I read a recent poll that had Trump far and away the lead candidate. But you know..."polls".
Trump is pretty much the only known candidate so far as he has basically not stopped campaigning and his announcement is imminent.
When those polls were taken was when it was expected we would see a large republican wave, including election deniers, Governors, the whole whack pack including Dr Oz.
Then Trump ended up with a lot of egg on his face and the biggest bright spot was probably Desantis' victory.
mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,832
Opinion | The media need a serious overhaul of their election coverage Opinion by Jennifer Rubin November 15, 2022 at 10:00 ET After the 2016 election, the mainstream media and pollsters were filled with remorse for horribly misreading the national mood and wrongly predicting a Hillary Clinton win. How had they missed the mark so badly? Yet after a similar media failure in this year’s midterm elections? Mostly crickets so far. If the media really want to improve their credibility and serve the interests of democracy, they need another round of introspection. What’s needed is serious and permanent changes in the way the media cover elections — especially those involving former president Donald Trump. The Trump challenge starts Tuesday night, when the former president is expected to announce his presidential campaign for 2024. The media would be wise not to cover the news conference live, which will almost certainly include a host of election conspiracy theories. Indeed, as a general rule, the media must be especially clear whenever Trump lies (virtually every time he opens his mouth). They should continue to frame headlines to underscore when his statements are untrue. And while he might generate more clicks and attract more eyeballs, news outlets should not devote any more time or space to him than other top candidates. They dare not make the mistake as they did in 2016, when they acted as a free communications team. Beyond Trump, pollsters and reporters need to recognize that women aren’t a minority or interest group. They are the average voter. Forget diners as the locale for interviews with voters; go to yoga studios, school pickup lines, supermarkets and other places where ordinary women can be found. Find out what their concerns are and what candidate qualities turn them off. If they do this, maybe next time the media will not underestimate women’s disgust with right-wing politicians. The media should also acknowledge error in the widespread narrative that Latinos are fleeing the Democratic Party. They are not. Florida, where many Latinos live, has trended Republican, but nationwide, the majority of Latinos still vote Democratic. In Texas, Democrats held on to the state’s 28th Congressional District and flipped the 34th, both heavily Latino areas. The border areas remained blue, thanks in part to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke’s strong showing in the region. Media outlets also need to recognize that several other states with large Latino populations — Nevada, Arizona and Colorado — have been trending blue. Better yet, the media need to recognize that “Latino” is almost meaningless because it encompasses people with vastly different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Treating an American born in Puerto Rico like a third-generation businessman with a Spanish surname but no Spanish fluency makes little sense. Next, it’s long past time to stop allowing polls to shape coverage. A shift away from horserace coverage, which is often wrong and utterly irrelevant, would allow the media to focus on candidates’ experience and character, major policy issues and voters’ attitudes and demographic changes. Journalism should not be a Magic Eight Ball; it is about understanding and analyzing the recent past and present. Here’s an idea: cap the number of stories each month that cite or rely on polling. Instead, find gurus in each state who really understand the ins and outs of voting trends (e.g., Jon Ralston in Nevada), expand use of focus groups, track coverage in local media and watch where candidates are spending money. Pay attention when both sides appear to agree that an issue is working for one side. (As I noted, in swing districts Democrats were leaning into the abortion issue while Republicans were scrubbing their positions on the issue from their websites.) The media won’t be better at guessing the outcome, but it will be better at explaining what is happening in a race. That’s the point, after all. Political coverage should also be more candid. It should acknowledge that the GOP is populated with cranks, conspiratorialists and election deniers who are at odds with the public. If the media had done this throughout this year’s cycle, it might not have been so shocking that millions of Americans rejected these Republicans across the board. While they are at it, the media should cease its fixation with debates. Voters virtually never change their minds after such events, and the media’s own judgments about who “won” often runs contrary to voters’ perceptions. Town halls and long interviews might provide just as much information to voters — without the cringeworthy news reviews. Finally, the media should recognize where they succeeded. Some outlets put much effort into highlighting election deniers and elevating secretary of state races. This helped inform voters about previously obscure races. Armed with information about the threat election deniers pose, voters lo and behold rejected them in virtually every governor and secretary of state race in swing states. None of this would help the media get predictions right, because the intention is to move the media out of the prediction business. In a country in which a handful of states and districts decide elections by extremely small margins, polling provides pundits a false sense of confidence — especially when aggregated with junk polls. Journalism can improve its image by leaving the prognostication to betting markets and tarot card readers. That should free up resources to focus on the threats still facing democracy.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Democrat wins secretary of state in AZ as well, beating a vehement election denier.
What have we learned this cycle? The electorate wants "normal". People running too far on either side got shellacked. This is particularly true in state wide elections, rather than congressional districts. But even Boebert's weakness shows that you can only be so crazy.
Well except where I live, and it looks like the House will be 219-216 R and the return of the freedom caucus to the front pages, and they’re saying mccarthy isn’t crazy enough to be speaker. Usually 60%+ seats are blue here, now they are all red, and none of the house races were that close here
Been going to the office twice a week lately (many have transitioned to 100% WFH). In office they’ve been yammering about this bail reform crap for months, and never provide any proof that’s the reason crime is supposedly up. Knowing my coworkers bought into the GOP BS is brutal. I am on an island here, not sure I see this why Dems are ignoring the reason why they lost the house. Without Long Island and the crime issue, the Dems would have won the house.
GOP lies still work, and there is a solid blueprint for them to take presidency and congress in 2024
edit, rereconsidering your comment, it looks like bail reform, not locking up poor nonviolent kids for two years awaiting trial, who can’t afford bail, is too extreme a position to take for Dems. If they don’t learn that lesson fast, the Rs can sweep DC next time
Seems more of the blame might be centered on NY dem party leadership and apparatus. AOC might just be the future, give the issues and demographics. Not unsalvageable but its going to take work. Maybe NY was more a perfect storm of a combination of shit rather than a massive voter shift? Interesting read:
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,832
GOP wins slim House majority, complicating ambitious agenda
By WILL WEISSERT, SARA BURNETT and JILL COLVIN
16 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans won control of the U.S. House on Wednesday, returning the party to power in Washington and giving conservatives leverage to blunt President Joe Biden’s agenda and spur a flurry of investigations. But a threadbare majority will pose immediate challenges for GOP leaders and complicate the party’s ability to govern.
More than a week after Election Day, Republicans secured the 218th seat needed to flip the House from Democratic control. The full scope of the party’s majority may not be clear for several more days — or weeks — as votes in competitive races are still being counted.
But they are on track to cobble together what could be the party's narrowest majority of the 21st century, rivaling 2001, when Republicans had just a nine-seat majority, 221-212 with two independents. That’s far short of the sweeping victory the GOP predicted going into this year’s midterm elections, when the party hoped to reset the agenda on Capitol Hill by capitalizing on economic challenges and Biden’s lagging popularity.
McCarthy celebrated his party having “officially flipped” the House on Twitter on Wednesday night, writing, “Americans are ready for a new direction, and House Republicans are ready to deliver.”
President Joe Biden congratulated McCarthy, saying he is “ready to work with House Republicans to deliver results for working families.”
“Last week’s elections demonstrated the strength and resilience of American democracy. There was a strong rejection of election deniers, political violence, and intimidation,” Biden said in a statement. “There was an emphatic statement that, in America, the will of the people prevails.”
He added, that “the future is too promising to be trapped in political warfare."
The narrow margins have upended Republican politics and prompted finger-pointing about what went wrong. Some in the GOP have blamed Donald Trump for the worse-than-expected outcome. The former president, who announced his third White House bid Tuesday, lifted candidates during this year’s Republican primaries who often questioned the results of the 2020 election or downplayed the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last year. Many of those struggled to win during the general election.
Despite the GOP’s underwhelming showing, the party will still have notable power. Republicans will take control of key committees, giving them the ability to shape legislation and launch probes of Biden, his family and his administration. There’s particular interest in investigating the overseas business dealings of the president’s son Hunter Biden. Some of the most conservative lawmakers have raised the prospect of impeaching Biden, though that will be much harder for the party to accomplish with a tight majority.
Any legislation that emerges from the House could face steep odds in the Senate, where Democrats won the barest of majorities Saturday. Both parties are looking to a Dec. 6 Senate runoff in Georgia as a last chance to pad their ranks.
With such a potentially slim House majority, there’s also potential for legislative chaos. The dynamic essentially gives an individual member enormous sway over shaping what happens in the chamber. That could lead to particularly tricky circumstances for GOP leaders as they try to win support for must-pass measures that keep the government funded or raise the debt ceiling.
The GOP’s failure to notch more wins — they needed a net gain of five seats to take the majority — was especially surprising because the party went into the election benefiting from congressional maps that were redrawn by Republican legislatures. History was also on Republicans’ side: The party that holds the White House had lost congressional seats during virtually every new president’s first midterm of the modern era.
The new majority will usher in a new group of leaders in Washington. If elected to succeed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the top post, McCarthy would lead what will likely be a rowdy conference of House Republicans, most of whom are aligned with Trump’s bare-knuckle brand of politics. Many Republicans in the incoming Congress rejected the results of the 2020 presidential election, even though claims of widespread fraud were refuted by courts, elections officials and Trump’s own attorney general.
“I'm proud to announce the era of one-party Democrat rule in Washington is over,” McCarthy said after winning the nomination.
Republican candidates pledged on the campaign trail to cut taxes and tighten border security. GOP lawmakers also could withhold aid to Ukraine as it fights a war with Russia or use the threat of defaulting on the nation’s debt as leverage to extract cuts from social spending and entitlements — though all such pursuits will be tougher given how small the GOP majority may end up being.
As a senator and then vice president, Biden spent a career crafting legislative compromises with Republicans. But as president, he was clear about what he viewed as the threats posed by the current Republican Party.
Biden said the midterms show voters want Democrats and Republicans to find ways to cooperate and govern in a bipartisan manner, but also noted that Republicans didn’t achieve the electoral surge they’d been betting on and vowed, “I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.”
AP VoteCast, a broad survey of the national electorate, showed that high inflation and concerns about the fragility of democracy had heavily influenced voters. Half of voters said inflation factored significantly, with groceries, gasoline, housing, food and other costs that have shot up in the past year. Slightly fewer — 44% — said the future of democracy was their primary consideration.
Counter to the GOP’s expectations, Biden didn’t entirely shoulder the blame for inflation, with close to half of voters saying the higher-than-usual prices were more because of factors outside his control. And despite the president bearing criticism from a pessimistic electorate, some of those voters backed Democratic candidates.
Democrats also likely benefited from anger over the Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision cementing a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Voters in Michigan voted to amend their state constitution to protect abortion rights while far more reliably Republican Kentucky rejected a constitutional amendment declaring no right to an abortion.
Overall, 7 in 10 voters said the high court’s ruling overturning the 1973 decision enshrining abortion rights was an important factor in their midterm decisions. VoteCast also showed the reversal was broadly unpopular. About 6 in 10 say they are angry or dissatisfied by it. And roughly 6 in 10 say they favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
A lot of demographic data here on but one NY district that flipped from blue to red, granted it’s from 2020. That said, how much did redistricting skew it toward red and how did the demographics change as a result? Higher average incomes? More white but less citizens? More unemployment and crime? Need to see 2022 demographics to compare.
MAGA Lake won’t concede she’s a perfect running mate for MAGA King! She’s probably looking in the mirror and asking herself “ how could they not like me “
jesus greets me looks just like me ....
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,305
Georgia high court allows Saturday voting for Senate runoff
By KATE BRUMBACK
Today
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia counties will be allowed to hold early voting this Saturday in the U.S. Senate runoff election between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, under a Wednesday ruling from the state Supreme Court.
The court issued a unanimous, one-sentence ruling declining to review or stay a ruling by the state's intermediate appellate court. Republicans had objected to the Saturday voting.
Warnock and Walker, the former University of Georgia and NFL football star, were forced into a Dec. 6 runoff because neither won a majority in the midterm election this month. Early in-person voting ends on Dec. 2, the Friday before Election Day, which means that Nov. 26 would be the only possible Saturday when early voting could be held.
At issue is a section of Georgia law that says early in-person voting is not allowed on a Saturday if the Thursday or Friday preceding it is a holiday. The state and Republican groups argued that means voting shouldn't be allowed this Saturday, Nov. 26, because Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday is a state holiday. Warnock's campaign and Democratic groups argued that the prohibition applies only to primaries and general elections, not runoff elections.
Georgia’s 2021 election law compressed the time period between the general election and the runoff to four weeks, and Thanksgiving falls in the middle. Many Georgians will be offered only five weekdays of early in-person voting beginning Nov. 28.
Eighteen of the state's 159 counties — including six of the 10 most populous — planned to offer voting on Saturday, interim Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling said on Twitter late Tuesday. Some counties plan to offer early voting Sunday, ahead of the required start Monday.
After initially saying in a television interview that voting would be allowed Nov. 26, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger then issued guidance to county election officials saying it is not allowed. Warnock's campaign, along with the Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sued last week to challenge that guidance.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox issued an order Friday saying state law does not prohibit early voting this coming Saturday. The state appealed that ruling Monday and asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to stay the lower court ruling. The Court of Appeals issued a single-sentence order late Monday declining to stay the lower court's order.
State officials accepted that ruling and said they would not pursue further appeals. But the Georgia Republican Party, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee, which had been allowed to join the case as intervenors, on Tuesday appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,832
New state voter fraud units finding few cases from midterms
By GARY FIELDS, ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE and SUDHIN THANAWALA
Today
WASHINGTON (AP) — State-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud are looking into scattered complaints more than two weeks after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems.
That's just what election experts had expected and led critics to suggest that the new units were more about politics than rooting out widespread abuses. Most election-related fraud cases already are investigated and prosecuted at the local level.
Florida, Georgia and Virginia created special state-level units after the 2020 election, all pushed by Republican governors, attorneys general or legislatures.
“I am not aware of any significant detection of fraud on Election Day, but that’s not surprising,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president of the Campaign Legal Center. “The whole concept of voter impersonation fraud is such a horribly exaggerated problem. It doesn’t change the outcome of the election, it's a felony, you risk getting put in jail and you have a high possibility of getting caught. It's a rare phenomena.”
The absence of widespread fraud is important because the lies surrounding the 2020 presidential election spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies have penetrated deeply into the Republican Party and eroded trust in elections. In the run-up to this year's elections, 45% of Republicans had little to no confidence that votes would be counted accurately.
An Associated Press investigation found there was no widespread fraud in Georgia or the five other battleground states where Trump disputed his 2020 loss, and so far there is no indication of that in this year's elections. Certification of the results is going smoothly in most states, with few complaints.
In Georgia, where Trump tried to pressure state officials to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss, a new law gives the state’s top law enforcement agency, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, authority to initiate investigations of alleged election fraud without a request from election officials. The alleged violation would have to be significant enough to change or create doubt about the outcome of an election.
GBI spokesperson Nelly Miles said the agency has not initiated any investigations under the statute. The agency is assisting the secretary of state’s office in an investigation of a breach of voting equipment in Coffee County in 2021, but that is its only recent election fraud investigation, she said in an email.
That breach, which came to light earlier this year, involved local officials in a county that voted for Trump by nearly 40 percentage points in 2020 and some high-profile supporters of the former president.
State Rep. Jasmine Clark, a Democrat who opposed the additional authority for the bureau, said the lack of investigations validates the criticism that the law was unnecessary. But she said just the prospect of a GBI investigation could intimidate people who want to serve as poll workers or take on some other role in the voting process.
“In this situation, there was no actual problem to be solved,” Clark said. “This was a solution looking for a problem, and that’s never the way that we should legislate.”
The office is under the Florida Department of State. It reviews allegations and then tasks state law enforcement with pursuing violations.
DeSantis this summer announced the election unit had arrested 20 people for illegally voting in the 2020 election, when the state had 14.4 million registered voters. That was the first major election since a state constitutional amendment restored voting rights for felons, except for those convicted of murder or felony sex crimes or those who still owe fines, fees or restitution.
Court records show the 20 people were able to register to vote despite prior felony convictions, apparently leading them to believe they could legally cast ballots. At least part of the confusion stems from language in the voter registration forms that requires applicants to swear they are not a felon — or if they are, that they have had their rights restored. The forms do not inquire specifically about past convictions for murder and felony sexual assault.
One of the people charged, 56-year-old Robert Lee Wood, had his home surrounded early one morning by law enforcement officers who banged on his door and arrested him. He spent two days in jail. Wood’s lawyer, Larry Davis, said his client did not think he was breaking the law because he was able to register to vote without issue. Davis called the law enforcement reaction “over the top” in this case.
Wood’s case was dismissed by a Miami judge in late October on jurisdictional grounds, because it was brought by the Office of the Statewide Prosecutor rather than local prosecutors in Miami. The state is appealing the ruling.
Andrea Mercado, executive director of Florida Rising, an independent political activist organization focused on economic and racial justice in the state, said the disproportionate targeting of such would-be voters was sending a “chilling message to all returning citizens who want to register to vote.” She said her group found that many of them were confused about the requirements.
“You have to go to 67 counties' websites and find their individual county processes to see if you have a fine or fee,” she said. “It’s a labyrinthian ordeal.”
Weeks before the Nov. 8 election, the Office of Election Crimes and Security began notifying Florida counties of hundreds of registered voters who potentially were ineligible to vote because of prior convictions. In letters to the counties, state officials asked that election officials verify the information and then take action to prevent ineligible voters from casting ballots.
“We’ve heard stories about voters who are eligible to vote but have a criminal conviction in their past, and they are now scared to register and vote," said Michael Pernick, a voting rights attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He called it “deeply concerning.”
A spokesman for the new office did not provide information related to any other actions it might have taken or investigations it might have underway related to this year’s primary and general elections.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced he was forming his own Election Integrity Unit in September, saying it would “work to help restore confidence in our democratic process in the Commonwealth.”
The formation of the unit came in a state where Republicans swept the three statewide offices in 2021 elections, including Miyares' defeat of a Democratic incumbent.
His spokeswoman, Victoria LaCivita, said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press that the office had received complaints connected to this month's elections, but she could not comment on whether any investigations had resulted.
In addition, “the EIU successfully got a demurrer and a motion to dismiss” an attempt to force the state to abandon its use of electronic voting machines to count ballots and institute a statewide hand count.
Miyares' office said he was not available for an interview, but in a letter to the editor in The Washington Post in October he stated there was no widespread fraud in Virginia or anywhere else during the 2020 election. He said his office already had jurisdiction in election-related issues but that he was restructuring it into a unit to work more cooperatively with the election community to allay any doubts about the fairness of elections.
Smith, of the Campaign Legal Center, said there are real issues related to election security, including protecting voters, poll workers and elections staff, and securing voting equipment. But he said Republican steps to boost what they often refer to as “election integrity” to combat voter fraud often are about something else.
“It’s a myth that’s created so they can justify making it harder for people to vote,” he said.
Izaguirre reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Thanawala from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Bob Christie and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia; and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, and contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
A lot of demographic data here on but one NY district that flipped from blue to red, granted it’s from 2020. That said, how much did redistricting skew it toward red and how did the demographics change as a result? Higher average incomes? More white but less citizens? More unemployment and crime? Need to see 2022 demographics to compare.
Long Island always had usually 3 of 5 seats dem, sometimes 2. Now due to census it’s four seats and all are to the GOP and none of the races were close. It’s never been like this. Maybe Hochul was weak but the crime message resonated 100% here, and trump has always been stronger than the average blue region here. The AOC liberal extremism gets zero momentum ten miles from her home
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,832
A lot of demographic data here on but one NY district that flipped from blue to red, granted it’s from 2020. That said, how much did redistricting skew it toward red and how did the demographics change as a result? Higher average incomes? More white but less citizens? More unemployment and crime? Need to see 2022 demographics to compare.
Long Island always had usually 3 of 5 seats dem, sometimes 2. Now due to census it’s four seats and all are to the GOP and none of the races were close. It’s never been like this. Maybe Hochul was weak but the crime message resonated 100% here, and trump has always been stronger than the average blue region here. The AOC liberal extremism gets zero momentum ten miles from her home
how well did the D candidates campaign? I get thecredult. but were they quality with good messaging?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
A lot of demographic data here on but one NY district that flipped from blue to red, granted it’s from 2020. That said, how much did redistricting skew it toward red and how did the demographics change as a result? Higher average incomes? More white but less citizens? More unemployment and crime? Need to see 2022 demographics to compare.
Long Island always had usually 3 of 5 seats dem, sometimes 2. Now due to census it’s four seats and all are to the GOP and none of the races were close. It’s never been like this. Maybe Hochul was weak but the crime message resonated 100% here, and trump has always been stronger than the average blue region here. The AOC liberal extremism gets zero momentum ten miles from her home
Guaranteed the majority of those districts that flipped from blue to red had Faux on. Gift article. "LOOTING IS OUT OF CONTROL!"
A lot of demographic data here on but one NY district that flipped from blue to red, granted it’s from 2020. That said, how much did redistricting skew it toward red and how did the demographics change as a result? Higher average incomes? More white but less citizens? More unemployment and crime? Need to see 2022 demographics to compare.
Long Island always had usually 3 of 5 seats dem, sometimes 2. Now due to census it’s four seats and all are to the GOP and none of the races were close. It’s never been like this. Maybe Hochul was weak but the crime message resonated 100% here, and trump has always been stronger than the average blue region here. The AOC liberal extremism gets zero momentum ten miles from her home
GOP-controlled Arizona county refuses to certify election
By JONATHAN J. COOPER
1 hour ago
PHOENIX (AP) — Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused on Monday to certify the 2022 election, despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count, amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races.
State election officials have said they will sue Cochise County if the board of supervisors misses Monday's deadline to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass. The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until hearing once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
Democratic election attorney Marc Elias pledged on Twitter to sue the county. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs's office has previously said it would sue if the county misses the deadline.
“The Board of Supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters,” Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for Hobbs, said in an email.
Elsewhere, Republican supervisors in Mohave County postponed a certification vote until later Monday after hearing comments from residents angry about problems with ballot printers in Maricopa County. Officials in Maricopa County, the state's largest, containing Phoenix, said everyone had a chance to vote and all legal ballots were counted.
Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country. That's not been the case in Arizona, which was a focal point for efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and push false narratives of fraud.
Arizona was long a GOP stronghold, but this month Democrats won most of the highest profile races over Republicans who aggressively promoted Trump’s 2020 election lies. Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor who lost to Hobbs, and Mark Finchem, the candidate for secretary of state, have refused to acknowledge their losses. They blame Republican election officials in Maricopa County for a problem with some ballot printers.
Navajo, a rural Republican-leaning county, and Coconino, which is staunchly Democratic, voted to certify on Monday. In conservative Yavapai County, supervisors unanimously voted to canvass the results despite their own misgivings and several dozen speakers urging them not to.
Republican supervisors in Mohave County said last week that they would sign off Monday but wanted to register a protest against voting issues in Maricopa County. In Cochise County, GOP supervisors demanded last week that the secretary of state prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the election results.
State Elections Director Kori Lorick has said the machines are properly certified for use in elections. She wrote in a letter last week that the state would sue to force Cochise County supervisors to certify, and if they don't do so by the deadline for the statewide canvass on Dec. 5, the county's votes would be excluded. That move threatens to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.
There are two companies that are accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to conduct testing and certification of voting equipment, such as the electronic tabulators used in Arizona to read and count ballots.
Conspiracy theories surrounding this process surfaced in early 2021, focused on what appeared to be an outdated accreditation certificate for one of the companies that was posted online. Federal officials investigated and reported that an administrative error had resulted in the agency failing to reissue an updated certificate as the company remained in good standing and underwent audits in 2018 and in early 2021.
Officials also noted federal law dictates the only way a testing company can lose certification is for the commission to revoke it, which did not occur.
Lake has pointed to problems on Election Day in Maricopa County, where printers at some vote centers produced ballots with markings that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators. Lines backed up amid the confusion, and Lake says an unknown number of her supporters may have been dissuaded from voting as a result.
She filed a public records lawsuit last week, demanding the county produce documents shedding light on the issue before voting to certify the election on Monday. Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich has also demanded an explanation ahead of the vote.
The county responded on Sunday, saying nobody was prevented from voting, and 85% of vote centers never had lines longer than 45 minutes. Most vote centers with long lines had others nearby with shorter waits, county officials said.
The response blamed prominent Republicans, including party chair Kelli Ward, for sowing confusion by telling supporters on Twitter not to place their ballots in a secure box to be tabulated later by more robust machines at county elections headquarters.
The county said that just under 17,000 Election Day ballots were placed in those secure boxes and all were counted. Only 16% of the 1.56 million votes cast in Maricopa County were made in-person on Election Day. Those votes went overwhelmingly for Republicans.
Maricopa County supervisors heard from dozens of people angry about the printing issue, some demanding the county hold a revote, though there is no provision in state law allowing that. The county was expected to certify later Monday.
The Republican National Committee and the GOP candidate for Arizona attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, filed an election challenge in his race, which is slated for an automatic recount with Hamadeh trailing by 510 votes.
Ward has urged supporters to push their county supervisors to delay certification votes until after an afternoon scheduling hearing in the Hamadeh case.
___
Associated Press writers Terry Tang and Anita Snow in Phoenix and Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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GOP-controlled Arizona county refuses to certify election
By JONATHAN J. COOPER
1 hour ago
PHOENIX (AP) — Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused on Monday to certify the 2022 election, despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count, amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races.
State election officials have said they will sue Cochise County if the board of supervisors misses Monday's deadline to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass. The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until hearing once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
Democratic election attorney Marc Elias pledged on Twitter to sue the county. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs's office has previously said it would sue if the county misses the deadline.
“The Board of Supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters,” Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for Hobbs, said in an email.
Elsewhere, Republican supervisors in Mohave County postponed a certification vote until later Monday after hearing comments from residents angry about problems with ballot printers in Maricopa County. Officials in Maricopa County, the state's largest, containing Phoenix, said everyone had a chance to vote and all legal ballots were counted.
Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country. That's not been the case in Arizona, which was a focal point for efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and push false narratives of fraud.
Arizona was long a GOP stronghold, but this month Democrats won most of the highest profile races over Republicans who aggressively promoted Trump’s 2020 election lies. Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor who lost to Hobbs, and Mark Finchem, the candidate for secretary of state, have refused to acknowledge their losses. They blame Republican election officials in Maricopa County for a problem with some ballot printers.
Navajo, a rural Republican-leaning county, and Coconino, which is staunchly Democratic, voted to certify on Monday. In conservative Yavapai County, supervisors unanimously voted to canvass the results despite their own misgivings and several dozen speakers urging them not to.
Republican supervisors in Mohave County said last week that they would sign off Monday but wanted to register a protest against voting issues in Maricopa County. In Cochise County, GOP supervisors demanded last week that the secretary of state prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the election results.
State Elections Director Kori Lorick has said the machines are properly certified for use in elections. She wrote in a letter last week that the state would sue to force Cochise County supervisors to certify, and if they don't do so by the deadline for the statewide canvass on Dec. 5, the county's votes would be excluded. That move threatens to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.
There are two companies that are accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to conduct testing and certification of voting equipment, such as the electronic tabulators used in Arizona to read and count ballots.
Conspiracy theories surrounding this process surfaced in early 2021, focused on what appeared to be an outdated accreditation certificate for one of the companies that was posted online. Federal officials investigated and reported that an administrative error had resulted in the agency failing to reissue an updated certificate as the company remained in good standing and underwent audits in 2018 and in early 2021.
Officials also noted federal law dictates the only way a testing company can lose certification is for the commission to revoke it, which did not occur.
Lake has pointed to problems on Election Day in Maricopa County, where printers at some vote centers produced ballots with markings that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators. Lines backed up amid the confusion, and Lake says an unknown number of her supporters may have been dissuaded from voting as a result.
She filed a public records lawsuit last week, demanding the county produce documents shedding light on the issue before voting to certify the election on Monday. Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich has also demanded an explanation ahead of the vote.
The county responded on Sunday, saying nobody was prevented from voting, and 85% of vote centers never had lines longer than 45 minutes. Most vote centers with long lines had others nearby with shorter waits, county officials said.
The response blamed prominent Republicans, including party chair Kelli Ward, for sowing confusion by telling supporters on Twitter not to place their ballots in a secure box to be tabulated later by more robust machines at county elections headquarters.
The county said that just under 17,000 Election Day ballots were placed in those secure boxes and all were counted. Only 16% of the 1.56 million votes cast in Maricopa County were made in-person on Election Day. Those votes went overwhelmingly for Republicans.
Maricopa County supervisors heard from dozens of people angry about the printing issue, some demanding the county hold a revote, though there is no provision in state law allowing that. The county was expected to certify later Monday.
The Republican National Committee and the GOP candidate for Arizona attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, filed an election challenge in his race, which is slated for an automatic recount with Hamadeh trailing by 510 votes.
Ward has urged supporters to push their county supervisors to delay certification votes until after an afternoon scheduling hearing in the Hamadeh case.
___
Associated Press writers Terry Tang and Anita Snow in Phoenix and Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed.
A lot of demographic data here on but one NY district that flipped from blue to red, granted it’s from 2020. That said, how much did redistricting skew it toward red and how did the demographics change as a result? Higher average incomes? More white but less citizens? More unemployment and crime? Need to see 2022 demographics to compare.
Long Island always had usually 3 of 5 seats dem, sometimes 2. Now due to census it’s four seats and all are to the GOP and none of the races were close. It’s never been like this. Maybe Hochul was weak but the crime message resonated 100% here, and trump has always been stronger than the average blue region here. The AOC liberal extremism gets zero momentum ten miles from her home
That’s a good article but I didnt see them raise 2021 local elections, which were also big wins for the GOP. This is not quite a short term issue. It may take a long time to get these voters back as republicans have a ton of blue state voters not trusting Dems.
Why would they cry when they won the house and can investigate Biden all day long?
Historical trends and off base media predictions at the end of day do not matter. They won, they control investigations, can veto any budget item and shut down the govt as much as they want.
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Why would they cry when they won the house and can investigate Biden all day long?
Historical trends and off base media predictions at the end of day do not matter. They won, they control investigations, can veto any budget item and shut down the govt as much as they want.
Because Maricopa certified their election and Kari Lake is going to lose.
Can't disagree with you more regarding what happened in congress too. They have the slimmest of majorities. They will be fighting themselves for two years while investigating bullshit the majority of the country does not care about. That is not to their advantage at all. If they were smart they'd pivot to the center but the fringe wackos control the party now and that will never happen.
Why would they cry when they won the house and can investigate Biden all day long?
Historical trends and off base media predictions at the end of day do not matter. They won, they control investigations, can veto any budget item and shut down the govt as much as they want.
It’s a slim majority so they can’t be screwballs all day every day. House dems will pull in less wacky republicans on some bills and those same republicans aren’t going to attach their name on far right stuff.
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When those polls were taken was when it was expected we would see a large republican wave, including election deniers, Governors, the whole whack pack including Dr Oz.
Then Trump ended up with a lot of egg on his face and the biggest bright spot was probably Desantis' victory.
also
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/
Opinion by Jennifer Rubin
November 15, 2022 at 10:00 ET
After the 2016 election, the mainstream media and pollsters were filled with remorse for horribly misreading the national mood and wrongly predicting a Hillary Clinton win. How had they missed the mark so badly?
Yet after a similar media failure in this year’s midterm elections? Mostly crickets so far. If the media really want to improve their credibility and serve the interests of democracy, they need another round of introspection. What’s needed is serious and permanent changes in the way the media cover elections — especially those involving former president Donald Trump.
The Trump challenge starts Tuesday night, when the former president is expected to announce his presidential campaign for 2024. The media would be wise not to cover the news conference live, which will almost certainly include a host of election conspiracy theories.
Indeed, as a general rule, the media must be especially clear whenever Trump lies (virtually every time he opens his mouth). They should continue to frame headlines to underscore when his statements are untrue. And while he might generate more clicks and attract more eyeballs, news outlets should not devote any more time or space to him than other top candidates. They dare not make the mistake as they did in 2016, when they acted as a free communications team.
Beyond Trump, pollsters and reporters need to recognize that women aren’t a minority or interest group. They are the average voter. Forget diners as the locale for interviews with voters; go to yoga studios, school pickup lines, supermarkets and other places where ordinary women can be found. Find out what their concerns are and what candidate qualities turn them off. If they do this, maybe next time the media will not underestimate women’s disgust with right-wing politicians.
The media should also acknowledge error in the widespread narrative that Latinos are fleeing the Democratic Party. They are not. Florida, where many Latinos live, has trended Republican, but nationwide, the majority of Latinos still vote Democratic.
In Texas, Democrats held on to the state’s 28th Congressional District and flipped the 34th, both heavily Latino areas. The border areas remained blue, thanks in part to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke’s strong showing in the region. Media outlets also need to recognize that several other states with large Latino populations — Nevada, Arizona and Colorado — have been trending blue.
Better yet, the media need to recognize that “Latino” is almost meaningless because it encompasses people with vastly different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Treating an American born in Puerto Rico like a third-generation businessman with a Spanish surname but no Spanish fluency makes little sense.
Next, it’s long past time to stop allowing polls to shape coverage. A shift away from horserace coverage, which is often wrong and utterly irrelevant, would allow the media to focus on candidates’ experience and character, major policy issues and voters’ attitudes and demographic changes. Journalism should not be a Magic Eight Ball; it is about understanding and analyzing the recent past and present.
Here’s an idea: cap the number of stories each month that cite or rely on polling. Instead, find gurus in each state who really understand the ins and outs of voting trends (e.g., Jon Ralston in Nevada), expand use of focus groups, track coverage in local media and watch where candidates are spending money. Pay attention when both sides appear to agree that an issue is working for one side. (As I noted, in swing districts Democrats were leaning into the abortion issue while Republicans were scrubbing their positions on the issue from their websites.) The media won’t be better at guessing the outcome, but it will be better at explaining what is happening in a race. That’s the point, after all.
Political coverage should also be more candid. It should acknowledge that the GOP is populated with cranks, conspiratorialists and election deniers who are at odds with the public. If the media had done this throughout this year’s cycle, it might not have been so shocking that millions of Americans rejected these Republicans across the board.
While they are at it, the media should cease its fixation with debates. Voters virtually never change their minds after such events, and the media’s own judgments about who “won” often runs contrary to voters’ perceptions. Town halls and long interviews might provide just as much information to voters — without the cringeworthy news reviews.
Finally, the media should recognize where they succeeded. Some outlets put much effort into highlighting election deniers and elevating secretary of state races. This helped inform voters about previously obscure races. Armed with information about the threat election deniers pose, voters lo and behold rejected them in virtually every governor and secretary of state race in swing states.
None of this would help the media get predictions right, because the intention is to move the media out of the prediction business. In a country in which a handful of states and districts decide elections by extremely small margins, polling provides pundits a false sense of confidence — especially when aggregated with junk polls.
Journalism can improve its image by leaving the prognostication to betting markets and tarot card readers. That should free up resources to focus on the threats still facing democracy.
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"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
The House election results in New York show ego prevailed over party (nbcnews.com)
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counting 5 grey boxes in California and 1 in Colorado, wheres the 7nvm. Alaska has yet to be called.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans won control of the U.S. House on Wednesday, returning the party to power in Washington and giving conservatives leverage to blunt President Joe Biden’s agenda and spur a flurry of investigations. But a threadbare majority will pose immediate challenges for GOP leaders and complicate the party’s ability to govern.
More than a week after Election Day, Republicans secured the 218th seat needed to flip the House from Democratic control. The full scope of the party’s majority may not be clear for several more days — or weeks — as votes in competitive races are still being counted.
But they are on track to cobble together what could be the party's narrowest majority of the 21st century, rivaling 2001, when Republicans had just a nine-seat majority, 221-212 with two independents. That’s far short of the sweeping victory the GOP predicted going into this year’s midterm elections, when the party hoped to reset the agenda on Capitol Hill by capitalizing on economic challenges and Biden’s lagging popularity.
Instead, Democrats showed surprising resilience, holding on to moderate, suburban districts from Virginia to Minnesota and Kansas. The results could complicate House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s plans to become speaker as some conservative members have questioned whether to back him or have imposed conditions for their support.
McCarthy celebrated his party having “officially flipped” the House on Twitter on Wednesday night, writing, “Americans are ready for a new direction, and House Republicans are ready to deliver.”
President Joe Biden congratulated McCarthy, saying he is “ready to work with House Republicans to deliver results for working families.”
“Last week’s elections demonstrated the strength and resilience of American democracy. There was a strong rejection of election deniers, political violence, and intimidation,” Biden said in a statement. “There was an emphatic statement that, in America, the will of the people prevails.”
He added, that “the future is too promising to be trapped in political warfare."
The narrow margins have upended Republican politics and prompted finger-pointing about what went wrong. Some in the GOP have blamed Donald Trump for the worse-than-expected outcome. The former president, who announced his third White House bid Tuesday, lifted candidates during this year’s Republican primaries who often questioned the results of the 2020 election or downplayed the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol last year. Many of those struggled to win during the general election.
Despite the GOP’s underwhelming showing, the party will still have notable power. Republicans will take control of key committees, giving them the ability to shape legislation and launch probes of Biden, his family and his administration. There’s particular interest in investigating the overseas business dealings of the president’s son Hunter Biden. Some of the most conservative lawmakers have raised the prospect of impeaching Biden, though that will be much harder for the party to accomplish with a tight majority.
Any legislation that emerges from the House could face steep odds in the Senate, where Democrats won the barest of majorities Saturday. Both parties are looking to a Dec. 6 Senate runoff in Georgia as a last chance to pad their ranks.
With such a potentially slim House majority, there’s also potential for legislative chaos. The dynamic essentially gives an individual member enormous sway over shaping what happens in the chamber. That could lead to particularly tricky circumstances for GOP leaders as they try to win support for must-pass measures that keep the government funded or raise the debt ceiling.
The GOP’s failure to notch more wins — they needed a net gain of five seats to take the majority — was especially surprising because the party went into the election benefiting from congressional maps that were redrawn by Republican legislatures. History was also on Republicans’ side: The party that holds the White House had lost congressional seats during virtually every new president’s first midterm of the modern era.
The new majority will usher in a new group of leaders in Washington. If elected to succeed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the top post, McCarthy would lead what will likely be a rowdy conference of House Republicans, most of whom are aligned with Trump’s bare-knuckle brand of politics. Many Republicans in the incoming Congress rejected the results of the 2020 presidential election, even though claims of widespread fraud were refuted by courts, elections officials and Trump’s own attorney general.
McCarthy won the nomination for House speaker on Tuesday, with a formal vote to come when the new Congress convenes in January.
“I'm proud to announce the era of one-party Democrat rule in Washington is over,” McCarthy said after winning the nomination.
Republican candidates pledged on the campaign trail to cut taxes and tighten border security. GOP lawmakers also could withhold aid to Ukraine as it fights a war with Russia or use the threat of defaulting on the nation’s debt as leverage to extract cuts from social spending and entitlements — though all such pursuits will be tougher given how small the GOP majority may end up being.
As a senator and then vice president, Biden spent a career crafting legislative compromises with Republicans. But as president, he was clear about what he viewed as the threats posed by the current Republican Party.
Biden said the midterms show voters want Democrats and Republicans to find ways to cooperate and govern in a bipartisan manner, but also noted that Republicans didn’t achieve the electoral surge they’d been betting on and vowed, “I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.”
AP VoteCast, a broad survey of the national electorate, showed that high inflation and concerns about the fragility of democracy had heavily influenced voters. Half of voters said inflation factored significantly, with groceries, gasoline, housing, food and other costs that have shot up in the past year. Slightly fewer — 44% — said the future of democracy was their primary consideration.
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Counter to the GOP’s expectations, Biden didn’t entirely shoulder the blame for inflation, with close to half of voters saying the higher-than-usual prices were more because of factors outside his control. And despite the president bearing criticism from a pessimistic electorate, some of those voters backed Democratic candidates.
Democrats also likely benefited from anger over the Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision cementing a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. Voters in Michigan voted to amend their state constitution to protect abortion rights while far more reliably Republican Kentucky rejected a constitutional amendment declaring no right to an abortion.
Overall, 7 in 10 voters said the high court’s ruling overturning the 1973 decision enshrining abortion rights was an important factor in their midterm decisions. VoteCast also showed the reversal was broadly unpopular. About 6 in 10 say they are angry or dissatisfied by it. And roughly 6 in 10 say they favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.
___
Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.
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ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia counties will be allowed to hold early voting this Saturday in the U.S. Senate runoff election between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, under a Wednesday ruling from the state Supreme Court.
The court issued a unanimous, one-sentence ruling declining to review or stay a ruling by the state's intermediate appellate court. Republicans had objected to the Saturday voting.
Warnock and Walker, the former University of Georgia and NFL football star, were forced into a Dec. 6 runoff because neither won a majority in the midterm election this month. Early in-person voting ends on Dec. 2, the Friday before Election Day, which means that Nov. 26 would be the only possible Saturday when early voting could be held.
At issue is a section of Georgia law that says early in-person voting is not allowed on a Saturday if the Thursday or Friday preceding it is a holiday. The state and Republican groups argued that means voting shouldn't be allowed this Saturday, Nov. 26, because Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday is a state holiday. Warnock's campaign and Democratic groups argued that the prohibition applies only to primaries and general elections, not runoff elections.
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Georgia’s 2021 election law compressed the time period between the general election and the runoff to four weeks, and Thanksgiving falls in the middle. Many Georgians will be offered only five weekdays of early in-person voting beginning Nov. 28.
Eighteen of the state's 159 counties — including six of the 10 most populous — planned to offer voting on Saturday, interim Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling said on Twitter late Tuesday. Some counties plan to offer early voting Sunday, ahead of the required start Monday.
After initially saying in a television interview that voting would be allowed Nov. 26, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger then issued guidance to county election officials saying it is not allowed. Warnock's campaign, along with the Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sued last week to challenge that guidance.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox issued an order Friday saying state law does not prohibit early voting this coming Saturday. The state appealed that ruling Monday and asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to stay the lower court ruling. The Court of Appeals issued a single-sentence order late Monday declining to stay the lower court's order.
State officials accepted that ruling and said they would not pursue further appeals. But the Georgia Republican Party, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican National Committee, which had been allowed to join the case as intervenors, on Tuesday appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — State-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud are looking into scattered complaints more than two weeks after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems.
That's just what election experts had expected and led critics to suggest that the new units were more about politics than rooting out widespread abuses. Most election-related fraud cases already are investigated and prosecuted at the local level.
Florida, Georgia and Virginia created special state-level units after the 2020 election, all pushed by Republican governors, attorneys general or legislatures.
“I am not aware of any significant detection of fraud on Election Day, but that’s not surprising,” said Paul Smith, senior vice president of the Campaign Legal Center. “The whole concept of voter impersonation fraud is such a horribly exaggerated problem. It doesn’t change the outcome of the election, it's a felony, you risk getting put in jail and you have a high possibility of getting caught. It's a rare phenomena.”
The absence of widespread fraud is important because the lies surrounding the 2020 presidential election spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies have penetrated deeply into the Republican Party and eroded trust in elections. In the run-up to this year's elections, 45% of Republicans had little to no confidence that votes would be counted accurately.
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An Associated Press investigation found there was no widespread fraud in Georgia or the five other battleground states where Trump disputed his 2020 loss, and so far there is no indication of that in this year's elections. Certification of the results is going smoothly in most states, with few complaints.
In Georgia, where Trump tried to pressure state officials to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss, a new law gives the state’s top law enforcement agency, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, authority to initiate investigations of alleged election fraud without a request from election officials. The alleged violation would have to be significant enough to change or create doubt about the outcome of an election.
GBI spokesperson Nelly Miles said the agency has not initiated any investigations under the statute. The agency is assisting the secretary of state’s office in an investigation of a breach of voting equipment in Coffee County in 2021, but that is its only recent election fraud investigation, she said in an email.
That breach, which came to light earlier this year, involved local officials in a county that voted for Trump by nearly 40 percentage points in 2020 and some high-profile supporters of the former president.
State Rep. Jasmine Clark, a Democrat who opposed the additional authority for the bureau, said the lack of investigations validates the criticism that the law was unnecessary. But she said just the prospect of a GBI investigation could intimidate people who want to serve as poll workers or take on some other role in the voting process.
“In this situation, there was no actual problem to be solved,” Clark said. “This was a solution looking for a problem, and that’s never the way that we should legislate.”
Florida has been the most visible state, creating its Office of Election Crimes and Security amid much fanfare this year and keeping a pledge that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis made in 2021 to combat unspecified election fraud.
The office is under the Florida Department of State. It reviews allegations and then tasks state law enforcement with pursuing violations.
DeSantis this summer announced the election unit had arrested 20 people for illegally voting in the 2020 election, when the state had 14.4 million registered voters. That was the first major election since a state constitutional amendment restored voting rights for felons, except for those convicted of murder or felony sex crimes or those who still owe fines, fees or restitution.
Court records show the 20 people were able to register to vote despite prior felony convictions, apparently leading them to believe they could legally cast ballots. At least part of the confusion stems from language in the voter registration forms that requires applicants to swear they are not a felon — or if they are, that they have had their rights restored. The forms do not inquire specifically about past convictions for murder and felony sexual assault.
One of the people charged, 56-year-old Robert Lee Wood, had his home surrounded early one morning by law enforcement officers who banged on his door and arrested him. He spent two days in jail. Wood’s lawyer, Larry Davis, said his client did not think he was breaking the law because he was able to register to vote without issue. Davis called the law enforcement reaction “over the top” in this case.
Wood’s case was dismissed by a Miami judge in late October on jurisdictional grounds, because it was brought by the Office of the Statewide Prosecutor rather than local prosecutors in Miami. The state is appealing the ruling.
Andrea Mercado, executive director of Florida Rising, an independent political activist organization focused on economic and racial justice in the state, said the disproportionate targeting of such would-be voters was sending a “chilling message to all returning citizens who want to register to vote.” She said her group found that many of them were confused about the requirements.
“You have to go to 67 counties' websites and find their individual county processes to see if you have a fine or fee,” she said. “It’s a labyrinthian ordeal.”
Weeks before the Nov. 8 election, the Office of Election Crimes and Security began notifying Florida counties of hundreds of registered voters who potentially were ineligible to vote because of prior convictions. In letters to the counties, state officials asked that election officials verify the information and then take action to prevent ineligible voters from casting ballots.
“We’ve heard stories about voters who are eligible to vote but have a criminal conviction in their past, and they are now scared to register and vote," said Michael Pernick, a voting rights attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He called it “deeply concerning.”
A spokesman for the new office did not provide information related to any other actions it might have taken or investigations it might have underway related to this year’s primary and general elections.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced he was forming his own Election Integrity Unit in September, saying it would “work to help restore confidence in our democratic process in the Commonwealth.”
The formation of the unit came in a state where Republicans swept the three statewide offices in 2021 elections, including Miyares' defeat of a Democratic incumbent.
His spokeswoman, Victoria LaCivita, said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press that the office had received complaints connected to this month's elections, but she could not comment on whether any investigations had resulted.
In addition, “the EIU successfully got a demurrer and a motion to dismiss” an attempt to force the state to abandon its use of electronic voting machines to count ballots and institute a statewide hand count.
Miyares' office said he was not available for an interview, but in a letter to the editor in The Washington Post in October he stated there was no widespread fraud in Virginia or anywhere else during the 2020 election. He said his office already had jurisdiction in election-related issues but that he was restructuring it into a unit to work more cooperatively with the election community to allay any doubts about the fairness of elections.
Smith, of the Campaign Legal Center, said there are real issues related to election security, including protecting voters, poll workers and elections staff, and securing voting equipment. But he said Republican steps to boost what they often refer to as “election integrity” to combat voter fraud often are about something else.
“It’s a myth that’s created so they can justify making it harder for people to vote,” he said.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections
___
Izaguirre reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Thanawala from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Bob Christie and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia; and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, and contributed to this report.
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how well did the D candidates campaign? I get thecredult. but were they quality with good messaging?
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PHOENIX (AP) — Republican officials in a rural Arizona county refused on Monday to certify the 2022 election, despite no evidence of anything wrong with the count, amid pressure from prominent Republicans to reject results showing Democrats winning top races.
State election officials have said they will sue Cochise County if the board of supervisors misses Monday's deadline to approve the official tally of votes, known as the canvass. The two Republican county supervisors delayed the canvass vote until hearing once more about concerns over the certification of ballot tabulators, though election officials have repeatedly said the equipment is properly approved.
Democratic election attorney Marc Elias pledged on Twitter to sue the county. Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs's office has previously said it would sue if the county misses the deadline.
“The Board of Supervisors had all of the information they needed to certify this election and failed to uphold their responsibility for Cochise voters,” Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for Hobbs, said in an email.
Elsewhere, Republican supervisors in Mohave County postponed a certification vote until later Monday after hearing comments from residents angry about problems with ballot printers in Maricopa County. Officials in Maricopa County, the state's largest, containing Phoenix, said everyone had a chance to vote and all legal ballots were counted.
Election results have largely been certified without issue in jurisdictions across the country. That's not been the case in Arizona, which was a focal point for efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and push false narratives of fraud.
Arizona was long a GOP stronghold, but this month Democrats won most of the highest profile races over Republicans who aggressively promoted Trump’s 2020 election lies. Kari Lake, the GOP candidate for governor who lost to Hobbs, and Mark Finchem, the candidate for secretary of state, have refused to acknowledge their losses. They blame Republican election officials in Maricopa County for a problem with some ballot printers.
Navajo, a rural Republican-leaning county, and Coconino, which is staunchly Democratic, voted to certify on Monday. In conservative Yavapai County, supervisors unanimously voted to canvass the results despite their own misgivings and several dozen speakers urging them not to.
Republican supervisors in Mohave County said last week that they would sign off Monday but wanted to register a protest against voting issues in Maricopa County. In Cochise County, GOP supervisors demanded last week that the secretary of state prove vote-counting machines were legally certified before they would approve the election results.
State Elections Director Kori Lorick has said the machines are properly certified for use in elections. She wrote in a letter last week that the state would sue to force Cochise County supervisors to certify, and if they don't do so by the deadline for the statewide canvass on Dec. 5, the county's votes would be excluded. That move threatens to flip the victor in at least two close races — a U.S. House seat and state schools chief — from a Republican to a Democrat.
There are two companies that are accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to conduct testing and certification of voting equipment, such as the electronic tabulators used in Arizona to read and count ballots.
Conspiracy theories surrounding this process surfaced in early 2021, focused on what appeared to be an outdated accreditation certificate for one of the companies that was posted online. Federal officials investigated and reported that an administrative error had resulted in the agency failing to reissue an updated certificate as the company remained in good standing and underwent audits in 2018 and in early 2021.
Officials also noted federal law dictates the only way a testing company can lose certification is for the commission to revoke it, which did not occur.
Lake has pointed to problems on Election Day in Maricopa County, where printers at some vote centers produced ballots with markings that were too light to be read by on-site tabulators. Lines backed up amid the confusion, and Lake says an unknown number of her supporters may have been dissuaded from voting as a result.
She filed a public records lawsuit last week, demanding the county produce documents shedding light on the issue before voting to certify the election on Monday. Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich has also demanded an explanation ahead of the vote.
The county responded on Sunday, saying nobody was prevented from voting, and 85% of vote centers never had lines longer than 45 minutes. Most vote centers with long lines had others nearby with shorter waits, county officials said.
The response blamed prominent Republicans, including party chair Kelli Ward, for sowing confusion by telling supporters on Twitter not to place their ballots in a secure box to be tabulated later by more robust machines at county elections headquarters.
The county said that just under 17,000 Election Day ballots were placed in those secure boxes and all were counted. Only 16% of the 1.56 million votes cast in Maricopa County were made in-person on Election Day. Those votes went overwhelmingly for Republicans.
Maricopa County supervisors heard from dozens of people angry about the printing issue, some demanding the county hold a revote, though there is no provision in state law allowing that. The county was expected to certify later Monday.
The Republican National Committee and the GOP candidate for Arizona attorney general, Abraham Hamadeh, filed an election challenge in his race, which is slated for an automatic recount with Hamadeh trailing by 510 votes.
Ward has urged supporters to push their county supervisors to delay certification votes until after an afternoon scheduling hearing in the Hamadeh case.
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Associated Press writers Terry Tang and Anita Snow in Phoenix and Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections
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https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3753244-arizonas-maricopa-county-votes-to-certify-2022-election-over-gop-objections/
Can't disagree with you more regarding what happened in congress too. They have the slimmest of majorities. They will be fighting themselves for two years while investigating bullshit the majority of the country does not care about. That is not to their advantage at all. If they were smart they'd pivot to the center but the fringe wackos control the party now and that will never happen.