Elections

California es uno de los nueve estados que este 2020 envían automáticamente las boletas a los votantes registrados, pero los inusuales retrasos en el correo han hecho que los funcionarios públicos animen a los electores para que devuelvan las boletas mucho antes de la fecha límite.Esto es lo que necesitas saber sobre la votación por correo —y en persona— en el Estado Dorado.Esto es lo que necesitas saber:¿Cuándo recibiré mi boleta por correo?¿Es demasiado tarde para registrarse para votar?¿Cuándo recibiré una Guía del Votante de California oficial?¿Cuándo tengo que devolver mi boleta?¿Cuáles son las fechas clave en esta elección?¿Cuándo recibiré mi boleta por correo?Los funcionarios electorales del condado comenzaron a enviar boletas a los 21 millones de votantes registrados en el estado, a más tardar, el 5 de octubre. Si eres un votante registrado activo, no necesitas solicitar una boleta por correo para esta elección.Sin embargo, si te has mudado o si estuviste fuera en las últimas elecciones, es importante que compruebes tu estatus en el sistema de votación para asegurarte de que recibirás automáticamente una boleta por correo.Este año, mientras el Servicio Postal se enfrenta a retrasos postales inusuales, la preocupación por la entrega de las boletas abunda.Los votantes podrán seguir el estado de sus boletas por correo con la herramienta “Where’s My Ballot?” (¿Dónde está mi boleta?). Las notificaciones se envían cuando una boleta ha sido puesta en el correo a la dirección del votante, cuando una boleta emitida ha llegado a la oficina del funcionario del condado y cuando ha sido contada.¿Es demasiado tarde para registrarse para votar?El 19 de octubre fue el último día para registrarte en línea, lo que se recomendaba para evitar ir a una oficina electoral o un centro de votación el día de la elección.El registro para votar con una solicitud por correo, debía tener matasellos antes del 19 de octubre.Sin embargo, si no cumpliste con la fecha límite del 19 de octubre, California permite que los residentes se inscriban y voten a través del sistema de Registro de votantes en el mismo día, disponible desde el 20 de octubre hasta el día de la elección. Tendrás que visitar un centro de votación o una oficina electoral del condado para llevar a cabo este tipo de inscripción.¿Cuándo recibiré una Guía del Votante de California oficial?Puedes consultar la Guía del Votante en línea antes de que te llegue impresa por correo previo a las elecciones generales.Este año, los votantes de California tienen que votar una serie de propuestas, y es probable que algunas de ellas tengan grandes efectos en la economía, la acción afirmativa y la vivienda. Para una información detallada sobre las propuestas en la boleta de este año y sobre los candidatos, puedes consultar esta Guía de las Elecciones 2020 hecha por CalMatters.¿Cuándo tengo que devolver mi boleta?Si decides mandar tu boleta por correo, debe tener matasellos hasta el 3 de noviembre y los funcionarios electorales deben recibirla antes del 20 de noviembre.En caso de que haya retrasos en el sistema postal, se aconseja que envíes tu boleta lo antes posible. Esto también deja tiempo para que los funcionarios revisen la firma de tu boleta y la devuelvan para corregir cualquier discrepancia.Si no estás seguro de que tu boleta será recibida para ese entonces, también puedes dejarla en un centro de votación, oficina electoral del condado o en un buzón del condado en cualquier momento antes de las 08:00 p. m. del día de la elección. Los funcionarios han dicho que los lugares de votación tendrán filas separadas para las personas que vayan a dejar sus boletas.También puedes autorizar a alguien a devolver la boleta en tu nombre, siempre y cuando no se le pague por cada boleta.¿Cuáles son las fechas clave en esta elección?5 de octubre: Los funcionarios electorales del condado comenzaron a enviar boletas por correo. Además, comenzó la votación anticipada en persona.19 de octubre: Fue el último día para presentar las solicitudes de registro de votantes en línea o por correo. Puedes registrarte para votar incluso el día de las elecciones, pero debes ir a la oficina electoral de tu condado o a tu centro de votación para inscribirte en persona.27 de octubre: Fecha límite para solicitar una boleta electoral por correo.3 de noviembre: Día de las elecciones. Las boletas de voto por correo deberán tener matasellos hasta esta fecha. More

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Joe Biden is leading ​Donald Trump in the national polls for the presidential election, but that doesn’t guarantee ​the Democratic candidate victory. Hillary Clinton also had a clear lead over Trump in the polls for almost the entire 2016 campaign and ended up losing in the electoral college.
​Because the presidential ​voting system assigns each state a number of electoral college votes, which​ go to the state’s victor regardless of the​ margin of victory (with the exception of Nebraska and Maine), a handful of swing states will ​probably decide the election and be targeted heavily by campaigners.
The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino examines how the race is developing in the areas that could decide the election
Watch Anywhere but Washington – our video series examining the key election battlegrounds More

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The small farming communities of Wisconsin’s 32nd state senate district, with names like Romance and Avalanche, sit nestled along the Mississippi River. It’s within these rural towns that millions of political dollars are pouring into small counties to influence a local race for state senators who are paid a far more humble amount.
That’s because in Wisconsin, like several other states this year, both Democrats and Republicans are trying to rack up seats in the state legislatures to hold influence over the political maps which are redrawn every 10 years after the decennial census count.
“One race should not have this kind of significance,” says Ben Wikler, the Democratic state party chairman tasked with wrestling back majority rule in a state where Democrats won 54% of the overall assembly vote in 2018, but won just over 36% of the seats. “But democracy in Wisconsin is broken.”
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Republicans asserted their dominance in 2010 by targeting 107 state legislative seats in 16 key states through a $30m national strategy appropriately called REDMAP. It worked: the hi-tech maps the GOP produced have kept every one of those swing-state chambers red throughout this decade, even in years when Democratic candidates won more votes.
Legislatures in these states, contrary to popular opinion, then worked quickly to undermine collective bargaining, erode voting rights, enact draconian new limits on reproductive rights, refused to expand Medicaid and much more.
But if Republicans flip the open seat in Wisconsin’s 32nd district – carried by a Democrat in 2018 by just 56 votes – they could block the Democratic governor’s agenda and claim complete control over drawing the next decade of legislative and congressional maps. They could cement their majority in the legislature, and continue implementing restrictions on voting like they are this year, potentially impacting which way Wisconsin goes in the presidential election.
“It’s all on the line,” Wikler says. “Imagine that? It can be a lot to run for local office and feel like the future of your state and maybe even the electoral college rests on your race.”
While races for the White House and control of the US Senate demand the largest headlines and the wildest fundraising sums, the stakes of America’s down-ballot races are huge. In three states in particular, Texas, Wisconsin and North Carolina, these local races will determine nothing less than the next decade of the states’ politics, and also influence the electoral college state of play into the 2030s.
“Collin county, Texas, and outside Dallas, Houston, Waco, even,” says Jessica Post, who leads the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “Overland Park, Kansas. Livonia, Michigan. Those are the places that will change the country.”
North Carolina: ‘They know what’s at stake’
Just how important are these district lines? A 2016 report by the Electoral Integrity Project at Harvard measuring the health of American democracy gave North Carolina a seven on a scale of 100, the worst in the nation, and a rating in line with Iran and Venezuela. North Carolina Republicans locked themselves in power, then enacted a “monster” voter suppression bill that targeted black voters with “surgical” precision. They passed the infamous transgender bathroom bill. And when voters elected a Democratic governor in 2016, they curtailed his powers in a shocking lame-duck session.
Those maps not only kept Republicans in power with fewer votes, it allowed them to command 10 of North Carolina’s 13 congressional districts, more than 70%, again, even when voters preferred Democratic candidates.
Chart showing North Carolina voters voted for Democrats but Republicans had the majority in the state house.
State Democrats broke the GOP’s gerrymandered monopoly in 2018, when they gained two seats in the state senate and nine in the house. Then, the following year, a North Carolina court tossed out the map, calling it an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that violated the state constitution. A new, fairer map was introduced – but it is now up for replacement.
The state elections this year are the last chance for Democrats to win a seat at the table for next year’s redistricting. The new, fairer map will be gone. If the GOP wins both chambers, Democratic governor Roy Cooper can’t veto the Republican plan.
“We’re going to have maybe 15 races where we’ve spent half a million dollars, just on the Democratic side, for a [state senate] job that pays $14,000 a year,” says state Representative Graig Meyer, who has led Democratic recruitment efforts to win back at least one chamber of the North Carolina legislature ahead of redistricting. “It’s all about the maps.”
Meyer and state Democrats made a strategic shift as they recruited candidates. Instead of seeking out veteran Democratic officeholders – quite likely a “slightly older than middle-aged white guy who was pretty boring,” Meyer says – they looked for people with deep community connections and a high degree of emotional intelligence. As a result, the ensuing slate is younger and features more women and candidates of color.
That’s the case here in state senate district 18, which includes Franklin county, in central North Carolina, and also some of the growing far outer suburbs of Raleigh. Rising home prices in the capital region pushed more families into these once quiet rural towns. Population shifts, newcomers from the north, and now a newly drawn state senate map that now reaches deeper into the outer Raleigh rings in Wake county could bring even more change.
In 2018, Republican state senator John Alexander held this seat by just 2,639 votes. When the court mandated a new map, however, the new district that had been carefully crafted to tilt red no longer included Alexander’s home. This newly open seat is now far more blue-leaning, and one of the seats Democrats see as a must-flip. In almost any scenario, if Democrats are to take the senate, the road runs through these towns of Zebulon and Wake Forest.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” says Democratic senate nominee Sarah Crawford. “If I lose, I might have to consider moving out of state. I might not be able to show my face. It’s about the future of North Carolina. It’s about the next decade.”
The mother of two and nonprofit executive said the skewed maps have taken a toll on the state.
“In a 50/50 state, you shouldn’t have one party with an extreme majority over another,” Crawford says. “What it’s meant for North Carolina is that public education has suffered. We haven’t expanded Medicaid. Now we have a whole new layer of inaction with the Covid-19 pandemic. All of these bad things have come out of gerrymandering.”
Just over an hour west sits the newly redrawn 31st senate district, encompassing the rural, tobacco environs surrounding Winston-Salem. This district has changed dramatically as well – from a Republican plus-18 seat to just a Republican plus-four on the new map. For the last decade, the only action has come in heated Republican primaries, followed by a November coronation.
“We haven’t had a history of competitive elections,” says Terri LeGrand, the Democratic challenger. But this seat is winnable. The new district not only cuts deeper toward blue Winston-Salem, it includes 20 new precincts – almost all of them Democratic-leaning – that had been buried inside a neighboring Republican district.
“My opponent is on record, very open about the fact that she supports gerrymandering. She has absolutely no problem with it. So, it’s not something that we want to leave to chance.”
Republicans aren’t gambling, either. Millions in dark money from Republican donors have been funneled into North Carolina through something called the Good Government Coalition. It is registered to an address at a UPS store in suburban Virginia, according to Raleigh television station WRAL, and the custodian of records is listed as Matthew Walter – formerly the president of the Republican State Legislative Committee, which pioneered the party’s REDMAP efforts in 2010.
The funds have gone toward negative ads being hurled against LeGrand, for example, incorrectly suggesting that she supports defunding the police. Similar ads have targeted other Democratic contenders in close districts, in a strategy mimicking REDMAP ads that identified a hot-button local issue, then buried mailboxes under a weeks-long avalanche of misleading negative ads.
“It’s grinding and vitriolic,” LeGrand says. “They’ve thrown everything at me because they know what’s at stake.”
Texas: ‘It’s not a red state. It’s a suppression state’
Deep in the upper-middle-class suburbs north-east of Dallas are the well-manicured towns neighboring the ultra-wealthy enclaves that George W Bush and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban call home. Here, Brandy Chambers holds one of the nine keys to Democratic hopes of flipping the Texas house for the first time in nearly two decades.
White people, for example, make up just over 40% of all Texans, according to 2019 census figures, yet still control nearly 70% of the state’s congressional and state legislative seats. In 2018, Texas Republicans won just over 50% of the statewide vote for Congress, but nevertheless won two-thirds of the seats.
That could change in 2021, and the 112th district could make all the difference. Nine seats separate Democrats from winning an all-important ticket to the redistricting table next year. They are increasingly competitive in Texas and had been able to flip 12 seats in the 2018 midterms.
If they succeed, Democrats would influence the drawing of as many as 39 congressional districts gerrymandered by the GOP dating back to the early 2000s redraw, which divided liberal Austin into four districts with four conservatives. There could also be a strong impact on national politics, because Texas could receive at least three new seats in Congress following census reapportionment next year.
A Democratic state house would provide a brake on voter suppression efforts that sunk Texas to 50th in voter turnout in 2018 and limited massive counties the size of New England states to one dropbox each this fall.
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“It’s not a red state. It’s a suppression state, and by God, my governor and my attorney general are doing their damndest to keep it that way,” Chambers says. “But when Texas goes blue, we take our 38 to 41 electoral votes with us, and then there’s no math in which a Republican can win the White House without Texas. If they draw the maps? We could be stuck like chuck for another decade.”
According to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which rates state legislative races Moneyball-style, with an eye toward pushing donations toward the most meaningful races to impact redistricting, Texas’s 112th district is the most valuable in the state. “I was able to get so close in a historically very red district,” Chambers tells me. “If my race goes, a couple other races go, and we get a new House majority.”
This year, determined Texans have withstood suppression efforts and set turnout records. More than seven million voted early, and numbers were highest in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and the surrounding environs that mirror the fast-growing, wealthy suburbs that have turned against the Republicans and Donald Trump.
“The story this year is the Texas voter overcoming these obstacles inspired by the women by and large who are running for the Texas house,” says Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman who lost a Senate battle to Ted Cruz in 2018, but has organized nightly phone banks aimed at flipping the chamber. “I’ve never seen this level of organization and capitalization and strategic deployment of resources in my life.” More

In her essay, “Don’t Give Up on America,” Marilynne Robinson describes the “deep if sometimes difficult affinity” she has for her country. At the end of a long, contentious election season, it’s not surprising that Ms. Robinson has become disillusioned with that love affair. “Resentment displaces hope and purpose the way carbon monoxide displaces air,” she writes.We asked readers to share what makes them love their country, what causes that devotion to waiver and what, if anything, restores their adoration.“I love most what this country has been at different times in its brief history: a defeater of tyrants, a promulgator of liberty, a beacon of opportunity and hope,” wrote Michael B. Trosino, a reader in Michigan.Jenn Monroe in New Hampshire focused on the future:“To love your country is to desire to see it become the best version of itself, to point out its failures, to recognize how we each have been complicit in allowing its worst to persist, to work together to create a community in which every resident has all that they need — love, food, shelter, health, peace, prosperity — and are truly treated as equals in every regard.”More thoughts from our readers follow. They have been edited for length and clarity.‘Be proud of it, but not afraid to confront its problems’To love your country is to be proud of it, but also to not be afraid to confront its problems and work to solve them. I love our blatant freedoms, despite all of the cries of “communism,” “social justice warriors” and “cancel culture.” We are still largely free to do what we want!I get disillusioned when leaders do nothing to solve problems. The way to manage it is to make them pay electorally. My faith is restored when I see that, despite everything, people generally do hold leaders accountable, as they will in the coming election. The fact that we can indeed fix it, even if it takes some time, gives me great faith in the system and this country. — Aaron Martinez, DallasI’m the daughter of a career military man. My patriotism is unwavering. I stand for the national anthem. I wear red, white and blue for every national holiday. I respect every branch of the military and those who have served. Most importantly, I hold my country in my heart and thank God every single day that I’m an American.I love being free to say what I want to say and live life the way I choose to live it. Freedom is a precious gift. Needless to say, I’m disillusioned with the current state of our government. Riots and looting have destroyed our beautiful city. There is a lack of respect for the police and firefighters who are (for the most part) trying to maintain civility and protect us from the violence that plagues us. — Kathryn Hubbard, Batavia, Ill.‘To love America you have to love experimentation’To love America you have to love experimentation because that’s what America is. It’s hard to love a science project; there are so many failures. That’s what motivates some conservatives — an aversion to inevitable failures. I love science, I love exploration, I love learning new things, I love grand accomplishments and spectacular failures and that’s why I love America. Elon Musk came to America to experiment and now he’s going to light up the sky with internet access and he’s going to put people on Mars! How could I not love that? If you don’t fail, you’re playing it too safe. — Charles Becker, Novato, Calif.Love isn’t passive. It’s not a sit back, relax and enjoy the show kind of deal. To love this country is to look cleareyed at its promises and its practices, working to bridge the gap between them. We are a nation, in Jimmy Carter and Bob Dylan’s phrasing, “busy being born.” Love is a belief not only in what has come, but in the growth that lies ahead. Without it we are “busy dying.” — Emmitt Sklar, Brooklyn, N.Y.‘I love this land, its beauty, its bounty’I’m a veteran and am incredibly thankful for the sense of purpose and work ethic I developed during my service. Now, as an engineer, I can begin to return that favor by contributing my expertise to build a better, more sustainable future. The slow, seemingly implacable death of our natural world is difficult to comprehend. I have hope, but little faith, in our ability to restore this planet, and that will have to be enough, because there isn’t anywhere else to go. — Benjamin Cheek, WashingtonI live in N.Y.C. Finding nature in the city (red-tailed hawks, migratory birds, the elms in Central Park) enthralls me and makes me believe anything is possible. I love watching the pleasure people take being in city parks — fishing, playing music, relaxing, biking, dancing. That, to me, is the Arcadian ideal. To treat the lands respectfully and sustainably, in memory of the Indigenous peoples who were so violently murdered for it and the slaves who were used to exploit it. — Marcella Durand, New York, N.Y.I’m a survivor of domestic violence and pervasive sexism that has periodically and unjustly crushed my American dreams for over five decades. Yet I still yearn for my freedom and am linked to others who have been unjustly judged, abused and oppressed. The promise of freedom and equality in our founding and our people’s struggles needs a rebirth that stretches deeper and farther than ever before. I love this land, its beauty, its bounty and all the wild creatures I have seen when visiting wild spaces. We need to embrace the protection of life and liberty for the planet, our fellow creatures and all of humanity. — Kara Steffensen, Eugene, Ore.‘You can’t love your country without loving your fellow citizens’To me, love of country is to be gladly anchored to values and customs that are shared by fellow citizens. It is to yearn to try shrimp and grits in South Carolina, seeing a game at Fenway, taking in some jazz in Chicago and watching waves crash against a West Coast shore.I have never felt so pitted against fellow citizens as I do now. I manage it by reflecting on Lincoln’s observation that a house divided against itself cannot stand. I resolve to mend divisions. — Joel Griffitts, Mapleton, UtahYou can’t love your country without loving your fellow citizens, and the truest expression of that love is the willingness to sacrifice for others. In a healthy society, that willingness to sacrifice would be distributed across the shoulders of many; in ours, it falls heavily on the shoulders of a few. Those who do the most for their country, who become social workers, public defenders, child care workers and teachers — to name a few examples — are punished for it with ever-increasing financial insecurity, poor-to-nonexistent health care, low social standing, and greatly diminished prospects of supporting a family or dying peacefully of old age. — Christopher Dueker, New HampshireI think of my love of the U.S. the same way I love my parents and son and husband, a sort of warts-and-all kind of love. I become disillusioned by the acts of hate now prevalent around us; particularly those acts of the state directed at Black citizens. What restores my faith? I look for the helpers. I jump on a League call or donate some time at the local dog shelter and remind myself of all the really truly good people in this wonderful, irritating country of ours. — Jennifer Spillane, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.I don’t take for granted the rights and responsibilities that come with our form of government outlined in our Constitution. I recognize the necessity of paying my fair share of taxes in order to provide infrastructure and needed services. When friends and family get compartmentalized in their political labels and we stop listening to each other, I get disillusioned. I manage it by taking a break, working in my garden, reading good fiction, baking for my husband and friends. My faith is restored by others who do the same and who refuse to give up. — Barbara Quijada, Tempe, Ariz.Ensure those less fortunate can ‘stand themselves up with dignity’Love of country is to seek its betterment. I express that love by caring for those who are disenfranchised, misunderstood and in need. The Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements have given me more hope than I have had in decades. To see a sea of women’s faces that also include men who believe that sexual abuse and misogyny must go, to see all ages and colors of thousands of people participate in the Black Lives Matter movement, that gives me profound hope and faith. — Laura Thornton, Southington, Conn.I love my country because I wouldn’t be alive or be an American citizen without my great-grandfather leaving a life of poverty and starvation in southern Italy to come here. To love your country is to ensure that those less fortunate, like my great-grandfather, are given the resources and assistance they need to stand themselves up with dignity, create a new life for themselves here and become productive citizens who proudly and lovingly call this place home. I used to express this love by volunteering a lot more than I do these days: Answering calls on the AIDS crisis hotline in the early days of the epidemic, serving meals and giving Christmas presents to the poor and homeless. Today I mostly express that love by donating money. — David Joseph Ruyle, Dallas‘To love your country is to believe in its ideals’To my surprise, reading the Bible in one year helped me see that we have always wandered away from God/good to worship gold. It is a constant struggle to return, but most people seem to continue to try. I am inspired by the words “in God we trust,” the golden rule — to love one’s neighbor as oneself, the dawning realization that here on earth we are all one another’s neighbors and the words Anne Frank wrote in her diary which continue to inspire decades after her death at the hands of pure evil and ignorance: “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” — Lisa DeLille Bolton, NashvilleTo love your country is to believe in its ideals. When I was younger, I would celebrate America on the Fourth of July, in a shirt with an American flag watching fireworks with my parents. I lost my love for America when I was 16 and Trump won the election. I woke up crying on Nov. 9 and the pain has never lessened. I think it’s dangerous to love your country so deeply. I am 20 now and my jaw feels permanently clenched. Do I have faith that things will get better in America? Ask me in December. — Emma Hinchcliffe, CaliforniaI have dual citizenship with Ireland and have seriously considered leaving America. But while I honor other countries, I love ours and cannot bring myself to leave. I want us to emerge from these terrible times stronger and more humble, resilient and focused on the common good, firm in the belief that Black lives matter and that we can rescue our planet from annihilation. I find faith in the decency of the American people and the hope of the American dream. — Kathleen A. Conway, Tempe, Ariz.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

The weeks following the election could very well be the most dangerous weeks in this country since the Civil War.If Donald Trump should lose, he may well not concede. And he will still be president, with all the power that bestows. His supporters will likely be seething, thinking that the election has been stolen. These are seeds he has been sowing for months.Trump will have command of the military, the Justice Department and part of the intelligence apparatus.He already knows that the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., is investigating his dodgy finances. Trump knows he could face charges as soon as he leaves office — and he won’t be federally pardoned.He has tasted power and can’t imagine a world in which it was withdrawn from him. A loss would be a supremely embarrassing rebuke, the first sitting president not to win re-election in 28 years.The pandemic will still be raging, but Trump, who has consistently downplayed it and tragically mismanaged it, will feel absolutely no obligation to contain it.He will be wounded, afraid and dangerous.People are already preparing for hostility and violence.The Washington Post reported in early October that “the Justice Department is planning to station officials in a command center at F.B.I. headquarters to coordinate the federal response to any disturbances or other problems with voting that may arise across the country.”Police departments across the country are preparing to confront unrest. Banks and apartment buildings are bracing for violence.As The Washington Post reported Friday, “The National Guard Bureau has established a new unit made up mostly of military policemen that could be dispatched to help quell unrest in coming days.”Stores are being boarded up. As The New York Times reported Friday:“In a show of just how volatile the situation seems to the industry, 120 representatives from 60 retail brands attended a video conference this week hosted by the National Retail Federation, which involved training for store employees on how to de-escalate tensions among customers, including those related to the election. The trade group also hired security consultants who have prepped retailers about which locations around the country are likely to be the most volatile when the polls close.”Facebook is even preparing for violence. As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, teams at the company “have planned for the possibility of trying to calm election-related conflict in the U.S. by deploying internal tools designed for what it calls ‘at-risk’ countries,” employing tactics they have “previously used in countries including Sri Lanka and Myanmar.”This, like so much else during the Trump presidency, is unprecedented and outrageous. How is it that we are making so many preparations for a presidential election to descend into bedlam?The Brookings Institution sees the prospect of violence being particularly high. As it pointed out Tuesday:“The broader pool of potential extremists has grown during Covid, with Americans at home and online, consuming vast quantities of propaganda and disinformation. So even if a relatively small percentage of people might actually mobilize to violence, the milieu from which they will emerge has metastasized significantly. The November election is increasingly perceived as a ‘winner-take-all’ contest, with no room for those who don’t identify with a specific side.”And the appetite and acceptance for violence among the public is growing. As researchers wrote in Politico early last month, “Our research, which we’re reporting here for the first time, shows an upswing in the past few months in the number of Americans — both Democrats and Republicans — who said they think violence would be justified if their side loses the upcoming presidential election.”All of the fears and preparation could well be for naught. We could have a clear winner, the country could peacefully accept it and Donald Trump could submit to a peaceful transfer of power.But no signs point in that direction.Trump has openly resisted saying that he will guarantee a peaceful transfer of power and he has repeatedly told his supporters that the only way he can lose is if the election is stolen from him.He has signaled in every way possible that he plans to stay in power at all costs. On Saturday, he said the Supreme Court will help secure a victory for him if he’s not declared the winner on election night: “If we win, if we win on Tuesday or, thank you very much Supreme Court, shortly thereafter.” He may have been speaking sarcastically here, but the statement fits a pattern: Trump doesn’t care if he “wins” ugly or unfairly, a win is a win. He doesn’t care if it could rip this country apart because he has never cared about the health and stability of the nation.Everyone in Trump World is a tool to be used by him, to further his ambitions, to fill his coffers, to stroke his ego, to protect his power.Trump will watch his country burn and warm himself by the blaze.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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The Texas Supreme Court on Sunday denied an effort by Republicans to throw out more than 120,000 votes that had already been cast at drive-through locations in Harris County, leaving Republicans’ only remaining option at the federal level.The ruling from the court came without comment.The effort to get rid of the votes from Harris County, which includes Houston and is largely Democratic, now hinges on a nearly identical effort at the federal level, where a judge has called an election-eve hearing for Monday.The lawsuit contends that the 10 drive-through voting sites in Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, are operating illegally and are arranged in locations that favor Democrats.The system was put in place for the first time this year by Chris Hollins, the Harris County clerk, with unanimous approval by county commissioners, after being tested in a pilot program over the summer.More than 127,000 voters have cast ballots at the sites, and the number could grow to more than 135,000 through Election Day on Tuesday, said Susan Hays, a lawyer for Harris County. She said county officials planned to vigorously challenge the suit, which she described as an act of “voter suppression.”“It’s nuts,” she said. “Votes should count.”Democrats were hopeful on Sunday that the decision from the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court would bode well for their battle at the federal level.The case will be heard on Monday morning by Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.In a motion on Friday asking to intervene in the case, Democrats said it threatened to “throw Texas’ election into chaos by invalidating the votes of more than 100,000 eligible Texas voters who cast their ballots” at the drive-through sites. The motion was filed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the campaign of M.J. Hegar, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Texas.The plaintiffs, who include State Representative Steve Toth and the conservative activist Steve Hotze, argue that drive-through voting “is a violation of state and federal law and must be stopped.”In a telephone interview on Saturday, Mr. Toth said that only the Legislature had the authority to put in place a drive-though voting system. He also said the arrangement of the sites was tilted toward Democratic voters, noting that Mr. Hollins is vice chairman of finance for the Texas Democratic Party.“If Hollins is really concerned that everybody is accurately represented, why is it that nine of the 10 are set up in predominantly Democratic areas?” said Mr. Toth, who represents part of neighboring Montgomery County.He denied that the lawsuit was aimed at blunting Democratic momentum amid record rates of early voting in Houston and other strongly Democratic areas in the last days before the election.“We’re not the ones who are disenfranchising anybody,” he said. “This is Hollins who did this.”In a statement on Twitter on Saturday, Mr. Hollins said drive-through voting was “a safe, secure and convenient way to vote,” adding: “Texas Election Code allows it, the Secretary of State approved it, and 127,000 voters from all walks of life have used it.”He said that his office was “committed to counting every vote cast by registered voters in this election,” and that voters would be notified if court proceedings required them to take any additional steps. More