Elections

Haiti, facing a prolonged crisis, is preparing for the biggest shake-up of government seen in decades with a constitutional referendum and national elections slated for this year.Haiti’s president knows he has a problem: Governing a country that at times seems to verge on the ungovernable is hard enough when you have a lot of support.Jovenel Moïse clearly does not.In a recent interview, the Haitian leader lamented that he has the confidence of only a small sliver of his people.He won the 2016 elections with just under 600,000 votes in a country of 11 million. And now many are angry over his refusal to leave office in February, amid a dispute over whether his term ended then or should extend for one more year.Yet Mr. Moïse, 52, has chosen this moment to embark on the biggest shake-up Haiti’s politics has seen in decades, overseeing the drafting of a new Constitution that will restructure government and give the presidency greater powers.The need for a new Constitution is a rare point of agreement between Mr. Moïse and his many detractors. What concerns some observers is the president’s unilateral approach to writing one. Others just don’t trust him.Mr. Moïse, critics charge, has become increasingly autocratic and is relying on a small circle of confidants to write a document that, among other changes, will give the president greater power over the armed forces as well as the ability to run for two consecutive terms. It would also grant Haiti’s leader immunity for any actions taken in office.A protest againt Mr. Moïse.Valerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Moïse says the broader powers are necessary.“We need a system that works,” he said in the telephone interview. “The system now doesn’t work. The president cannot work to deliver.”Haiti won its independence in 1804, after Haitians rose up against colonial France, but it was not until 1990 that it had its first election widely regarded as free and fair. Even then, in a country with a long history of dictatorships and coups, democracy has never fully taken root.Many Haitians say a new Constitution is needed. The current one has created two competing power centers in the country — the president and prime minister — which often leads to friction and a fractured government.The draft Constitution would abolish the Senate, leaving in place a single legislative body elected every five years, and replace the post of prime minister with a vice president that answers to the president, in a bid to streamline government.Haitians will vote on the new Constitution in June, ahead of national elections slated for September.But some take little reassurance from the ballot casting ahead.“People need to realize that elections are not inherently equivalent to democracy,” said Jake Johnston, a research associate for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.Every time there is a political crisis in Haiti, he said, the international community tends to call for elections. That leaves the country limping from one paralyzed government to another, instead of trying to reform the electoral process and work to engage voter participation.“When an election actually ceases to represent the will of the people, what kind of government do they expect that to produce?” Mr. Johnston asked.Since 1986, after nearly 30 years of dictatorship, voter turnout has steadily declined in Haiti. Only 18 percent of all eligible Haitians participated in the 2016 election that brought Mr. Moïse to power.Now, the country’s deep economic and social morass may only encourage more Haitians to stay at home when it is time to vote on the new Constitution and then for a new president.Unemployment is rampant and desperation is at an all-time high. Many Haitians are unable to step onto the street to run basic errands without worrying about being kidnapped for ransom.A market in Port-au-Prince. Many Haitians are unable to run basic errands without worrying about crime, including being kidnapped.Chery Dieu-Nalio for The New York TimesMr. Moïse says he, too, is concerned about voter participation.“There is a silent majority,” he said. “Many Haitians don’t want to participate in something they think will be violent. We need peace and stability to encourage people to vote.”As the June referendum on the Constitution approaches, the government is trying to register five million voters, Mr. Moïse said. His goal, he said, is to inject the process with more legitimacy than his presidency had.According to the United Nations, there are at least 6.7 million potential voters in Haiti. Others say that number is an undercount, since many Haitians are undocumented, their births never registered with the government.In an effort to placate critics, and ease concerns that he is positioning himself to benefit from the new Constitution, Mr. Moïse has promised not to run in the next election.But to fix the country before he steps down, he says, he needs to accumulate enough power to take on an oligarchy he says has paralyzed Haiti to profit off a government too weak to regulate or tax their businesses.“We are suffering today from state capture — it is the biggest problem we face today,” Mr. Moïse said.Some view with deep skepticism Mr. Moïse’s claims that he has made an enemy out of big businesses by trying to regulate them. They say the president is simply trying to stoke populist sentiment to deflect from the failures of his own government and sideline political opponents.Police officers clashing with protesters demanding the resignation of Mr. Moïse.Valerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOthers are willing to be more charitable, but say he has not done enough to build support.“The problem is that the way that Moïse has gone about it,” said Alexandra Filippova, a senior staff attorney with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, an organization that provides legal representation for victims of human rights abuses. “He is unilaterally pushing it forward.”The draft Constitution, for example, released last month, is available only in French — which the vast majority of Haitians do not read — instead of Creole.And no members of civil society were invited to take part as the document was drafted. Mr. Moïse instead appointed a special commission to do that. That, critics say, dims the chances for real progress.“Constitutional change is supposed to reflect a social consensus of some sort,” Ms. Filippova said. More

The chief executives of Google, Facebook and Twitter are testifying at the House on Thursday about how disinformation spreads across their platforms, an issue that the tech companies were scrutinized for during the presidential election and after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.The hearing, held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is the first time that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Sundar Pichai of Google are appearing before Congress during the Biden administration. President Biden has indicated that he is likely to be tough on the tech industry. That position, coupled with Democratic control of Congress, has raised liberal hopes that Washington will take steps to rein in Big Tech’s power and reach over the next few years.The hearing is also be the first opportunity since the Jan. 6 Capitol riot for lawmakers to question the three men about the role their companies played in the event. The attack has made the issue of disinformation intensely personal for the lawmakers since those who participated in the riot have been linked to online conspiracy theories like QAnon.Before the hearing, Democrats signaled in a memo that they were interested in questioning the executives about the Jan. 6 attacks, efforts by the right to undermine the results of the 2020 election and misinformation related to the Covid-19 pandemic.Republicans sent the executives letters this month asking them about the decisions to remove conservative personalities and stories from their platforms, including an October article in The New York Post about President Biden’s son Hunter.Lawmakers have debated whether social media platforms’ business models encourage the spread of hate and disinformation by prioritizing content that will elicit user engagement, often by emphasizing salacious or divisive posts.Some lawmakers will push for changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that shields the platforms from lawsuits over their users’ posts. Lawmakers are trying to strip the protections in cases where the companies’ algorithms amplified certain illegal content. Others believe that the spread of disinformation could be stemmed with stronger antitrust laws, since the platforms are by far the major outlets for communicating publicly online.“By now it’s painfully clear that neither the market nor public pressure will stop social media companies from elevating disinformation and extremism, so we have no choice but to legislate, and now it’s a question of how best to do it,” said Representative Frank Pallone, the New Jersey Democrat who is chairman of the committee.The tech executives are expected to play up their efforts to limit misinformation and redirect users to more reliable sources of information. They may also entertain the possibility of more regulation, in an effort to shape increasingly likely legislative changes rather than resist them outright. More

Who will be the next Manhattan district attorney? The race is dominated by low-profile progressives who could reshape law enforcement in New York City.The race to become Manhattan’s next district attorney is shaping up to be one of the most important in decades, a watershed contest that is likely to fundamentally change the mission of the prominent office and may affect the future of former President Donald J. Trump.Yet the eight candidates are all relative unknowns, and, with no public polling, there is no clear front-runner. The victor is likely to win the general election in November without having received a majority of votes in the Democratic primary.Most of the candidates believe prosecutors should be sending fewer people to prison, especially for minor crimes, and that the office should play an active role in creating a less punitive, less racially biased criminal justice system.The election is being watched as a test of what a borough considered to be a liberal bastion wants from its head prosecutor, and just how deeply voters want the criminal justice system to change.“The Manhattan D.A.’s office is justifiably seen as one of the premier offices in the country,” said Eric H. Holder Jr., the United States attorney general under President Barack Obama. “What happens in the D.A.’s office will have an outsized influence on the path of reform around the country.”The current officeholder, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., announced earlier this month that he would not seek re-election.Mr. Vance, who has no plans to endorse a candidate, has held the position for three terms and was the handpicked successor of Robert M. Morgenthau, who over four decades built the office’s reputation as one of the largest and most ambitious prosecutorial agencies in the country.Mr. Vance’s announcement catapulted the race into the national spotlight, as his successor stands to inherit an investigation into whether Mr. Trump and his company committed fraud to obtain loans and tax benefits.The race can be divided into two camps, with three candidates who have not worked as prosecutors and five who have.The candidates who have never prosecuted a case — Tahanie Aboushi, Eliza Orlins and Dan Quart — have argued that the core work of the district attorney’s office needs to be revamped, shifting toward reducing incarceration and cutting back prosecution of low-level crimes.Four of the former prosecutors — Alvin Bragg, Lucy Lang, Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Diana Florence — largely agree. But they have pitched themselves as occupying a middle ground, focused on less sweeping changes. A fifth former prosecutor, Liz Crotty, has been less vocal in calling for systemic change.Ranked-choice voting — which allows voters to express who they would support if their top choice does not win — will not be used in the primary on June 22.That means whoever gets the biggest slice of votes in the Democratic primary, even if far from a majority, will go on to the general election. There, victory is almost certain because so far there are no Republicans on the ballot.The ‘progressive prosecutor’ movementIn the decade since Mr. Vance took office in 2010, views of criminal justice have shifted in many urban centers, transforming elections for local prosecutors.Activists — most prominently those in the Black Lives Matter movement — have used social media platforms to raise awareness of police violence, mass incarceration and racial bias in the justice system.“We as a general society are seeing on a larger scale how things like police violence are impacting people’s lives,” said Nicole Smith Futrell, a law professor at the City University of New York.Starting with the election of Kenneth P. Thompson as the Brooklyn district attorney in 2013, voters have rewarded candidates across the country who have focused on prosecutorial and police misconduct.These politicians — often grouped together as “progressive prosecutors” — have included Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Chicago and George Gascón in Los Angeles.Tali Farhadian Weinstein, right, was general counsel to the Brooklyn district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, left.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesIn New York City, Eric Gonzalez, who was elected as Brooklyn district attorney in 2017, said he wanted to lead “the most progressive D.A.’s office in the country.” A former public defender, Tiffany Cabán, who pledged to stop prosecuting low-level crimes, lost the race for Queens district attorney by the slimmest of margins in 2019.The candidatesMost of the candidates competing to succeed Mr. Vance said that they will redirect the power wielded by the Manhattan district attorney. Others have pledged to fundamentally reduce it.Ms. Aboushi, 35, has pointed toward her adolescent experience of seeing her father convicted on federal conspiracy charges related to the theft of trucks transporting cigarettes. He was sent to prison for 22 years. Ms. Aboushi has said she wants to keep the district attorney’s office from harming families like her own.Along with Ms. Orlins, she has committed to cutting the office in half. She has also stressed the use of alternatives to prison. She has won support from the left and has been endorsed by the Working Families Party, a power player in New York.Ms. Aboushi, who has worked at her family’s law firm since 2010, would be the first woman, Muslim and nonwhite candidate to hold the office. (Every contender except for Mr. Quart would break at least one such barrier.)Ms. Orlins and Mr. Quart are running campaigns in a similar vein. Ms. Orlins, 38, a longtime public defender, has a fiery social media presence and often mentions the damage that she said prosecutors did to her clients. She has pledged not to prosecute the majority of misdemeanors.“I saw clients getting cycled through the system, getting locked up, getting bail set, getting offered ridiculous plea deals, spending a month or two months in jail for these low-level minor offenses,” she said.Mr. Quart, 47, a seven-term assemblyman and the only candidate with any previous political experience, has argued that he is the only person running who has already changed the system. He points to his role in successful efforts to repeal laws that protected police from accountability and put thousands of people in jail for low-level crimes.“My experience is about not just the rhetoric of reform, but actually achieving it,” Mr. Quart said.Assemblyman Dan Quart (D-Manhattan) is the only candidate with experience in politics.Patrick Dodson for The New York TimesAll three have argued that it is a virtue never to have prosecuted anyone, suggesting that the very act of prosecution should bear some stigma. By contrast, the ex-prosecutors in the race sprinkle suggestions for change with specifics on how to curtail certain crimes.Alvin Bragg, 47, the only Black candidate, seems comfortable running both as a reformer and a career law-enforcement official. Mr. Bragg, who was a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and later chief deputy attorney general in New York, was the only candidate to appear at both a “decarceral debate” held by public defenders and a forum organized by alumni of the Manhattan district attorney’s office — audiences with opposing viewpoints..css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1cz6wm{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1cz6wm{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1cz6wm:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1cz6wm{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}Your Questions About Donald Trump’s Taxes, AnsweredYes. Hours after the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Trump’s final bid to defy a 2019 subpoena, millions of pages of records were turned over to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is now combing through them.The investigation is wide-ranging, but one particular area of concern is whether Trump’s company manipulated its property values, inflating them to obtain favorable loans while lowballing them to reduce its taxes. Investigators have also focused on the company’s long-serving chief financial officer.The records turned over to the district attorney’s office will remain private unless they are presented as evidence at a trial, but The Times has already uncovered a variety of potential financial improprieties, based on more than two decades of Mr. Trump’s tax data.If the district attorney were to indict Mr. Trump — far from a sure thing — the result would be the potential criminal trial of a former president. For his part, Mr. Trump has dismissed the investigation as a politically motivated “fishing expedition” and vowed to “fight on.”Mr. Bragg has leaned on his roots in Harlem. He often brings up the half-dozen times he has had a gun pointed at him, including three encounters involving police officers. He has said he wants to reduce unnecessary incarceration and fight crime.“One thing we need to reject is this false dichotomy that you’ve got between civil rights and public safety,” he said.Mr. Bragg’s closest competitor in straddling the two camps is Lucy Lang, who worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office for 12 years. Ms. Lang, 40, is steeped in policy and has released the outlines of her approach to dozens of issues, from sex crimes to restorative justice. She presents herself as someone who would change the office but also has the experience to manage high-profile cases.Tali Farhadian Weinstein, 45, a former federal prosecutor and general counsel in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, is running a more conservative campaign than her colleagues and has a substantial lead in fund-raising. She has been endorsed by Mr. Holder, with whom she worked at the Department of Justice.Though she emphasizes her experience in Brooklyn, where she led a unit that reviews convictions, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has also been direct in describing her approach to prosecution. “You can’t just identify the problem,” she said. “You also then have to have a positive agenda about what the solution is.”The final two candidates stand apart from the field for different reasons.Ms. Florence, 50, is also a veteran of the Manhattan district attorney’s office and spent much of her career prosecuting fraud and corruption cases. She wants the office to refocus its energy on cases against the powerful.But she must overcome a significant hurdle: She resigned from the office after a judge found that she had withheld evidence from defense lawyers in a major bribery case, a serious ethical violation. A spokeswoman for Ms. Florence’s campaign said she has taken “full responsibility” for the mistake.Ms. Crotty, 50, a former assistant district attorney under Mr. Morgenthau, has conformed least to the blueprint set by the other contenders. Though she acknowledges systemic racism, she is loath to call for systemic solutions, saying instead that she will evaluate matters on a case-by-case basis. She has pledged to strengthen the office’s investigations of white-collar crime.The Trump investigationMr. Vance is likely to decide whether to seek an indictment against Mr. Trump before he leaves office. If he does, the next district attorney will have to handle the prosecution of a former president.The candidates have been reluctant to discuss the case in detail, saying it would be unethical to offer an opinion without seeing the evidence firsthand.It is unclear how the prospect of a trial of a former president might influence voters. Some strategists say it would matter little. Others say it favors experienced prosecutors.“This is Manhattan,” said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, Mr. Vance’s former deputy. “You’re going to have high-profile, high-interest, serious crimes. You need people who know how to handle those cases.” More

The US president and first lady hosted members of the US women’s national soccer team at the White House to recognise equal pay day, which symbolises how far into the year women must work on average to make up their pay disparity with men over the year. Earlier in the day, Megan Rapinoe testified in front of a congressional committee examining the economic harm caused by longstanding gender inequalities

‘You want full stadiums? We filled them’: Rapinoe testifies to Congress on equal pay More

[Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Thursday. Weather: It’ll get close to 70 today. Foggy and overcast early, but sunny by midafternoon. Alternate-side parking: In effect until Sunday (Passover).Eduardo Munoz/ReutersThe primary for New York City’s mayoral race is less than three months away. But many Democrats say they are still undecided.A new poll from Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analytics showed that 50 percent of likely Democratic voters were still unsure who is best to lead the city. My colleague Katie Glueck found that a crowded mayoral field and the challenges of campaigning amid a pandemic have left the race wide open.“There is no front-runner,” said George Fontas, the founder of Fontas Advisors. “We have no idea what’s going to happen in the next three months, and if history shows us anything, it’s that three months is an eternity in a New York City election.”[The poll found a clear front-runner: undecided.]The detailsOnly two candidates garnered double-digit support in the poll: Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, at 16 percent, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, at 10 percent.Coming in third, at 6 percent, was Maya D. Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and ex-counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, got 5 percent, and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, received 4 percent.Near the bottom, Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary; Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner; and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, tied at 2 percent.The contextVoters are facing multiple obstacles in choosing the next mayor. The pandemic disrupted many traditional campaigning routines. This is also the city’s first mayoral race using ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to express a preference for up to five candidates. As of Wednesday, there are 21 candidates to choose from.Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, told Ms. Glueck, “When you have that many candidates, it’s hard to know what to do, and then, of course, ranked-choice voting.”The prospectAlthough the mayoral field is crowded, the poll suggests the pivotal moment will be just a few weeks before the June 22 primary. That’s been standard in the city’s previous mayoral races. Experts predict that the race will accelerate beginning in May, when a series of televised debates will kick off.One candidate leaves the fieldOn Wednesday, Carlos Menchaca, a City Council member from Brooklyn, announced his departure from the race after difficulty fund-raising and gaining traction. His platform included housing reform, police accountability and a targeted program for universal basic income. Mr. Menchaca also had hoped to become the city’s the first openly gay Latino mayor.From The TimesCuomo’s Family Is Said to Have Received Special Access to Virus TestsA Hospital Encounters Vaccine Hesitation Among Its Own StaffHousing Boss Who Was Accused of Sexual Abuse Now Faces Bribery ChargesCan You Autograph a Playbill Through Your Screen?Want more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingA Tribeca apartment was found to be a crowded, mask-free illicit nightclub. [New York Post]After attacks on Asian-Americans, volunteers formed patrols in New York City. [Wall Street Journal]The Long Island Rail Road announced a new schedule after commuters complained about crowding. [WABC]And finally: Divorce rates are droppingThe Times’s Vincent M. Mallozzi writes:Divorces from coast to coast have slowed considerably in the last 12 months, according to lawyers, relationship coaches in New York and records kept by the Superior Court of California.“We had a surge in divorces in the early months of the pandemic, but now we seem to be seeing a plummeting,” said Harriet N. Cohen, a divorce lawyer who founded Cohen Stine Kapoor in Manhattan.Ms. Cohen rattled off some of the top reasons some couples got divorced during the pandemic era, or in any other era, such as boredom, financial difficulties, extramarital affairs and physical abuse. She also cited a few reasons couples “decided to stick it out at this particular time in our history.”“So many negative things are currently happening that people are afraid to change the status quo, and are staying married,” she said. “It’s not that they won’t divorce in the future, it’s just that people do not have their ordinary outlets right now, they don’t leave the house that much, they don’t go to the office to continue affairs if they are having one, and of course, getting divorced is very expensive.”Ken Jewell, another New York divorce lawyer, offered some free legal advice for anyone, anywhere, who is contemplating divorce at this point in the pandemic.“I would say wait until the weather’s warmer, wait until you get vaccinated and see what can be solved among yourselves, which will save you a lot of money in legal fees,” he said. “Try to avoid going to court, and if there are any remaining issues that can only be dealt with through lawyers, you’ll be able to handle those things on a much smarter, focused and inexpensive level.”It’s Thursday — consider your options.Metropolitan Diary: Blocked in Dear Diary:There was a time when, if you were patient, you could find unmetered parking spots on a few blocks in the West 50s within walking distance of the Theater District.During most daytime hours, these spots were restricted (“No Standing,” “No Parking” and so on). But they typically became available to anyone in the early evening, so I would try to time my arrival for then if I was going to a Broadway show or a restaurant in the area.Once, I found a spot that was ideal, parked my car and went about my business in the neighborhood. When I was ready to go home, I returned to my car, got in, started the engine and signaled my intention to pull out.Almost immediately, another vehicle appeared alongside mine and then pulled up a little past it, waiting for me to leave. Just then, a small truck pulled up behind, also ready to claim the spot once I abandoned it.Now I wasn’t going anywhere. The two vehicles had blocked me in.I rolled down my window and asked the drivers whether one of them would move so that I could pull out. Neither was willing, so I remained blocked in.Finally, I turned off my engine, got out of the car and took a walk around the block. When I got back, it was all clear and I was able to drive off.The city installed meters on the block shortly after that.— Frank P. TomasuloNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.What would you like to see more (or less) of? Email us: [email protected]. More

Democrats characterized the far-reaching elections overhaul as the civil rights battle of modern times. Republicans called it a power grab that would put their party at a permanent disadvantage.Democrats began pushing on Wednesday for the most substantial expansion of voting rights in a half-century, laying the groundwork in the Senate for what would be a fundamental change to the ways voters get to the polls and elections are run.At a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders made a passionate case for a bill that would mandate automatic voter registration nationwide, expand early and mail-in voting, end gerrymandering that skews congressional districts for maximum partisan advantage and curb the influence of money in politics.The effort is taking shape as Republicans have introduced more than 250 bills to restrict voting in 43 states and have continued to spread false accusations of fraud and impropriety in the 2020 election. It comes just months after those claims, spread by President Donald J. Trump as he sought to cling to power, fueled a deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 that showed how deeply his party had come to believe in the myth of a stolen election.Republicans were unapologetic in their opposition to the measure, with some openly arguing that if Democrats succeeded in making it easier for Americans to vote and in enacting the other changes in the bill, it would most likely place their party permanently in the minority.“Any American who thinks that the fight for a full and fair democracy is over is sadly and sorely mistaken,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. “Today, in the 21st century, there is a concerted, nationwide effort to limit the rights of citizens to vote and to truly have a voice in their own government.”Mr. Schumer’s rare appearance at a committee meeting underscored the stakes, not just for the election process but for his party’s own political future. He called the proposed voting rollbacks in dozens of states — including Georgia, Iowa and Arizona — an “existential threat to our democracy” reminiscent of the Jim Crow segregationist laws of the past.He chanted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at Republicans who were promoting them.It was the start of an uphill battle by Senate Democrats, who have characterized what they call the For the People Act as the civil rights imperative of modern times, to overcome divisions in their own ranks and steer around Republican opposition to shepherd it into law. Doing so may require them to change Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster, once used by segregationists to block civil rights measures in the 1960s.Republicans signaled they were ready to fight. Conceding that allowing more people to vote would probably hurt their candidates, they denounced the legislation, passed by the House this month, as a power grab by Democrats intent on federalizing elections to give themselves a permanent political advantage. They insisted that it was the right of states to set their own election laws, including those that make it harder to vote, and warned that Democrats’ proposal could lead to rampant fraud, which experts say has never been found to be widespread.Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, on Wednesday at the hearing.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“This is an attempt by one party to write the rules of our political system,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who has spent much of his career opposing such changes.“Talk about ‘shame,’” he added later.Some Republicans resorted to lies or distortions to condemn the measure, falsely claiming that Democrats were seeking to cheat by enfranchising undocumented immigrants or encouraging illegal voting. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said the bill aimed to register millions of unauthorized immigrants, though that would remain unlawful under the measure.The clash laid bare just how sharply the two parties have diverged on the issue of voting rights, which attracted bipartisan support for years after the civil rights movement but more recently has become a bitter partisan battleground. At times, Republicans and Democrats appeared to be wrestling with irreconcilably different views of the problems plaguing the election system.Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, which convened the hearing, said states were taking appropriate steps to restore public confidence after 2020 by imposing laws that require voters to show identification before voting and limiting so-called ballot harvesting, where others collect voters’ completed absentee ballots and submit them to election officials. He said that if Democrats were allowed to rush through changes on the national level, “chaos will reign in the next election and voters will have less confidence than they currently do.”The suggestion piqued Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the committee chairwoman, who shot back that it was the current elections system — an uneven patchwork of state laws and evolving voting rules — that had caused “chaos” at polling places.“Chaos is what we’ve seen in the last years — five-hour or six-hour lines in states like Arizona to vote. Chaos is purging names of longtime voters from a voter list so they can’t go vote in states like Georgia,” she said. “What this bill tries to do is to simply make it easier for people to vote and take the best practices that what we’ve seen across the country, and put it into law as we are allowed to do under the Constitution.”With Republicans unified against them, Democrats’ best hope for enacting the legislation increasingly appears to be to try to leverage its voting protections — to justify triggering the Senate’s so-called nuclear option: the elimination of the filibuster rule requiring 60 votes, rather than a simple majority, to advance most bills.Even that may be a prohibitively heavy lift, though, at least in the bill’s current form. Liberal activists who are spending tens of millions of dollars promoting it insist that the package must move as one bill. But Senator Joe Manchin III, a centrist West Virginia Democrat whose support they would need both to change the filibuster rules and to push through the elections bill, said on Wednesday that he would not support it in its current form.Speaking to reporters in the Capitol, Mr. Manchin said he feared that pushing through partisan changes would create more “division” that the country could not afford after the Jan. 6 attack, and instead suggested narrowing the bill.Voters waited in line to cast ballots in the 2020 election in Suwanee, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“There’s so much good in there, and so many things I think all of us should be able to be united around voting rights, but it should be limited to the voting rights,” he said. “We’re going to have a piece of legislation that might divide us even further on a partisan basis. That shouldn’t happen.”But it is unclear whether even major changes could win Republican support in the Senate. As written, the more than 800-page bill, which passed the House 220 to 210 mostly along party lines, is the most ambitious elections overhaul in generations, chock-full of provisions that experts say would drive up turnout, particularly among minorities who tend to vote Democratic. Many of them are anathema to Republicans.Its voting provisions alone would create minimum standards for states, neutering voter ID laws, restoring voting rights to former felons, and putting in place requirements like automatic voter registration and no-excuse mail-in balloting. Many of the restrictive laws proposed by Republicans in the states would move in the opposite direction.The bill would also require states to use independent commissions to draw nonpartisan congressional districts, a change that would weaken the advantages of Republicans who control the majority of state legislatures currently in charge of drawing those maps. It would force super PACs to disclose their big donors and create a new public campaign financing system for congressional candidates.Democrats also said they still planned to advance a separate bill restoring a key enforcement provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, after a 2013 Supreme Court ruling gutted it. The ruling paved the way for many of the restrictive state laws Democrats are now fighting.In the hearing room on Wednesday, Republicans ticked through a long list of provisions they did not like, including a restructuring of the Federal Election Commission to make it more partisan and punitive, a host of election administration changes they predicted would cause mass “chaos” if carried out and the public campaign financing system.“This bill is the single most dangerous bill this committee has ever considered,” Mr. Cruz said. “This bill is designed to corrupt the election process permanently, and it is a brazen and shameless power grab by Democrats.”Mr. Cruz falsely claimed that the bill would register undocumented immigrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots, too.In fact, it is illegal for noncitizens to vote, and the bill would do nothing to change that or a requirement that people registering to vote swear they are citizens. It would extend the franchise to millions of former felons, as some states already do, but only after they have served their sentences.Senator Amy Klobuchar pressed against Republicans saying that it was the current elections system that had caused “chaos” at polling places.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThough few senators mentioned him by name, Mr. Trump and his false claims of election fraud hung heavily over the debate.To make their case, Republicans turned to two officials who backed an effort to overturn then-President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election victory. Mac Warner, the secretary of state of West Virginia, and Todd Rokita, the attorney general of Indiana, both supported a Texas lawsuit late last year asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the election results in key battleground states Mr. Biden won, citing groundless accusations of voting improprieties being spread by Mr. Trump.On Wednesday, Democrats balked when Mr. Rokita, a former Republican congressman, asserted that their proposed changes would “open our elections up to increased voter fraud and irregularities” like the ones that he said had caused widespread voter mistrust in the 2020 outcome.Senator Jon Ossoff, a freshman Democrat from Georgia, chastised the attorney general, saying he was spreading misinformation and conspiracies.“I take exception to the comments that you just made, Mr. Rokita, that public concern regarding the integrity of the recent election is born of anything but a deliberate and sustained misinformation campaign led by a vain former president unwilling to accept his own defeat,” Mr. Ossoff said.Mr. Rokita merely scoffed and repeated an earlier threat to sue to block the legislation from being carried out should it ever become law, a remedy that many Republican-led states would most likely pursue if Democrats were able to win its enactment.Election workers re-counting ballots in November in Atlanta.Nicole Craine for The New York Times“You are entitled to your opinion, as misinformed as it may be, but I share the opinion of Americans,” Mr. Rokita said.Sixty-five percent of voters believe the election was free and fair, according to a Morning Consult poll conducted in late January, but only 32 percent of Republicans believe that. 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G.O.P. lawmakers in at least eight states controlled by the party are trying to gain broad influence over the mechanics of voting, in an effort that could further undermine the country’s democratic norms.In the turbulent aftermath of the 2020 presidential contest, election officials in Georgia, from the secretary of state’s office down to county boards, found themselves in a wholly unexpected position: They had to act as one of the last lines of defense against an onslaught of efforts by a sitting president and his influential allies to overturn the will of the voters.Now state Republicans are trying to strip these officials of their power.Buried in an avalanche of voting restrictions currently moving through the Georgia Statehouse are measures that would give G.O.P. lawmakers wide-ranging influence over the mechanics of voting and fundamentally alter the state’s governance of elections. The bill, which could clear the House as soon as Thursday and is likely to be passed by the Senate next week, would allow state lawmakers to seize control of county election boards and erode the power of the secretary of state’s office.“It’s looking at total control of the election process by elected officials, which is not what it should be,” said Helen Butler, a Democratic county board of elections member. “It’s all about turnout and trying to retain power.”It’s not just Georgia. In Arizona, Republicans are pushing for control over the rules of the state’s elections. In Iowa, the G.O.P. has installed harsh new criminal penalties for county election officials who enact emergency voting rules. In Tennessee, a Republican legislator is trying to remove a sitting judge who ruled against the party in an election case.Nationwide, Republican lawmakers in at least eight states controlled by the party are angling to pry power over elections from secretaries of state, governors and nonpartisan election boards.The maneuvers risk adding an overtly partisan skew to how electoral decisions are made each year, threatening the fairness that is the bedrock of American democracy. The push is intertwined with Republicans’ extraordinary national drive to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote, with legislative and legal attacks on early voting, absentee balloting and automatic voter registration laws.“Republicans are brazenly trying to seize local and state election authority in an unprecedented power grab,” said Stacey Abrams, the Democratic voting rights advocate who served as the minority leader in the Georgia State House. She said it was “intended to alter election outcomes and remove state and county election officials who refuse to put party above the people.”She added, “Had their grand plan been law in 2020, the numerous attempts by state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters would have succeeded.”As Mr. Trump carried out his pressure campaign to try to overturn the election results in swing states, he found many sympathetic lawmakers willing to go along with him — but he was rebuffed by numerous election officials, as well as state and federal courts.The new legislation across the country would systematically remove the checks that stood in Mr. Trump’s way, injecting new political influence over electors, county election boards and the certification process. In doing so, the Republican effort places a few elected officials who refused to buy into the lies and falsehoods about the election in its cross hairs.One of those officials is Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, who rebuffed Mr. Trump in the face of mounting pressure to falsely declare the election rife with fraud, despite multiple audits that affirmed the outcome.In Georgia’s new voting bill, the State Legislature is looking to strip Mr. Raffensperger of his role as the chair of the State Election Board and make him an ex-officio member without a vote.Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, repeatedly rejected Donald J. Trump’s entreaties to help him overturn the election results.Audra Melton for The New York TimesBut perhaps more consequential is Republicans’ targeting of county election boards. If the bill becomes law, the State Election Board, under control of the Legislature, would have more authority over these county boards, including the ability to review and fire their members.“It will give the State Election Board the authority to replace a limited number, it appears, of county election superintendents, and that can be a very partisan tool in the wrong hands,” said David Worley, the sole Democratic member of the five-person state board.The provision has worried Democratic officials in major left-leaning counties like Fulton County, which is home to Atlanta, and Gwinnett County, as well as their surrounding suburbs. They fear that a partisan state board influenced by the Legislature may enact more restrictive policies for their counties, which are home to the majority of the Democratic voters in the state and a large concentration of the state’s Black voters.Jon Greenbaum, the chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said Republicans were engaged in an “all-out effort to change the voting rules in lots of ways that would allow for greater opportunity for them to challenge the eligibility of electors,” and that the party would “add micromanagement by state legislatures to the process of running an election.”State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican who has been a chief sponsor of the bills in Georgia, did not respond to requests for comment. In a hearing on the bill this month, he defended the provisions, saying, “We as legislators decide how we will actually be elected, because we decide our own boards of elections and those of the counties we are elected from.”Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has not weighed in publicly on the changes to election administration and oversight. Asked for comment, his office offered only that he was in favor of “strengthened voter ID protections.”At the local level, at least nine Republican counties in Georgia have passed local legislation since November dissolving their current election boards — often composed of three Republicans and two Democrats — and replacing them with a new membership entirely appointed by the county commissioner, resulting in single-party boards.A new law in Iowa restricting access to voting also targeted county election officials. In addition to barring them from proactively sending out absentee ballot applications, the bill introduced criminal charges for officials who fail to follow the new voting rules.The threat of increased punishment seemed to be directed at three county election officials in the state, who last year chose to mail absentee ballot applications to all registered voters in their counties, drawing the ire of state Republicans.“We can be fined heavily now, removed from office,” said one of those officials, Travis Weipert, the Johnson County auditor. “And instead of just saying, ‘Don’t do it again,’ they brought the hammer down on us.”He joked on Facebook that he would be setting up a GoFundMe page because “I have a pretty good idea which auditors will be fined first.”Election officials checked information on absentee ballot envelopes in Newton, Iowa, in October. A new law in the state restricting access to voting has targeted county election officials. Kathryn Gamble for The New York TimesBobby Kaufmann, the Republican state representative in Iowa who sponsored the voting bill, said the county auditors’ actions were “as much the inspiration for the bill as anything,” pointing to their decisions to mail out ballots with prepopulated information.“There were multiple things that these county auditors did to take the law into their own hands, which is why we put these strict punishments and oversight in for auditors that go beyond the scope of their job,” Mr. Kaufmann said, referring to the auditors who proactively mailed ballots. “That’s the role of the Legislature, not the role of an auditor.”In Arizona, the Republican-controlled Legislature is pursuing multiple paths to tip the scales of election oversight. One bill gives the Legislature the authority to approve the state election manual, an essential planning document that is drawn up every two years by the secretary of state. It had previously been approved by the governor and the attorney general.The effort has been roundly criticized by election officials in the state.“They don’t serve any purpose, except for the Legislature just trying to insert themselves into the process, create obstruction, and say that they did something in the name of election integrity without actually doing anything that does that,” said Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona.Ms. Hobbs, who was the target of many Republican attacks after the 2020 election, said that purely partisan politics were at play in the bills.“The Legislature wasn’t interested in control over elections until I got here and happened to have a ‘D’ by my name,” she said.Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a Republican state senator who has been a sponsor of many of the bills, did not respond to a request for comment.Republicans are also introducing measures to give them more electoral oversight in some states, like Michigan and New Jersey, that have Democratic governors who would most likely veto such bills. In North Carolina, which also has a Democratic governor, Republican legislators have publicly discussed introducing a similar bill, but have not yet done so.Efforts in other states to muddle with the mechanics of elections have gone beyond state legislatures. In Michigan, the state Republican Party has indicated that it is unlikely to ask a G.O.P. member of the State Board of Canvassers who chose to certify last year’s election results to return to his post.That member, Aaron Van Langevelde, sided with the two Democrats on the state board in November, clearing the path for Michigan’s Electoral College votes to be awarded to President Biden.If Mr. Van Langevelde is ousted from the board, election officials in Michigan worry that the state Republican Party may again seek to hold up certification of a statewide election and possibly succeed, regardless of the success and security of the vote.It is nearly assured that almost all of these bills will face legal challenges from Democrats, who have signaled that combating the efforts to restrict voting will be a top priority through both federal legislation and the courts.And Democrats could find a path to challenging some of these laws in deep-red Kansas.That state’s Republican-led Legislature put forward a proposal similar to those in Georgia and Arizona, seeking to limit the authority of the secretary of state to make emergency decisions and provisions for elections. But the Republican secretary of state, Scott Schwab, informed the Legislature that the proposal “could run afoul” of federal voting laws regarding military and overseas voters.The legislation was quickly amended the next day. More

Fifty percent of likely Democratic voters still don’t know whom they want to be the next mayor of New York, a poll found.The primary for the New York City mayor’s race, poised to be the most consequential contest in a generation, is fewer than 100 days away.But for many voters, that reality has not yet sunk in.A slate of major debate matchups does not begin until May. Few of the candidates have the resources to advertise on television yet. Traditional campaign methods — greeting subway riders, for example — have limited reach as fewer New Yorkers use public transit. And while city residents were often preoccupied by the challenges of life in a pandemic, the crowded field of mayoral candidates spent the winter in one Zoom forum after another, often in front of sparse online audiences.These extraordinary circumstances have made an always-fluid citywide race even more unpredictable this year, compressing the contest into a three-month springtime sprint for candidates eager to sway undecided voters before the June 22 primary that is likely to decide who will be the next mayor.Their work will be cut out for them: Half of likely Democratic voters are still undecided about their choice to lead the city, according to a poll released on Wednesday.The poll, from Fontas Advisors and Core Decision Analytics, offered a vivid illustration of the uncertain nature of the race.“There is no front-runner,” said George Fontas, the founder of Fontas Advisors, who sponsored the poll and said that he is not affiliated with any campaign in the race. “It’s an open race. We have no idea what’s going to happen in the next three months, and if history shows us anything, it’s that three months is an eternity in a New York City election.”The poll did show some early leaders. Only two candidates registered double-digit support: Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, at 16 percent, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, at 10 percent. Both have done more in-person campaigning than others in the field.Maya D. Wiley, a former MSNBC analyst and ex-counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was at 6 percent; Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, got 5 percent; a former Citi executive, Raymond J. McGuire, received 4 percent; and Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary; Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner; and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, each got 2 percent.New York mayoral races have broken late in other years — three months ahead of the 2013 mayoral primary, Mayor Bill de Blasio was something of an afterthought — and many campaigns and strategists expect the contest to accelerate in earnest in late spring, when more candidates, and possibly independent expenditure committees, start spending on television ads.Certainly, candidates have ramped up their campaigning in recent weeks. And as voters increasingly tune in, they are discovering that in addition to deciding on their favorite candidate, they must also think through the new ranked-choice voting system, which enables them to express a preference for up to five candidates.“When you have that many candidates, it’s hard to know what to do, and then, of course, ranked-choice voting,” said Gale A. Brewer, the Manhattan borough president. “I think they’re very confused about trying to do the right thing. The people I talk to want to do the right thing, they feel the city needs a lot of good leadership.”Neighbors, she said, have asked her, “‘If I’m doing this person first, who should I do second? Who should I do third?’ In their head, they’re all trying to figure this out.”There are also many voters who have been consumed by national politics and the controversies surrounding Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in Albany, but have not yet turned their attention closer to home.“You have D.C. and all of its machinations that have kept people more than engaged, and then you have Albany, which is taking up a tremendous amount of voters’ brain space,” said Christine C. Quinn, the former City Council speaker who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2013.She also noted that some voters, accustomed to September primaries, are still adjusting to the June time frame.“It was hard to get people to vote in September, it’s going to be harder to get them to vote in June,” she said. “They’re not used to it. And you add in ranked-choice voting, and it’s a lot of confusion. So campaigns are really going to have to do outstanding get-out-the-vote if they really want to win.”There is limited credible public polling in the mayor’s race. But a number of both public and private surveys suggest that Mr. Yang is the early poll leader — by varying margins — typically followed by Mr. Adams. Mr. Yang on Wednesday released an internal poll that showed him at 25 percent of first-choice votes, followed by Mr. Adams at 15 percent.Reflecting a growing rivalry, Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang’s campaign managers traded notably sharp attacks on Wednesday, with Mr. Adams wrongly claiming that “people like Andrew Yang never held a job in his entire life.” Mr. Yang’s campaign managers charged that Mr. Adams “crossed a line with his false and reprehensible attacks. The timing of his hate-filled vitriol towards Andrew should not be lost on anyone.”Those two contenders, along with Mr. Stringer, had the highest name recognition in the Fontas survey as well. They all have significant fund-raising coffers.Ms. Wiley has also appeared to gain some traction in recent weeks with a spate of new endorsements. Mr. McGuire and Mr. Donovan have already started pressing their messages on television.The next mayor will confront a series of staggering challenges concerning the economy, education, inequality and a range of other problems exacerbated by the pandemic. “Who becomes the next mayor is probably one of the most important political decisions this city will ever make, ever,” said Keith L.T. Wright, the leader of the New York County Democrats.But Mr. Wright acknowledged that many voters have had more immediate concerns in mind than electoral politics. “People are concerned about eating, let’s be clear. They’re concerned about whether they’re going to get their stimulus check.”“The first one who’s able to break through and get the attention of those undecideds,” Mr. Wright said, “probably becomes the winner.”The poll was the result of 800 live telephone interviews of New York City Democratic primary likely voters. It was conducted March 15-18, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points. More