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      Inflation, election lies and racial tension weigh on voters in Georgia swing county: ‘We all got to eat’

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      Less than six months before the US presidential election on 5 November, anxiety over the economy looms large. While official figures show a significant recovery since the pandemic, many Americans aren’t buying it. As polling day approaches, the Guardian is dispatching reporters to key swing counties to gauge how they are feeling – and how they might vote.Rows of pecan and peach trees frame the scenery throughout Peach county, Georgia, a rural area of central Georgia, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. A field of yellow school buses pack a lot on the way into Fort Valley, the county’s seat, where the buses used across the US are manufactured.Peach county is a swing county in what has emerged as one of the most important swing states in the presidential election. And, according to a March 2024 poll conducted by Emerson College, the economy is the most important issue to Georgia voters. About 32% of those polled said the economy was their top priority, trailed by immigration at 14% and healthcare at 12%.In 2020, Joe Biden won the state of Georgia by 0.2 percentage points. Donald Trump won Peach county by just over 500 votes, 51.8% to 47.2%. Emerson’s last poll found 46% of voters in Georgia currently support Trump to 42% supporting Biden, with 12% undecided – setting the state, and Peach county, on course for another nail-biting election where views on the economy will be key.For Victoria Simmons, a retired local newspaper editor who lives in Byron, the economy is a top issue. “People can hardly afford to buy groceries and are losing hope,” she said. “We need to be focusing more on our own country rather than sending millions to places like Ukraine.“If the election is fair and there is no tampering, I believe we will see a Trump victory,” she said.Like many in the US, Anna Holloway, a retired professor in Fort Valley, doesn’t seem enamored by either candidate. She identifies as a “classical liberal” and campaigned and voted for the independent Evan McMullin in 2016, but voted for Biden in 2020 and said she intended to do so again.“I am opposed to big government but voted for Biden and will do so again just because he’s less likely to fracture our political system than Donald Trump,” she said.Inflation remains a big concern for everyone. LeMario Brown, 38, a former city council member in Fort Valley and local pecan farmer, has seen prices rise first-hand. It costs tens of thousands of dollars and years of work to get a pecan farm into production, not including costly and difficult to obtain insurance to cover any crop losses due to natural disasters.“It doesn’t matter if we’re Republican or Democrat, we all got to eat,” he said.He also knows how important just a few votes in the county can be. He came up short in the 2021 election for mayor of Fort Valley by just 19 votes.Born and raised in Fort Valley, Brown explained the transitions in the area he had seen over the years and his hopes for improving the local economy and retaining young people and graduates of the local historically Black university, Fort Valley State University.Brown has been involved with a local non-profit started in 2018, Peach Concerned Citizens, an organization focused on non-partisan civic engagement efforts including voter registration, increasing voter turnout, increasing US census engagement and responses in Peach county and surrounding counties, and educating voters so they have the necessary information to be able to vote and do so informed of who and what they are voting on.“Most individuals are standoffish because politics are like religion,” said Brown. “They don’t want to offend, Democrats or Republicans, but most of the time once you engage a person from a social standpoint, they tell you what the issues are if you’re listening because it’s either they’re going to do what they want to do, or we don’t have enough money to do this, or my light bill or gas is too high, so if you listen you’re going to figure what issues you can actually tackle.”For all this talk of crisis and the loss of hope at the top level, Peach county – like the rest of the US – appears to be doing well. The unemployment rate in the region is just 3.3%, below the US average of 3.9%. Inflation is also trending below the national average. But those macro trends don’t seem to be cutting through locally where people are still feeling the pinch of price rises on everyday living and interest rates seem stuck at heights unseen in 20 years.With the state’s voters splitting evenly between Republicans and Democrats, the candidates are fighting for the 18% of voters Pew Research reported don’t lean either way.“We have some independent voters and I’ve heard the stories of: ‘Well, it’s the lesser of two evils, Biden isn’t doing that, Trump is doing this, Trump is going to do that, Trump isn’t doing that, Biden will do that.’ It’s kind of mixed, but I think it all stems back to economics,” Brown added. “People want to be able to pay the light bill, put gas in the car, feed their family, the basic necessities of being a productive citizen in the community.”But the economy will not be the only issue on the ballot come November. Georgia was also one of the main states where Trump supporters focused their efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election. And for Tim Waters, the chairman of the Peach County Republicans, the number one issue concerning voters in Peach county in 2024 will be corruption, from the local to the federal level.The 2020 election “was stolen and everybody knows it was stolen”, said Waters. “They just keep up this lying nonsense.”“People are sick and tired of the corruption from the absolute travesty of going after Donald Trump again and again and again. That’s why this cabal is trying to destroy this country. People are waking up to it. They’re sick and tired of it and they want change and they want it now,” said Waters. “That is absolutely what I’m seeing.”“They’re still going to cheat again in the elections,” said Waters. “I do not trust the secretary of state. I don’t trust the attorney general of the state of Georgia, Chris Carr, and I do not trust the governor, Brian Kemp. He’s out there at Davos when he should be here focusing on his constituents.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRace will also be a big factor in Peach county. The county has a population around 28,000, 45% Black and 51% white. Racial and economic demographics largely segregate the county, the Black population centered around the county seat of Fort Valley, with the white, higher-income population predominantly concentrated in the parts of the city of Byron that fall in the county’s north-eastern boundary.Democrats have traditionally won Black votes in Georgia by overwhelming margins. Trump has been courting Black voters despite a long record of racist remarks and some recent polls have suggested he is gaining ground with Black voters. Kattie Kendrick, a retiree and CEO of Peach Concerned Citizens, politely noted that Trump’s old remarks could be an issue come November.“Back when I grew up in the country, all of the children played together. The thing I didn’t like, no disrespect to anyone, but when they turned 16, we had to call them mister and miss, but we were playing together all this time and all of a sudden,” said Kendrick.She noted the resurgence of racism and division in politics, such as Trump telling the far-right extremist group Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a 2020 presidential debate.“I think what happened was it was there all the time, but they pulled the rug back, it became more of an accepted norm and it should never be. I don’t think people should be fake or phoney, but I don’t think we were put here to be mean to each other either,” added Kendrick.She founded the non-profit in 2018 after she ran for a seat on the county commission in 2016 and noticed some of the civic engagement and outreach gaps in the region, in Peach county and other nearby counties as well including Crawford, Taylor, Marion and Lee counties.Kendrick cited numerous issues facing the county, from economic inequities in development and resources and the pressing need for medical coverage, doctors and expansion of Medicaid.“We have a lot of people who only believe they need to vote in a presidential election but the president doesn’t necessarily pave the roads, streets, the utility bills, so we try to get information out to the people where it affects them right now,” she said.The Rev Leon Williams, pastor at the Fairview CME church in Fort Valley, knows that inflation has hurt people but he hopes that voters will put the current situation in perspective.“We just came through Covid-19 where nobody could work, no products were available, so what do you expect when something like that happens? Prices are going to go up, products will be hard to find, supply will be limited, you expect this, it’s going to take time for us to get over that,” said Williams.Voters should “listen to the parties and see what they say what they will do” and not all the negative attacks on the opposition, he said.“Our main focus as I see it is to get the people out to vote, motivate people to get out to vote. That is who is going to win, the people more motivated to vote. The Black community, you don’t need to tell them how to vote, they can listen and see what’s being said,” added Williams.As November’s election inches nearer, Williams worries about the already heated political environment and where it will lead. “I don’t like the direction everything is going right now. Of course, we have problems, but we can work them out,” said Williams. “Those who you divide and want to put down, where are you going to put them? We all have to live here, so we need to find some kind of way to get along instead of getting divided.” More

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      Majority of Americans wrongly believe US is in recession – and most blame Biden

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      Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
      55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
      49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
      49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
      Many Americans put the blame on Biden for the state of the economy, with 58% of those polled saying the economy is worsening due to mismanagement from the presidential administration.The poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation. The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing. In reality, the rate of inflation has fallen sharply from its post-Covid peak of 9.1% and has been fluctuating between 3% and 4% a year.In April, the inflation rate went down from 3.5% to 3.4% – far from inflation’s 40-year peak of 9.1% in June 2022 – triggering a stock market rally that pushed the Dow Jones index to a record high.A recession is generally defined by a decrease in economic activity, typically measured as gross domestic product (GDP), over two successive quarters, although in the US the National Bureau of Economic Research (NEBR) has the final say. US GDP has been rising over the last few years, barring a brief contraction in 2022, which the NEBR did not deem a recession.The only recent recession was in 2020, early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, the US economy has grown considerably. Unemployment has also hit historic lows, wages have been going up and consumer spending has been strong.But the road to recovery has been bumpy, largely because of inflation and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to tamp down high prices.Despite previously suggesting the Fed could start lowering rates this year, Fed officials have recently indicated interest rates will remain elevated in the near future. While inflation has eased considerably since its peak in 2022, officials continue to say inflation remains high because it remains above the Fed’s target of 2% a year.After a tumultuous ride of inflation and high interest rates, voters are uncertain about what’s next. Consumer confidence fell to a six-month low in May.So even though economic data, like GDP, implies strength in the economy, there’s a stubborn gap between the reality represented in that data – what economists use to gauge the economy’s health – and the emotional reality that underlies how Americans feel about the economy. In the poll, 55% think the economy is only getting worse.Some have called the phenomenon a “vibecession”, a term first coined by the economics writer Kyla Scanlon to describe the widespread pessimism about the economy that defies statistics that show the economy is actually doing OK.While inflation has been down, prices are at a higher level compared with just a few years ago. And prices are still going up, just at a slower pace than at inflation’s peak.Americans are clearly still reeling from price increases. In the poll, 70% of Americans said their biggest economic concern was the cost of living. About the same percentage of people, 68%, said that inflation was top of mind.The poll showed little change in Americans’ economic outlook from a Harris poll conducted for the Guardian on the economy in September 2023.A similar percentage of respondents agreed “it’s difficult to be happy about positive economic news when I feel financially squeezed each month” and that the economy was worse than the media made it out to be.Another thing that hasn’t changed: views on the economy largely depend on which political party people belong to. Republicans were much more likely to report feeling down about the economy than Democrats. The vast majority of Republicans believe that the economy is shrinking, inflation is increasing and the economy is getting worse overall. A significant but smaller percentage of Democrats, less than 40%, believed the same.Unsurprisingly, more Republicans than Democrats believe the economy is worsening due to the mismanagement of the Biden administration.Something both Republicans and Democrats agree on: they don’t know who to trust when it comes to learning about the economy. In both September and May, a majority of respondents – more than 60% – indicated skepticism over economic news.The economy continues to present a major challenge to Joe Biden in his re-election bid. Though he has tried to tout “Bidenomics”, or his domestic economy record, including his $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill from 2022, 70% of Republicans and 39% of Democrats seem to think he’s making the economy worse.But it’s not all bad news for Biden. Republican voters were slightly more optimistic about the lasting impacts of “Bidenomics” than they were in the September Harris poll. Four in 10 Republicans, an 11 percentage-point increase from September, indicated they believe Bidenomics will have a positive lasting impact, while 81% of Democrats said the same. And three-quarters of everyone polled said they support at least one of the key pillars of Bidenomics, which include investments in infrastructure, hi-tech electronics manufacturing, clean-energy facilities and more union jobs.Yet even with these small strands of approval, pessimism about the overall economy is pervasive. It will be an uphill battle for Biden to convince voters to be more hopeful.“What Americans are saying in this data is: ‘Economists may say things are getting better, but we’re not feeling it where I live,’” said John Gerzema, CEO of the Harris Poll. “Unwinding four years of uncertainty takes time. Leaders have to understand this and bring the public along.” More

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      Vince Fong wins Kevin McCarthy’s seat for rest of US House term

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      Vince Fong, backed by Donald Trump, has won a special election to finish the term of the former US House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who also lent his endorsement.Fong, a California state assembly member, defeated fellow Republican and Tulare county sheriff Mike Boudreaux in the 20th congressional district, in the Central Valley farm belt.It was not immediately clear when Fong would be sworn in – that is up to the current House speaker, Mike Johnson. Trump endorsed Fong in February, calling him “a true Republican”.McCarthy last year became the only US House speaker in history voted out of the job, and resigned afterwards.Republicans occupy only 11 of California’s 52 US House seats. With the district once held by McCarthy remaining in their hands, it will give Republicans 12 seats in the state delegation and boost the party’s fragile edge in Congress by a single vote.There are 217 Republicans in the House, 213 Democrats and five vacancies, including McCarthy’s former seat.The special election only covers the time remaining on McCarthy’s term. Fong and Boudreaux will compete again in November for a full two-year term. Boudreaux said he congratulated Fong in a phone call.Fong and Boudreaux have already appeared on two House ballots this year: the 5 March statewide primary for the full House term, and the 19 March primary in the special election to fill out McCarthy’s term.Fong carried 42% of the vote in the March primary. Boudreaux got nearly 26% and the remainder was divided among other candidates. More

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      Trump prosecutor Fani Willis wins Georgia primary election

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      Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney overseeing Georgia’s expansive criminal case against Donald Trump and his allies for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, has won her Democratic primary bid for re-election with nearly 90% of the vote.Willis and Judge Scott McAfee – who won his primary election on Tuesday – are central figures in the prosecution against the former president and associates in his orbit accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Willis will now face Republican lawyer Courtney Kramer in November. With her high name recognition, the advantages of incumbency and a hefty fundraising haul, Willis’s victory in the primary was not terribly surprising.The most prominent – and sweeping – charge handed down in an indictment by a grand jury in August 2023 alleged Trump and 18 co-defendants violated Georgia’s racketeering law in a criminal conspiracy to unlawfully change the results of the election.Trump allies, including the attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, were also charged with forgery in connection with their efforts to send false pro-Trump electors to represent swing states that had in fact elected Joe Biden.Willis’s role in pursuing the most comprehensive prosecution against Trump has drawn her intense scrutiny. In March, the prosecutor who Willis hired to lead the case, Nathan Wade, resigned after revelations about a romantic relationship between him and Willis threatened to derail the prosecution.Last week, the Georgia court of appeals agreed to consider an appeal from Trump’s defense seeking to toss Willis from the case amid the allegations of unethical conduct.Amid the prosecution, Willis has also faced a barrage of threats and harassment. In May, a California resident was charged with threatening to injure Willis for her role in prosecuting Trump and his allies.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      US justice department sues Oklahoma in challenge to immigration law

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      The US Department of Justice sued Oklahoma on Tuesday over a state law that seeks to impose criminal penalties on those living in the state illegally.The lawsuit in federal court in Oklahoma City challenges an Oklahoma law that makes it a state crime – punishable by up to two years in prison – to live in the state without legal immigration status. Similar laws passed in Texas and Iowa are already facing challenges from the justice department. Oklahoma is among several GOP states jockeying to push deeper into immigration enforcement as both Republicans and Democrats seize on the issue. Other bills targeting undocumented immigrants have been passed this year in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee.The justice department says the Oklahoma law violates the US constitution and is asking the court to declare it invalid and bar the state from enforcing it.“Oklahoma cannot disregard the US Constitution and settled Supreme Court precedent,” Brian M Boynton, the US principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the justice department’s civil division, said in a statement. “We have brought this action to ensure that Oklahoma adheres to the Constitution and the framework adopted by Congress for regulation of immigration.” The Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, said the bill was necessary because the Biden administration was failing to secure the nation’s borders.“Not only that, but they stand in the way of states trying to protect their citizens,” Stitt said in a statement.The federal action was expected, as the Department of Justice warned Oklahoma officials last week that the agency would sue unless the state agreed not to enforce the new law.In response, the Oklahoma attorney general, Gentner Drummond, called the justice department’s pre-emption argument “dubious at best” and said that while the federal government had broad authority over immigration, it did not have “exclusive power” on the subject.“Oklahoma is exercising its concurrent and complementary power as a sovereign state to address an ongoing public crisis within its borders through appropriate legislation,” Drummond wrote in a letter to the justice department. “Put more bluntly, Oklahoma is cleaning up the Biden Administration’s mess through entirely legal means in its own backyard – and will resolutely continue to do so by supplementing federal prohibitions with robust state penalties.”Texas was allowed to enforce a law similar to Oklahoma’s for only a few confusing hours in March before it was put on hold by a federal appeals court’s three-judge panel. The panel heard arguments from both supporters and opponents in April, and will next issue a decision on the law’s constitutionality.The justice department filed another lawsuit earlier this month seeking to block an Iowa law that would allow criminal charges to be brought against people who have outstanding deportation orders or who previously have been removed from or denied admission to the US.The law in Oklahoma has prompted several large protests at the state capitol that included immigrants and their families voicing concern that their loved ones will be racially profiled by police.“We feel attacked,” said Sam Wargin Grimaldo, who attended a rally last month wearing a shirt that read “Young, Latino and Proud”.“People are afraid to step out of their houses if legislation like this is proposed and then passed,” he said. More

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      Rudy Giuliani pleads not guilty to charges in Arizona fake electors case

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      Rudy Giuliani denied charges of illegally trying to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election defeat as he was arraigned to appear before a court in Arizona along with 10 other defendants on Tuesday.Giuliani’s not guilty plea to nine felony charges came days after he was served an indictment as he left a party to celebrate his 80th birthday last Friday.Giuliani was the last of the 12 defendants to receive a summons to Tuesday’s hearing after the Arizona attorney general’s office said he had evaded efforts to serve him with a notice for several days.Reflecting the difficulties in tracking him down, the attorney general’s office requested a $10,000 cash bond for Giuliani, citing the problems it had serving him with an indictment and a general lack of cooperation, according to reports. No such request was made of other defendants.Others charged over their roles as false electors include two sitting lawmakers, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern. The former Arizona Republican party chair Kelli Ward and her husband, Michael Ward, have been charged, as has Tyler Bowyer, a Republican national committeeman, and Turning Point USA executive, and Jim Lamon, who ran for US Senate in 2022.The others charged in the fake electors scheme are Nancy Cottle, Robert Montgomery, Samuel Moorhead, Lorraine Pellegrino and Gregory Safsten.Further defendants are expected to be arraigned next month, including Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer for Trump, and Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff.Trump himself is listed as “un-indicted co-conspirator 1” in the case but has not been charged.Before receiving the indictment, Giuliani, the former New York mayor and the legal spearhead of Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, had taunted the Arizona officials by posting a picture of himself on X challenging them to drop the case.“If Arizona authorities can’t find me by tomorrow morning: 1. They must dismiss the indictment; 2. They must concede they can’t count votes,” he captioned the post, which has since been deleted.After being served his indictment, Giuliani posted on Facebook that he did not know that Arizona officials were looking for him until “somebody told me there was a news article saying they were having a hard time finding me”.The indictment alleged that Giuliani “pressured” Arizona legislators and the Maricopa county board of supervisors to change the election result in the state, which Joe Biden won by more than 10,000 votes.He is also accused of urging Republican electors in Arizona to vote for Trump, in the face of the popular vote counts showing a victory for Biden.According to the testimony of Rusty Bowers, a former speaker of the Arizona house of representatives, Giuliani, in his efforts to persuade the state legislature to overturn the 2020 vote, told him and legislators that “we don’t have the evidence but we have lots of theories”.The case is the latest in a spate of legal woes to beset Giuliani – a former federal prosecutor once renowned for fighting mafia organised crime bosses – over his attempts to help Trump overturn the 2020 poll.He has filed for bankruptcy after being ordered to pay $148m in damages to two election workers in Georgia after they successfully sued for defamation. More

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      TV meteorologist attacks Ron DeSantis over Florida’s ‘don’t say climate change’ law

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      A TV meteorologist condemned the Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s so-called “don’t say climate change” law on air and urged viewers to vote.Steve MacLaughlin of WTVJ in Miami addressed viewers on Saturday amid rising heat records across the state, saying: “On Thursday, we reported … that the government of Florida was beginning to roll back really important climate-change legislation and really important climate-change language.”MacLaughin condemned DeSantis’s position on the matter, saying that it came “in spite of the fact that the state of Florida over the last couple of years has seen record heat, record flooding, record rain, record insurance rates, and the corals are dying all around the state”.He said: “The entire world is looking to Florida to lead in climate change, and our government is saying that climate change is no longer the priority it once was.“Please keep in mind the most powerful climate change solution is the one you already have in the palm of your hands – the right to vote. And we will never tell you who to vote for, but we will tell you this: we implore you to please do your research and know that there are candidates that believe in climate change and that there are solutions. And there are candidates that don’t.”McLaughlin delivered his comments after DeSantis recently signed several bills the governor claimed sought to “restore sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots”.“Radical green zealots want to impose their climate agenda on people through restrictions, regulations and taxes,” a notice posted by DeSantis said.In addition to prohibiting windfarms offshore and near coastlines, the bill prioritizes the expansion of natural gas and bolsters protections against gas appliance bans and repeals climate policies enacted during Barack Obama’s presidency.The gas industry has helped drive climate change and its resulting effects, including severe weather becoming more commonplace.Over the weekend, south Florida saw record temperatures, with Fort Lauderdale and Miami each reaching record highs of 95F (35C) on Sunday. Typical highs for this time of year are about 86F (30C), the Palm Beach Post reported.Since McLaughlin shared his segment on X on 18 May, it has been viewed nearly 407,000 times on the platform, with more than 3,300 likes and 1,400 reshares.Many were quick to praise McLaughlin for speaking out, with one user saying: “I know there’s often pressure on meteorologists not to speak. Thank you for speaking.”Another user wrote: “Thank you, Steve, for giving us the facts.”Someone else said: “So needed. Thank you for this.”Meteorologists across the US have faced harassment over their climate crisis reporting.Speaking to the Associated Press last year, Sean Sublette, a former TV meteorologist who now works at Virginia’s Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper, said: “More than once, I’ve had people call me names or tell me I’m stupid or these kinds of harassing type things simply for sharing information that they didn’t want to hear.”Meanwhile, last July, meteorologist Chris Gloninger announced he was stepping down from Des Moines’s CBS TV station affiliate KCCI due to post-traumatic stress disorder that he developed as a result of threats over his climate-crisis coverage. More

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      North Carolina Republican dismisses 2018 state election fraud as ‘fairly minor’

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      A North Carolina Republican running to be the state’s attorney general dismissed a significant election fraud incident in 2018 that resulted in a new election as “some fairly minor illegal ballot harvesting”.Dan Bishop, a congressman whose district is based outside of Charlotte, made the comments in an 1 April episode of the Reclaiming America podcast.In 2018, Mark Harris, a Republican, won the race to represent North Carolina’s ninth congressional district. But shortly after the election, the North Carolina state board of elections voted to overturn a congressional election and call a new one after an investigation revealed that a Harris operative was illegally collecting absentee ballots from voters. Harris decided not to run again and Bishop ultimately won the seat.The operative, Leslie McCrae Dowless, allegedly instructed those working for him to falsely sign as witnesses for voters though they had not witnessed the voter filling out the ballot and making it seem like the voter mailed back the ballot themselves when they had not. People working for Dowless said they collected hundreds of mail-in ballots and in some cases were directed to fill in votes for local candidates. In North Carolina, a voter must get two witnesses or a notary to sign an absentee ballot envelope and it is illegal for anyone other than the voter, a close relative, or a legal guardian to return the ballot.Dowless was charged with several felonies for the conduct in the 2016 and 2018 elections. He died in 2022, before the case went to trial. Several others involved in the scheme pleaded guilty to misdemeanors.Bishop said in the interview that the board of elections “under Democrat control” decided to overturn the election. While Democrats did have a 3-2 majority on the board at the time, the vote for a new election was unanimous. Mark Harris, the Republican candidate who won, also called for a new election, and the state Republican party supported Harris’s decision not to run again. Harris, who won a Republican primary for Congress earlier this year, has since walked back his position, falsely accusing Democrats of stealing the election from him.A Bishop spokesperson did not return a request for comment.The type of fraud that took place in North Carolina – which is extremely rare – is exactly the type of activity that Republicans across the country have tried to crack down on, passing laws that make it harder for third parties and non-family members to return absentee ballots on a voter’s behalf.Bishop voted against certifying the 2020 election. During the same 1 April interview, he acknowledged the immense power he would have over election issues were he elected attorney general this fall. “I will say that I believe the number one impact that an attorney general can have is in the area of election integrity, by seeing to it that the kind of mischief that has gone on in litigation concerning elections is being responded to appropriately,” he said. More