He may not win the popular vote, but that’s what the electoral college is for,” Kuga said.
Joshua Schumann, a 31-year-old IT worker for the county, voted for Democratic presidential nominee Biden, but more as an anti-Trump move: “I was very frightened by Trump and the things that he says and does … so I kind of voted against him.”
Schumann said he leans toward the progressivism of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Biden rival in the Democratic nomination race, but added, “I think Biden’s OK.”
Vandals hit Democratic headquarters in Houston
HOUSTON — Vandals sprayed graffiti and glued locks at the headquarters of the county Democratic Party in Houston on Monday, according to party officials who posted photos of the damage online.
“Election No, Revolution Yes,” was spray-painted on the office’s front windows, along with a hammer and sickle. Glue in the locks prevented officials from entering, said Lillie Schechter, Harris County Democratic Party chair, who blamed the damage on Republicans. Houston police said they were investigating the incident, but have not identified a suspect.
“This is what happens when Republicans are losing,” Schechter said in a statement. “They use scare tactics and intimidation to scare voters.”
Angelica Luna-Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the county Democratic Party, said that after she released a statement, she received threatening phone calls from at least one Pennsylvania number condemning her as a communist.
Similar vandalism was reported overnight in Pennsylvania. Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle’s office and Republican congressional candidate Sean Parnell’s house were both vandalized, according to Twitter posts.
‘So much drama.’ A Florida student is ready for it all to be over
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Jenna Kjoller, a sophomore studying food science at the University of Florida, hunkered down in the grass at Depot Park in Gainesville to study for a biology exam.
Kjoller, 19, said she voted early in person last week for former Vice President Joe Biden. She’s not a fan of President Trump’s rhetoric against Asian Americans like herself, she said.
“He’s been blatantly racist, and I don’t appreciate that at all,” she said, noting he called the coronavirus “the Chinese virus” among other things. Kjoller said her friends, many of them first-time voters like herself, were motivated to get involved in politics this year because of the pivotal election. She said she is hopeful that the Democratic ticket wins and plans to watch some of the coverage Tuesday night. Most of all, she said, she will be glad when it’s over. She has four exams coming up that she needs to focus on.
“There’s just been so much drama with this presidential election,” she said. “It’s not going to go back normal whatsoever, but at least it’s one less thing people are going to be arguing about.”
Michigan expects record turnout
DETROIT — More than 5 million Michigan voters are expected to vote in the presidential election, the most in any election in state history, a turnout that will require until Friday to finish counting ballots, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Monday.
Nearly 3 million people have already cast absentee ballots, and more than 2 million are expected to vote in person on election day, “putting us on a path towards record-breaking voter turnout for this 2020 general election,” Benson told reporters at a news conference in downtown Detroit.
Election workers will need about 80 hours to tabulate all the ballots, which they should be able to complete by Friday, she said.
Some results will start rolling in Tuesday night, an hour after polls close in most of the state. Polls close at 8 p.m., but since four of Michigan’s 83 counties are in the Central time zone, first results will not be available until 9 p.m. Eastern time.
Voters in North Carolina change direction in 2020
RALEIGH, N.C. — In 2016, Steven Johnson voted for Donald Trump. Four years later, he’s a Joe Biden supporter.
“I thought that he would make wiser decisions … relationships-wise,” Johnson, 36 and working in fast food services, said of Trump, pointing to trade conflicts the president has stirred with China. He also cited Biden’s decades-long political experience and opposition to mandatory minimum sentences as prompting the switch.
Robert Schramm, 33, an engineer at Duke Energy, moved in the other direction; this election he voted early for Trump, but in 2016 he supported libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. “The nature of the United States right now” led to that change, he said; “it’s kind of just the way I was feeling.”
Trump “did a decent job so far,” Schramm said. The economy was doing well up until this year, and “that’s pretty much the only topic I really was concerned about.”
For Latinos, combating disinformation about the election often starts at home
MIAMI — The falsehoods are flying hard and fast in Spanish and English, each more specious than the last, all designed to sway Latino voters nationwide during this contentious election season.
Joe Biden is no better than a Latin American dictator. (That’s one the Democrat flings back at President Trump.) Black Lives Matter protests are all violent. (They’ve been largely peaceful.) Mail-in voting is riddled with fraud. (It isn’t.) The pandemic is a hoax. (More than 225,000 people have died in the U.S.)
Disinformation is flooding television, radio and social media. It has permeated Latino communities, set family members against each other, caused young Latinos to unfriend their parents on Facebook and pushed fed-up voters out of WhatsApp group chats.
Obama makes last effort to flip battleground Georgia
Former President Obama swooped into Atlanta on Monday in a last effort to flip the southern battleground state of Georgia, taking a series of swipes at President Trump and GOP senators before delivering a heartfelt message on the power of voting.
“Tomorrow, after four years of failure, you have the power to change America,” Obama said at a get-out-the-vote rally in the parking lot of a football stadium south of downtown. “Tomorrow, you can put an end to politics that tries to divide a nation just to win an election.”
Obama began his speech poking fun at a string of GOP figures. But the thrust of his speech was not so much an appeal to the party faithful as a pitch to those who haven’t planned to vote because of disenchantment over the slow pace of change or being uninspired by the current Democratic candidates.
“It can be discouraging sometimes,” he said. “You drive through some neighborhoods in Atlanta … and you think, you know what? Folks are still having a hard time. Some of the things that should have been fixed haven’t been fixed.”
Occasionally, Obama said, he and his wife, Michelle, got down.
“Sometimes we’re just like, ‘Lord, why are we still fighting some of these battles? I thought we had settled some of these arguments. I thought we had turned a corner.’”
“Even as president of the United States, there were times when I thought ‘Man, I thought I could get this done or that done, and somehow the special interests are blocking it and make it hard.’”
“You get frustrated. I get it, but you know what? Whenever I get in one of those moods, I just remind myself that when we work together, when we put in a little bit of effort, things may not get perfect, but they do get better.”
When John Lewis and a procession of civil rights activists crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Obama said, they didn’t eliminate racism and bigotry in America. But they started a movement that got the Voting Rights Act passed.
“We’re never going to get all the way to the promised land, but we can help lay the path for future generations to get there,” he said. “That is what voting is about. Not making things perfect, but making things better. Laying that path, brick by brick, to a better future.”
“The fact that we don’t get 100% of what we want is not a good reason not to vote,” he said as a crowd of SUVs and sedans honked. “We’ve got to keep at it.”
Michigan’s secretary of state says any voter intimidation will be prosecuted
DETROIT - Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson warned Monday that any attempt to intimidate voters at the polls on election day would be prosecuted.
“The idea, frankly, that any voter should feel fearful as they prepare to cast their vote for the leader of the free world in antithetical to everything our democracy stands for,” she told reporters at a news conference in downtown Detroit. “The bottom line is that voter intimidation is illegal and it will be charged and prosecuted in our state to the fullest extent of the law.”
Days earlier a state appeals court struck down her effort to ban the open carry of firearms at polling places.
Michigan will be among the most closely watched states on election night because of how narrowly the traditionally Democratic state went for Donald Trump in 2016 as well as numerous concerns about voter intimidation this year.
Tensions are running high in the state, home to a number of armed groups that call themselves militias. Michigan is among the five most likely to see militia-related violence around the election, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
Earlier this year, federal officials arrested more than a dozen men in a plot to kidnap the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. The Democratic state leader, who has frequently drawn the ire of President Trump, has faced sustained dissent over her COVID-19 closures, including tense armed protests at the state capitol.
In October, Benson tried to enact a ban on guns at the polling place. Several sheriffs said they wouldn’t comply and 2nd Amendment activists ultimately blocked the effort in the courts. Atty. Gen. Dana Nessel has vowed to send in state troopers if local law enforcement officials do not stop any voter intimidation.
How Facebook and Twitter plan to handle election day disinformation
A man in the Atlanta suburbs was scrolling Facebook in late October when an ad popped up claiming his polling place had changed. At first glance, the change didn’t seem to align with official records.
He suspected it was a lie — potentially a voter suppression tactic. He had already voted by mail, but was on high alert for shenanigans in his hotly contested battleground district.
Further digging showed that it was a false alarm. Cobb County, Georgia, had in fact switched around a number of its polling places between the June primary election and the November general election, informing voters of the change by mail. What had seemed like fake news was actually a promoted Facebook post from the county itself, trying to get the word out.
This is the shaky ground on which the 2020 election is playing out: tech platforms that are simultaneously the central source of information for most voters and a morass of fake news, rumors, and disinformation that aim to alter the democratic process.
Anti-Trump retiree: ‘We stand on the brink of utter chaos’
PHILADELPHIA -- To Dennis Roberts, a retired Philadelphia social worker, the stakes in Tuesday’s election could not be higher.
“I think that we stand on the brink of utter chaos,” he said Monday on a walk down Chestnut Street in the city center, as crews nailed plywood onto storefront windows in anticipation of election unrest.
“I believe that four more years of Trump would be devastating socially, economically, medically, and I think that he has been perhaps the most divisive leader that the U.S. has had.”
The 66-year-old Democrat plans to vote in person Tuesday for President Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. When protests erupted here last week after police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man, Roberts watched from his apartment window as vandals stole merchandise from a Target and a CVS.
“Unfortunately, I think the looting and the violence attached to it has diminished the importance of the protests,” he said. “I think it’s also a reflection of people just trying to hold on to what they have. Folks have such a tenuous grasp on their livelihood right now.”
Biden vows to be ‘most pro-union president’
WASHINGTON -- Joe Biden traveled to western Pennsylvania Monday afternoon to kick off a voting canvass in Beaver County with union members and labor leaders, a crucial constituency that saw defections to Trump in 2016.
Promising to be “the most pro-union president you have ever seen,” Biden said, “My dad used to say the only way to deal with power is with power. The only way we can deal with corporate greed in America is union power.”
Federal judge in Texas rejects Republican challenge to drive-through voting
HOUSTON — A federal judge in Texas on Monday rejected a Republican attempt to invalidate about 127,000 votes in this year’s presidential election because drive-thru polling centers established during the coronavirus pandemic were used to cast ballots.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, ruled that a Republican activist and candidates who filed the lawsuit lacked standing and that drive-thru voting could proceed with Election Day on Tuesday.
Republican activist Steve Hotze and three Republican candidates had sued Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins seeking to halt drive-thru voting after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the manner of voting could proceed.
“We’re very grateful that we saved 127,000 votes from both parties,” said Richard Mithoff, an attorney for Harris County, said after the ruling as he stood with Hollins and other Texas Democrats outside the federal courthouse in downtown Houston.
In a frenzy of final campaigning, Trump airs grievances while Biden says Trump is the problem
WASHINGTON — President Trump unleashed bitter grievances — including complaints about polls that suggest he may lose Tuesday’s election — while Joe Biden vowed “an end to a presidency that’s divided this nation,” as the two rivals made their final impassioned pleas to voters in a whirl of last-minute rallies.
The stark contrast between Trump’s anger at outside forces and Biden’s claim that Trump is the problem underscored the highly personal nature of the choice for the shrinking number of voters still to cast their ballots after weeks of early voting.
During an hourlong speech in Fayetteville, N.C., and then in a second rally in northeast Pennsylvania, Trump departed often from a script that focused on a promise to re-create the “economic powerhouse” that he said was wrecked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump attacked familiar targets, including his impeachment by the House and subsequent acquittal in the Senate, his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and her emails, Silicon Valley companies that he claims have stifled bad news about Biden, the special counsel investigation into his 2016 campaign’s involvement with Russia, China and the coronavirus that emerged there, celebrities including LeBron James and Lady Gaga, adverse rulings by the Supreme Court, and even the polling arm of Fox News, which shows him trailing Biden nationally and in multiple swing states.
‘We have the numbers.’ Vegas culinary union members go door to door for Biden
LAS VEGAS— For three months now, hundreds of culinary union members have knocked on doors in Nevada — hoping for a win for Joe Biden.
Election eve was no different. Cesar Brambila, 28, and Larry Turner, 57, spent the afternoon knocking on doors in a Las Vegas neighborhood where the Virgen de Guadalupe was affixed near front doors and at least one home had planted Biden/Harris signs in the frontyard. The men are members of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226.“
We already know we have the numbers,” said Brambila, who along with Turner is a member of of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226.
“We just need everybody to turn out.”
To focus on this effort, the pair took leave from their jobs, after being back to work for about a month and a half after the pandemic shut down the Strip.
“Everything that’s important to us is on this ballot, from our healthcare to our children’s future,” Bramblia said.Brambila works as a house person at Mandalay Bay and Turner as a casino porter at Four Queens Resort and Casino.
They knocked on doors where parents who weren’t eligible to vote said their children had already voted and others where some were disinterested in talking about politics. Some people didn’t realize they had to vote by Tuesday and asked where they needed to go to cast ballots. Many residents weren’t yet home from work.
“Most of the people we’re talking to are the working class, so they’re all working,” said Brambila, who wore a black shirt that read “defeat Trump.”
As they walked, a young man leaned out his window and shouted “Joe Biden, woo.”“Go Joe Biden,” Brambila shouted back.
Signature errors could disenfranchise a record number of voters in the election
A record number of Americans are expected to vote by mail in the November general election because of the pandemic — and a record number may have their ballots rejected over signature issues.
In nearly 40 states, election officials check the signatures on the ballot envelopes that voters send back against the ones on file — usually from voter registration forms or motor vehicle departments. A handful of states require voters to fill out their ballot in front of a witness, who must also sign.
If a signature doesn’t appear to match, or the necessary signatures are missing, what happens next depends on the state — and even the county — a voter lives in. Some states require county election officials to give the voter a chance to verify their identity or fix a mistake; others don’t, and their ballots are tossed out.
LeBron, Lady Gaga and Bon Jovi: Trump’s not a fan
WASHINGTON -- Before President Trump was a politician, he was a celebrity, a fixture in New York City’s tabloids and the star of his own reality show on NBC, “The Apprentice.”
He still views the world through the prism of ratings, audience sizes and perceived competitors for both, and it’s no different in the final stretch of his reelection campaign.
During a rally outside Scranton, Pa., on Monday, Trump said NBA ratings have dropped because “they don’t respect our flag.” He singled out LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers: “How about LeBron? I felt badly for LeBron.”
His crowd chanted “LeBron James sucks.”
Trump segued to other stars supporting Biden.
“I can tell you stories about Lady Gaga. I know a lot of stories,” he said suggestively. The singer and actress was slated to appear with Biden at his final rally in Pittsburgh on Monday night.
“Jon Bon Jovi,” Trump added. “Every time I see him, he kisses my ass.”
Election officials seek to reassure voters
WASHINGTON — Election officials in some of 2020’s fiercest battleground states sought to restore voters’ confidence on Monday amid a spate of lawsuits and reports of intimidation at the polls.
“This isn’t our first rodeo as a battleground state,” Michigan Atty. Gen. Dana Nessel said on a press call hosted by the nonpartisan Voter Protection Program.
She emphasized that states do not certify results on election night.
“We are not about to let anyone steal this election,” she said.
In another Midwestern state key to both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaigns, Wisconsin Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul said voter intimidation is a crime in Wisconsin, “as it is in every state in the country.”
“The use of force or threats of force to those voting or creating a state of distress to prevent them from voting, that is a felony,” Kaul said. “Anybody who commits that crime should prepare to be prosecuted and put behind bars.”
Josh Stein, attorney general of North Carolina, seemed to allude to President Trump’s comments his campaign would send in its lawyers on election night to challenge the result.
“People are acting out across this country, there’s a great deal of disinformation about the integrity of the elections,” Stein said. “Voters should take comfort knowing they will be the ones who determine the winners of this election, not any politicians, not any lawyers.”
Oregon governor puts National Guard on standby
SEATTLE – Oregon Gov. Kate Brown is putting the National Guard on standby in case election-related violence breaks out in Portland, the scene of repeated protests this year.
The Democratic governor also says that the Oregon State Police and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office will take charge of law enforcement in Portland from 5 p.m. Monday through the same time Wednesday.
Her maneuver allows state and county authorities to bypass Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s ban on the city’s police department from using tear gas. Brown told reporters on Monday that she expected that any tear gas would be used in “extremely limited circumstances” to save lives and keep people safe.
“Voter intimidation and political violence will not be tolerated – not from the left, not from the right, not from the center,” Brown said at a news conference with law enforcement officials.
She said that no specific threats of violence have been made, but she accused President Trump of suppressing the vote by discouraging Americans from voting by mail, as all Oregon voters do. Brown and Wheeler have frequently feuded with Trump this year over federal and local responses to protests in Portland.
In Arizona, a restaurant owner hopes the state will turn blue
PHOENIX — As Carly Logan got ready to open for business at her namesake restaurant Carly’s in Phoenix’s Roosevelt Arts District, her focus swung from concerns about the election to the future of her business.
Those two worries weren’t unrelated.
Logan, 46, has owned the eatery for 15 years but because of the coronavirus pandemic, she’s only able to operate at 50% capacity, forcing her to barely scrape by. A Democrat who voted early for Joe Biden, she blames President Trump for his handling of the pandemic and economic recovery. So do many of her friends here in this battleground state’s largest city and capital.
“A lot of them have been hit hard by COVID and people are looking for stronger leadership,” Logan said. “People are distrustful of Trump, because he’s sent out so much mixed messaging.”
Logan also fears that if Trump wins reelection, he’ll enact policies that will chip away at the anti-discrimination laws that protect women and LGBTQ people. But Logan believes Arizona will flip blue this year for Biden and Democratic Senate candidate Mark Kelly.
Logan may be optimistic about Democrats’ chances in Arizona but the climate of tension makes her nervous too. While driving on Interstate 10 on Sunday, she passed a long caravan of Trump supporters driving slowly enough to cause a backup.
She said she’s thought about the possibility of violence on election night and beyond.
That’s the concern for a lot of people - that he’ll win the election and there’ll be civil unrest,” Logan said.”I’m praying not,” Logan said. “I’m praying not.”
Trump vs. Biden: Comparing their policies on race, immigration, climate and more
A look at where President Trump and Joe Biden stand on key issues in the 2020 election, including immigration, racial justice, climate and healthcare.
Whom might Biden choose to run State Department, NSA, other foreign policy jobs?
WASHINGTON — If former Vice President Joe Biden wins election next month, an early task will be to rebuild a U.S. foreign policy team following the Trump administration’s sidelining of numerous veteran diplomats and retreat from global leadership on the world stage.
Here’s a look at some of the top contenders for a possible Biden administration:
Democrats favored to win Senate and pad House majority
WASHINGTON — Democrats are favored to take control of the Senate for the first time since 2014 and are expected to pad their House majority, according to polls and political forecasters.
The party is trying to take advantage of President Trump’s unpopularity, especially in the suburbs, to capture Republican-held Senate seats across the country. Democrats are all but certain to lose one seat, in Alabama.
Republicans have already written off their incumbent in Colorado, Sen. Cory Gardner. They are also expected to lose in Arizona, though polls of the race between appointed Republican Sen. Martha McSally and Democrat Mark Kelly, a former astronaut, have tightened in recent days.
Also endangered is Maine’s Republican Sen. Susan Collins. In battleground states including North Carolina and Iowa, Republican senators are hoping that Trump does well to boost party turnout.
In the House, Democrats are expected to add from eight to 15 seats to the 232 they have (a majority is 218), according to forecasters, though the Cook Political Report said the party could gain as many as 20 seats if the election amounts to a Democratic wave. A majority that large could help ensure that Democrats keep control after the 2022 midterm elections if Joe Biden wins; the party with the White House typically loses congressional seats in a president’s first midterm election.
Democrats have focused on House races in Texas in particular, hoping to flip six Republican-held seats in that state alone – just as, two years ago, they scooped up additional seats in California.
Battle brewing over Trump claim his lawyers will challenge results on election night
WASHINGTON — The Biden campaign on Monday rejected claims from President Trump that his camp would immediately challenge results on election night, and reports he may try to declare victory before votes are fully counted.
“It’s very telling that President Trump is focused not on his voters but on his lawyers,” said Bob Bauer, a Biden senior advisor and former White House counsel during the Obama administration. “His lawyers are not going to win the election for him.”
Bauer said on a press call on election protection that Biden’s legal team would “match them and exceed them in quality and vigor, and we will protect the vote.” Trump told reporters in North Carolina on Sunday, “We’re going to go in the night of, as soon as that election is over, we’re going in with our lawyers.”
There is no requirement that a winner be known election night, and states do not finalize results that night. Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said Trump might be planning to declare victory early, but “he will just be declaring victory without having won.”
At the same time, O’Malley Dillon said voters should expect to hear from Biden on election night, “probably late.”
The 2020 election, in which millions of Americans have already voted, shattering turnout records ahead of election day, has been marked by fierce litigation, as well as reports of voter intimidation. Bauer said the “error rate” on early ballots had been “remarkably low.” He also said there had been only sporadic, isolated reports of attempts at voter intimidation.
“It’s fairly clear from the president’s rhetoric in recent days that there’s an increasing level of desperation,” Bauer said. “Just ignore it, there’s nothing to it.”
Judge rejects GOP effort to throw out 127,000 Houston votes
HOUSTON — A federal judge in Texas on Monday rejected a Republican attempt to invalidate about 127,000 votes in this year’s presidential election because drive-through polling centers established during the COVID-19 pandemic were used to cast ballots.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, ruled that a Republican activist and candidates who filed the lawsuit lacked standing and that drive-through voting could proceed on Tuesday.
Republican activist Steve Hotze and three Republican candidates had sued Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins seeking to halt drive-thru voting after the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the manner of voting could proceed.
“We’re very grateful that we saved 127,000 votes from both parties,” said Richard Mithoff, an attorney for Harris County, said after the ruling as he stood with Hollins and other Texas Democrats outside the federal courthouse in downtown Houston.
Voter lines and enthusiasm in downtown Detroit
DETROIT — Poll workers Patrice Taylor and Tracy Armstrong said the lines they were seeing at an early-voting center in downtown Detroit on Monday reminded them of the enthusiasm they saw during the 2008 election.
“This is really busy,” said Armstrong, 49, as dozens of people stood outside in the chilly afternoon. A line of cars snaked in front, with occupants handing their absentee ballots out their windows to election workers.
Armstrong said she believed the intensity came in part because 2016 was so close, with President Trump winning Michigan by less than 11,000 votes.
She said when she learned Trump won the state, “I really thought it was a joke. I was like, ‘OK, this not for real.’ Hillary was gonna win, and she was so far ahead in the national polls, right? And then no one in Detroit really voted. If Detroit would have voted, I don’t think he would have won Michigan.”
Both women voted early for Democrat Joe Biden. Taylor said she believed the former vice president would bring a return to civility.
“Even if you didn’t vote for him, he seems like he’s going to be president for the United States, not just the Republican states.”
Moving toward record turnout, 11.2 million Californians have already voted
More than half of California’s registered voters have already cast their ballot on the eve of election day, according to an established vote-tracking company.
Of the 22 million registered voters this year, 11.2 million ballots — or 51% — had been returned as of 8 a.m. Monday morning, Political Data Inc. reported. The firm, a trusted data source, is a bipartisan voter data company based in California that tracks detailed voter information.
“It’s undeniable, absolutely factual, 100% we’re going to set a record in the total number of votes cast in an election in California,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president for Political Data.
Photos: Election day voting is over but the counting continues.
California is already well on its way to beating the turnout of the 2016 election — the state has cast 76.9% of the 14.6 million total votes counted four years ago, according to the U.S. Elections Project and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Nationwide, 96.2 million voters have cast their ballots, 69.8% of the total turnout in 2016.
“I think we’re going to blast right past that total number of votes cast,” Mitchell said.
Wisconsin mayors prepared for trouble, but not expecting it
KENOSHA, Wis. — Mayors of five cities in Wisconsin said on a conference call Monday that they were prepared for trouble, including possible voter intimidation, but believed the election would come off smoothly in their battleground state.
“We are excited about where things stand,” said Eric Genrich, the mayor of Green Bay. “We are looking for a really great day tomorrow. Election day is oftentimes a very inspiring thing to behold, and that’s what we are looking forward to tomorrow.”
Also on the call were the mayors of Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Madison. Genrich said early voting had gone smoothly.
Trump in North Carolina departs from the script to recite a long list of grievances
WASHINGTON — President Trump at the first of five rallies in four states Monday departed often from a script that focused on a promise to re-create an “economic powerhouse” that has been wrecked by COVID-19.
Instead, at a speech in Fayetteville, N.C., he recited a list of complaints against targets that included: the news media; the 2019 House impeachment that ended with his acquittal in the Senate this year; 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton and her emails; technology companies he claims are stifling bad news about Biden; the special investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election; and even the polling arm of Fox News, which has him down nationally and in multiple swings states.
“We’ve been under a phony fake hoax investigation for three years, nothing but really bad and corrupt publicity from these people,” he said, referring to the reporters in a press pen as he stood on a runway in front of Air Force One.
“We’re going to win anyway,” he said.
Trump, wearing an overcoat and leather gloves to beat back the chilly weather, spent several minutes praising individual Fox News hosts while complaining repeatedly that the rest of the media had ignored his attempts to paint Democratic nominee Joe Biden as corrupt or acknowledge the president’s work on building a border wall with Mexico, which he falsely claimed was almost complete.
The lack of focus in Trump’s remarks was typical for him but highly unusual for a candidate facing daunting polls on the eve of a presidential election.
Philadelphia Trump voter: ‘The Democrats left a lot of us behind’
PHILADELPHIA — Jim McHugh, a Philadelphia painter, was a lifelong Democrat but recently switched his registration to Republican and cast a mail-in ballot for President Trump.
“The Democrats left a lot of us behind,” McHugh, 54, said Monday after walking off a paint job because the homeowner insisted he wear a mask because of the pandemic. “I don’t even know what the hell they’re doing any more. Just the sheer lies.”
McHugh voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because she struck him as more experienced than Trump. Democrats’ impeachment of the president turned him into a Trump supporter.
“He was right: It was a witch hunt from the beginning,” McHugh said. “They were trying to impeach him before he became president. To me, that’s just a bunch of BS.”
McHugh distrusts Biden, in part because of his admitted plagiarism early in his career. He sees Trump as an honest man dedicated to good works for others.
“He’s done a lot for people, but you’ll never hear that out of his mouth,” he said. “I like that about a person. I think he’s a good man.”
Biden to voters: Fire Trump before he fires Fauci
CLEVELAND — “Wonderful,” said a facetious Joe Biden, to President Trump’s suggestion at a recent campaign rally that, once reelected, he would fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Biden told his own rally in Cleveland Monday. “Elect me and we’re gonna hire Dr. Fauci. And we’re gonna fire Donald Trump!”
The Democratic presidential nominee’s comment was a new twist to his standard campaign attack on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. He blasted the president for suggesting that doctors were inflating COVID-19 deaths to make more money, calling Trump a “disgrace.”
Biden also accused Trump of several Ohio-specific economic slights. He recalled that Trump told residents of Lordstown not to sell their homes because its huge GM plant would keep humming -- it closed – and urged people not to buy tires from Goodyear, which is headquartered in Akron.
“Ohio, in 2008 and 2012 you placed your trust in me and Barack,” Biden said. “In 2020, I’m asking you to trust me again.”
In Philadelphia, one voter says she’s opting for ‘lesser of two evils’
PHILADELPHIA — Graduate student Puneet Thiara waited in line Monday morning to vote for Joe Biden at Philadelphia’s City Hall, but with little enthusiasm.
“Honestly, it’s just the lesser of two evils,” said Thiara, an independent who preferred Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primaries. “I am very anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-xenophobia, and Biden makes sense for that. I just can’t vote for Trump, with those views.”
Thiara, 27, is a studying for her master’s in business administration at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, President Trump’s alma mater. Across the street from where she was standing in line behind a few dozen other voters outside City Hall, men were nailing sheets of plywood across storefront windows in anticipation of election night unrest.
“It’s good to see civic engagement,” she said, “but maybe not the violent side of it.”
Biden’s election-eve campaigning includes unlikely stop in Ohio
CLEVELAND — Nearly everyone in America is counting down the days until this election is over. Joe Biden is no different.
“One more day! One more day!” he bellowed to supporters in an airport hangar in Cleveland, kicking off his final full day of campaigning.
“Tomorrow we have an opportunity to put an end to a presidency that’s divided this nation,” he went on. “Tomorrow we can put an end to a president who has failed to protect this nation. And tomorrow, we can put an end to a president who has fanned the flames of hate all across this country.”
Biden pointed out his four grandchildren in the crowd — “they’re my good luck charms.”
Few would have predicted that Biden’s election-eve campaigning would include a stop in Ohio. President Trump won the state by eight percentage points in 2016, and in the midterm elections two years later, Ohio Democrats suffered losses in what was an otherwise good year for the party. Pundits saw evidence that Ohio was tilting further to the right.
Although public polls have shown a tight race, Biden credited Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown with persuading him not to give up on Ohio. He noted that Brown was reelected in 2018 by about the same margin of Trump’s Buckeye State victory in 2016.
“So when Sherrod tells me to come to Ohio the day before, I come to Ohio,” Biden said. “That’s what I do.”
‘Historic day for change.’ In Atlanta, aiming to turn Georgia blue
ATLANTA - Kanika Greenlee was feeling optimistic as she lined up in an Atlanta parking lot for a final get-out-of-the-vote rally.
“We’re on the eve of what we hope will be a historic day for change,” the 44-year-old executive director of Keep Atlanta Beautiful said after pulling up in Georgia State University’s Center Parc Stadium to hear former President Obama.
In front of her Lexus sedan, the registered Democrat had set up a small wooden table with hummus, crackers, chicken salad, cheese and grapes for her sister, Aisha, and aunt, Atlanta City Councilmember Joyce Sheperd.
“We’re here for the long haul to celebrate,” Greenlee said as the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, Nikema Williams, prepared to rally the crowd. Polling in the last week shows Trump and Biden deadlocked. If Biden wins Georgia, he will become the first Democratic presidential candidate to secure this traditionally conservative stronghold since Bill Clinton in 1992.
“There’s been a lot of stress and anxiety up until this point,” Greenlee said. “Yes, it’s tight. But this is the first time in a long time that we can finally turn this state not just purple but blue.”
Traveling with Trump is a cognitive dissonance carnival
TAMPA, Fla. — The rhythms seem routine, but for those in the “pool,” the small, rotating group of White House reporters who shadow the president, it’s important to note them all.
Air Force One takes off, then lands; a pool report is emailed to other reporters. President Trump takes the stage and says all kinds of things. Then he dances — dances? — as “Y.M.C.A.” plays at max volume. More pool reports. We take off again, and it all repeats somewhere else.
After five years of covering Donald Trump, setting my alarms to his tweets, watching and wondering about him from the 2015 Iowa State Fair to the Oval Office, from New Delhi to Detroit, I was back in the bubble with Trump last week for a final, frenzied campaign swing — three days, six rallies, seven states and almost seven hours of speeches — as he fights for reelection.
Trump campaign, GOP lose bid to stop Vegas-area ballot count
LAS VEGAS — A Nevada judge on Monday denied a legal bid by the Trump campaign and state Republicans to stop the count of mail-in ballots in Las Vegas, the state’s most populous and Democratic-leaning county.
An immediate appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court is being considered, said Adam Laxalt, co-chairman of the Trump campaign in Nevada.
Judge James Wilson Jr. acknowledged that state election law was reshaped last summer due to the coronavirus pandemic, and it allows in-person votes and mailed-in ballots to be physically handled differently. But “nothing the state or Clark County has done values one voter’s vote over another’s,” he said.
The Trump campaign joined dozens of lawsuits aiming to stop expansion of voting access in the midst of the pandemic, and the president has said mail-in ballots could harm Republican’s chances in the election. Wilson heard a full day of arguments on Wednesday in Carson City during which attorney Jesse Binnall, representing the Trump campaign and state party, asked to stop the count until election officials in Las Vegas allowed “meaningful” oversight of ballot processing and let observers challenge ballots.
Binnall did not challenge ballot processing in other Nevada counties, which lean Republican.
International observers monitoring the U.S. election are raising quiet alarms
WASHINGTON — `International observers who are monitoring the U.S. elections this season are already raising quiet alarms.
In its recently released interim report, the monitoring group for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe noted efforts by President Trump and others to call into question the legitimacy of the vote. It also expressed concern over issues that are troubling many Americans such as disinformation barrages and voter suppression.
Although the U.S. might not be the first country one associates with international election monitoring and widespread irregularities, the OSCE’s human rights and democracy division has been working stateside elections since 2002. This year, because of the pandemic, the team is smaller than usual: 102 people from 39 countries.
For only the second time, the Organization of American States, the hemisphere’s largest multilateral organization for the Americas, is also deploying monitors. And for the first time, the Atlanta-based Carter Center, while not observing the elections, is doing behind-the-scenes work to help poll workers with public information and keeping the process transparent, a spokeswoman said. The Carter Center for decades has sent observers to countries all over the world but does not normally participate in monitoring domestically.
Urszula Gacek, a Polish parliamentarian who is heading part of the OSCE team, said restrictions prompted by the COVID-19 outbreak have tangled an already complicated process because of the lack of uniformity in election rules and procedures across the country.
Speaking to reporters ahead of Tuesday’s election day, she said the prospect of armed “watchers” dispatched to intimidate voters is “scary, scary.”
Michigan healthcare workers warn about COVID-19 risks at Trump rallies
DETROIT — Hours before President Trump planned to hold two rallies in Michigan on Monday, healthcare professionals warned people not to attend the gatherings because of the risk of coronavirus infection.
“I’m very disappointed and worried about President Trump’s rallies here in Michigan. Getting people together in large groups is dangerous,” said Carly Batcha, a registered nurse in Traverse City. “The president is setting a terrible example and putting people at risk with these rallies.”
Batcha and three physicians spoke to reporters on a call organized by the liberal advocacy group Committee to Protect Medicare on Monday morning. Trump is scheduled to hold rallies in Traverse City and Grand Rapids.
Harland Holman, a family physician in Grand Rapids, said the regions the president was visiting were already impacted by rising rates of coronavirus infection. In Kent County, where Grand Rapids is located, infection rates are triple what they were in early October. Hospitalizations have quadrupled in 10 counties in the area, with many near capacity, he said.
“Every county in western Michigan is either in the middle of an ongoing COVID-19 outbreak or at extreme risk of experiencing one,” Holman said.
Rob Davidson, an emergency room physician, pointed to a recent Stanford University study that estimated that 18 Trump rallies between June and September could be responsible for more tan 30,000 coronavirus infections and 700 deaths.
“We’re angry and frustrated that the president continues to put people’s lives at risk even when we now have the data showing his rallies may have contributed to deaths that could have been prevented,” Davidson said.
More than 230,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19.
‘It’s kind of a nervous time.’ Homeless woman worries about potential violence
KENOSHA, Wis. — Linda Minshall, 53, has bigger immediate worries than the election outcome, as an unemployed and homeless woman living in a shelter and hoping for better times in 2021.
Minshall, a political independent, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but said she couldn’t make up her mind this time and was unsure whether she would even vote on Tuesday. Like many other voters, she said she was ready for an end to the many anxieties that had come with the campaign.
“Everybody’s fighting, pretty much everywhere, you know,” Minshall said. “It’s kind of a nervous time. It certainly makes me nervous.”
The onetime security guard said she couldn’t recall another election where a threat of violence seemed to be lurking.
“It’s kind of scary, because people have made their belief system so personal in this election,” Minshall said. “And it seems they’re ready to physically fight about it.
“I know a lot of people voted early and they are just ready to move on. They’re sick and tired of all of this.”
Kamala Harris just wants to talk about Biden. ‘I’m not gonna talk about the other guy’
PHILADELPHIA - Democrats have framed the presidential race as a referendum on the incumbent, President Trump. But as she rallied union members in northeast Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris did not mention Trump’s name once.
“On the eve of this election, I just actually wanna talk about Joe,” said the vice presidential candidate and running mate of Joe Biden. “I’m not gonna talk about the other guy. I don’t feel like talking about him right now.”
Harris, the junior senator from California, kicked off her Pennsylvania barnstormer Monday by embracing her role as Biden’s biggest booster. She touted his working-class upbringing in Scranton, not too far from the Luzerne County canvassing site, and portrayed her running mate as an optimist, “because he knows when you face a crisis head on and you work hard, you can actually come through it and maybe come through it better.”
The closest she came to conjuring Trump was to refer to him as “you know who,” accusing the president of trying to make it more difficult and confusing to vote. And she asserted that over his tenure, “our democracy has taken a beating.”
“If you think of it as a house — yeah, some of the shingles have fallen off. But the house is still standing,” she said, to cheers from the audience.
Harris delivered her brief remarks outside, on a bright but blustery day. Luzerne County is hotly contested territory in this battleground state; residents here backed President Obama in 2008 and 2012, and then swung to Trump four years later. Trump will host his own rally in the county seat of Wilkes-Barre later on Monday.
Amid talk of voter suppression, the U.S. could set record for turnout
WASHINGTON — While efforts at voter suppression and intimidation have gotten a lot of attention, the bigger story of 2020 could be an all-time record for voter participation.
How large might the turnout be? Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, one of the country’s leading experts on voting, predicted Monday that the total vote would be just over 160 million people, 160.2 million to be precise.
McDonald, who bases his projection in part on the size of the early vote, projected that about 100 million people will have voted before election day, once all the remaining mail-in and early in-person ballots are accounted for. To date, more than 96 million have been reported by states.
A turnout of 160 million would represent a 15% increase over 2016 and would be, by a significant margin, the largest turnout in modern U.S. history -- 67% of the total number of Americans eligible to vote (adult citizens 18 and older who aren’t legally barred from voting because of incarceration or mental disability).
The 20th century record stands at 65.7% turnout in 1908, but that’s somewhat misleading because most women were not allowed to vote then. In the century since women’s suffrage, the highest turnout was in 1960, when 63.8% of eligible voters chose between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
U.S. turnout dropped after 18- to 21-year-olds won the right to vote in 1971; they have voted at a lower rate than older Americans. Since then, the largest turnout was 61.6% in 2008, when Barack Obama won.
“This is a 100-year flood of voters that we’re seeing,” Nathaniel Persily, elections expert at Stanford Law School, said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
Justice Department’s civil rights unit is monitoring the election in 18 states
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is sending staff around the country to monitor the election Tuesday, a standard deployment but one that will likely attract extra attention this year because of battles over ballot access.
“Our federal laws protect the right of all American citizens to vote without suffering discrimination, intimidation, and harassment,” said a statement from Eric S. Dreiband, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division.
President Trump has already urged his supporters to watch polling places, a directive that activists and Democrats fear could lead to voter intimidation.
There will be staff in 44 jurisdictions spread across 18 states, according to the Justice Department. That includes a heavy presence in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona. Some are also headed to Orange County and Los Angeles County in California.
Trump defends supporters who swarmed Biden campaign bus, calls FBI probe ‘FALSE’
WASHINGTON - President Trump, en route to the first of his five rallies on the final day of campaigning, took issue again with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, defending his supporters who are under investigation for harassing his opponent’s campaign.
In Texas on Friday, a caravan of vehicles with Trump signs and flags surrounded a Biden campaign bus and appeared to try to slow it down or force it to pull over, prompting the campaign to call 911. A police escort later guided the bus to its destination.
On Sunday, the FBI confirmed that its San Antonio office was “aware of the incident and investigating.” In a tweet Monday morning, Trump claimed that a report referencing the FBI’s investigation wasn’t true.
“This story is FALSE,” he tweeted. “They did nothing wrong. But the ANTIFA Anarchists, Rioters and Looters, who have caused so much harm and destruction in Democrat run cities, are being seriously looked at!”
Trump, whose rallies consistently feature calls by the president and his supporters to incarcerate his opponents, has been steadfast and vocal in defending his supporters’ tactics.
He tweeted an initial video of the trucks with Trump flags flying from the pickup beds surrounding a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway with the caption: “I LOVE TEXAS!” He then responded to news of the FBI investigation Sunday by tweeting: “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong.”
During one campaign rally Sunday, Trump referred to the event misleadingly, suggesting his supporters had been “protecting” the Biden campaign bus they forced off the road.
The events in Texas are not the only such incidents in recent days, as Trump supporters have blocked traffic on a busy bridge between New Jersey and New York City and snarled traffic surrounding a polling place in Riverside County.
Trump’s attempts to shift blame to Antifa and suggest election-related violence by left-wing groups, which has not occurred, have created a pretext for his supporters to take to the streets, especially around polling places, seemingly in an effort to suppress the vote.
Republican Sen. Florida Sen. Marco at a Sunday rally praised the drivers who swarmed the Biden bus.
“I saw video yesterday of these people in Texas. Did you see it? All the cars on the road,” he said, “We love what they did, but here’s the think they don’t know: We do that in Florida every day. I love seeing the boat parades.”
Philadelphia leaders counter Trump’s gibes against city’s elections process
PHILADELPHIA - After President Trump’s months of claims that “bad things happen” in Philadelphia elections, city leaders tried to assure voters Monday that their voting system was safe and secure.
“Any aggressive behavior or voter intimidation at the polls won’t be tolerated — this includes attempts by individuals who are not certified poll watchers to access polling locations and observe voting,” Mayor Jim Kenney and Lisa Deeley, chair of the city’s election commission, wrote in an open letter.
The two Democrats urged the public to be patient with long lines expected at 718 polling stations across Philadelphia, as well as the slow ballot count. By state law, the city cannot start processing mail ballots cast by more than 400,000 Philadelphia residents until Tuesday morning, so the tabulation will take at least several days, they said.
With the presidential election potentially hinging on Pennsylvania, Trump’s campaign is expected to challenge the validity of many ballots in the city, which is certain to produce the state’s biggest trove of votes for his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
If voters “encounter frustrating or difficult situations on Election Day, let your inner strength guide you,” Kenney and Deeley wrote. “Stay calm, stay respectful, stay above the fray.”
Trump’s media gatekeepers keeping watch
President Trump has benefited from the protection of an unprecedented media fortress for more than four years — with a loyal core of sentries keeping out or dismissing all unwanted scrutiny from mainstream media as “fake news” from “the enemy of the people.”
But for some of his media gatekeepers, it is never enough.
“If there was ever a day to turn off all media except the EIB Network, it’s today. We have reached peak disinformation,” Rush Limbaugh tweeted Monday, referring to the name he gave his radio network, which stands for “Excellence in Broadcasting.”
The warning to supporters felt, in some ways, like the perfect coda for the Trump campaign.
Biden and Harris make last push for Pennsylvania, joining Lady Gaga and John Legend
PHILADELPHIA - Joe Biden and running mate Kamala Harris are making one last dash into Pennsylvania on Monday as President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence try to pull off a come-from-behind victory in a state that could decide the election.
Lady Gaga will join the former vice president and his wife, Jill Biden, at an election-eve drive-in event in Pittsburgh. Singer John Legend will appear in Philadelphia at the same time with Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.
Earlier in the day, the Bidens will pay a final visit to Ohio, and the California senator and Emhoff will campaign separately across eastern Pennsylvania.
Trump eked out a win in Pennsylvania four years ago, but Biden holds a narrow lead in the polls. Without the state’s 20 electoral votes, Trump would have almost no viable path to winning a second term.
Trump, who plans to campaign Monday in Scranton, Biden’s hometown when he was a boy, used the Lady Gaga event to repeat on Twitter his false accusation that his rival plans to ban fracking, a big source of jobs in the state.
“Just learned that Sleepy Joe Biden is campaigning in Pennsylvania with Lady Gaga, a proud member of ‘Artists Against Fracking,’” he tweeted. “This is more proof that he would ban Fracking and skyrocket your energy prices.”
Biden has said repeatedly that he does not plan to ban fracking.
On the defensive, Trump is holding five rallies in states he won in 2016
WASHINGTON - President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence have put together what may be their most ambitious rally schedule of the campaign on the eve of the election, with Trump holding five rallies stretching from the South to the Upper Midwest and Pence hitting four rallies, including two where he will speak ahead of the president.
All of Monday’s rallies are being held in states Trump won in 2016, underscoring the campaign’s defensive posture as he tries to prove polls projecting him to lose this time around are wrong, just as they were four years ago.
Trump, who spent the night at one of his properties in south Florida, will hold his first rally of the day in Fayetteville, N.C., one of the most closely contested states in the electoral map and one he almost certainly needs if he stages a comeback to win reelection.
From there, he goes to another essential state, Pennsylvania, for a rally in the Wilkes-Barre Scranton region, which flipped from Democratic to Republican in 2016 to put him over the top in a state that both sides believe is crucial to winning this year’s contest.
Trump will finish the day in two more states that once formed part of the Democratic “blue wall” that he knocked down in 2016: He’ll hold two rallies in Michigan, sandwiching a rally in Kenosha, Wis.
Pence begins the day with two rallies in Pennsylvania (Latrobe and Erie), before joining Trump at the Michigan rallies (Traverse City and Grand Rapids).
Trump suggests he will fire Fauci, nation’s top infectious disease expert, amid the pandemic
WASHINGTON - President Trump suggested he would fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, during a late-night rally on Sunday in Florida.
During his speech, the president falsely claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 230,000 people in the U.S., is “rounding the turn” and complained that the news media were covering it too much. Then the crowd started to chant “Fire Fauci.”
“Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election, please,” Trump said, sparking roars of approval from the audience. “I appreciate the advice.”
Fauci has been increasingly critical of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus, warning in a recent interview with the Washington Post that the country is facing “a whole lot of hurt” as winter approaches.
However, it’s unclear if Trump has the ability to fire Fauci, because he’s not a presidential appointee.
Voting early to ‘make room for other people to get their vote in’
DETROIT — Al Critt and Willie Jonson stopped by the Greater Grace Temple in northwest Detroit on a blisteringly cold Sunday to cast their ballots for Democrats Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris.
Critt, 55, a nurse, said she was worried there would be lengthy delays if she waited until Tuesday to vote.
“I wanted to make sure that we skip the long lines and make room for other people to get their vote in,” she said. Critt and Jonson, both Democrats, said they supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. They voted Sunday just before parishioners at Greater Grace Temple held a Walk the Vote event to try to boost Black voter turnout.
Jonson, 64, who works on ground maintenance for the city, said he was supporting Biden because of his policies and because “he’s got a little sense.”
Critt’s top priority was denying President Trump a second term, she said when asked why she was supporting former Vice President Biden.
“You really want to know?” she said. “Voting Trump out. I like Joe Biden and I like his policies and I like his plans to get the nation back together. But Trump is an evil racist.”
Biden holds small lead in Pennsylvania, Monmouth poll shows
WASHINGTON - With both parties intensely focused on Pennsylvania as the state likeliest to tip the presidential election one way or the other, a final statewide poll shows former Vice President Joe Biden holding a small but persistent lead.
Biden leads President Trump by five to seven points, depending on turnout, the poll from Monmouth University finds. That’s down from the 8- to 11-point margin that Biden held just after the first debate between the two candidates in late September and is consistent with the average of recent polls, which shows Biden leading in Pennsylvania by five points.
If voter turnout is high, the Monmouth poll shows Biden leading 51%-44%. A lower turnout would trim his lead to 50%-45%, the poll found. The Libertarian candidate, Jo Jorgensen, drew 1%, and 4% either said they were undecided or would not disclose their choice. Given the large number of Pennsylvanians who have already voted by mail, a low turnout would occur only if large numbers of mail-in ballots were disqualified, said Patrick Murray, the director of the university’s polling institute.
The poll found two significant shifts from 2016: Biden is outpacing Hillary Clinton’s margin in the state’s large urban counties, and Trump’s lead has shrunk a bit in the conservative, rural parts of the state. The state’s swing counties, mostly in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania and the areas just west of Philadelphia, were closely divided in the last election and are once again, the poll found.
By a narrow margin, 46%-41%, Pennsylvanians think Biden will win the presidency, the poll found. That’s a shift from this summer and a contrast with two other hotly contested states, Florida and Georgia, that Monmouth recently polled in which more voters expected Trump to win.
How to vote in California
The general election is approaching fast, with presidential, congressional, state legislative and local races on the Nov. 3 ballot.
This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom encouraged Californians to vote by mail in order to protect themselves from the coronavirus, but if you prefer to vote in person, you still can.
Here’s everything you need to know to make sure your vote is counted.
The online voter registration deadline has passed, but you can still vote in California
The bad news: You missed the voter registration deadline to cast a ballot in this election. The good news: You haven’t missed your chance to vote.
The last day to use the state’s online voter registration system was Oct. 19. But last year, California enacted conditional voter registration. Sometimes called “same-day voter registration,” conditional registration lets you register up until and on election day at your county elections office or a community vote center. You can then cast a ballot, which will be processed and counted after county elections officials verify your registration.
‘MAGA’ hats allowed but ‘Biden’ gear banned under California in-person voting rules
California election rules prohibit clothing, signs and swag urging support for a specific candidate at polling places, but state officials have decided no such ban exists on items emblazoned with the slogan “Make America Great Again,” the mantra championed by President Trump.
If there’s a distinction between a shirt bearing the name of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and the ubiquitous hats featured prominently in Trump’s online store, it may be lost on voters come election day. But it is clear.
“I want to make sure the public knows what the rules are,” said Kammi Foote, the registrar of voters in Inyo County. “I don’t want to be accused of favoritism allowing MAGA gear but telling people with a Biden/Harris mask to remove it.”
California has long differentiated between political slogans and what the law defines as “electioneering” — displaying information about a candidate or campaign — at a polling place or vote center. Last month, state elections officials made clear that gear bearing the Trump slogan would not be considered synonymous with showing support for the president’s reelection.
“Examples of campaign slogans or political movement slogans [which are permitted at polling places] include but are not limited to: Make America Great Again (MAGA), Black Lives Matter (BLM), Keep America Great (KAG), Vote for Science, and Build Back Better,” according to the Sept. 28 guidelines sent to county registrars of voters.
“State law is clear that you can’t have a candidate’s likeness or name,” said Sam Mahood, a spokesman for Secretary of State Alex Padilla. “It does not prohibit slogans that could be created for a campaign or a political movement.”