Elections

Officials in Cochise County gave final approval to the midterm results after a judge ordered them to end the stall tactics.An Arizona county whose Republican supervisors had refused to certify last month’s election results relented on Thursday under court order, ending an unusual standoff that had threatened to delay the formal end of the election in the closely watched battleground state.In a hastily arranged meeting, the board of supervisors in Cochise County voted 2 to 0 to approve the final canvass of votes in the largely rural county in the southeast corner of the state. The move came hours after Judge Casey F. McGinley of Pima County Superior Court ordered members of the board of supervisors to take action by the end of the day.Whatever concerns they had about the election, “it is not a reason to delay” finalizing the results, Judge McGinley said at a hearing on the matter.The board’s two Republican members, Peggy Judd and Tom Crosby, had said they were stalling to hear out the concerns of right-wing activists promoting a legal theory — one previously debunked by federal election officials and rejected by the state’s courts — that the state’s electronic voting equipment was invalid.But in an interview this week with The New York Times, Ms. Judd characterized the delay as a way to protest the election in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, where Republican candidates have clashed with Republican election officials over unproven claims that November’s election was compromised by technical problems.Before she voted to give up the protest, Ms. Judd acknowledged she would be disappointing some people.Peggy Judd, vice chairwoman of the Cochise County board of supervisors, after the election certification on Thursday.Rebecca Noble for The New York Times“I’m going to make a lot of people happy, and some people are going to stay mad at me anyway, but that’s OK, too,” she said. “I’m a person and our lives are all like that, ups and downs and happy and sad.”Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, sued the Cochise County board of supervisors on Monday for refusing to certify the county’s election by the deadline. The action had threatened to delay the statewide certification of the results beyond the legal deadline of Dec. 5.Ms. Hobbs, a Democrat who defeated the Republican Kari Lake in the governor’s race last month, argued in the lawsuit that the Cochise County board had overstepped its bounds. Judge McGinley on Thursday agreed, saying the board had “exceeded its lawful authority” in delaying certification.His decision followed a brief but chaotic hearing in which the county board members appeared without a lawyer. The county attorney, Brian McIntyre, had for weeks opposed a series of efforts by Ms. Judd and Mr. Crosby to audit or delay certification of last month’s election, arguing that they were illegal.In the hearing, Ann English, the board’s chairwoman and its lone Democratic member, spoke up in opposition and expressed concerns about a board meeting scheduled for Friday, in which Mr. Crosby had hoped to have a group of Arizona election deniers and representatives of Ms. Hobbs’s office present their cases against and for certification — “a sort of a smackdown,” she said.“I think it’s a circus that doesn’t even have to happen,” Ms. English told Judge McGinley in the hearing. “I’ve had enough. I think the public’s had enough.”Ann English, the chairwoman of the board of supervisors, after Cochise County’s midterm election certification meeting on Thursday.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesMs. English and Ms. Judd voted to end the standoff. Mr. Crosby did not attend the board meeting.Mr. Crosby and Ms. Judd had at various times said that their efforts were necessary to assuage the concerns of their constituents, citing a variety of election conspiracy theories and false claims that have taken root in a large swath of the Republican electorate.In a rebuke of some of these theories, a federal district judge in Arizona found on Thursday that Ms. Lake and Mark Finchem, the losing Republican candidate for secretary of state, had made “false, misleading and unsupported factual assertions” in a lawsuit that the judge, John J. Tuchi, said was worthy of sanctions.The judge found that Ms. Lake and Mr. Finchem did not meet the standards for receiving sanctions themselves, “although the court does not find that plaintiffs have acted appropriately in this matter — far from it.” He said he would determine who among the lawyers involved in the case should be sanctioned.Alan Dershowitz, one of the lawyers on the case, and other attorneys for Ms. Lake and Mr. Finchem did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The legal fallout from the election in Arizona is likely to continue. Ms. Lake has said she plans to file a lawsuit contesting the results of the election as soon as Monday, as does Abe Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for attorney general, who is trailing his opponent by only around 500 votes.Mr. Hamadeh already filed such a suit last week, but it was dismissed on Tuesday after a state judge found it was “premature.”Ken Bensinger More

Despite all the tough headlines, he could prevail. Here are two theories about how the runoff could unfold.The steady stream of tough headlines for Herschel Walker has always obscured one stubborn fact about the Senate race in Georgia: He could still win.With the runoff election just days away, the conventional wisdom holds that Senator Raphael Warnock is waltzing toward re-election against an inexperienced Republican opponent who has a thin grasp on policy issues, avoids reporters, faces serious allegations about his personal conduct and has been known to ramble on the stump. But if things were that simple, Warnock would have won handily in November.And if there’s one thing American politics keeps teaching us, it’s to be humble about predicting what voters will do. With that in mind, here are two basic ways to look at the Georgia runoff on Tuesday:The case for WarnockUnder this theory, the runoff is Warnock’s to lose.Many Republicans will stay home, the thinking goes, because they no longer believe that their vote matters much. It’s hard to make the case that 51 Democrats in the Senate, as opposed to 50, would represent some huge threat to conservative priorities and values. Denying Democrats a majority vote on Senate committees is not the kind of argument that fires up the Republican base.Runoff elections are driven by who can persuade more of their supporters to vote yet another time. And Warnock has a battle-tested turnout operation that has now performed well over three elections.The Walker campaign, by contrast, is relying on Gov. Brian Kemp — who is no longer on the ballot — to drag a weak candidate across the finish line. Senate Republicans have basically rented Kemp’s field program for the runoff, but it’s not at all clear that an operation built to turn out voters for Kemp can change gears so easily. Walker drew about 200,000 fewer votes than Kemp did, suggesting that there’s a large chunk of Republican voters who find the Senate hopeful unworthy. Forced to stand on his own two feet, Walker might crumble.Democrats are also outspending Republicans heavily down the stretch. Since Nov. 9, they’ve spent more than double what Republicans have spent on the runoff on digital and television advertising — nearly $53 million versus a little over $24 million, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. The two parties were much closer to parity in the three months before Election Day, though Democrats had a slight edge in spending.The case for WalkerThe second theory rests on the fact that Georgia is still fundamentally a right-leaning state, as this year’s blowout race for governor showed. Perhaps the state’s historical tendencies will prove decisive in the runoff, whatever Walker’s deficiencies as a candidate.Warnock finished ahead of Walker in the general election by fewer than 40,000 votes. The Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver, received more than 81,000 votes — and he is not on the ballot this time. Oliver earned about 50,000 votes more than the Libertarian candidate did in the race for governor, suggesting that he was a sponge for conservatives who could not stomach Walker. If only 46 percent of Oliver’s supporters vote for the Republican this time, Warnock’s margin on Nov. 8 will be completely erased.It’s possible, too, that voters who chose Kemp but not Walker in November will change their minds — if they show up, that is. Walker drew a lower share of the vote than Kemp did, not just in metro Atlanta but also in the most conservative areas of the state. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Walker ran behind Kemp by at least six percentage points in eight counties — most of them Republican strongholds, with the exception of Cobb County.Walker’s indictment of Warnock was always a simple one: He’s another vote for President Biden’s agenda. And, Biden, with an approval rating in the 30s or low 40s, is about as popular in Georgia as the Florida Gators. So Warnock was careful, during his lone debate with Walker, not to associate himself too closely with Biden.What to Know About Georgia’s Senate RunoffCard 1 of 6Another runoff in Georgia. More

An analysis of November turnout data shows that voting by mail dropped as Georgians increasingly cast ballots in person. The shift hints at the possible impact of a 2021 voting overhaul.While voter turnout remained strong, absentee voting in Georgia dropped off drastically in this year’s midterm election, the first major test of an expansive 2021 voting law that added restrictions for casting ballots by mail.Data released by the Georgia secretary of state showed that mail voting in the state’s November general election plunged by 81 percent from the level of the 2020 contest. While a drop was expected after the height of the pandemic, Georgia had a far greater decrease than any other state with competitive statewide races, according to a New York Times analysis.Turnout data suggests that a large majority of people who voted by mail in 2020 found another way to cast their ballots this year — turning to in-person voting, either early or on Election Day. Turnout in the state was 56 percent of all active voters, shy of the 2018 high-water mark for a midterm election.The numbers are the first sign of how the 2021 law may have affected the election in Georgia, which has recently established itself as a battleground state. The law was signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, and backed by G.O.P. state lawmakers who said that the changes would make it “easier to vote, harder to cheat.” It significantly limited drop boxes, added voter identification requirements and prevented election officials from proactively mailing out absentee ballot applications.But civil rights groups, voting rights advocates and Democrats noted that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in elections. They viewed the law, known as S.B. 202, as an attempt to suppress Democratic-leaning voters, especially people of color, who had just helped flip Georgia blue in a presidential election for the first time in decades.President Biden called the law “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” Major League Baseball moved its All-Star game out of suburban Atlanta in protest.This year, after a mostly smooth and high-turnout general election under the new rules, both sides saw validation in their arguments. Republicans pointed to the strong overall turnout as evidence that the law had not suppressed votes. Democrats and civil rights groups argued that their sprawling voter education and mobilization efforts had helped people overcome the new hurdles.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

Plus: Kyiv in darkness, South Africa in turmoil and the week in culture.Vigil attendees in Beijing commemorated the victims of an apartment fire in Urumqi, China.Thomas Peter/ReutersIs China shifting on ‘zero Covid’?China appears to be backing away from its harsh Covid rules, after a week of mass protests against its policies. The demonstrations have been the largest challenge to Beijing in decades.In Guangzhou, residents returned to work yesterday for the first time in weeks after Covid-19 lockdowns were lifted. In Chongqing, some residents were no longer required to take regular Covid tests. And in Beijing, a senior health official played down the severity of Omicron variants, a rare move.The ruling Communist Party has still not publicly acknowledged the widespread demonstrations against lockdowns. But, after policing measures mostly muted the protests, the party is signaling a willingness to address the root cause of the public anger: intrusive pandemic controls that have stifled economic growth and left millions confined in their homes for long stretches.Context: Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has staked the party’s legitimacy on controlling the virus better than the nation’s rivals in the West. Any reversal or abandonment could undercut his authority.From Opinion:Run from anyone who claims to know where China’s protests are headed next, Nicholas Kristof says.Yasheng Huang argues that Xi Jinping has broken the social contract that helped China prosper.The Chinese people have reached a tipping point and are losing faith in the Communist Party, Wu Qiang writes.E.U. diplomats are still debating an oil price cap.Alexey Malgavko/ReutersIn Kyiv, life without powerSix million people across Ukraine are without power as temperatures drop. In Kyiv, 3.3 million people face shortages of electricity, water and heat, as well as cellphone and internet service.Municipal officials estimate that 1.5 million people are still without power for more than 12 hours a day in the capital. Elevators are stocked with emergency supplies, in case the power fails. The National Philharmonic played on a stage lit by battery-powered lanterns. Doctors have performed surgeries by flashlight. A cafe has two menus, one with no hot food.Residents are exhausted, and threats are mounting. Temperatures are often below freezing now. Extended power outages threaten health care and risk a rise in accidents and hypothermia. Yesterday, Russian shelling also knocked out power in Kherson, which was recently recaptured.Context: Kyiv has been relatively unscathed since spring. But waves of Russian missiles targeting Ukraine’s energy grid have affected the city.Understand the Protests in ChinaThe Toll of ‘Zero Covid’: The protests come as President Xi Jinping’s harsh pandemic policies have hurt businesses and strangled growth. The Daily looks at what the demonstrations could mean for Mr. Xi.A Roar of Discontent: The protests have awoken a tradition of dissent that had seemed spent after 10 years under Mr. Xi. The effects may far outlast the street clashes.The Economic Fallout: The unrest in the world’s biggest manufacturing nation is injecting a new element of uncertainty and instability into the global economy.Facing Long Odds: The protesters in China hope to bring sweeping change, but three major forces stand in their way, our columnist writes.Strikes: Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, defended strikes on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. (The U.N. said they could amount to war crimes.)Aid: The U.N. is seeking a record-breaking $51.5 billion from international donors. The war is fueling desperation around the world.“All options are on the table,” said a spokesman for President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSouth Africa’s president in perilCyril Ramaphosa’s future as South Africa’s president hangs in the balance, a day after a parliamentary panel found that he may have broken the law. Opponents are lobbying for his departure as Parliament readies itself for a possible impeachment hearing for corruption. On Wednesday, a parliamentary report cast heavy skepticism on Ramaphosa’s explanation of how a large sum of U.S. currency came to be hidden in — and stolen from — a sofa at his farm.When he swept into office four years ago, Ramaphosa was heralded as an anti-corruption crusader. But one of the president’s political foes alleged in June that Ramaphosa had between $4 million and $8 million stolen from his property in February 2020 and that he failed to report the theft to the police.Ramaphosa: He claims that only $580,000 was stolen and that the money represented the proceeds of the sale of 20 buffaloes. But now, he may be doomed by a corruption scandal of his own making.Elections: The A.N.C. is scheduled to elect its leadership at a national conference in two weeks. Until he was rocked by corruption allegations, Ramaphosa was favored to win a second term.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificRakesh Kumar Yadav, 40, died in Dubai. Five weeks later, his body was flown to Nepal.Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesNepali migrants face inequality and vulnerability overseas. When they die, their families also struggle to repatriate their remains.From Opinion: Many Afghans who worked with U.S. troops were left behind in the withdrawal. Their text messages reveal their desperation.Around the WorldThe two leaders lavished praise on each other despite tensions about the handling of the war in Ukraine.Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Biden welcomed Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, at the White House. Biden said that he would be open to meeting with Vladimir Putin, but with conditions.The two leaders will have a state dinner. Check out the menu.The U.S. and Ukrainian Embassies in Spain were targeted by letter bombs. No major injuries have been reported.The DealBook SummitSam Bankman-Fried said that FTX’s downfall was caused by “a massive failure of oversight on my part.” Here are key takeaways from his interview.Janet Yellen, the U.S. Treasury secretary, described the collapse of FTX as a “Lehman moment” and called for more regulation of cryptocurrency.The World CupLed by Lionel Messi, Argentina advanced with a 2-0 victory over Poland, which also qualified for the knockout round despite the loss.Japan beat Spain, 2-1. And Germany beat Costa Rica, 4-2, but was eliminated.Belgium, a heavyweight, was eliminated after tying Croatia, 0-0. Morocco advanced with a win over Canada, 2-1.Garment workers in Myanmar earn less than $3 a day to produce soccer apparel for Adidas. Some say they were fired for asking for a raise.Qatar is watching the World Cup, too. Our photographer shot spectators across the country, rejoicing in public.The Week in CultureUNESCO, the United Nations heritage agency, decreed that the French baguette is a piece of “intangible cultural heritage.”Sight & Sound’s once-a-decade poll of critics crowned “Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” as the greatest movie ever made. It’s the first to top the list that was directed by a woman.“Everything Everywhere All at Once” got top honors at the Gotham Awards, the first big show of the awards season.Where have all the movie stars gone?A Morning ReadGeorge Steinmetz for The New York TimesFew countries ship more live animals overseas than Australia, which has exported a million cattle a year, on average, since 2017. Damien Cave, our Sydney bureau chief, followed the route of some cattle to Indonesia, where they will be fattened and slaughtered by Islamic butchers.Advocacy groups insist that the journey is unethical, and the route is dangerous. But the business also has its own unique culture, at once a throwback and a modern marvel of globalization.ARTS AND IDEAS‘I want my body back,” Aleigha Harris said.Yehyun Kim for The New York TimesWhat does it take to breastfeed?Some 83 percent of babies in the U.S. start out on breast milk. But by 6 months, just 56 percent are breastfed. At that stage, only a quarter drink breast milk exclusively, as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends.That steady decline speaks to the wide-ranging challenges parents face in trying to breastfeed.Take Dr. Laiyin Ma, who returned to work four weeks after her oldest daughter’s birth and two weeks after her second arrived. She pumped milk in stolen bursts in clinic rooms, propping her chair against the door to prevent patients and colleagues from barging in. While performing long operations, she leaked breast milk under her surgical gown.She is stung by the irony that doctors and nurses struggle to meet the health guidelines they themselves recommend. “I really don’t think that people realize how hard it is for women in medicine to breastfeed,” Dr. Ma said.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookEvan Sung for The New York TimesThis cranberry tart riffs on the French tarte au citron.What to MoviesWatch a great documentary this weekend.What to Listen toChristine McVie, who died at 79, was the serene center of Fleetwood Mac. Here are some of her most beloved songs.Where to TravelSpend 36 hours in Rome, merging old and new.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and here’s a clue: Take the wheel (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.Have a lovely weekend! See you Monday. — AmeliaP.S. We’ll send you 31 delights, tips and distractions to get you through each day of the holiday season. Sign up here.“The Daily” is on a Jan. 6 verdict.Whet Moser wrote today’s Arts and Ideas. Email us at [email protected]. More

An Ohio judge ordered Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who concocted a 2020 robocall scheme to discourage mail-in voting, to spend hundreds of hours registering new voters.Two conservative operatives responsible for placing tens of thousands of calls in Midwestern states that made false claims about the legitimacy of mail-in ballots were sentenced by an Ohio judge to spend hundreds of hours registering new voters.The operatives, Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Va., and Jacob Wohl, 24, of Irvine, Calif., orchestrated a robocall scheme that targeted Black neighborhoods in Ohio in 2020, prosecutors said.More than 8,000 of the roughly 67,000 phone calls the pair made across the Midwest, using a voice broadcasting service, were sent to phone numbers in Cleveland and East Cleveland, where many Black voters reside, prosecutors said. The calls were placed during the pandemic, ahead of the 2020 election, a time of heightened interest in absentee voting because of rising concerns about health and safety.The calls falsely stated that voting by mail meant the personal information of people who cast those ballots would be added to a public database and that they would be tracked by the authorities.“Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man,” the recorded message said, according to a court filing in Michigan, which said Mr. Burkman and Mr. Wohl specifically targeted “Black neighborhoods” in the Midwest, including Cleveland. “Stay safe and beware of vote by mail.”The Spread of Misinformation and FalsehoodsCovid Myths: Experts say the spread of coronavirus misinformation — particularly on far-right platforms like Gab — is likely to be a lasting legacy of the pandemic. And there are no easy solutions.Midterms Misinformation: Social media platforms struggled to combat false narratives during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, but it appeared most efforts to stoke doubt about the results did not spread widely.A ‘War for Talent’: Seeing misinformation as a possibly expensive liability, several companies are angling to hire former Twitter employees with the expertise to keep it in check. A New Misinformation Hub?: Misleading edits, fake news stories and deepfake images of politicians are starting to warp reality on TikTok.The prerecorded messages claimed that mail-in voting would result in a cascade of negative consequences, including pursuit by the authorities for outstanding debts and warrants, and mandatory vaccines.On Tuesday, Mr. Burkman and Mr. Wohl were sentenced in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland. At the hearing, which the defendants attended by videoconference, Judge John Sutula likened the robocall scheme to voter suppression efforts targeting Southern Black voters in the 1960s, Cleveland.com reported.“I think it’s a despicable thing that you guys have done,” Judge Sutula remarked, according to Cleveland.com.Mr. Wohl previously promoted false sexual assault allegations against Pete Buttigieg, then a Democratic presidential candidate, and Robert S. Mueller, the former special counsel.In the robocall case, Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman were each sentenced to completing two years of probation, working 500 hours at a voting registration center in Washington, D.C., and paying a $2,500 fine, a spokeswoman for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office said. They will also be electronically monitored for 12 hours, starting at 8 p.m. each day, through the first six months of their probation period.Michael C. O’Malley, the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, called the sentence “appropriate.”“These two individuals attempted to disrupt the foundation of our democracy,” Mr. O’Malley said in a statement.The sentence arrived two years after they were indicted in Ohio for their voter intimidation scheme. They had initially faced up to 18 years in prison for multiple charges of bribery and telecommunications fraud but under a plea deal, the charges were merged into a single count each of telecommunications fraud, which they pleaded guilty to in October 2022.Mark Wieczorek, a lawyer representing Mr. Wohl, said that the sentence was “fair” and “in the spirit of justice.”“We think it’s a great sentence given the amount of charges he was originally indicted with,” Mr. Wieczorek said. “I think he is genuinely remorseful for his actions and took full responsibility for it.”Mr. Burkman’s lawyer could not be reached for comment.The pair also face similar charges in Michigan, where a case against them is still pending in the state’s Supreme Court, said John Nevin, a spokesman for the court. In 2020, they were charged with intimidating voters, conspiracy to intimidate voters, using a computer to intimidate voters and conspiracy to use a computer to intimidate voters, according to a criminal complaint. A judge in New York previously ordered them to call 85,000 people back to inform them that their initial calls about voting by mail had included false information. More

The ads, submitted by researchers, were rejected by YouTube and TikTok.Facebook says it does not allow content that threatens serious violence. But when researchers submitted ads threatening to “lynch,” “murder” and “execute” election workers around Election Day this year, the company’s largely automated moderation systems approved many of them.Out of the 20 ads submitted by researchers containing violent content, 15 were approved by Facebook, according to a new test published by Global Witness, a watchdog group, and New York University’s Cybersecurity for Democracy. Researchers deleted the approved ads before they were published.Ten of the test ads were submitted in Spanish. Facebook approved six of those ads, compared with nine of the 10 ads in English.TikTok and YouTube rejected all the ads and suspended the accounts that attempted to submit them, the researchers said.The tests underscored the challenges that social networks face in moderating increasingly partisan and violent content around elections, especially as poll workers are facing additional threats from election deniers and far-right extremists. The Justice Department and other federal agencies warned ahead of this year’s midterm elections that threats against election workers had surged.In a statement, a spokesman for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it later disabled several accounts that had submitted the ads. The company also said that ads continue to be reviewed after they go live.“This is a small sample of ads that are not representative of what people see on our platforms,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Content that incites violence against election workers or anyone else has no place on our apps, and recent reporting has made clear that Meta’s ability to deal with these issues effectively exceeds that of other platforms.”The research adds to previous tests conducted by the same groups, including one this year in which 20 ads were submitted containing political misinformation. In that test, Facebook approved only two of the misleading ads in English from an account in the United States, while TikTok approved about 90 percent of them. YouTube suspended the account that tried to submit the ads.But this round used more overt language that tested Facebook’s largely automated moderating system. Those included direct threats of violence, which were sourced from real statements by election deniers and other far-right extremists in the United States. One ad, which was approved by Facebook, read: “We are going to kill you all.” Another ad, which threatened to abuse children, was also approved.“It was really quite shocking to see the results,” said Damon McCoy, an associate professor at N.Y.U. “I thought a really simple keyword search would have flagged this for manual review.”In a statement, researchers also said they wanted to see social networks like Facebook increase content moderation efforts and offer more transparency around the moderation actions they take.“The fact that YouTube and TikTok managed to detect the death threats and suspend our account, whereas Facebook permitted the majority of the ads to be published shows that what we are asking is technically possible,” they wrote. More

Tuesday afternoon, I waited over an hour and a half to vote in Atlanta in the Georgia Senate runoff between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.This is my second election cycle in Georgia, but I still can’t get used to the wait times to vote. It’s a voter suppression tactic in and of itself. It’s a poll tax paid in time.I lived more than 25 years in New York, where I took for granted that voting was a casual affair. For years, I would take my children into the booth with me so that they could see how the electoral process worked. There was never a line. Maybe there was a person or two in front of us, but no real delay.I wouldn’t do that here in Georgia. Forcing a child to wait in a long line in the cold could by itself be considered abusive.But, as I waited, something else occurred to me: Voter suppression is one of the surest cures for apathy. Nothing makes you value a thing like someone trying to steal it from you.The line, and all the people patiently waiting in it, is a symbol of resilience and perseverance. It is a reminder that people will work hard to overcome obstacles to accomplish things they deem essential.Waiting in line is such a feature of Georgia voting that some counties even publish their waiting times online so that voters can plan their arrivals to have the shortest wait.These waits can disproportionately affect nonwhite voters. According to a report by Georgia Public Broadcasting and ProPublica before Election Day in 2020, a shrinking number of polling places “has primarily caused long lines in nonwhite neighborhoods where voter registration has surged and more residents cast ballots in person on Election Day.”According to the report, the nine metro Atlanta counties “have nearly half of the state’s active voters but only 38 percent of the polling places.”Yet those voters would not be deterred.During the general election, voters set a record for the number of early votes cast in a Georgia midterm election, and on Monday and again on Tuesday they set records for single-day early voting in a Georgia runoff. It is interesting to note that an estimated 35 percent of the early votes so far are from African Americans, a slightly greater figure than their percentage of the population of Georgia.This is a testament to the fortitude of those voters, because they were the ones targeted by Georgia’s latest round of voter suppression with “uncanny accuracy,” as the Brennan Center for Justice’s president, Michael Waldman, put it last year. Waldman wrote that Gov. Brian Kemp “signed his voter suppression bill in front of a painting of a plantation where more than 100 Black people had been enslaved. The symbolism, unnerving and ghastly, is almost too fitting.”People who defend voter suppression point to these numbers as proof that their critics are simply being hyperbolic and creating an issue where none exists. But that is the opposite of the truth as far as I can see it. From my perspective, voters are simply responding with defiance to the efforts to suppress.And yet that defiance might still not be enough to overcome all of the obstacles placed in voters’ way. While those record daily numbers are heartening, they are in part a result of a new Republican election law that cut the number of early-voting days roughly in half. Even with the extraordinary turnout, it is unlikely this year’s early voting will match that of last year’s runoff between Warnock and the Republican incumbent, Kelly Loeffler.In addition, Republicans have fielded a singularly offensive candidate in Walker, a man not fit for elective office, a walking caricature of Black competence and excellence, as if Black candidates are interchangeable irrespective of accomplishment and proficiency.The whole time I was waiting in line, I kept thinking about how the wait would have been impossible for someone struggling with child care or elder care, or someone whose job — or jobs — wouldn’t allow for that long a break in the middle of the day.Also, I voted on an unseasonably warm day. What about those whose only opportunity to vote might be a day when it was raining or cold? The line at my polling place was outside for 90 percent of the time I waited.I have nothing but disdain for the efforts to suppress the vote in my new home state, but I have nothing but admiration for the voters’ determination not to be suppressed.Democracy is being saved by sheer force of will, by people climbing a hill that should never have been put in front of them.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

Mr. Pence, while promoting his new book at the DealBook Summit, frowned upon the idea of the Justice Department’s taking action against his former boss.Former Vice President Mike Pence said that he hoped Elon Musk would “create a level playing field” on Twitter that doesn’t censor users.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesNEW YORK — Former Vice President Mike Pence leaned into Republican talking points on Wednesday about Elon Musk and Disney while walking a familiar fine line on his former boss, delivering a message seemingly geared toward conservatives who will decide whether he is a viable presidential contender in 2024.Appearing at The Times’s DealBook Summit in New York, Mr. Pence was repeatedly pressed by Andrew Ross Sorkin, the founder of DealBook, to talk about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and the character of former President Donald J. Trump. He demurred.Even as he repeated his belief that Mr. Trump is not an antisemite, he again condemned Mr. Trump for hosting Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and racist, at a recent dinner.“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, a Holocaust denier, a seat at the table,” Mr. Pence said.He defended the role he had played on Jan. 6, when Mr. Trump’s supporters called for his hanging after he had refused to overturn the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.And he said that he had never seen “evidence of widespread fraud that would change the outcome” of the 2020 presidential election.When asked whether Mr. Trump should face an indictment by the Justice Department, he frowned on the scenario.“I’m not sure that taking bad advice from lawyers is a violation of criminal law,” he said. “We see too many cases in third world countries where the incoming administration prosecutes a prior administration. That is not an image I want to resonate for the United States.”He also doubled down on comments he made earlier in the day during a Fox News appearance about Mr. Musk, saying he had faith in Mr. Musk’s overhaul of Twitter and its content guidelines, which had led the company under its previous ownership to banish Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 attack.Mr. Pence, who is weighing a run for president, took a swipe at Disney during his remarks as well. He sought to correlate its stock losses and a recent executive shake-up with the company’s criticism of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The measure prohibits classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in some elementary school grades.“I think Bob Iger’s recent statements, coming into lead Disney again, prove that the antidote to woke America is America,” he said, referring to Mr. Iger’s return as Disney’s chief executive.He also mentioned his new book, “So Help Me God,” no fewer than seven times — enough to make it a punchline.“As you can tell, if I haven’t mentioned, I have a book,” Mr. Pence joked.“We got that,” Mr. Sorkin said. “We are good.”Mr. Pence underlined, as he often had before, that he was proud of the work done by the Trump administration. But, he noted, “It obviously didn’t end well.” More