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      New York's Five Ballot Measures: Explained

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      Breaking down the five proposals New York voters will see on their ballots, all involving potential amendments to the state constitution.If you’re reading this, you are probably well aware of New York City’s mayoral election and the other city races being contested this year. But you may be less familiar with the five potential amendments to the State Constitution that are also on the ballot.The ballot questions include measures involving legislative redistricting, changes to voting laws, environmental policy and New York City’s civil courts. Any that are approved would take effect on Jan. 1, 2022.According to the political website Ballotpedia, New Yorkers approved 74 percent of state ballot measures from 1985 to 2020.Registered voters can weigh in on the proposals by casting ballots during early voting, which runs through Sunday, or on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 2. The Board of Elections’ poll site locator has information on where and when to cast your ballot.Here is a rundown of the five ballot measures and what they entail. The full text of each can be found on the Board of Elections’ website.1. Changes to the state’s redistricting processThis measure involves the drawing of legislative maps, which occurs every 10 years. Among other things, it would cap the number of state senators at 63, require that all New York residents be counted in the U.S. census regardless of their citizenship status, and count incarcerated people at their last place of residence rather than where they are detained.Michael Li, a senior counsel at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said that maintaining the existing number of state senators was necessary to prevent gerrymandering, the practice of manipulating congressional district lines for political gain. Freezing the number, Mr. Li said, would prevent the creation of new districts that could be exploited for partisan purposes.The measure would also scrap the current requirement that two-thirds of state lawmakers must agree to pass redistricting plans, in favor of simple majorities in both the Assembly and Senate.The proposal’s opponents, including The League of Women Voters of New York State, have focused on this point, saying that allowing a simple majority to make such decisions could diminish a minority party’s voting power.“It’s not giving other parties a fair shot at having any sort of say in this process,” said Jennifer Wilson, the group’s deputy director.Mr. Li argued that it was difficult to say with any certainty whether the new district maps would be better or worse for minority parties because the process is complicated.“We’ll see how this new system works,” he said. “It may be that New York needs more reform after we see what the maps look like.”2. An environmental rights amendmentThis measure would give New Yorkers a constitutional right to clean air, water and a “healthful environment.” The proposal language is vague on what a “healthful environment” is or how the standard would be legally enforced.Eddie Bautista, the executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, said the measure was especially important for Black and brown communities because they experience disproportionate rates of pollution..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{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;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“We can’t exercise our right to free speech if we’re having trouble breathing,” Mr. Bautista said. “If you want to have a right to speak, you have a right to breathe. This is a long overdue and welcome addition to the Constitution.”Critics of the measure have cited its broad language as a concern, arguing that the lack of specificity could lead to unnecessary lawsuits. State Senator Dan Stec, a Republican who represents the North Country region, said in a statement that the proposal would place the burden of enforcement on the courts.New Yorkers approved 74 percent of statewide ballot measures between 1985 and 2020, according to Ballotpedia.Amir Hamja for The New York Times“Businesses, including farms, are very concerned what this will mean if adopted, especially at a time of tremendous challenges and uncertainty because of Covid-19,” Mr. Stec said. “We owe it to the voters to at least offer them something more clearly defined.”But environmental advocates said the proposal’s language only poses a risk to those who know they may be polluting the environment.3. A push to allow same-day voter registrationThe measure, one of two ballot related to voting rights, would eliminate a rule that requires voters to register at least 10 days before an election.If passed, the measure would make it possible for state lawmakers to adopt same-day voter registration, something that 20 states already have.The measure would be particularly beneficial to voters who do not start paying attention to local politics until late in the election cycle, said Jan Combopiano, the senior policy director for the Brooklyn Voters Alliance.“It really hurts people who get activated and interested in an election late in the game, and there’s no reason to punish those people,” she said. “They haven’t been paying attention until maybe the last month — that’s like human nature.”4. Making it easier to cast absentee ballotsThe second proposed change to the voting process would erase the requirement that those who request absentee ballots explain why they are doing so.Under current law, mail-in ballots are only allowed for voters who expect to be away on Election Day, or who have an illness or disability that would prevent them from voting in person.There was an increase in absentee ballots cast last year because of the coronavirus pandemic; Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order automatically providing all New Yorkers with absentee ballot applications.Ms. Combopiano said that, if approved, both of the measures related to voting would increase participation in elections by making it easier to cast ballots. Expanding access to absentee voting specifically would make it easier for New Yorkers to take their time and make more informed decisions, she said.5. Changes to New York City’s civil courtsThis measure would double the monetary limit for claims filed in New York City’s civil courts to $50,000 from $25,000. This would enable the courts to consider more small claims, reducing the burden of such actions on the state’s Supreme Court.In theory, the measure is meant to make it faster, easier and less expensive for people to resolve disputes legally.Although the change would be likely to increase the efficiency with which lawsuits are resolved, it might also increase the workload for the city’s civil courts, which are already understaffed, said Sidney Cherubin, the director of legal services at the Brooklyn Volunteer Lawyers Project.If the measure passes, he said, the state would to have to help the civil courts handle the probable surge in cases, perhaps by hiring more judges or increasing the funding for the system.“What we anticipate is quicker resolution for litigants,” Mr. Cherubin said. He added: “It’s not going to cure all the issues, but it takes us a step in the right direction.” More

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      in Elections

      Will We See Red or Blue Mirages in Election Results on Tuesday?

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      Mail-in ballots skewed early returns in some states in 2020. Will the trend repeat itself on Tuesday?Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays.Virginia was not close last November. Joseph R. Biden Jr. won there by 10 percentage points, roughly the same margin by which then-President Donald J. Trump won Alaska.But for hours after the polls closed in Virginia, partial returns showed Biden trailing, at times by substantial margins — around 18 points, for instance, as of 9 p.m. Eastern time.Part of that was geography; the rural, conservative counties of southwestern Virginia tend to start reporting election results before the more populous Democratic strongholds of Northern Virginia. But it was also a product of something new: a so-called red mirage. Because so many Democrats voted by mail in response to the pandemic and mail-in ballots took longer to process, the early returns were so skewed that even an easy win didn’t look like it for hours. And narrow wins? Well, just look at Georgia or Pennsylvania, which weren’t called for Biden for days.Other states started processing mail-in ballots first, creating blue mirages. Around the same time that Trump appeared to be running away with Virginia, Biden appeared narrowly ahead in Ohio, where he actually lost by eight percentage points.Now, the question is whether the mirages were one more weird 2020 thing, or whether they are now a long-term feature of U.S. politics.More specifically: Should we expect to see mirages in the important elections happening around the country next Tuesday? Like the Virginia governor’s race between the Democrat Terry McAuliffe and the Republican Glenn Youngkin? Or the race for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court?On the one hand, the state of the world, and of U.S. politics, is not what it was last fall. The coronavirus case rate is decreasing, about two-thirds of Americans have received at least one dose of a vaccine, and there are fewer restrictions on daily activities. And while Trump’s lies about fraud in last year’s election have infused nearly every corner of the Republican Party, his broadsides against early and mail voting are no longer in the headlines every day.Christina Freundlich, a spokeswoman for McAuliffe, said the campaign’s data showed that many Democrats who voted by mail last year were returning to in-person voting on Election Day this year. Conversely, my colleague Nick Corasaniti reports that some Republicans are realizing that maligning early and mail voting could hurt them, and are encouraging their supporters to consider those methods. Together, these trends could narrow the partisan gap between early and Election Day ballots.But narrowing is not eliminating.Consider California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom soundly defeated a Republican recall effort last month. With two-thirds of ballots counted, he was about five percentage points ahead of where he ended up with all ballots counted. While the shift was irrelevant in a race Newsom won by a huge margin, it was more than large enough to have created a false impression if the race had been competitive.McAuliffe’s campaign expects early returns in Virginia to be skewed toward Youngkin. That is likely to be the case regardless of who ultimately wins..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{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;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}If the 2020 election is a guide, partial results in Pennsylvania — where voters will decide an expensive and contentious race for a state Supreme Court seat that is currently held by a Republican — could be similarly misleading.It’s harder to predict whether we’ll see mirages elsewhere, much less their color, because many states have revised their election procedures since November.In New Jersey, home to a governor’s race that is expected to be less competitive than Virginia’s (Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has a strong polling lead over his Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli), the early presidential returns were pretty similar to the final results. But that may be because New Jersey ran last year’s election almost entirely by mail, and it’s hard to have a mirage when almost everyone votes by the same method. The state is not doing that this time around.Other notable races next week are for the mayors of Atlanta (Georgia had a red mirage last year), Boston (Massachusetts had no major mirage), Buffalo and New York City (New York State had no major mirage), Detroit (Michigan had a red mirage), Minneapolis (Minnesota had no major mirage) and Seattle (Washington conducts all-mail elections, so no mirage).But if we can’t predict where the mirages will be, we can say this: They will not in any way be evidence of foul play, as Trump so vociferously and falsely claimed after his loss. They’re just the way our elections work now. There is nothing nefarious about election administration procedures varying from state to state, or certain ballots being easier and faster to count than others.So don’t celebrate — or panic — based on what you see at 9 p.m. You might just be in that alternate universe where Trump won Virginia and Biden won Ohio.Change into comfy pajamas and check back in the morning.nine days of ideas to remake our futureAs world leaders gather in Glasgow for consequential climate change negotiations, join us at The New York Times Climate Hub to explore answers to one of the most urgent questions of our time: How do we adapt and thrive on a changing planet? Glasgow, Scotland, Nov. 3-11; in person and online. Get tickets at nytclimatehub.com.On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      in Elections

      In Virginia, Early Voting Has an Impact. And a Long Run.

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      The pandemic has helped convert more and more voters into early voters, as hundreds of thousands of Virginians have made clear in recent weeks.In the tight race for governor of Virginia, Election Day has morphed into Election Month.By the time voters cast their ballots on Election Day next Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of other voters will have already done so in person and by mail during a month and a half of early voting. The state’s six-week early voting period, one of the longest in the country, began on Sept. 17 and ends on Saturday.More than 724,965 ballots had been cast in person and by mail as of Monday, more than triple the early turnout four years ago, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan group that tracks voting data.The surge in early voting signals that the sea change in voting habits in 2020 may forever alter elections around the country.The coronavirus pandemic has helped convert more and more voters into early voters — in the 2020 presidential election, the early vote made up 63 percent of the electorate, up from 36 percent in 2016. Even as conservatives have attacked the legitimacy of voting by mail with false claims of widespread fraud, the popularity of early voting in Virginia by both Democrats and Republicans has been shaping the dynamics of the race and may play a role in delaying the final results if the election is extraordinarily close.Before 2020 in Virginia, early voting lasted for seven days and required an excuse from voters. Last year, the State Legislature extended early voting to up to 45 days and expanded access to all voters by removing the excuse requirement, a response, in part, to the pandemic.“We used to shove four million voters through the doors in 13 hours,” said Christopher E. Piper, the commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections. “Now we can do that over the course of 45 days.”The shift in voting habits creates a host of new electoral difficulties.With more voters casting ballots by mail, postal system delays are threatening to disenfranchise thousands of voters. With hundreds of thousands of votes cast, but no party registration data in Virginia, both candidates are pushing internal campaign projections to claim momentum.And if the race is extremely close, final results might not be known for days, akin to the 2020 presidential election.Virginia requires that counties begin processing ballots this week by opening the envelopes, checking for eligibility and scanning them. But the state also accepts ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but not received by officials until the following Friday (18 other states and the District of Columbia have similar provisions). In 2020, 10,901 ballots were received and counted after Election Day in Virginia.If the race between Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate, and Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate, is extremely close, those late-arriving ballots, coupled with an expected increase in provisional ballots, could be pivotal. A winner may not be projected for up to a week.“I think that’s the future of everybody’s elections the more we go to voting by mail as an option for voters,” said Scott O. Konopasek, the director of elections for Fairfax County, the largest county in Virginia. “If there’s any close races, we’re not going to know until after the Friday after the election.”While the surge in early voting has exceeded the early turnout in 2016, the numbers this year have failed to keep up with 2020, in part because the Virginia election is an off-year race. Still, based on current early voting trends, overall turnout could top out around 2.6 million, roughly on par with the 2017 elections, according to Michael McDonald, a professor of politics at the University of Florida who studies voting.So far, early vote totals in Virginia reflect more of a shift in behavior than a rise in turnout, as 90 percent of early voters in Virginia this year also voted early in the 2020 election, according to TargetSmart, a Democratic political data firm..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{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;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Some people weren’t aware that they could vote by absentee ballot or vote early in 2020, because that was the first election that this law was changed, and now they just like doing it,” Mr. McDonald said.Partisan models show Democrats continuing to outpace Republicans at a significant clip for early voting. But one of the voting blocs that has been a concern for the McAuliffe campaign has been the youth vote.Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 made up less than 6 percent of the early vote according to TargetSmart. In past elections young voters were roughly 10 percent of the early vote. Currently, more than half of early voters have been over the age of 64, TargetSmart found. The only age bloc former President Donald J. Trump carried in the state during the 2020 election was those over 64.Young voters between the ages of 18 and 29 make up less than 6 percent of the early vote in Virginia this year, according to one Democratic political data firm.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesDemocrats have also had to contend with some election administration issues during the early vote. Last week, the Democratic Party of Virginia sued the Postal Service for what it claimed was an unusually slow processing of more than 25,000 mail ballots across three key counties: Albemarle, James City and Portsmouth.The lawsuit asks a federal court to force the Postal Service to process all the remaining ballots in those counties in 24 hours.But amid those challenges, the McAuliffe campaign has been claiming momentum, heightened by a significant uptick in voting last week in key Northern Virginia suburbs. Deeply blue Fairfax nearly tripled turnout after more voting locations were opened across the county.“This year we expect to have the highest voter turnout ever seen in a nonpresidential year in Virginia,” said Christina Freundlich, a spokeswoman for the McAuliffe campaign. “We have seen a meaningful jump in the daily early vote totals from the past week, with over 250,000 ballots cast since last Monday, concentrated in high-density Democratic areas in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.”The new laws that opened access to early voting, approved by a Democratic-controlled State Legislature and a Democratic governor in both 2020 and 2021, were criticized by some Republicans as attempting to write partisan advantage into the election code. Early voting by mail has been a constant target of Mr. Trump.But Mr. Youngkin has aggressively embraced early voting and vote by mail, often holding rallies near early-voting sites, encouraging attendees to vote afterward. His campaign runs text messaging programs geared toward early voting, and door-to-door knockers help chase down mail ballots.“Republicans don’t normally vote early, so we’re trying to set a new culture,” said Jeff Roe, a senior adviser to the Youngkin campaign who also advised the presidential campaigns of Mr. Trump in 2020 and Senator Ted Cruz in 2016.Mr. Youngkin’s campaign says its focus on early voting is aiding his chances. While the data from both campaigns show Democrats with a lead in early-voting numbers, the Youngkin team claims it is outpacing Mr. Trump’s 2020 performance in Democratic counties, including Chesterfield and Henrico near Richmond and Virginia Beach in the east.“We are on track to be in a good spot starting Election Day,” said Kristin Davison, a senior strategist for the Youngkin campaign.Lisa Lerer More

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      Arizona Vote Review ‘Made Up the Numbers,’ Election Experts Say

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      An analysis found that a hand recount of votes by Republican investigators missed thousands of ballots, and possibly many more.The circuslike review of the 2020 vote commissioned by Arizona Republicans took another wild turn on Friday when veteran election experts charged that the very foundation of its findings — the results of a hand count of 2.1 million ballots — was based on numbers so unreliable that they appear to be guesswork rather than tabulations.The organizers of the review “made up the numbers,” the headline of the experts’ report reads.The experts, a data analyst for the Arizona Republican Party and two retired executives of an election consulting firm in Boston, said in their report that workers for the investigators failed to count thousands of ballots in a pallet of 40 ballot-filled boxes delivered to them in the spring.The final report by the Republican investigators concluded that President Biden actually won 99 more votes than were reported, and that former President Donald J. Trump tallied 261 fewer votes.But given the large undercount found in just a sliver of the 2.1 million ballots, it would effectively be impossible for the Republican investigators to arrive at such precise numbers, the experts said.Rod Thomson, a spokesman for Cyber Ninjas, the company hired to conduct the inquiry in Arizona, rejected the experts’ claim. “We stand by our methodology and complete final report,” he said.Investigators went through more than 1,600 ballot-filled boxes this summer to conduct their hand recount of the election in Maricopa County, the most populous county in the state. Both they and the Republican-controlled State Senate, which ordered the election inquiry, have refused to disclose the details of that hand count.But a worksheet containing the results of the hand count of 40 of those boxes was included in a final report on the election inquiry released a week ago by Cyber Ninjas.The three election experts said the hand count could have missed thousands or even hundreds of thousands of ballots if all 1,600 boxes of ballots were similarly undercounted. Their findings were earlier reported in The Arizona Republic.For months, the Cyber Ninjas effort had been the lodestar of the conservative movement, the foundational investigation that would uncover a litany of abuses and verify countless conspiracies, proving a stolen election. But the review was criticized from the start for unprofessional and unorthodox methods and partisan influence.Now, the experts’ findings on the vote review compound withering analyses debunking a wide range of questions raised in the review about the counting of votes and conduct of the election. Nonetheless, the review has been embraced by Mr. Trump and his followers even as its findings have been overwhelmingly refuted.Noting that the leaders of the Arizona review had “zero experience in election audits,” the experts concluded, “We believe the Ninjas’ announcement that they had confirmed, to a high degree of accuracy, the election results” of one of the largest U.S. counties “is laughable.”Laughable or not, none of it changed the fact that Mr. Biden won the state by about 10,500 votes and Maricopa County by roughly 45,000 in several official tallies of the vote.Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state in Arizona, said the report’s findings vindicated criticisms about the Cyber Ninjas process.“It was clear from the start that the Cyber Ninjas were just making it up as they went,” Ms. Hobbs said in a statement. “I’ve been saying all along that no one should trust any ‘results’ they produce, so it’s no surprise their findings are being called into question. What can be trusted are actual election officials and experts, along with the official canvass of results.”The results of the review were presented to the Arizona State Senate last week.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesThe inquiry into the election has been repeatedly condemned as a sham by election experts and denounced by the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which oversaw the 2020 vote.Critics note that the chief executive of Cyber Ninjas had spread false allegations that Arizona voting machines were rigged to ensure Mr. Trump’s defeat. The summer-long investigation was financed almost entirely by nearly $7 million in donations from Trump supporters.The experts based their conclusion on a worksheet containing a slice of the hand-count results that the Republican investigators published in the report on their inquiry. The worksheet shows that investigators counted 32,674 ballots in 40 of the 1,634 boxes of ballots they were reviewing.But official records show — and the investigators’ own machine count of the 2.1 million ballots effectively confirmed — that those 40 boxes actually contained 48,371 ballots, or 15,692 more than were counted.The worksheet indicated that nine of the boxes had not been counted at all. But even if those boxes were excluded from the tally, the count of the remaining boxes fell 4,852 ballots short of the correct total, the experts said.The charge of a ballot undercount comes atop the debunking by experts and Maricopa officials of virtually all of 22 implications of voting irregularities, involving more than 50,000 voters, in the Cyber Ninjas report.Among them: A claim that 23,434 mail-in ballots may have come from addresses that voters no longer occupied was based on research using a commercial address database that itself did not include 86,391 of the county’s registered voters and, like most lists, relied on sources that are often inaccurate. It also ignored the fact that voters may legally cast ballots and then move. And moving is common: More than 280,000 Maricopa County households moved in 2019 alone.Another claim that thousands of voters returned more ballots than they received misconstrued a data file that makes a new entry every time a damaged or incomplete ballot is corrected.Yet another claim that precincts counted 836 more votes than were recorded ignored the fact that the records of some 3,600 voters, such as abused spouses and police officers, are not made public for security reasons. And an insinuation that 5,295 Maricopa County voters may have double-voted because residents of other counties had the same names and birth years was spot-checked by county officials and found baseless; the outsiders were in fact other people.With similar reviews now set for Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas, it is increasingly clear that Arizona’s partisan review succeeded while it failed — by amplifying baseless talking points while failing in any factual way to back up Mr. Trump’s claims of a rigged election.The Arizona-style reviews in other states seem likely to follow the same script with the blessing of the Republican political leaders who are promoting them, said Nate Persily, a Stanford University law professor, elections expert and scholar of democracy.“For those who are pushing the fraud narrative, the actual truth is beside the point,” he said. “The idea that the election was stolen is becoming a tribe-defining belief. It’s not about proving something at this point. It’s about showing fealty to a particular description of reality.”Indeed, in the wake of the initial Cyber Ninjas report, Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate only furthered their resolve to press ahead with a review of the election, one that includes a request for drivers’ license numbers and partial Social Security numbers of all seven million Pennsylvania voters.“The historic audit in Maricopa County is complete and significant findings have been brought to light,” State Senator Doug Mastriano, a Republican and leading proponent of the election review, said in a statement last week. “If these types of issues were uncovered in Maricopa County, imagine what could be brought to light from a full forensic audit in other counties around the U.S. who processed mass amounts of mail-in ballots.”On Friday, Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, signed multiple subpoenas issued to the head of the elections commission in Milwaukee, the biggest city in the state and home to the largest concentration of Democratic voters, with a substantive request for documents, including communication between the city and state elections boards.Mr. Vos, in an interview this week, reiterated his commitment to investigating the 2020 election, with a presumption that there were mistakes in the administration.“I think we kind of have to accept that certain things were done wrongly — figure out how to correct them, or else we’re never going to have public confidence,” Mr. Vos said.Reid J. Epstein More

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      What the California Recall Means for the Future of Mail-in Voting

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      More than a third of California’s active registered voters had cast their ballots in the recall election by Saturday, several days before polls close.That hints not only at a fundamental shift in how Californians are casting their ballots, but when they are doing so, said Paul Mitchell, a vice president of Political Data Inc., a Sacramento-based supplier of election data.“There will come a day where the highest voter turnout is not on Election Day,” he said.That may not be this election, for which all of the state’s roughly 22 million active registered voters were mailed ballots. But trends suggest that the proportion of ballots cast on Tuesday, the last day of roughly a month of voting, will be much lower than in the past, Mr. Mitchell said.“If only 15 to 20 percent of people vote on the last Monday to Tuesday, that’s pretty crazy,” he said.Throughout the campaign, experts have said that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to hang on to his job leading the nation’s most-populous state would hinge on whether California’s enormous Democratic base would show up in significant enough numbers to counteract enthusiasm among Republicans. Polling has consistently shown that approval of Mr. Newsom’s performance has split largely along party lines.As of Wednesday, the Political Data Inc. election tracker showed that they have so far: Of those who received ballots, 34 percent of registered Democrats and 30 percent of registered Republicans have returned them, meaning that more than twice as many Democratic ballots have been cast.That, of course, does not include ballots that are in the mail, or those of voters who are waiting to hit the polls in person in the next several days.But Mr. Mitchell noted that the early votes have also come largely from older voters. Nearly half of voters 65 and older have returned their ballots, compared with 23 percent of voters 35 to 49 and 16 percent of voters 18 to 34.Historically, he said, early voting and voting by mail were dominated by older, whiter Republicans. But that flipped in 2020 as misinformation about ballot fraud took hold, and the data in this election suggests that the trend of voting early or by mail among older Democrats has continued.Despite the number of early votes, both campaigns have hewed to a traditional schedule by ramping up in the final week of the election.“We still want that last closing message,” Mr. Mitchell said. “It’s this romantic idea of a campaign arc that doesn’t exist anymore.”In this election, he said, the last-ditch efforts could pay off by turning out young people and Latinos whose votes may still be up for grabs. More

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      The ease of mail-in voting may increase turnout in California’s recall election.

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      A temporary change in California’s election rules aimed at protecting voters during the coronavirus pandemic could be instrumental in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to beat back a proposed recall — and could become permanent if the governor signs a bill that state lawmakers passed last week.Voting by mail has emerged as a critical factor in the Republican-led recall, which political experts say will probably hinge on whether Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, can turn out the state’s enormous base of liberal voters before the polls close on Sept. 14.Because of the coronavirus, lawmakers ensured that ballots would automatically be mailed to every registered, active voter, turning an already popular option into the default through at least the end of this year.As a result, political experts tracking returns in the recall are predicting that at least 50 percent of registered voters will cast ballots, roughly double the turnout that would be expected in a special election. Paul Mitchell, a vice president at Political Data Inc., a Sacramento-based supplier of election data, said more than a quarter of the electorate had already voted.“You cannot overstate how important the mail-in ballot will be in this election,” said David Townsend, a Sacramento-based Democratic political consultant. Because Democrats outnumber Republicans by two to one in California, the electoral math is with Mr. Newsom — but only if his voters cast their ballots. Voting by mail gives even indifferent voters a nudge and an opportunity to cast a ballot without much effort..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{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;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{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;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{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;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Before this, you had to convince a voter to get in a car, drive to a location with no real signage but a flag and go vote on something they might care about or might not,” Mr. Townsend noted. “Now you get a ballot in the mail, make an X by a box, sign it and drop it back in the mailbox. You don’t even have to look for a stamp.”About two-thirds of California voters cast mail-in ballots in 2018, but in many parts of the state the option required that voters meet an application deadline. As the coronavirus surged in 2020, Mr. Newsom and California’s legislators became concerned that going to the polls might endanger voters and poll workers.Assemblyman Marc Berman, a Democrat who represents parts of Silicon Valley, said he was particularly alarmed by Wisconsin’s primary election, where voters were required to come to the polls in person as infections were raging.“There was this footage of people standing for hours risking their health,” Mr. Berman said, “just to exercise their right to vote.”The bipartisan decision to mail ballots to all 22 million or so of the state’s registered and active voters was “wildly successful,” Mr. Berman said. “Elections officials up and down the state said the election went remarkably smoothly.”Californians who had not actively voted in recent years did not get ballots mailed to them, and bar codes helped prevent double voting. Studies conducted afterward found few, if any, sustained complaints of voter fraud.Some 87.5 percent of the electorate used the mail-in ballots to vote in 2020, either mailing them in or dropping them off at drop boxes or polling places. Turnout among registered California voters was nearly 81 percent, said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California.“We had the highest voter turnout since Harry Truman was president,” said State Senator Tom Umberg, an Orange County Democrat who, as chair of his chamber’s committee on elections, sought to extend the system at least through this year.At the time, he said, the extension was to protect voters in two upcoming local special elections; the recall effort against the governor had so few signatures that it was widely regarded as a long shot.As former President Donald J. Trump complained with increasing intensity that his presidency had been stolen, California Republicans became less supportive of mail-in ballots, and the extension in California passed on a party-line vote. A bill to make the system permanent is on the governor’s desk after the State Legislature passed it last week, again over Republican objections.A spokeswoman for the governor said he does not comment on pending legislation. However, lawmakers said the governor was expected to sign the bill.If it is signed, Mr. Berman said, California will become the sixth state to require active registered voters to be mailed a ballot before each election, along with Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Utah.Still, experts say that many California voters from across the political spectrum prefer to hand their ballot to a human rather than drop it in the mail.“Young voters and Latino voters tend to vote in person,” said Luis Sánchez, executive director of Power California, a statewide progressive organizing group focused on young voters. “They want to make sure their vote counts.”As of Tuesday, 15 percent of voters ages 18 to 34 had returned their ballots, compared with 47 percent of those 65 and older, although the former make up the largest age group, according to Political Data Inc.Democratic ballots far outnumbered those from Republicans. More

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      Reporter Discusses False Accusations Against Dominion Worker

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      Through one employee of Dominion Voting Systems, a Times Magazine article examines the damage that false accusations can inflict.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.As Susan Dominus, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, approached her reporting for an article on the attacks on Dominion Voting Systems, a business that supplies election technology, she wanted to tell the story of one of the Dominion employees who was being vilified by supporters of President Trump.She zeroed in on one man: Eric Coomer, whose anti-Trump social media posts were used to bolster false allegations that Dominion had tampered with the election, leading to death threats. Her article, published on Tuesday, is a case study in what can happen when information gets wildly manipulated. In an edited interview, Ms. Dominus discussed what she learned.How did you come upon Eric Coomer — did you have him in mind all along? Or did you want to do something on Dominion and eventually found your way to him?The Magazine was interested in pursuing a story about how the attacks on Dominion Voting Systems — a private business — were dramatically influencing the lives of those who worked there, people who were far from public figures. Many employees there were having their private information exposed, but early on, a lot of the threats were focusing on Eric Coomer, who was then the director of product strategy and security at Dominion. Eventually, people such as the lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and the president’s son Eric Trump were naming him in the context of accusations about Dominion fixing the election.What was the biggest surprise you came across in your reporting?I was genuinely surprised to find that Mr. Coomer had expressed strong anti-Trump sentiments, using strong language, on his Facebook page. His settings were such that only his Facebook friends could see it, but someone took a screenshot of those and other divisive posts, and right-wing media circulated them widely. The posts were used in the spread of what cybersecurity experts call malinformation — something true that is used to support the dissemination of a story that is false. In this case, it was the big lie that the election was rigged. I think to understand the spread of spurious information — to resist its lure, to fight it off — these distinctions are helpful to parse. Understanding the human cost of these campaigns also matters. We heard a lot about the attacks on Dominion, but there are real people with real lives who are being battered in a battle they had no intention of joining, whatever their private opinions.There were so many elaborate theories of election fraud involving Dominion. How important were the accusations against Eric Coomer in that bigger story?It’s hard to say. But Advance Democracy Inc., a nonpartisan nonprofit, looked at the tweets in its database from QAnon-related accounts and found that, from Nov. 1 to Jan. 7, Eric Coomer’s name appeared in 25 percent of the ones that mentioned Dominion. Coomer believes the attacks on Dominion were somewhat inevitable but considered his own role as “an accelerant.”Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 4A monthslong campaign. More

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      Podcast Looks at Voting Fraud Claims in North Carolina

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      The podcast series “The Improvement Association” investigates the role that rumors and race play in a North Carolina county.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.By all accounts, election fraud is rare.But following the 2018 election, the small, rural community of Bladen County, N.C., made news when state officials threw out the results of a congressional race over suspicions of fraud.Two years earlier, in the same county, state officials received similar reports of vote rigging, although those turned out to be unfounded.Zoe Chace, a producer for the podcast “Serial” and the radio program “This American Life,” set out to understand how Bladen County became fertile ground for these allegations. The result of her reporting is “The Improvement Association,” a five-part podcast series produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times. The episodes explore the corrosive power of claims of election fraud and the role that race played in those claims in Bladen County.“Bladen County was consumed with rumors and accusations of election fraud long before the 2020 presidential election, and we wanted to understand how that happened and how it has affected people’s lives there,” Ms. Chace said.Ms. Chace first spent time in Bladen County while reporting a radio story for “This American Life.” In 2016, local Republicans had accused the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC, a Black Democratic enfranchisement group, of tampering with absentee ballots, but the claims were dismissed by officials.Several years earlier, the group had helped elect the county’s first Black sheriff using a novel tactic — encouraging Black voters to use absentee ballots. Although completely legal, the method fueled suspicions of cheating. In the years that followed, white residents began to regularly accuse the Bladen County Improvement Association of election tampering, although there was no evidence.Then, in a rare event, state officials threw out the 2018 election of Mark Harris, a Republican, to the congressional district that includes Bladen County, after local Republicans were accused of committing absentee-ballot fraud. McCrae Dowless, the political operative at the center of the scandal, has been charged with obstruction of justice and illegal possession of an absentee ballot. The case is in progress.After that case became public, a leader of the Bladen County Improvement Association reached out to Ms. Chace, offering to explain the local political landscape where these allegations had become common, and Ms. Chace returned to the community.She first looked at the claims against the association, interviewing poll workers, political boosters and officials from the North Carolina State Board of Elections. She also reviewed absentee ballot envelopes from nursing home residents that some claimed had been tampered with, and she pored over years of election fraud complaints and documents from the state board of elections. She couldn’t find anything to suggest that the group had cheated.“We were lucky because we got a lot of documents,” Ms. Chace said.Nancy Updike, the producer of the series, said they also studied the history of racism in election fraud allegations, which have been used to disenfranchise Black voters. Ms. Updike said that in U.S. elections, the idea of Black people casting votes has frequently led to claims from white people about voter fraud.“From Reconstruction until now, white Americans have repeatedly conjured the idea of Black Americans voting fraudulently in order to keep Black people from voting,” she said.Ms. Chace’s reporting also showed how damaging these allegations of fraud can be. For the Bladen County Improvement Association, the claims were difficult to shake and led to animosity and divisions within the organization. In the end, the years of unfounded allegations have eroded the group’s political power.“The charge of election fraud, untethered to any evidence, is a truly dangerous force at work in America right now,” Ms. Updike said. “And in this one place you can see how it tore up people’s lives as well as pulled at the fabric of this place.” More