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      in US Politics

      US election roundup: Joe Biden and Donald Trump descend on key battleground of Florida

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      Donald Trump and Joe Biden converged on Florida on Thursday in the final stages of the battle for the swing state, which the president must win to have a realistic chance of holding on to power.
      “You hold the key,” Biden told a rally in Broward county. “If Florida goes blue, it’s over. It’s over!”
      The rivals duelled over interpretations of new data which showed the US economy recovering fast in the third quarter, but still suffering from the impact of the Covid pandemic. And despite Trump’s efforts to push the issue aside, the candidates’ widely different approaches to the pandemic came into focus once more.
      The Trump campaign broadcast new Spanish-language advertisements showing the president wearing a mask – a tacit admission that his frequent derision of mask-wearing was damaging his standing among at least some of his supporters.
      But the president’s rally held outside a Tampa football stadium followed the pattern of his campaign, packing thousands of mostly maskless fans together.
      Adding to the irony, Melania Trump told the crowd that her husband and his team were focused on creating ways for people to “start gathering with friends again on safe distances”.
      The president’s disregard for masks has alienated many elderly voters, who are critical in Florida, where polls show the race to be more or less tied – and whose 29 votes in the electoral college have proved decisive in the past.
      Most electoral analysts argue that it would be virtually impossible for Trump to hold on to the presidency without winning the state.
      If Trump wins Florida, it would increase pressure on Biden to win the big battleground states to the north, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The Democratic challenger began the day in Broward county, part of the coastal urban sprawl north of Miami, before crossing the state to Tampa, where he was due to arrive in the evening, a few hours after Trump had departed for North Carolina, one of the traditionally Republican strongholds he is trying to defend against a Democratic surge.
      As part of the continuing deliberate contrast with the president’s campaign style, the Biden Broward county event was a socially distanced drive-in at a college campus, where supporters were cautioned not to stray more than an arm’s length from their cars. The evening rally scheduled in Tampa was also a drive-in.
      In a new advertisement launched on Thursday, Biden pledged to set up a special taskforce on his first day in office which would be devoted to finding the families of 545 children forcibly separated from their families under Trump immigration policies.
      Data released on Thursday showed GDP had bounced back dramatically in the third quarter of 2020, 33% on an annualized rate in the third quarter after dropping 31% in the second quarter, but the economy was still nearly 4% down compared with the end of 2019.
      On Twitter, Trump proclaimed the recovery to be the “Biggest and Best in the History of our Country”. Biden countered that the country was still “in a deep hole” and warned that the recovery was “slowing if not stalling” while benefiting the wealthiest Americans. More

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      in US Politics

      Obama campaigns for Biden in Florida as Trump heads to battleground Ohio – live coverage

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      Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris is calling for an administration that is frank about racist police brutality in America.
      “There isn’t a Black man I know, be it a relative or friend, who has not had some sort of experience with police that’s been about an unreasonable stop, some sort of profiling or excessive force,” she said. More

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      in Elections

      Florida accused of sowing confusion with last-minute voting changes

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      Florida’s top election official is facing accusations of voter suppression after two last-minute moves critics say will lead to intimidation and confusion.Alarm bells went off last week after the office of Florida’s secretary of state, Laurel Lee, abruptly notified election officials the state was beginning to flag voters for potential removal from the voter rolls if they owed money related to a felony conviction. In a second letter, the state offered an extremely restrictive view on how localities needed to operate ballot drop boxes, which voters are increasingly turning to this year amid United States Postal Service delays.Both notices threaten confusion and chaos in one of the most important swing states in the 2020 election. Mail-in voting started weeks ago and in-person early voting started on Monday. Polls show an extremely tight race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in Florida, a state where elections are routinely decided by just thousands of votes.‘This is just to create fearmongering’In 2018, Florida voters repealed the state’s longstanding lifetime voting ban for people with felony convictions, a move estimated to affect up to 1.4 million people. But Republicans in the state legislature quickly undercut the reform by passing a law in 2019 that requires people to repay all financial obligations associated with their sentence before they can vote again. Civil rights groups sued the state over the measure, saying it amounted to an unlawful tax on the right to vote. A federal appeals court upheld the law in September, saying Florida did not even have to tell people how much they owed before they could vote.Florida does not have a centralized system for keeping track of how much people with felony convictions owe and it can be nearly impossible for even trained officials to figure it out. And under state law, no one can be removed ahead of the November election – state law gives local election officials seven days to notify a voter and then gives the voter 30 days to respond.Still, critics are worried that voters with felony convictions could receive notices suggesting they are ineligible to vote, dissuading them from casting votes, even though they are legally entitled to do so.“If you’re not able to put a system together to let people know what they owe, how can we even trust that you have any kind of legitimate system to determine whether people should be taken off of the roster,” said Desmond Meade, the executive director of Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), an advocacy group for people with felony convictions. He was concerned the state would wrongly flag people who were eligible to vote because they had been granted clemency, even though they still owed money to the state. More

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      in Elections

      Trump holds packed rally after Covid diagnosis as he struggles in polls

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      US elections 2020

      President addresses mostly maskless crowd in key swing state of Florida: ‘I feel so powerful’

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      ‘I’ll kiss everyone’: Trump claims he has immunity at first rally since Covid diagnosis – video

      Keen to appear lively and well after his recent hospitalization for Covid-19, Donald Trump held his first rally since being diagnosed, addressing a packed, largely maskless crowd in Florida – a state he desperately needs to win.
      “I feel so powerful,” he boasted to his cheering supporters, 11 days after announcing his infection. “I’ll walk into that audience. I’ll walk in there, I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women – everybody,” he added, his voice still a bit hoarse.
      With just weeks to go before election day, and early voting under way, Trump has been eager to return to a full schedule of in-person rallies as he scrambles to hold on to supporters. Polls have his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, ahead by an average of 10.4 points as of Friday. Trump is also losing support from seniors, who are the most vulnerable in a pandemic that has already killed more than 214,000 Americans.
      In a frenetic push to solidify support, Trump and his campaign have sought to downplay the threat of coronavirus. The president’s own demonstrations of reckless, maskless bravado appear to be key to that strategy, as Trump characterizes his opponent as frail and confined to his basement. More

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      in Elections

      Federal judge denies plea to extend Florida voter registration

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      A federal judge has denied a motion to extend voter registration in Florida after its website crashed just before the deadline, potentially preventing tens of thousands of people from casting their ballot in November’s presidential election.The judge accused the state of failing its citizens.The development on Friday came after the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, had extended the deadline from Monday to Tuesday this week after the state’s online system had stopped working for seven hours on the final day of registration.Voting rights and minority rights advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit, saying voters needed more time, but DeSantis disagreed.On Thursday, US district court judge Mark E Walker held a hearing to decide whether or not to grant a preliminary injunction to reopen and extend the deadline.But in a 29-page overnight ruling on Friday he rejected calls for an extension. He said the decision was “an incredibly close call” but that “the state’s interest in preventing chaos in its already precarious – and perennially chaotic – election outweighs the substantial burden imposed on the right to vote.”Walker said: “Every man who has stepped foot on the moon launched from the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. Yet, Florida has failed to figure out how to run an election properly – a task simpler than rocket science.”And in a critique of the state’s historic elections issues, he said, “I feel like I’ve seen this movie before” and said the state had “failed its citizens”.“Notwithstanding the fact that cinemas across the country remain closed, somehow, I feel like I’ve seen this movie before. Just shy of a month from election day, with the earliest mail-in ballots beginning to be counted, Florida has done it again,” he wrote.He added: “This case is not about Floridians missing registration deadlines. This case is also not a challenge to a state statute. This case is about how a state failed its citizens.”Data filed by the state indicates that 50,000 people registered during the extended time period. Based on previous trends, the judge noted, perhaps more than 20,000 additional people might have also registered to vote, if they had been able to access the system.He also took aim at the secretary of state, Laurel Lee, who he said had implemented a “half measure” after the public had raised the alarm.“She hastily and briefly extended the registration period and ordered Florida’s supervisors of election to accept applications submitted by the secretary’s new ‘book closing’ deadline,” he wrote.He also criticised her for failing to notify the public of the new deadline until noon on the date of the new deadline.“This left less than seven hours for potential voters to somehow become aware of the news and ensure that they properly submitted their voter registration applications, all while also participating in their normal workday, school, family, and caregiving responsibilities,” Walker wrote.With less than a month to go until the 3 November election, it is the latest issue to potentially prevent people from voting in Florida. In September, a court ruled that people with felony convictions could not vote unless they repaid all outstanding debts – potentially blocking an estimated 744,000 people from voting. More