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      Five US election officials on what they’re expecting: ‘There’s a conspiracy theory for everything’

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      In Fulton county, Georgia, they’re on guard for efforts to undermine democracy from Republican members of the state elections board. In Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, they’re defending themselves as conspiracy theories swirl. And in Cochise county, Arizona, they’re preparing to certify the results shortly after one of their colleagues pleaded guilty to refusing to do so in the last election.Election officials are the first line of defense for democracy this election – and their job is anything but easy.For years, they have worked in relative obscurity as they administered the vote in a non-partisan way. But Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election unleashed a wave of harassment and pressure on these officials never seen before. Many have chosen to leave the profession, and those that have stuck around find themselves in a job that looks dramatically different from the low-profile one they once held.The Guardian has been following five election offices across the country for the last year, examining how staff turnover, election denialism and misinformation have affected their work, mental health and physical safety.On the eve of election day, we checked in with the officials, many in swing states, who will be working around the clock to ensure that all votes are counted.Fulton county, GeorgiaSheri Allen and Julie Adams rhetorically circled each other at the election board meeting like boxers in a ring.Allen, chairperson of the Fulton county board of registration and elections, and Adams, one of two recalcitrant Republican members of the board, were negotiating terms for which election documents Adams could inspect over the next week or two.But really, they were probing each other for an angle – some hidden danger or exposed weakness or intent behind their words.“I can see where this conversation is going,” Adams said at the board meeting last Wednesday, “but I want to renew the request that I have made, and I would like to see the reports from poll watchers, poll workers and voters that have had issues, complaints or comments, and how we react.”Allen is a personal injury attorney and approached Adams’s inquiries like a lawyer might. The two sparred over how to define a problem that should rise to the board’s notice, about whether Adams could have an electronic copy of the list of voters who had cast ballots in Fulton county – in order of their vote, by precinct – and whether she could be physically present as election workers popped the seals on the boxes of early vote ballots on election day.Under other conditions, Adams’s request to get reports in real time about problems at polling locations, or a list of voters who had cast a ballot, would raise no alarms.In Fulton county, the alarms never stop.After the 2020 election in Georgia, Trump and others issued florid and extravagant lies about Fulton county and the conduct of its poll workers. Though recounts showed that the election was fair and accurate, every error made by the county has been amplified by conservative partisans.County elections officials have been in a state of hyper-vigilance ever since, wondering which mistake might draw the heavens down upon them, or from which rock the next fountain of misinformation will spring.“With all that is on the line for this election, why would we keep throwing in additional new ways of doing things?” asked board vice-chairperson Aaron Johnson. “I’m on the record today; this is going to cause chaos. I don’t know that it’s intentional.”Adams, who works for a Trump-aligned group, sued the county earlier this year seeking a ruling to establish that she and other elections board members in Georgia had the legal right to refuse to certify an election if they think it didn’t meet their standards. A judge rejected that position, ruling instead that certification is a ministerial act mandated by the Georgia constitution.But Judge Robert McBurney also ruled that Adams has a right to review documents in advance of the certification vote, though a second judge in a separate case ruled that counties are not obligated to provide volumes of poll data and administrative paperwork to elections superintendents.At the board meeting on Wednesday, Adams’s request to have an electronic copy of the voter list was denied in a 3-2 vote. Allen cited security considerations. Instead, the county will make a hard paper copy available for her review, no phone recording allowed. If the elections director has to send a report to the secretary of state’s office about a polling problem, the board will get a note too. And Adams will be able to watch the first ballots come out of the box for counting at 2pm sharp on election day.Cochise county, ArizonaIn rural Cochise county, Arizona, a Republican haven along the US-Mexico border, there are Democratic candidates running for the three open county supervisor seats and a recorder position – something that hasn’t happened in recent memory.The Democratic activation came after several years of rampant election denialism culminated in criminal charges against two supervisors who initially refused to certify the county’s election results in 2022. Those charges followed attempts to hand-count ballots and after an experienced elections director quit over a hostile work environment. The county is on its fifth elections director since 2022.“I think it speaks volumes to the frustration that people have with their local government,” said Elisabeth Tyndall, the chair of the local Democratic party, that “people were willing to step up and run for those seats, even in light of all of the chaos”.One of the supervisors, Peggy Judd, recently agreed to a plea deal, accepting a misdemeanor charge that brings probation and a fine. The other supervisor, Tom Crosby, hasn’t done the same – and he refused to vote to certify the 2022 results even after a court required the county to do so.

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      Tyndall said, despite the upheaval, she trusts the elections department to carry out a successful election. About 100 ballots in one precinct were missing a supervisor’s race, an error that the county rectified by sending corrected ballots to those affected and having some on hand on election day at the polls. It was a “fixable mistake” that Tyndall said the county remedied fairly.Still, the specter of refusing to certify looms over the 2024 results – as jurisdictions around the country toy with the idea of whether they have to sign off on election results, a non-discretionary task. Judd’s probation lasts through the certification, and prosecutors said that timing was intentional to ideally prevent a repeat of 2022. Crosby, who has been the more vocal elections critic, hasn’t indicated his plans.“Honestly, it will be very difficult for them to not certify,” Tyndall said.Hillsdale county, MichiganAbe Dane is hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.Dane, who administers elections in Hillsdale county, Michigan, has spent the last four years challenging the election-related disinformation and conspiracy theories that have taken hold in his conservative community all while getting ready to run his first presidential election.“We’re not a heavily staffed office, and most of our staff are dealing with everything outside of elections,” said Dane. “So it’s a lot, but I have a wonderful group of township and city clerks that I’m very close with.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenThis year, Dane has full confidence in the local election officials running the show in the small towns and cities that make up Hillsdale county. That wasn’t always the case.In 2020, the clerk in Adams Township was drawn into Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election. Scott didn’t only accept Trump’s claims of a stolen election. She believed Michigan’s presidential election had been corrupted by nefarious forces in favor of Joe Biden, who many in Hillsdale county could not believe won the 2020 election. Egging her on was Stefanie Lambert, a Michigan lawyer who in the wake of the 2020 election took on numerous cases challenging the results.After the election, the state of Michigan alleges Scott and Lambert illegally turned over private voter data to an outside group in their search for fraud – for which they currently face multiple felony charges. When Scott refused to turn over voting equipment for mandatory maintenance, the state stripped her of her authority to administer elections in 2021. Two years later, voters ousted her in a recall election that was widely viewed as a test of the power of election denialism in the deep-red community.Scott, who challenged Dane in the Republican primary for the position overseeing elections in Hillsdale county, enjoys the support of a small but vocal coterie of activists who maintain their belief that the 2020 election was stolen. After Scott and a slate of so-called America First candidates lost their primary elections in August, Dane says the group has quieted down. But that hasn’t stopped the flow of conspiracy theories, which he says “disseminate from the top down”.“I still have people that I know, love and respect in my circles that believe some of the stuff, and I have to continually try and either bite my tongue, or if the opportunity presents itself, try and educate them on what the facts are,” said Dane.Dane has been preparing security measures for months in advance of the election, coordinating with local law enforcement officials to continually monitor polling places on election day. But he says he is more concerned about the bread-and-butter of election administration – processing early and absentee ballots, helping poll workers adapt to new processes and technology, and preparing for inevitable human errors.Luzerne county, PennsylvaniaLuzerne county, an industrial battleground in north-eastern Pennsylvania, is facing a wave of conspiracy theories on the eve of the election.In late October, the county was doing some routine shredding of documents. When someone spotted the truck for the shredding company in front of the county’s office building, which also houses its election offices, it set off conspiracy theories. Romilda Crocamo, the county manager, quickly started hearing online that the county was shredding ballots, which of course wasn’t true.“There’s a conspiracy theory for everything,” she said. “There is nothing that we can say or do that will convince the people who believe in conspiracies to change their minds. I feel badly for those people. I don’t know how you live that way.”Crocamo is also worried about violence. During the early voting period, she had to call a sheriff to the elections office because two people were fighting. Someone called a bureau employee a racial slur. Another person spit on an employee.She said the county was adding barriers to control traffic into the office. Government employees will be required to go through a metal detector on election day.Scott Pressler, a conservative activist who has been registering voters in the state, suggested there was voter registration fraud in the county. As officials in another county investigate possible fraudulent registrations, Pressler suggested that there could be something amiss about voter registrations that were dropped off at the registration deadline by Beth Gilbert McBride, a voting rights organizer. McBride served as head of the Luzerne county election office in 2022 when it ran out of paper on election day.The claim was amplified by the Gateway Pundit, the influential far-right website that has become a powerful vector of election misinformation. Days later, the Luzerne county district attorney said that between 20 and 30 forms had been dropped off at the deadline, and none of them were fraudulent.Shasta county, CaliforniaVoting in Shasta county, a conservative stronghold in far northern California, will largely proceed as normal.That’s disappointing to the small but vocal group of residents who hoped to see radical changes in the community of 180,000 people that has attracted national attention for its far-right politics and embrace of election denialism.A band of local activists convinced of widespread voter fraud and stolen elections have been relentless in their efforts to uncover evidence of tampering. The group successfully lobbied officials, some of whom have also spread election misinformation, to throw out the county’s voting machines and institute a hand-count system. When the head of the elections office retired, the county replaced her with someone who had no experience and who election skeptics thought would be sympathetic.They believed they would be able to remake the voting system, but their efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful. State lawmakers thwarted plans for a hand-count system with a bill preventing counties from using manual tallies in most elections. The new elections clerk has pushed back against proposals that would violate election law and said he won’t make any major changes to county election processes.At a tense and widely attended meeting of the county’s governing body last week, several expressed disappointment in the registrar of voters.“You cannot certify the election next Tuesday, no matter what happens because of what’s happening in that office,” one man said, asking officials to “put pressure on” the registrar.There’s discontent among that group, said Jeff Gorder, a retired county public defender, but after years of upheaval and violent rhetoric in the area things feel surprisingly calm: “It seems to be a milder environment right now.”Some elected officials have continued to sow doubt, though. Patrick Jones, a county official who was recently voted out of office, suggested to journalists that if Trump does not win it would be due to cheating.“It’s pretty obvious to most of us that he should easily win this and if they cheat him out of it again I think the response from the public is going to be very different unfortunately,” he said. “They can certainly cheat but there’ll be a price for that.”Still, Nathan Blaze, a local activist and chef, said he expects election day will proceed without issue. He plans to act as an observer at the elections office to ensure that workers there, who have faced increased harassment in recent years, can do their jobs without interference. More

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      History in the making: is the US finally about to elect its first female president?

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      “This is monumental,” said 19-year-old Kai Carter as she stood in line behind the White House where Kamala Harris was about to take the stage a week before the 5 November election.Carter was ecstatic at the prospect of Harris making history as the first Black female president of the United States. She attended the event with a group of fellow students from Howard University, the historically Black college in Washington DC, which is also the vice-president’s alma mater.Born in the United States of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, Harris, the first female vice-president, is also potentially on the verge of becoming the first Asian American president, as well the country’s first female president. Yet she is not making a big deal about it.In her closing argument in Washington DC before one of the most consequential elections in the country’s history, Harris did not refer to her gender or her race or how she may be breaking a glass ceiling. It’s not something she brings up often on the campaign trail, choosing instead to focus on her middle-class upbringing and how she hopes to be a president for “all Americans”.Her central message that night was about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. “This election is more than a choice between two parties and two different candidates. It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American. Or one ruled by chaos and division.”Unlike Hillary Clinton, who made gender a central part of her 2016 run for office, at a time of historic polarization Harris chose to focus on issues over identity. That is also how she chose to run her unusually short campaign of 13 weeks after an ageing Biden finally passed her the mantle on 21 July.Laurie Pohutsky, a Democratic state representative in Michigan, decided to run in 2018 after witnessing Trump’s misogynistic campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Since then, she has introduced two key pieces of state legislation that lifted restrictions on abortion. In a phone interview from the swing state governed by the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, she said: “You know, we weren’t elected because we were women. And I think that when we frame it that way, we do a disservice to ourselves.”She said she agreed with Harris’s choice not to focus on gender: “While it’s historic, it’s not what would make her a good president.”“We’re long overdue for a female president,” she added. “But that’s not why I think people are voting for her. They’re voting for her because of her record and the work that she’s done and the things that she believes, versus what we know Donald Trump believes.”Identity politicsIn the face of misogyny and racism, it is Harris’s detractors who have attempted to use her identity against her. Republicans regularly mispronounce her name or call her a “DEI hire”.At the beginning of her campaign, Trump sought to steer the conversation towards race in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, questioning whether Harris is indeed Black. Many recognize these personal attacks as Trump’s hallmark. Their purpose is to undermine debate, take his opponent off script, stoke division and ultimately attract media attention.Christina Reynolds, senior vice-president for communications for Emily’s List, a political action committee that backs pro-choice Democratic female candidates, including Harris, explains that women are often the butt of personal attacks whereas men are attacked for their policies. Reynolds has witnessed this first-hand after working on five presidential campaigns, including Hillary Clinton’s.This is just one example of the double standards women and particularly women of color face to get to the top. Another is the pressure on women to be both likable and competent, whereas a man can be one or the other. Research by UC Berkeley’s Hass School of Business also shows that women in positions of power lose likability. This is particularly true of successful middle-aged women.In 2016, Trump accused Clinton of being a “nasty woman” while male pundits told her to “smile” more. When Harris, a former prosecutor, successfully grilled Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearing for the supreme court, Trump accused her too of being “nasty”.A champion of women’s rightsDespite Harris’s attempts to detract attention from her gender and race, she has campaigned heavily on the issue of women’s rights. “She may not frame things in terms of her gender, but the first president or vice-president to invite abortion providers to the White House and to visit an abortion provider – both of those firsts were Kamala Harris,” Reynolds said.The overturning of Roe v Wade by three Trump-appointed supreme court justices in 2022 placed women’s rights at the forefront of voters’ concerns. The right to abortion was a hard-fought battle that was won in 1973. A poll from May 2024 from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center suggested that 63% of Americans believed abortion should be legal in all or most cases.In perhaps one of the most moving moments of the Democratic national convention, three women told their harrowing personal stories of being denied medical care in states where abortions are restricted.At the closing rally in Washington DC, Harris suggested Trump could take things even further: “He would ban abortion nationwide, restrict access to birth control and put IVF at risk and force states to monitor women’s pregnancies,” she said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris has also proposed policies to appeal to people – especially women – who need to care for parents and young children at the same time, known as the sandwich generation. She talks about how she had to care for her mother before she died of cancer in 2009, and she has talked about her plan to have Medicare pay for home healthcare.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage:

      When do polls close?

      Trump v Harris on key issues

      What’s at stake and what else to know
      Signs of progressHarris is running for office in a divided country, with Trump threatening violence against his political opponents. “On day one, if elected, Donald Trump would walk into that office with an enemies list. When elected, I will walk in with a to-do list,” she said in DC last week to a crowd of more than 75,000 people.And while in her closing argument the Democratic nominee made clear that she pledged to be a “president for all Americans” and “to always put country above party and above self”, at the same time Reynolds noted that “she has taken the communities that she has been a part of” and ensured that they “have a voice” and “that they are included in conversations”.As Americans watched Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House and Harris as vice-president sitting behind Biden as he gave his first address to Congress in April 2021, they were reminded of how women are increasingly occupying positions of power. The numbers tell a similar story. According to data provided by the Center for American Women and Politics, in 2017 the US had 105 female members of Congress out of 535. Today the number has reached 150, including rising stars such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett.“We still have a long way to go,” said Reynolds. But people no longer hear the word “candidate” “with the assumption that a candidate is a man”.“And that’s progress,” she added.At Harris’s closing address in Washington DC, Elaine Callahan, a self-described independent voter, felt compelled to back Harris in 2024: “It is historic. Yes!”But as polls show Harris and Trump neck and neck in many swing states, she remembers what happened to Clinton back in 2016 and is prompted to “pray to God there will be a shift”. More

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      When do polls close on election day, Tuesday, 5 November 2024?

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      After a historic US election cycle that saw the incumbent president step down from his party’s ticket and two assassination attempts against the Republican presidential nominee, voters are (finally) casting their ballots.Tens of millions of Americans will have already voted by the time that polls close on 5 November, but tens of millions more will cast ballots in person on election day. In 2020, more than 200 million Americans voted in the presidential race, as turnout hit its highest level since 1992.This year, election experts expect voter turnout to be similarly robust, with Americans eager to make their voices heard in what will probably be a very close contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Voters will also have the opportunity to weigh in on thousands of other elections happening at the federal, state and local levels.As voters head to the polls, here’s a guide on how to navigate an election night that is guaranteed to be eventful:6pm ET: polls start to closeThe first polls will close in eastern Kentucky and much of Indiana at 6pm ET. Democrats’ expectations are low in the two Republican-leaning states: Trump is virtually guaranteed to win both, and Republicans are expected to easily hold most of the two states’ House seats as well.7pm ET: polls fully close in six states, including GeorgiaAmericans will get their first clues about the outcome of the presidential race at 7pm ET, when polls close in the battleground state of Georgia. Joe Biden won Georgia by just 0.2 points in 2020, after Trump carried the state by 5 points four years earlier. This year, Trump appears to have a slight advantage over Harris in the Peach state, but a strong night for Democrats could put Georgia in their win column again.As Georgia starts to count its ballots, polls will also close in Virginia, where both parties hope to flip a House seat. Republicans are looking to expand their narrow majority in the House, and the results in Virginia’s second and seventh congressional districts could give an early indication of the party’s success.7.30pm ET: polls close in North Carolina, Ohio and West VirginiaNorth Carolina represents one of the largest tests for Harris, who has run neck and neck with Trump in the state’s polling. Trump won North Carolina by 1 point in 2020 and 3 points in 2016, and a loss in this battleground state could doom the former president. Democrats also expect a victory in the North Carolina gubernatorial race, given the recent revelations about Republican Mark Robinson’s disturbing internet activity.Meanwhile, the results in Ohio and West Virginia could decide control of the Senate. Republicans are expected to pick up a seat in West Virginia, where the independent senator Joe Manchin decided against seeking re-election; and the Democratic incumbent, Sherrod Brown, is facing a tough race in Ohio. If Republicans win both races, that would erase Democrats’ current 51-49 advantage in the Senate.8pm ET: polls fully close in 16 states, including PennsylvaniaThis will represent a pivotal moment in the presidential race. Whoever wins Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes is much more likely to win the White House, a fact that both nominees acknowledged as they held numerous campaign events in the state.“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Trump said at a rally in September. “It’s very simple.”Pennsylvania will also host some of the nation’s most competitive congressional races. If it is a good night for Republicans, they could flip the seat of the incumbent Democratic senator Bob Casey, who is facing off against the former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick.But if Democrats have an especially strong night, they may set their sights on Florida, where the final polls close at 8pm ET. In addition to Harris’s long-shot hopes of flipping a state that Trump won twice, the Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is looking to unseat the Republican senator Rick Scott, who has maintained a polling advantage in the race. An upset win for Mucarsel-Powell could allow Democrats to maintain their Senate majority.8.30pm ET: polls close in ArkansasThere won’t be much suspense in Arkansas, as Trump is expected to easily win the solidly Republican state. Arkansas does have the distinction of being the only state where polls will close at 8.30pm ET, but most Americans’ attention will be on the results trickling in from battleground states by this point in the night.9pm ET: polls fully close in 15 states, including Michigan and WisconsinThis will be the do-or-die moment for Harris. In 2016, Trump’s ability to eke out narrow victories in the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin sent him to the White House, but Biden won all three battlegrounds four years later.Harris’s most likely path to 270 electoral votes runs through Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this year, so Trump could secure a second term if he can pick off even one of those states.Michigan and Wisconsin will also play a potentially decisive role in the battle for Congress. Democrats currently hold two Senate seats in the states that are up for grabs this year, and Republican victories in either race could give them a majority. Michigan’s seventh congressional district, which became an open seat after Elissa Slotkin chose to run for the Senate rather than seek re-election, has been described as “the most competitive open seat in the country”.In New York, where polls also close at 9pm ET, Democrats have the opportunity to flip several House seats that Republicans won in 2022. If they are successful, it could give Democrats a House majority.10pm ET: polls fully close in Nevada, Montana and UtahHarris hopes to keep Nevada in her column, as Democratic presidential candidates have won the state in every race since 2008. Trump previously led Nevada polls, but Harris has closed that gap in the final weeks of the race.Another two Senate races will come to a close at this point in the night as well. In Nevada, the Democratic incumbent, Jacky Rosen, is favored to hold her seat, but her fellow Democratic senator Jon Tester’s prospects appear grim in Montana.If Republicans have not already clinched a Senate majority by the time Montana’s polls close, this may be the moment when they officially capture control of the upper chamber.11pm ET: polls fully close in four states, including CaliforniaWhile Harris is virtually guaranteed a victory in her home state of California, the state’s House races carry important implications for control of Congress. Five House Republicans face toss-up races in California, according to the Cook Political Report, so the state represents Democrats’ biggest opportunity to regain a majority in the chamber.12am ET: polls close in Hawaii and most of AlaskaBy the time polls close in Hawaii and most of Alaska, Americans should have a much better sense of who will be moving into the White House come January. But if 2020 is any indication, the nation may have to wait a bit longer to hear a final call on who won the presidential race.In 2020, the AP did not declare Biden as the winner of the presidential election until 7 November at 11.26am ET – four days after the first polls closed. And in 2016, it took until 2.29am ET the morning after election day to declare Trump as the winner.Given how close the race for the White House is expected to be, Americans might have to settle in for a long night – or even week – to learn who their next president is. More

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      The candidates’ closing campaign messages could not be more different | Margaret Sullivan

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      In recent days, the Republican nominee for president of the United States has driven around in circles in a garbage truck, pretended to work at McDonald’s and presided over a rally in which Puerto Rico was called a floating island of garbage.Outrageous, of course – but then it got worse. On Thursday, talking on stage with Tucker Carlson in Arizona, Donald Trump went after the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who opposes his re-election and has campaigned with Kamala Harris: “Let’s put her with a rifle with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face.”Cheney characterized this as “how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death.”Meanwhile, in the final days of her campaign, Harris continued to call for unity, progress and inclusion. In a sweeping speech at the Ellipse in Washington DC before a huge and appreciative crowd, she warned of Americans losing their fundamental freedoms if they submit to the will of the “petty tyrant” mentioned above.With only a few days left of this exhausting campaign, the candidates’ closing statements could not be more different. There’s violent, hateful rhetoric and threats of retribution from one side. There’s inclusion, sanity and promises of good will on the other. Autocracy on the one hand; the preservation of democracy on the other.And yet, according to the polls – if you choose to believe them – the presidential race is tied.The oft-cited Cook Political Report issued its final projection: “Too close to call. Harris heads into Election Day with 226 electoral votes in Likely or Solid Democrat, and Trump with 219 in Likely or Solid Republican. Seven states and their 93 electoral votes are too close to call, with neither candidate having a lead larger than one or two points in any state.”You’d think, then, that these final days would matter. That mysteriously undecided voters would finally figure things out, or that some last-minute political bomb would explode – like the Access Hollywood audio followed by the FBI’s reopening of the Hillary Clinton emails investigation in the last days of the 2016 campaign.But no one should have bothered to wait.At this point, nothing can make a bit of difference. For some observers, this is not a new realization.“That’s where I’ve been ever since 2015: feeling like language is pointless,” wrote David Roberts, formerly of Vox, who writes the Volts newsletter about clean energy and politics. “Like the reality I inhabit is so far from the reality Trump supporters inhabit that discourse between us is impossible or at least futile. The divide is unbridgeable.”And this is the background as voters make their way to their election sites, with many of them voting early to avoid chaos or danger on Tuesday. Each side is claiming the early voters as theirs.And right to the end, the most powerful of the mainstream press keeps trying to equalize the unequal.Both the New York Times and the Washington Post led their websites with Joe Biden’s verbal fumble in which he may, or may not, have referred to Trump supporters as garbage.And both placed that story above the fold on Thursday’s print front pages. The Post’s hefty two-column headline dominated the lead position: “Biden’s ‘garbage’ remark has Harris seeking distance.” The Times struck the same note: “Biden Misstep Delivers Grist to Harris Foes.”The headlines themselves demonstrate the flawed news judgment. “The news hook is literally that it provided ‘grist’ to Republicans,” and this in effect “outsources the judgment about the newsworthiness of the event to bad faith actors,” wrote Greg Sargent of the New Republic.Sure, Biden’s untimely gaffe is a legitimate story. But this important? Certainly not when you consider how the Times handled its own scoop – that the former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general, believes Trump is a fascist and a danger to the nation. That one went to page A12.Meanwhile, Trump drives around in a garbage truck, issues death threats and says he’s planning to protect American women from their own healthcare decisions “whether the women like it or not”.No October surprise could have superseded the media’s reflexive false equivalence or the cult-like adoration of Trump’s followers.But, as my father used to urge, keep the faith.If there’s any justice or decency left – and I trust there is – Harris will leave the pollsters and the pundits scratching their heads after a November surprise. Her historic victory.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Harris vows at Michigan rally to ‘do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza’

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      Kamala Harris pledged to “do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza” in her final rally in Michigan on Sunday, as she attempted to appeal to the state’s large Arab American and Muslim American population two days out from the election.Michigan is home to about 240,000 registered Muslim voters, a majority of whom voted for Biden in 2020, helping him to a narrow victory over Donald Trump. But Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the state have expressed dissatisfaction over the vice-president’s stance on Israel’s war on Gaza, and polling suggests that these voters are gravitating towards Jill Stein, the Green party candidate.With Harris and the former president essentially tied in Michigan, a drop in voting numbers for either could be critical, and Harris made a clear appeal at the beginning of her speech.“We are joined today by leaders of the Arab American community, which has deep and proud roots here in Michigan, and I want to say this year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon,” Harris said.“It is devastating, and as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination.”Speaking at the Michigan State University campus, Harris repeated her campaign promise to “turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division”. Harris did not mention Trump by name in East Lansing, as she gave an address that struck a hopeful tone for the future.“America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow American not as an enemy, but as a neighbor,” she said.“We are ready for a president who knows that the true measure of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it is based on who you lift up.”

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      Harris was making her fourth stop of the day in Michigan, having earlier spoken at a church in Detroit and stopped by a barber shop in Pontiac. The state is key to her chances of success, but the result is likely to be close. Trump won Michigan by about 10,000 votes in 2016 as he demolished Democrats’ “blue wall”, and Biden also carried the state by a narrow margin in 2020. Trump is holding his final rally of the campaign in Michigan on Monday night, but Harris was defiant.“We need to finish strong. So for the next two days we still have a lot of work to do but here’s the thing: we like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work,” she said.“And make no mistake, we will win.”It was a raucous atmosphere at the rally, Harris’s final stop in Michigan before Tuesday’s vote. She repeatedly had to pause for loud chants of “Kamala, Kamala” from a diverse crowd who seemed enthusiastic about voting for her“I feel more energized and more excited in this election than I have in a while,” said Latonya Demps, 40, a small business owner and a Michigan State alumna.“I’m very excited to vote for Harris. As a woman she speaks for my rights and the rights of women that we have fought for for a very, very long time: the right to choose, the right to have equity and access, also freedom for all of us in terms of climate change, in terms of our economy, the type of neighbors we want to have, the families that we want to raise, I think she represents the values that are really important to me.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThis week Democrats have fought to counter the gains made by Stein among Arab American and Muslim American voters in Michigan, with the Democratic National Committee launching a series of ads on Instagram and YouTube aiming to discourage people from voting for Stein and Cornel West, who is running as an independent and is also a critic of Israel.The ads highlight recent comments by Trump that he likes Stein “very much”, because: “She takes 100% from [Democrats].” The pro-Democrat organization MoveOn has also been running a “seven-figure” ad campaign this week, which it said was designed to appeal to people who are yet to decide on a candidate and “third-party curious voters”.Polling on the issue has yielded inconsistent results. Last week a national survey of Arab Americans, conducted by the Arab News Research and Studies Unit, found 43% supporting Trump compared with 41% for Harris, and 4% backing Stein, while a survey of Muslim Americans, by the Council on American-Islamic Relations of American Muslims, found that 42.3% plan to vote for Stein, 41% for Harris and 9.8% for Trump.Despite that uncertainty, Harris supporters left buoyant on Sunday night.“She’s going to be the first Black woman president that we’ve had. She’s actually going to fight for our rights. She’s fighting for women’s reproductive rights, she’s also fighting for the middle class, for entrepreneurs, and business owners like myself,” said Zay Worthey, 19.Worthey said he was “100%” confident that Harris will win the White House on Tuesday.“Because she has something that Donald Trump doesn’t: community,” Worthey said.“She’s really working and fighting for the people of America, and Donald Trump is just only working for the people of the rich.” More

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      Trump disputes Iowa poll showing Harris ahead in red state: ‘It’s not even close!’

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      Donald Trump has passionately disputed a shock Iowa poll that found Kamala Harris leading the former president in the typically red state 47% to 44%.“No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday morning. “In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT.”Trump continued, in all caps: “I love the farmers, and they love me. And they trust me.” More than 85% of Iowa’s land is used for farming and it produces more corn, pigs, eggs, ethanol and biodiesel than any other state.On Saturday, the Selzer poll carried out for the Des Moines Register newspaper showed the vice-president ahead of her Republican rival by three points. Selzer is a widely respected polling organisation with a good record in Iowa; she shot to polling fame in 2008 when she predicted that a virtually unknown senator, Barack Obama, would beat frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.If Harris were even competitive in Iowa – which Trump won in both 2016 and 2020 – it could radically reshape the race.The pollster told MSNBC on Sunday that Harris was leading in early voting in Iowa “because of her strength with women generally, even stronger with women aged 65 and older. Her margin is more than 2-to-1 – and this is an age group that shows up to vote or votes early in disproportionately large numbers.”Earlier on Sunday, Trump’s campaign released a memo from its chief pollster and its chief data consultant calling the Des Moines Register poll “a clear outlier” and saying that an Emerson College poll – also released Saturday – more closely reflected the state of the Iowa electorate.

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      The Emerson poll found 53% of likely voters support Trump and 43% support Harris, with 3% undecided and 1% planning to vote for a third-party candidate.The Trump campaign, which many Democrats believe is setting the stage for a series of legal challenges to poll results, also said in an email that the Des Moines Register poll and a subsequent New York Times swing state poll that found Harris ahead in four of the seven states, is “being used to drive a voter suppression narrative against President Trump’s supporters.“Some in the media are choosing to amplify a mad dash to dampen and diminish voter enthusiasm,” the statement added.Last week, Trump said: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before” but did not provide evidence for the claim. A Harris campaign official said that the “cheating” claim was an example of how Trump was trying to sow doubt in the electoral system because he was afraid he would lose.The claims come as a federal judge plans to rule on whether Iowa officials can continuing trying to remove hundreds of potential noncitizens from its voting rolls despite critics saying the effort could keep recently naturalized citizens from voting.North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, a Republican, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he is confident that Trump is “going to confidently win Iowa”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked if Trump has a problem winning over women voters, Burgum said: “I’d be surprised, completely shocked if that comes anywhere close to being the fact in Iowa.”Burgum pointed to national polling which shows Harris and Trump tied.“I think that’s the feeling that I get on the ground. It’s a very tight race. It’s going to be decided on Tuesday,” Burgum added.But speaking to MSNBC, Maryland governor Wes Moore, a Democrat, said the Des Moines Register poll putting Harris ahead Iowa, but still within margins of error, “lines up with what we’re seeing on the ground”, particularly among women voters.Moore continued: “We’re watching an energy that I think has not been there for a while, where we continue to see where women understand firsthand, what is at stake, that they understand the dynamics and the distinctions between these two candidates literally could not be more stark about when you’re talking about a future vision for the country.” More