Elections

Several states run by Democrats are pushing for stiffer rules on the spread of false information, while Republican-run states are pushing for fewer rules.To fight disinformation, California lawmakers are advancing a bill that would force social media companies to divulge their process for removing false, hateful or extremist material from their platforms. Texas lawmakers, by contrast, want to ban the largest of the companies — Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — from removing posts because of political points of view.In Washington, the state attorney general persuaded a court to fine a nonprofit and its lawyer $28,000 for filing a baseless legal challenge to the 2020 governor’s race. In Alabama, lawmakers want to allow people to seek financial damages from social media platforms that shut down their accounts for having posted false content.In the absence of significant action on disinformation at the federal level, officials in state after state are taking aim at the sources of disinformation and the platforms that propagate them — only they are doing so from starkly divergent ideological positions. In this deeply polarized era, even the fight for truth breaks along partisan lines.The result has been a cacophony of state bills and legal maneuvers that could reinforce information bubbles in a nation increasingly divided over a variety of issues — including abortion, guns, the environment — and along geographic lines.The midterm elections in November are driving much of the activity on the state level. In red states, the focus has been on protecting conservative voices on social media, including those spreading baseless claims of widespread electoral fraud.In blue states, lawmakers have tried to force the same companies to do more to stop the spread of conspiracy theories and other harmful information about a broad range of topics, including voting rights and Covid-19.“We should not stand by and just throw up our hands and say that this is an impossible beast that is just going to take over our democracy,” Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, a Democrat, said in an interview.Calling disinformation a “nuclear weapon” threatening the country’s democratic foundations, he supports legislation that would make it a crime to spread lies about elections. He praised the $28,000 fine levied against the advocacy group that challenged the integrity of the state’s vote in 2020.“We ought to be creatively looking for potential ways to reduce its impact,” he said, referring to disinformation.The biggest hurdle to new regulations — regardless of the party pushing them — is the First Amendment. Lobbyists for the social media companies say that, while they seek to moderate content, the government should not be in the business of dictating how that’s done.Concerns over free speech defeated a bill in deeply blue Washington that would have made it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail, for candidates or elected officials “to spread lies about free and fair elections when it has the likelihood to stoke violence.”Governor Inslee, who faced baseless claims of election fraud after he won a third term in 2020, supported the legislation, citing the Supreme Court’s 1969 ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio. That ruling allowed states to punish speech calling for violence or criminal acts when “such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”The legislation stalled in the state’s Senate in February, but Mr. Inslee said the scale of the problem required urgent action.Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat from Washington State, faced baseless claims of election fraud after he won a third term in 2020.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York TimesThe scope of the problem of disinformation, and of the power of the tech companies, has begun to chip away at the notion that free speech is politically untouchable.The new law in Texas has already reached the Supreme Court, which blocked the law from taking effect in May, though it sent the case back to a federal appeals court for further consideration. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the legislation last year, prompted in part by the decisions by Facebook and Twitter to shut down the accounts of former President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, violence on Capitol Hill.The court’s ruling signaled that it could revisit one core issue: whether social media platforms, like newspapers, retain a high degree of editorial freedom.“It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in a dissent to the court’s emergency ruling suspending the law’s enforcement.A federal judge last month blocked a similar law in Florida that would have fined social media companies as much as $250,000 a day if they blocked political candidates from their platforms, which have become essential tools of modern campaigning. Other states with Republican-controlled legislatures have proposed similar measures, including Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and Alaska.Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, has created an online portal through which residents can complain that their access to social media has been restricted: alabamaag.gov/Censored. In a written response to questions, he said that social media platforms stepped up efforts to restrict content during the pandemic and the presidential election of 2020.“During this period (and continuing to present day), social media platforms abandoned all pretense of promoting free speech — a principle on which they sold themselves to users — and openly and arrogantly proclaimed themselves the Ministry of Truth,” he wrote. “Suddenly, any viewpoint that deviated in the slightest from the prevailing orthodoxy was censored.”Much of the activity on the state level today has been animated by the fraudulent assertion that Mr. Trump, and not President Biden, won the 2020 presidential election. Although disproved repeatedly, the claim has been cited by Republicans to introduce dozens of bills that would clamp down on absentee or mail-in voting in the states they control.Democrats have moved in the opposite direction. Sixteen states have expanded the abilities of people to vote, which has intensified pre-emptive accusations among conservative lawmakers and commentators that the Democrats are bent on cheating.“There is a direct line from conspiracy theories to lawsuits to legislation in states,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of voting rights at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan election advocacy organization at the New York University School of Law. “Now, more than ever, your voting rights depend on where you live. What we’ve seen this year is half the country going in one direction and the other half going the other direction.”TechNet, the internet company lobbying group, has fought local proposals in dozens of states. The industry’s executives argue that variations in state legislation create a confusing patchwork of rules for companies and consumers. Instead, companies have highlighted their own enforcement of disinformation and other harmful content.“These decisions are made as consistently as possible,” said David Edmonson, the group’s vice president for state policy and government relations.For many politicians the issue has become a powerful cudgel against opponents, with each side accusing the other of spreading lies, and both groups criticizing the social media giants. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has raised campaign funds off his vow to press ahead with his fight against what he has called the “authoritarian companies” that have sought to mute conservative voices. In Ohio, J.D. Vance, the memoirist and Republican nominee for Senate, railed against social media giants, saying they stifled news about the foreign business dealings of Hunter Biden, the president’s son.In Missouri, Vicky Hartzler, a former congresswoman running for the Republican nomination for Senate, released a television ad criticizing Twitter for suspending her personal account after she posted remarks about transgender athletes. “They want to cancel you,” she said in the ad, defending her remarks as “what God intended.”OnMessage, a polling firm that counts the National Republican Senatorial Committee as a client, reported that 80 percent of primary voters surveyed in 2021 said they believed that technology companies were too powerful and needed to be held accountable. Six years earlier, only 20 percent said so. “Voters have a palpable fear of cancel culture and how tech is censoring political views.” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Florida Republican, has raised campaign funds off his vow to press ahead with his fight against what he has called “authoritarian companies.”Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIn blue states, Democrats have focused more directly on the harm disinformation inflicts on society, including through false claims about elections or Covid and through racist or antisemitic material that has motivated violent attacks like the massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo in May.Connecticut plans to spend nearly $2 million on marketing to share factual information about voting and to create a position for an expert to root out misinformation narratives about voting before they go viral. A similar effort to create a disinformation board at the Department of Homeland Security provoked a political fury before its work was suspended in May pending an internal review.In California, the State Senate is moving forward with legislation that would require social media companies to disclose their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, extremism, harassment and foreign political interference. (The legislation would not compel them to restrict content.) Another bill would allow civil lawsuits against large social media platforms like TikTok and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram if their products were proven to have addicted children.“All of these different challenges that we’re facing have a common thread, and the common thread is the power of social media to amplify really problematic content,” said Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel of California, a Democrat, who sponsored the legislation to require greater transparency from social media platforms. “That has significant consequences both online and in physical spaces.”It seems unlikely that the flurry of legislative activity will have a significant impact before this fall’s elections; social media companies will have no single response acceptable to both sides when accusations of disinformation inevitably arise.“Any election cycle brings intense new content challenges for platforms, but the November midterms seem likely to be particularly explosive,” said Matt Perault, a director of the Center on Technology Policy at the University of North Carolina. “With abortion, guns, democratic participation at the forefront of voters’ minds, platforms will face intense challenges in moderating speech. It’s likely that neither side will be satisfied by the decisions platforms make.” More

Many of Shinzo Abe’s goals are central to the Liberal Democrats’ platform, and party members hoped the slain ex-leader’s memory would inspire sympathy votes on Sunday.TOKYO — When Shinzo Abe was gunned down at a campaign stop on Friday, he was no longer the leader of Japan, nor of its governing party. But as Japanese voters went to the polls on Sunday, Mr. Abe, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, was still a guiding political force, shaping their choices at the ballot box and his party’s vision for the future.“I have the responsibility to take over the ideas of former Prime Minister Abe,” the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, told a crowd west of Tokyo on Saturday, the day after Mr. Abe’s killing, as he campaigned for their party’s candidates for the Upper House of Parliament.Many of Mr. Abe’s goals, like bolstering military spending and revising Japan’s pacifist Constitution, are still central to the Liberal Democratic Party’s platform. And party leaders hoped that drawing on his memory would give them more power to enact those ideas.Even before the assassination, the Liberal Democrats, along with Komeito, their longtime partner in the governing coalition, had been expected to win a majority of the seats up for grabs in the Upper House on Sunday. If Mr. Abe’s death results in the additional sympathy votes that some analysts expect, the coalition could gain a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament.Technically, at least, that would give it the power to achieve Mr. Abe’s most cherished goal: amending the clause in the Constitution imposed by postwar American occupiers that renounces war, and thus opening the door for Japan to become a military power capable of global leadership.Hours after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot in Nara, Japan, people left flowers at the site of the attack.Philip Fong/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMuch stands in the way of that goal — not least that it has long been unpopular with the Japanese public. And with inflation pressures mounting, the yen weakening and coronavirus infections again on the rise, changing the Constitution could be a harder sell than ever.“I’m interested in prices, wages, daily life, medical services and child care,” said Risako Sakaguchi, 29, who cast her votes for Liberal Democratic candidates at a polling station in Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo.Given such fundamental concerns, “constitutional revision is a kind of luxury good,” said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who oversees work on Asia.“It’s the kind of thing where if there’s nothing else going on, maybe you can focus on this,” Mr. Harris said. “But given that attention being spent on constitutional revision is attention not being paid to other stuff, there is going to be a penalty for it, especially when people are so concerned about household issues.”More on the Assassination of Shinzo AbeAn Influential Figure: Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was one of the most transformational politicians in the country’s post-World War II history.Japan’s Gun Laws: Mr. Abe’s assassination may look like a rebuke of the country’s stringent gun laws. But a closer look at what happened actually demonstrates their effectiveness. Reactions: People in Japan, where violent crime is rare, were rattled by the assassination. Mr. Abe’s death also prompted an outpouring of mournful statements from world leaders.Mr. Abe, who was in office for nearly eight years (in addition to a brief, earlier stint as prime minister), left a legacy that went well beyond his hopes of revising the Constitution.Even after Japan fell behind China in world economic rankings, he helped extend its influence by holding a multinational trade agreement together after President Donald J. Trump pulled the United States out of it. At home, he helped bring the economy back from years of doldrums. Even if his economic policies never delivered as much as he promised, he gained international recognition for the program he called “Abenomics.”After he left office, Mr. Abe’s public statements resonated well beyond those of most former prime ministers. When he suggested that it was time for Japan to establish a nuclear sharing agreement with the United States, media outlets assumed the Liberal Democrats were considering a break with the longtime taboo against even discussing the possibility of a Japanese nuclear arsenal.For Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the sudden loss of Mr. Abe may present opportunities as well as perils. Pool photo by Yoshikazu TsunoWithin the party, he was a kingmaker, often referred to as a “shadow shogun.” Mr. Kishida owes his position to Mr. Abe, who directed his supporters to throw their weight behind him after Mr. Abe’s first choice, Sanae Takaichi, lost a first-round ballot in the party leadership contest.Campaigning for Liberal Democrats over the last two weeks, Mr. Abe’s enduring influence was on display, drawing crowds as far north as Hokkaido and as far south as Fukuoka. His fatal visit to Nara, Japan’s old capital, was his second in support of Kei Sato, 43, a junior member of the party.For Mr. Kishida, the sudden loss of Mr. Abe may present opportunities as well as perils. He could consolidate power after the election, as he is not legally required to call another one for three years. Politicians in Japan often refer to this interval as the “golden period.”But history suggests the odds may be against him. Since the end of World War II, powerful prime ministers have typically been followed by a revolving door of forgettable faces, said Carol Gluck, a professor of history and specialist in modern Japan at Columbia University. Mr. Kishida is the second person to hold the job since Mr. Abe resigned in 2020; his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, lasted just a year.“There’s a whole lot of prime ministers, if you add them up between 1945 and now, who did not make a mark,” Professor Gluck said.Privately, Mr. Kishida may feel some relief that he will no longer have to answer to Mr. Abe. But others in the party are sure to maneuver to fill the power vacuum.Mr. Abe, center, campaigning in Yokohama for a Liberal Democratic candidate on Wednesday.Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Abe led the largest, and most right-leaning, party faction, and he had not anointed a successor. Infighting could unsettle the party and make it more difficult for Mr. Kishida to get policies enacted.“It would have been much more predictable if Abe was still a big influence,” said Koichi Nakano, a professor of politics at Sophia University.Party power squabbles aside, the bigger question may be whether Mr. Kishida ultimately has his own vision.He once cast himself as a liberal-leaning, dovish member of the party. But driven by the war in Ukraine and increasing threats from North Korea and China, Mr. Kishida has followed Mr. Abe in calling for increased military spending and weapons that can strike missile launch sites in enemy territory.Without Mr. Abe as a driving force, though, some analysts wonder if Mr. Kishida will be able to deliver on that national security agenda.“I think Japan will lose our momentum to strengthen our defense,” said Lully Miura, a political scientist and head of the Yamaneko Research Institute in Tokyo. “We need a visible figure who can support the strong security and appeal to the public.”At the peak of his power, Mr. Abe himself was unable to push through the constitutional revisions he so badly wanted. In 2016, he presided over a Parliament in which his governing coalition had the required two-thirds supermajority. But tensions within the coalition, along with concern that the public — which must ultimately ratify any constitutional amendment — would not go along, thwarted his hopes. Changing the Constitution could be even further out of reach now, given multiple crises around the world and at home.Campaign posters outside a Tokyo polling station on Sunday. Kimimasa Mayama/EPA, via ShutterstockThe war in Ukraine has worsened supply chain problems and driven up the prices of oil and other commodities, raising fears of energy shortages in Japan. Coronavirus infections, until recently under control, have started rising again. And in the longer term, an aging population and falling birthrate raise the prospect of labor shortages and problems with caregiving.Mr. Kishida has offered no all-encompassing program to address such challenges. When running for the party leadership, he spoke of a “new capitalism,” but never spelt out what that meant, other than vague rhetoric about reducing inequality.“Kishida could get things done if there are things that he wants to get done,” said Nick Kapur, a historian of modern Japan at Rutgers University. “He has some popularity and he’s going to have a majority, but as we know, there are so many economic headwinds for everyone in the world — dealing with inflation and an emerging markets debt crisis and the war in Ukraine — and maybe that would damage any leader at some point.”Interest in politics has long been low in Japan, where the Liberal Democrats have been in power for virtually all of the postwar period — largely because of ineffective opposition parties, many analysts say. Early indications on Sunday were that turnout would be low, despite the party’s hopes for a surge in sympathy votes.Ayumi Sekizawa, 31, who works for a real estate company in Tokyo, said he had voted for the Liberal Democrats in part to show his support after Mr. Abe’s death. But he said he usually voted for them because there were “no other good parties.”He said that given the aggressive behavior of Russia, China and North Korea, he agreed that Japan needed to improve its defense capabilities.But his main concerns were closer to home. “I’m interested in the economy,” he said. “Wages should be raised, otherwise, virtually, our living standard is declining.”Makiko Inoue More

Republicans are standing behind Herschel Walker, the former football star, despite an array of revelations, missteps and questions about his qualifications for a Senate seat. ATLANTA — Georgia Republicans knew for months before Herschel Walker launched his Senate campaign that he would be a huge risk in one of the party’s most pivotal races. Just how much of a risk has become clear to many of them in recent weeks.Mr. Walker has blundered through an array of missteps and has endured negative media coverage, raising questions about his past and fitness for the office.He made exaggerated and untrue claims about his business background and his ties to law enforcement. After repeatedly criticizing absent fathers in Black households, he publicly acknowledged having fathered two sons and a daughter with whom he is not regularly in contact. And he initially failed, according to reporting by The Daily Beast, to share information about those three children with senior campaign aides.“Herschel Walker, the wannabe U.S. senator, is avoiding contact — with opponents, with the media, with good sense — like the way Georgia Bulldog fans sidestep wedding invites that fall on a gameday,” Adam Van Brimmer, opinion editor of the Savannah Morning News, wrote in a recent column. “Walker isn’t so much running for U.S. Senate as he is running from it.”Yet these developments have mattered little to Republican officials and strategists, several of whom said in interviews that their support for Mr. Walker has not wavered. They said he continues to have the backing of top Republican leaders in the state at a time when Democrats are bracing for bruising losses in the November midterms. Even those in the G.O.P. who are quietly wary of Mr. Walker’s tumultuous past and his lack of political experience say they are looking past all that and focusing instead on flipping a Democratic seat in the Senate.The Republican Party has stood by numerous elected officials and candidates plagued by scandals, often choosing to break with them only when their chances of winning a race are jeopardized. For Mr. Walker — who comes with hefty investments from top conservative groups, Donald J. Trump’s blessing and a base enamored by his football stardom at the University of Georgia in the 1980s — that break has yet to materialize. A display in honor of Herschel Walker at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in Macon.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“I think Georgia Democrats have gotten a lot more excited than the Republicans have gotten worried,” said Randy Evans, a former leader of the Republican National Committee in Georgia and an ambassador to Luxembourg under Mr. Trump. Some Republicans, however, said they believe Mr. Walker will continue to be weakened in the months leading up to the November election. Janelle King, an Atlanta-area Republican political consultant whose husband, Kelvin King, ran against Mr. Walker in the G.O.P. primary, said that Mr. King and other unsuccessful Senate candidates argued that the party had been too blinded by Mr. Walker’s football stardom to see that his past would be a liability. Now, she said, she wishes they had worked harder to highlight those concerns. In addition to a slow drip of negative press, Mr. Walker failed to attend any of the Republican Senate debates during the primary — something Ms. King said she regrets not making a bigger focal point of her husband’s campaign. “We should have demanded to see more from him,” she said. “Because at least we could have worked out some of these things. So now we’re in the general and everything is just coming out.”Others in the party who are concerned about Mr. Walker’s past fear it will hurt his standing with the slice of independent and moderate Republican voters who will ultimately decide the race. Some Republicans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the campaign, said that Mr. Walker’s staff should have taken advantage of his lead during the primary to prepare for a much tougher general election by sharpening his public speaking skills for the debates against the Democratic incumbent, Senator Raphael Warnock. Mr. Warnock has already committed to attending three debates later this fall. Mr. Walker has also agreed to debate but has not named the debates he would attend. In the last week Mr. Walker’s campaign has limited his media exposure almost completely, barring reporters from attending at least two of his events, including one with the Buckhead Atlanta chapter of the Young Republicans and an Independence Day picnic that was billed as “open to everyone” with Representative Andrew Clyde. “Georgia voters will have a clear choice this fall between Reverend Warnock’s extensive record of fighting for all Georgians to lower costs for hardworking Georgia families and Herschel Walker’s pattern of lies, exaggerations, and completely bizarre claims, all of which show he is not ready to represent Georgians in the U.S. Senate,” Meredith Brasher, Mr. Warnock’s communications director, said in a statement.Recent polling shows a tight race between Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock. A poll from the Democratic group Data for Progress shows Mr. Walker with a two-point lead over Mr. Warnock. In late June, a Quinnipiac poll found that Mr. Warnock had a ten-point lead over Mr. Walker — Mr. Walker’s campaign claimed the margin is much closer. Mallory Blount, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walker, said the recent string of headlines had little effect. “Attacks on our campaign aren’t new and I’m sure we will see more,” Ms. Blount said in a statement. “What else can Sen. Warnock talk about? Gas prices? Inflation? Crime? Accomplishments? Nope. The fact is Warnock cares more about Joe Biden than he does Georgia — he’s gone Washington and left Georgia behind.” Those who are confident about Mr. Walker’s prospects say that voters are either not paying close attention to the negative stories about him or not caring enough about them to let it change their vote. Last month, at a Juneteenth event hosted by Mr. Walker’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, voters characterized the negative coverage as little more than political distractions. “He is a man. He’s doing right by his family. He’s doing right by the community,” said Ronel Saintvil, a Republican who is Black and who lives in metro Atlanta. “To me, for somebody just to bad mouth him like this, I don’t believe it’s right. They’re not focusing on the issues at hand that affect the people in Georgia. And I think that’s what’s more important.” Others say Democrats’ own woes, both nationally and statewide, are buffering concerns about Mr. Walker.Marci McCarthy, chair of the DeKalb County Republican Party, cited recent stories of Mr. Warnock’s use of campaign funds for personal legal matters, saying voters “are really not looking for the rubbish about either candidate.”Mr. Walker’s campaign, for its part, has started to make a number of changes in preparation for the fall, including hiring a new communications director. Top Republican groups have also made big investments in the race. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican Senate campaign arm that has so far spent $8 million in Georgia this year, bought $1.4 million in pro-Walker television airtime last week, according to the advertising data tracking firm, AdImpact. And in the state, Mr. Walker benefits from support among the party’s most faithful. In Cherokee County, a Georgia Republican stronghold that supported Mr. Trump by nearly 40 points in 2020, G.O.P. leaders are planning to host an event in partnership with the campaign in the coming weeks, according to the county party chair, James Dvorak. Vernon Jones, the Democrat-turned-Trump-Republican who lost his congressional race in Georgia’s deep-red 10th district, has also entered the fray, saying on Friday that he will launch an independent expenditure committee supporting Mr. Walker’s and Gov. Brian Kemp’s campaigns. He plans to spend at least $500,000 in radio and digital advertisements aimed at Black male voters over the next four months. The continuing support shows Mr. Walker’s strength, his proponents say. “You’re going to have bumps in the road in the road, and it’s probably better to get those things out of the way as early as possible,” said Eric J. Tanenblatt, a Georgia Republican strategist who was chief of staff to a former governor, Sonny Perdue. “I think by the time voting starts in the fall, some of these bumps in the road will get worked out. I hope so, for Herschel’s sake.” More

President Biden has said he plans to run for a second term, but his age has become an uncomfortable issue for him and his party.WASHINGTON — When President Biden leaves Tuesday night for a four-day swing through the Middle East, he will presumably be more rested than he would have been had he followed the original plan.The trip was initially tacked onto another journey last month to Europe, which would have made for an arduous 10-day overseas trek until it became clear to Mr. Biden’s team that such extended travel might be unnecessarily taxing for a 79-year-old president, or “crazy,” as one official put it.Aides also cited political and diplomatic reasons to reorganize the extra stops as a separate trip weeks later. But the reality is that managing the schedule of the oldest president in American history presents distinct challenges. And as Mr. Biden insists he plans to run for a second term, his age has increasingly become an uncomfortable issue for him, his team and his party.Just a year and a half into his first term, Mr. Biden is already more than a year older than Ronald Reagan was at the end of two terms. If he mounts another campaign in 2024, Mr. Biden would be asking the country to elect a leader who would be 86 at the end of his tenure, testing the outer boundaries of age and the presidency. Polls show many Americans consider Mr. Biden too old, and some Democratic strategists do not think he should run again.It is, unsurprisingly, a sensitive topic in the West Wing. In interviews, some sanctioned by the White House and some not, more than a dozen current and former senior officials and advisers uniformly reported that Mr. Biden remained intellectually engaged, asking smart questions at meetings, grilling aides on points of dispute, calling them late at night, picking out that weak point on Page 14 of a memo and rewriting speeches like his abortion remarks on Friday right up until the last minute.But they acknowledged Mr. Biden looks older than just a few years ago, a political liability that cannot be solved by traditional White House stratagems like staff shake-ups or new communications plans. His energy level, while impressive for a man of his age, is not what it was, and some aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events, and they hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe.Although White House officials insist they make no special accommodations the way Reagan’s team did, privately they try to guard Mr. Biden’s weekends in Delaware as much as possible. He is generally a five- or five-and-a-half-day-a-week president, although he is called at any hour regardless of the day as needed. He stays out of public view at night and has taken part in fewer than half as many news conferences or interviews as recent predecessors.Mr. Biden fell off his bike in Delaware last month. He did not appear to suffer any injuries, but the incident attracted widespread attention.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Biden fell while dismounting a bicycle last month, White House officials ruefully noticed that it was among the top stories of the week — never mind that the president works out five mornings a week, often with a physical trainer, or that many men his age hardly ride bikes anymore.Mr. Biden himself has said questions about his fitness are reasonable to ask even as he reassures Americans that he is in good shape. Even for some admirers, though, the question is whether that will last six more years.The Biden PresidencyWith midterm elections looming, here’s where President Biden stands.Struggling to Inspire: At a time of political tumult and economic distress, President Biden has appeared less engaged than Democrats had hoped.Low Approval Rating: Despite early warnings from his pollster, Mr. Biden’s approval among Americans has reached the lowest level of his presidency.Rallying Allies: Faced with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Biden has set out to bolster the West and outline a more muscular NATO.Staff Changes: An increasing number of West Wing departures has added to the sense of frustration inside the Biden White House.Looking Ahead to 2024: Amid doubts from Democrats, aides say Mr. Biden is irked by persistent questions over his plans to seek re-election.“I do feel it’s inappropriate to seek that office after you’re 80 or in your 80s,” said David Gergen, a top adviser to four presidents. “I have just turned 80 and I have found over the last two or three years I think it would have been unwise for me to try to run any organization. You’re not quite as sharp as you once were.”Everyone ages differently, of course, and some experts put Mr. Biden in a category of “super-agers” who remain unusually fit as they advance in years.“Right now, there’s no evidence that the age of Biden should matter one ounce,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a longevity specialist at the University of Illinois Chicago who studied the candidates’ ages in 2020. “If people don’t like his policies, they don’t like what he says, that’s fine, they can vote for someone else. But it’s got nothing to do with how old he is.”Still, Professor Olshansky said it was legitimate to wonder if that would remain so at 86. “That’s the right question to be asking,” he said. “You can’t sugarcoat aging. Things go wrong as we get older and the risks rise the older we get.”The White House rejected the idea that Mr. Biden was anything other than a seven-day commander in chief. “President Biden works every day and because chief executives can perform their duties from anywhere in the world, it has long been common for them to spend weekends away from the White House,” Andrew Bates, a deputy press secretary, said after this article was published online.The president’s medical report in November indicated he had atrial fibrillation but that it was stable and asymptomatic. Mr. Biden’s “ambulatory gait is perceptibly stiffer and less fluid than it was a year or so ago,” the report said, and gastroesophageal reflux causes him to cough and clear his throat, symptoms that “certainly seem to be more frequent and more pronounced.”But overall, Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, the president’s physician, pronounced him “a healthy, vigorous 78-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.”Questions about Mr. Biden’s fitness have nonetheless taken a toll on his public standing. In a June survey by Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll, 64 percent of voters believed he was showing that he is too old to be president, including 60 percent of respondents 65 or older.Mr. Biden’s public appearances have fueled that perception. His speeches can be flat and listless. He sometimes loses his train of thought, has trouble summoning names or appears momentarily confused. More than once, he has promoted Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “President Harris.” Mr. Biden, who overcame a childhood stutter, stumbles over words like “kleptocracy.” He has said Iranian when he meant Ukrainian and several times called Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, “John,” confusing him with the late Republican senator of that name from Virginia.Republicans and conservative media gleefully highlight such moments, posting viral videos, sometimes exaggerated or distorted to make Mr. Biden look even worse. But the White House has had to walk back some of his ad-libbed comments, such as when he vowed a military response if China attacks Taiwan or declared that President Vladimir V. Putin “cannot remain in power” in Russia.Mr. Biden was famously prone to gaffes even as a younger man, and aides point to his marathon meetings with families of mass shooting victims or his working the rope line during a trip to Cleveland this past week as evidence of stamina.Mike Donilon, a senior adviser who began working for Mr. Biden some 40 years ago, said he did not see any change. “On the way back from long trips when the staff is wiped out, he’ll want to spend four hours planning for how we hit the ground running on domestic policy, when all much younger staff want to do is sleep,” he said.Mr. Biden is not the first president to confront questions of age. The issue came up repeatedly under President Donald J. Trump, who is four years younger. Mr. Trump’s diminished vocabulary, tendency to meander, sometimes incoherent remarks, light office schedule and struggles to process information led critics to conclude that he was in decline.At one point, he had trouble lifting a glass of water to his lips and stepping down a ramp, and he also made an unexplained trip to the hospital. By the end of his term, he was boasting about passing a cognitive test meant to detect signs of dementia. If he runs again in 2024, it could be a contest between two men who would serve in their 80s.Reagan had previously been the oldest president. He once joked during a debate that he would not exploit “my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”Ron Edmonds/Associated PressUntil now, the oldest president was Reagan. When a poor debate performance in 1984 briefly threatened his re-election, he recovered in his next encounter by joking that he would not exploit “my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”“Reagan understood this issue, both intuitively and he had thought it through,” said the biographer Lou Cannon. “And he told me, ‘Age will be an issue if I act old and it won’t if I don’t.’”By Reagan’s final years, a new set of aides secretly assessed whether he might have to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment’s disability clause, but ultimately concluded he was still fit. (Five years after leaving the White House, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.)Still, aides tried to limit his schedule, monitored sharply by the first lady, Nancy Reagan. “That’s one of the first lessons we had, to not overschedule,” recalled Tom Griscom, one of those aides. Nor should they send excessive briefing papers at night. “After a couple weeks,” he said, “a message came back down from Mrs. Reagan asking us not to send so much up in the evening because he would read it all,” staying up late.Mr. Biden’s advisers say he resists such management and pushes in the other direction. “He’s driving additions to his schedule all the time, whether it’s new C.E.O. calls or night meetings with members,” said Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the deputy chief of staff who oversees his calendar.But aides are cautious about exposing him to the coronavirus. Aides are tested once a week and wear colored wristbands on the day of their test; if they plan to attend a meeting with the president on another day, then they must test that morning, too, and wear N95 masks.The White House seems equally determined to guard Mr. Biden against unscripted interactions with the news media. He has held just 16 news conferences since taking office, less than half as many as Mr. Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush had by this stage and less than a third as many as Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, a longtime scholar of presidential media strategy.Likewise, Mr. Biden has given just 38 interviews, far fewer than Mr. Trump (116), Mr. Obama (198), the younger Mr. Bush (71), Mr. Clinton (75) and the older Mr. Bush (86). Mr. Biden has been more accessible taking a few questions informally after a speech or other event, which he has done 290 times, compared with 213 by Mr. Trump and 64 by Mr. Obama.During his European trip last month, foreign leaders followed his lead while protectively treating him like a distinguished elderly relative. At a photo opportunity, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany gently pointed Mr. Biden in the direction of the cameras. Just before a meeting, a reporter twice shouted a question about getting grain out of Ukraine. When Mr. Biden could not hear the question, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, rescued him. “We’re working on it,” Mr. Johnson responded.Mr. Biden at a working lunch with other Group of 7 leaders in Germany last month. On one day of his trip, his public schedule finished with a 3:30 p.m. event.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesAt times, Mr. Biden kept a packed schedule. On the day he flew to Madrid for a NATO summit, he met with multiple leaders and finished with a dinner hosted by King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain. On another day, though, he skipped evening festivities with other leaders, and his public schedule finished with a 3:30 p.m. event.But aides said he was busy and stayed up working late each night of the trip out of view — just as they say they expect him to in the coming week as he hits the road again in Israel and Saudi Arabia.Jim Tankersley More

Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel for President Donald J. Trump, appeared before the House committee investigating the Capitol attack for roughly eight hours on Friday.WASHINGTON — Pat A. Cipollone, who served as White House counsel for President Donald J. Trump, was asked detailed questions on Friday about pardons, false election fraud claims and the former president’s pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence, according to three people familiar with his testimony before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The panel did not press him to either corroborate or contradict some specific details of explosive testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who captivated the country late last month with her account of an out-of-control president willing to embrace violence and stop at nothing to stay in power, the people said.During a roughly eight-hour interview conducted behind closed doors in the O’Neill House Office Building, the panel covered some of the same ground it did during an informal interview with Mr. Cipollone in April. In the session on Friday, which took place only after Mr. Cipollone was served with a subpoena, investigators focused mainly on Mr. Cipollone’s views on the events of Jan. 6 and generally did not ask about his views of other witnesses’ accounts.Mr. Cipollone, who fought against the most extreme plans to overturn the 2020 election but has long held that his direct conversations with Mr. Trump are protected by executive privilege and attorney-client privilege, invoked certain privileges in declining to answer some of the committee’s questions.Tim Mulvey, a spokesman for the panel, said the committee “received critical testimony on nearly every major topic in its investigation, reinforcing key points regarding Donald Trump’s misconduct and providing highly relevant new information that will play a central role in its upcoming hearings.”“This includes information demonstrating Donald Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty,” Mr. Mulvey said. “The testimony also corroborated key elements of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony.”The panel recorded Mr. Cipollone on video with potential plans to use clips of his testimony at upcoming hearings. Aides have begun strategizing about whether and where to adjust scripts to include key clips, one person said. The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.In the interview, Mr. Cipollone was asked about Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. The panel has asked similar questions of top Justice Department officials, White House lawyers and Trump campaign officials, who have testified that they did not agree with the effort to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Cipollone also broke with Mr. Trump in response to questions about the former president’s pressure campaign against Mr. Pence, which included personal meetings, a profane phone call and even a post on Twitter attacking the vice president as rioters stormed the Capitol pledging to hang him, people familiar with the testimony said.Mr. Cipollone’s agreement to sit for an interview before the panel had prompted speculation that his testimony could either buttress or contradict the account of Ms. Hutchinson, who attributed some of the most damning statements about Mr. Trump’s behavior to Mr. Cipollone. For instance, she testified that Mr. Cipollone told her on the morning of Jan. 6 that Mr. Trump’s plan to accompany the mob to the Capitol would cause Trump officials to be “charged with every crime imaginable.”Two people familiar with Mr. Cipollone’s actions that day said he did not recall making that comment to Ms. Hutchinson. Those people said the committee was made aware before the interview that Mr. Cipollone would not confirm that conversation were he to be asked. He was not asked about that specific statement on Friday, according to people familiar with the questions.“Why are Pat Cipollone & his lawyers letting the J6 Committee get away with suborning Cassidy Hutchinson’s perjury?” Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who has also testified before the panel, wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “Only cowards let the Left bully them into sitting quietly instead of speaking up and telling the truth. Stop hiding on background, Pat. Grow a spine & go on record.”Mr. Mulvey said there was no “preinterview agreement to limit Cipollone’s testimony” and any suggestion otherwise was “completely false.”Among other subjects, Mr. Cipollone was asked in the interview about conversations in which presidential pardons were discussed.The committee did not press Mr. Cipollone to either corroborate or contradict some specific details of testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who appeared before the panel last month.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMs. Hutchinson has testified that on Jan. 7, the day after the assault on the Capitol, Mr. Trump wanted to promise pardons for those involved in the attack, but Mr. Cipollone argued to remove language making such a promise from remarks that the president was to deliver.She has also testified that members of Congress and others close to Mr. Trump sought pardons after the violence of Jan. 6.An adviser to Mr. Cipollone declined to comment on his appearance before the panel.“He was candid with the committee,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a member of the panel, said on CNN on Friday. “He was careful in his answers, and I believe that he was honest in his answers.”She added, “We gained some additional insight into the actual day, Jan. 6.”Ms. Lofgren said Mr. Cipollone did not contradict other witnesses. “There were things that he might not be present for or in some cases could not recall with precision,” she said.Mr. Cipollone’s testimony came after he reached a deal to testify before the panel, which had pressed him for weeks to cooperate and issued him a subpoena last month.Mr. Cipollone was a witness to key moments in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election results, including discussions about sending false letters to state officials about election fraud and seizing voting machines. He was also in direct contact with Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 as rioters stormed the Capitol.Mr. Trump has railed against Mr. Cipollone’s cooperation. On Thursday, he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: “Why would a future President of the United States want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a ‘lawyer’ for the Country, may someday be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress.” More

TOKYO — It was supposed to be a quiet election for the Upper House of Parliament. But the assassination on Friday of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has added an element of chaos to Japanese politics just two days before voters head to the ballot box.For the time being, political parties across the spectrum are pulling back on their messaging, but the election is still going ahead.Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said after Mr. Abe’s death that campaigning for the Upper House election would continue as planned.“Free and fair elections are the foundation of democracy, and we absolutely must protect them,” he said, adding that doing so would demonstrate Japan’s “firm resolve not to surrender to violence.”Japanese electoral law gives candidates just over two weeks to take their message to voters, and the last days normally involve politicians sprinting through endless rallies, hoping to drum up last-minute votes.Candidates running for an electoral seat make many stops every day across their prefecture, usually on a truck with their face and slogan plastered along the side. They typically park along the road and talk from beside or even atop their truck.Often, lesser-known candidates will have a more prominent politician join them for a few stops. That is what Mr. Abe was doing on Friday: supporting a younger politician running for re-election, even though he himself was not up for election.So far, the authorities have not announced additional security measures for the last day of campaigning.Mr. Abe’s party, the Liberal Democrats, have been the dominant political force in Japan since the end of World War II, and the country’s scattered opposition parties have little hope of changing that on Sunday.Upper House members in Japan serve staggered six-year terms, with half of them up for election every three years. This year, 75 members will be chosen to represent electoral districts, and 50 through proportional representation.Even after stepping down as prime minister in 2020, Mr. Abe continued to be a powerful force in his party, pushing forward his long-held goals of increasing Japan’s military spending and changing its pacifist Constitution to allow it to maintain a standing army.That role as a power broker kept him at the center of public attention in the lead-up to the election, said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow for Asia at the Center for American Progress who has written a biography of Mr. Abe.His death will have a powerful impact on the election, Mr. Harris said, even though the specifics are yet to be known.“It just scrambles so much,” Mr. Harris said. More

Supporters of the senator hope that the state’s unique nonpartisan primary system will help her, but allies of Tshibaka, a Trump-backed challenger, see a path to victory.Paulette Schuerch, a Native Alaskan who helped Lisa Murkowski’s fabled write-in campaign for Senate in 2010, is now working for the senator’s Trump-backed opponent, Kelly Tshibaka.The breaking point for Schuerch, as she detailed in a telephone interview from her home in Kotzebue, a village 35 miles above the Arctic Circle, came in 2014. That year, Murkowski initially evaded insensitive comments about suicide made by Don Young, the state’s congressman, whom she had endorsed, before later asking him to apologize. Suicide is a delicate topic for many rural Alaskans, especially Alaska Natives, who have some of the highest rates of any ethnic group in the country.At a meeting on the margins of an annual gathering of Alaska Natives, Murkowski looked several of the delegates in the eye, Schuerch said, and told them: “Don’t you give me the stink eye and shake your heads at me. I see you.”“That really turned me off,” Schuerch recalled. “Suicide affects us all the time. I can’t support somebody who doesn’t understand that.”It’s a story Schuerch has told increasingly often, and she is now helping Tshibaka make inroads among Alaska’s Native population, which has long been a key element of Murkowski’s winning coalition.Tshibaka has been visiting villages in rural Alaska, participating in traditional events like the Utqiagvik blanket toss and crashing on the floors of schools in her sleeping bag.And while public polling in Alaska is scarce, Tshibaka’s campaign points to Schuerch’s break with Murkowski as a clear sign that the independent-minded senator may be in trouble in her re-election bid.On Saturday, former President Donald Trump is holding a rally for Tshibaka in Anchorage, Alaska’s most populous city. Tshibaka’s team is confident that Republican partisans have soured on Murkowski over her support for President Biden’s cabinet nominees — especially Deb Haaland, the secretary of the interior.In an oil-rich state where jobs are often scarce and energy is a top political issue, the Biden administration’s environmental conservation moves have rankled many rural Alaskans, who depend heavily on resource extraction for their livelihoods. Tshibaka has sought to exploit the Native community’s disquiet with Haaland, a Native American herself who has become a lightning rod in Alaska.Tshibaka often accuses the Biden administration of wanting to “turn the entire state of Alaska into a national park,” a line that appears to resonate with people like Schuerch.“I think after 21 years in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski is taking Alaska Natives for granted,” Schuerch said.A tricky path for a Trump-backed challengerComplicating the picture, however, is Alaska’s unique nonpartisan primary system, which voters approved as part of a 2020 ballot initiative and is being used this year for the first time.Under the system, the four candidates from any party who receive the most votes in the Aug. 16 primary are expected to proceed to the general election in November, when voters will rank them in order of preference. This is called ranked-choice voting.The ballot initiative, which passed narrowly by a popular vote, was pitched to Alaskans as a cure for gridlock and partisan polarization in a state that has one of the largest shares of independent voters in the country and prides itself on bucking national voting trends.It also happens to have been pushed in part by allies of Murkowski — including Scott Kendall, who is now running a super PAC, Alaskans for L.I.S.A., that supports her candidacy. (Officially, the name includes an acronym for “Leadership in a Strong Alaska.” Under federal election law, it’s illegal to use a candidate’s name in the name of a super PAC.)Murkowski has never received more than 50 percent of the vote in any of her winning campaigns for Senate.Ash Adams for The New York TimesAnd while Kendall insists that the top-four system was not put in place to benefit Murkowski, his former boss, there’s no question it has complicated Tshibaka’s path to victory.“It doesn’t allow the farthest-right Republican to knock out the moderate and be the only candidate in the general election,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, a political strategist who is supporting Murkowski. “The old primary system punished people who dared to be independent thinkers. You can’t do that anymore in Alaska.”By Lottsfeldt’s reckoning, Murkowski ought to emerge with about 55 percent of the vote after voters’ preferences are taken into account, while Tshibaka, whose positions on issues like abortion might turn off moderates, is likely to finish at around 45 percent.Tshibaka’s team is urging her supporters to use what’s known as “bullet voting,” in which voters do not rank any candidates besides their first choice — thus, they hope, denying thousands of second-choice votes to Murkowski.They note, too, that Murkowski has never received more than 50 percent of the vote in any of her winning campaigns for Senate, and they point to polls showing the senator to be deeply unpopular with the Republican base.It’s debatable whether Trump’s Alaska sojourn will help or hurt his preferred candidate. Tshibaka will probably cut television ads promoting his endorsement, using footage from Saturday’s rally, as candidates in other states have done.But there’s a popular bumper sticker in Alaska that reads, “We don’t give a damn how they do it Outside” — a slogan that speaks to the frontier state’s suspicion of the Lower 48, as Alaskans often refer to the rest of the continental United States.So Trump’s intervention, unless it is done with the sort of delicacy and tact that the former president is not known for, could easily backfire.“Trump is not from Alaska, period,” noted Lottsfeldt, who added that the former president’s visit comes after weeks of tough congressional hearings about his role in inciting the Capitol riot.“All I think it does is probably motivates people in the center to feel negative about Tshibaka,” Lottsfeldt said.What to read tonightUnder pressure to do more to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, President Biden issued an executive order that aims to ensure access to abortion medication and emergency contraception while preparing for legal fights to come, Michael Shear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg report.The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority prohibited the use of most drop boxes for voters to return absentee ballots, a move that came as Republicans in the state have taken a range of steps since the 2020 election to try to limit the influence of voters over the state’s government. Reid Epstein has the story.The ascent of Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, is perhaps the most prominent example of right-wing candidates for public office who explicitly aim to promote Christian power in America, Elizabeth Dias writes.Cities around the South have challenged the supremacy of coastal supercities, drawing a steady flow of creative young people. In her Big City column, Ginia Bellafante asks:Will new abortion bans put an end to that?viewfinderPresident Biden, Jill Biden and other members of their family watched fireworks in celebration of Independence Day.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesSeeking symbolism for the FourthOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Here’s what Sarah Silbiger told us about capturing the image above:You can always count on photographing certain details on July 4. Kids with drippy Popsicles, rhinestone American flag T-shirts and oversize mascots of the Founding Fathers.But what I find most interesting are the different photo-ops the White House creates. In 2019, I spent hours in the rain outside the Lincoln Memorial covering President Donald Trump’s display of tanks and a Blue Angels flyover.In 2020, we photographed the White House from about half a mile away, in a field. Talk about social distancing.In 2021, President Biden’s White House adopted a somber tone, to recognize American resilience during Covid, but cautiously celebrated the beginning of the country’s emergence from the pandemic thanks to vaccines.This year, the absence of distance or masks made for a picture-perfect image of Biden’s extended family on a balcony of the White House. The bright white spotlight on the family, set up by White House officials, signaled to the news media that they, too, recognized the moment as an important photo-op.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you on Monday.— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

Last week, the Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments in Moore v. Harper, a challenge to North Carolina’s new congressional map.The long and short of the case is that North Carolina Republicans proposed a gerrymander so egregious that the state Supreme Court ruled that it violated the state’s Constitution. Republicans sought to restore the legislative map, citing the “independent state legislature doctrine,” which asserts that state legislatures have almost absolute power to set their own rules for federal elections. Once passed into law, then, those rules cannot be overturned — or even reviewed — by state courts.A Republican victory at the Supreme Court would, according to the election law expert Rick Hasen, “radically alter the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures that violate voting rights in federal elections. It could essentially neuter the ability of state courts to protect voters under provisions of state constitutions against infringement of their rights.”This radical interpretation of the Elections Clause of the Constitution also extends to the Presidential Electors Clause, such that during a presidential election year, state legislatures could allocate Electoral College votes in any way they see fit, at any point in the process. As I argued earlier this year, we could see Republican-led states pass laws that would allow them to send alternative slates of electors, overruling the will of the voters and doing legally what Donald Trump and his conspirators pressured Republicans in Arizona and Georgia to do illegally. Under the independent state legislature doctrine, the next time Trump tries to overturn the results of an election he lost, he won’t need a mob.There are many problems with this doctrine beyond the outcomes it was engineered to produce. Some are logical — the theory seems to suggest that state legislatures are somehow separate and apart from state constitutions — and some are historical. And among the historical problems is the fact that Americans have never really wanted to entrust their state legislatures with the kind of sweeping electoral powers that this theory would confer.For most of the first 50 years of presidential elections, there was no uniform method for the allocation of electors. In the first truly competitive race for president, the election of 1800, two states used a winner-take-all system where voters cast ballots to pick their electors directly, three states used a system where electors were chosen on a district-by-district basis, 10 states used a system where the legislature simply chose the electors, and one state, Tennessee, used a combination of methods.Methods changed from election to election depending on partisan advantage. Virginia moved from the district system in 1796 to the winner-take-all “general ticket” in 1800 to ensure total support for Thomas Jefferson in his contest against John Adams. In retaliation, Adams’s home state of Massachusetts abandoned district elections for legislative selection, to ensure that he would get all of its electors.This kind of manipulation continued until the mid-1830s, when every state save South Carolina adopted the “general ticket.” (South Carolina would not allow voters to directly choose electors until after the Civil War.)Beginning in 1812, however, you can start to see the public and its elected officials turn against this use of state legislative power.Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party was still in power. James Madison, his longtime friend and political ally, was president. But he, and the war he was now fighting, were unpopular.Most members of Congress had backed Madison’s call for war with Great Britain. But it was a partisan vote with most Republicans in favor and every Federalist opposed.The reasons for war were straightforward. The “conduct of her government,” said Madison in his message to Congress requesting a declaration of war, “presents a series of acts hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral nation.” Among those acts were impressment of American seaman (“thousands of American citizens, under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag, have been torn from their country”) and attacks on American commerce (“British cruisers have been in the practice also of violating the rights and the peace of our coasts.”).In fighting Britain, the administration and its allies hoped to pressure the crown into a more favorable settlement on these maritime issues. They also hoped to conquer Canada and shatter British influence in the parts of North America where it allied with Native tribes to harass American settlers and stymie American expansion.Those hopes crashed into reality, however, as an untrained and inexperienced American militia flailed against British regulars. And as the summer wore on, bringing him closer and closer to the next presidential election, Madison faced defeat abroad and division at home. In New England especially, his Federalist opponents used their hold on local and state offices to obstruct the war effort.“In Hartford,” writes the historian Donald Hickey in “The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict,” “Federalists sought to end loud demonstrations by army recruiters by adopting a pair of city ordinances that restricted public music and parades.” In Boston, “the Massachusetts legislature threatened to sequester federal tax money if militia arms due to the state under an 1808 law were not delivered.”Fearing defeat in the presidential race as a result of this anger and discontent over the war, Republicans did everything they could to secure Madison’s victory. The historian Alexander Keyssar details these shenanigans in the book “Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?” He notes that,In North Carolina, which had utilized a district system since 1796, the legislature announced that it would choose electors by itself: its majority feared that Madison might lose the state to DeWitt Clinton, who ran with the support of both Federalists and dissident Republicans.On the other side, “the Federalist legislature in New Jersey announced, just days before the election, that it was canceling the scheduled balloting and appointing electors of its own.” And in Massachusetts, the Republican-led senate and Federalist-led lower house could not agree on a method for choosing electors. “In the end,” notes Keyssar, “an extra legislative session had to be convened to save the state from losing its electoral votes altogether.”Madison was re-elected, but according to Keyssar, the attempt on both sides to manipulate the outcome “ignited firestorms of protest and recrimination.” A number of lawmakers would try, in the immediate aftermath and the years that followed, to amend the Constitution to end legislative selection of electors and mandate district-based elections for the Electoral College.District elections, according to one supportive congressman, were best because they fit the “maxim that all legitimate power is derived from the people” and because they would reduce the chance that “a man may be elected to the first office of the nation by a minority of votes of the people.”This concern for democracy (or “popular government”) was a big part of the case for reform. For Senator Mahlon Dickerson of New Jersey, allowing legislators to choose electors without giving voters a say was “the worst possible system” as it “usurped” power from the people and departed from “the spirit if not from the letter of the Constitution.”Even at this early juncture in our nation’s history, many Americans believed in democratic participation and sought to make the institutions of the Republic more receptive to the voice of the people. One supporter of district elections, Representative James Strudwick Smith of North Carolina, put it simply: “You will bring the election near to the people, and, consequently you will make them place more value on the elective franchise, which is all-important in a republican form of Government.”There is a somewhat common view that the counter-majoritarianism of the American system is acceptable because the United States is a “Republic, not a democracy.” That notion lurks behind the idea of the “independent state legislature,” which would empower partisans to limit the right of the people to choose their leaders in a direct and democratic manner.But from the start, Americans have rejected the idea that their system is somehow opposed to more and greater democracy. When institutions seemed to subvert democratic practice, the voters and their representatives pushed back, demanding a government more responsive to their interests, desires and republican aspirations. It is not for nothing that the men who claimed Jefferson as their political and ideological forefather labeled their party “The Democracy.”As Americans recognized then, and as they should recognize now, the Constitution is not a charter for states or state legislatures, it is a charter for people, for our rights and for our right to self-government.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More