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      Fueled by Falsehoods, a Michigan Group Is Ready to Challenge the Vote

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      In private meetings, activists, lawyers and G.O.P. officials laid out their strategy. “If there is a close election, it’s going to be up to us to fix it,” one said.DETROIT — The invitation went out in early July.Republican activists, lawyers and elected officials in Michigan who call the results of the 2020 election fraudulent would unite with a single focus: “to provide ongoing citizen oversight, transparency, and accountability” in elections. They adopted the name Michigan Fair Elections and the simple slogan, “Choose Freedom.”Over the next months, the participants got to work trying to remake democracy in the nation’s 10th largest state under the banner of integrity.They recruited and trained challengers to spot and document minute ballot irregularities; filed lawsuits to undermine protections for the vote-counting process; and debated the merits of calling 911 on poll workers deemed to be violating rules. In weekly Zoom meetings, they discussed friendly insiders positioned on Michigan canvassing boards, which certify results; repeated debunked conspiracy theories about election machines, ballot “mules” and widespread voter fraud; and obsessed over the idea that Democrats “cheat” to win elections.“If there is a close election, it’s going to be up to us to fix it,” said Erick Kaardal, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society, a conservative legal group in Chicago, during an Oct. 27 Zoom attended by more than 50 people. “We’re the team that’s going to have to fix an election in Michigan if it’s rigged.”The New York Times reviewed more than 20 hours of recordings of Michigan Fair Elections meetings, along with training sessions and organizing calls from closely linked groups. What emerged was a picture of an organization fueled by falsehoods, bent on trying to influence the 2022 midterms and determined to change the voting system in ways that would benefit Republicans.The Michigan group has counterparts around the country. Since the 2020 election, activists have rallied behind Donald J. Trump’s claims about rigged elections and set out to find evidence to prove their theories and change the system. They have staked out ballot drop boxes, recruited thousands of volunteers to monitor voting in the midterm elections and filed legal challenges.In Michigan, the organizers behind the effort include both Republican stalwarts and grass-roots activists. Attendees on the calls included Cleta Mitchell, the longtime elections lawyer who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn his 2020 loss; Ann Bollin, the chairwoman of the Elections and Ethics Committee in the Michigan House of Representatives; Patrick Colbeck, a former Michigan state senator who has called election denial a “spiritual battle”; and Sandy Kiesel, a Michigan activist who runs a group still pushing to decertify the 2020 election nearly two years after Mr. Trump left office.The coalition grew out of Ms. Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, which has established groups doing similar work in states including Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Virginia.A ballot drop box on Sunday in downtown Grand Rapids, Mich.Brittany Greeson for The New York Times“What you’re doing is really reclaiming our country,” Ms. Mitchell said at a meeting in August. “Just remember that what we are collectively trying to do is save our country from the radical left.”Someone with access to video and audio recordings of the calls shared them with The Times. Several participants confirmed the material’s authenticity.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Final Landscape: As candidates make their closing arguments, Democrats are bracing for potential losses even in traditionally blue corners of the country as Republicans predict a red wave.The Battle for Congress: With so many races on edge, a range of outcomes is still possible. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, breaks down four possible scenarios.Voting Worries: Even as voting goes smoothly, fear and suspicion hang over the process, exposing the toll former President Donald J. Trump’s falsehoods have taken on American democracy.In a statement to The Times about her work, Ms. Mitchell said her network “is about following the law and restoring the election process to one that is accurate, honest, and protects the secret ballot for all voters.”Patrice Johnson, who sent the July invitation and oversees meetings of Michigan Fair Elections, referred requests for comment to Mr. Kaardal, who did not respond to queries.Ms. Kiesel said in an interview that she wanted “to unify the United States through transparent and trusted elections.” She said that although she attended some meetings she is not a member of the coalition.Election officials and governance experts say that if there is an erosion of trust in elections, Mr. Trump and his supporters are causing it. In Michigan, election officials say they are prepared for activists and lawyers to challenge close races in court by asking the judges to discard thousands of ballots in Democratic strongholds such as Detroit and Grand Rapids, and by filing lawsuits that seek to delay or block the certification of results.On one recent Zoom meeting, Mr. Kaardal spoke about plans to try to force the entire governor’s race to be rerun. Mr. Colbeck last week called for a “full forensic audit” — a buzz word for the type of discredited, partisan examination of votes conducted in Arizona last year — regardless of the outcome.But election experts say that they have confidence that the system is sound and that votes will be fairly and accurately counted. Millions of Americans already have cast ballots early without widespread disruption or trouble. Still, they say that such endeavors could further dent public confidence in the electoral system, which could have repercussions in the future.“I think it really undermines public confidence in the system because to some people where there’s smoke there’s fire,” said Dan Korobkin, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. “It’s true our democracy didn’t fall apart in 2020, and maybe it won’t in 2022, but how many years in a row can you have that kind of situation until we really are in deep trouble?”One focus in the meetings has been defeating a ballot proposal backed by Democrats that would amend the Michigan constitution to make voting easier and force canvassing boards to certify results, among other measures.The Michigan Fair Elections participants see it as a crisis.“It’s a nuclear bomb to our elections,” Marian Sheridan, the grass-roots vice chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said in an Oct. 13 meeting.Braden Giacobazzi, an activist and engineer from the outskirts of Detroit, has led a series of training sessions for poll challengers.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesInstead, she and others associated with the group support a measure requiring voter ID and barring outside groups from donating money to election offices. The measure failed to get on the ballot, but participants hope to push it through the legislature ahead of the 2024 election, along with legislation that would make it easier for voters to sue elections officials.Ms. Sheridan did not respond to requests for comment.The most pressing issue on the calls in recent months has been preparing for the midterm elections. Planning has included some talk of monitoring ballot boxes and demanding hand recounts, strategies pursued by groups in other states, but the Michigan coalition has largely kept its focus on the courts.“Lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits,” Mr. Colbeck said in a meeting in early August. (A promoter of theories about hacked election machines, Mr. Colbeck is a close associate of Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and a leading figure in the election denial movement.)Some groups involved have been preparing for lawsuits by stationing trained volunteers — labeled “challengers” in Michigan election law — at the vote-counting centers to collect what they claim will be evidence of problems.Late last month, Braden Giacobazzi, an activist and engineer from the outskirts of Detroit, led one of a series of poll challenger trainings for the Election Integrity Force and Fund, a group headed by Ms. Kiesel. The goal, he said, is documenting activity that can be used later in legal challenges. “You just keep gathering data, all of that as evidence,” Mr. Giacobazzi, who has been kicked out of counting centers twice in the past two years, said to around 50 new recruits.Mr. Giacobazzi said in an interview that he follows the law and wants to try to help catch fraud if there is any, to ensure a more transparent process.In September, the Election Integrity Force and others sued Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, as well as its secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, in a bid to decertify the 2020 election.In another recent lawsuit, Mr. Giacobazzi and the Election Integrity Force joined with Kristina Karamo, Republican candidate for secretary of state, to ask a judge to effectively declare the absentee ballot system used in Detroit unlawful.Over the course of a four-hour hearing on that case last week, their lawyers referred to debunked conspiracy theories from the discredited film “2000 Mules.”“This is again part of a right-wing fever dream,” said David Fink, a lawyer for the city of Detroit, during the hearing.In a ruling issued on Monday, Judge Timothy Kenny rejected the claims, noting that the plaintiffs’ demands would disenfranchise 60,000 voters who had already cast ballots. Every one of 12 accusations submitted “are unsubstantiated and/or misinterpret Michigan law,” he wrote.By last Thursday, there were 1,100 people signed up statewide to be poll challengers as election officials begin to process absentee ballots.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesConspiracy theories frequently crept into Michigan Fair Elections’ planning meetings. In an Oct. 27 meeting, Ms. Kiesel said a lawyer had sent letters to 1,600 elections clerks in Michigan advising them to recount ballots by hand based in part on a debunked theory about voting machines.In another meeting, Ms. Kiesel boasted that her group had tried to challenge 22,000 voters before the August primaries. The secretary of state’s office said the challenges were invalid, but last week Ms. Kiesel sent out thousands more.“Groups that ignore the law and spread misinformation and lies do nothing of value,” Ms. Benson said in a statement. Participants on the calls share updates on their recruitment of both poll monitors and poll workers, the temporary workers who run polling places.On a call in August, Matt Seifried, the Republican National Committee’s elections integrity director for Michigan, said the party had installed 1,500 Republican poll workers in the state during the August primary. Some 500 of them were in Detroit alone, up from just 170 in 2020.“That is a huge accomplishment,” Mr. Seifried said.Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the R.N.C., said the party’s election integrity operation is separate from outside groups.By last week, there were 1,100 people signed up statewide to be poll challengers as election officials begin to process absentee ballots. On Election Day, Mr. Seifried said in a Zoom meeting on Thursday, there will be 30 lawyers ready to take calls from challengers who spot problems, with 65 more at polling locations, plus additional lawyers inside counting rooms in Democratic strongholds.During that meeting, Mr. Kaardal, the lawyer from the Thomas More Society, gave a final motivational speech.“Everyone on these phone calls should be very proud that we advanced the election integrity effort this far,” he said, reminding the 75 participants that there was no time to rest.“We start our forensic investigation on Election Day.”Nick Corasaniti More

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      Michigan’s top election official: ‘Every tactic tried in 2020 will be tried again’

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      InterviewMichigan’s top election official: ‘Every tactic tried in 2020 will be tried again’Sam Levine in New YorkUp for re-election as secretary of state herself, Jocelyn Benson expects more electoral interference in the looming midterms Jocelyn Benson can still rattle off all the important dates.There was 17 November 2020, when two canvassers in Michigan’s Wayne county nearly refused to certify the election results. There was 23 November, when the state board almost did the same thing. There was 5 December, when dozens of armed protesters gathered outside her home as she put up Christmas decorations with her family. And there was 6 January, when an armed mob laid siege to the US Capitol.The US is on a knife-edge. The enemy for Trump’s Republicans is democracy itself | Jonathan FreedlandRead moreTwo years later, Benson, a Democrat, is overseeing another high-stakes election in her state, a key battleground in the US. She’s also running for a second term as Michigan’s top election official – secretary of state – facing off against Kristina Karamo, a Republican who gained national attention for seeding doubt about the results of the 2020 race. There’s little doubt in Benson’s mind that there will be another attempt to overturn the will of the voters in her state.“We expect that every lever that was pulled, and every tactic that was tried in 2020, will be tried again in ’22, and will be tried again in ’24,” she said in an interview with the Guardian. “And so we go into this election cycle not only with the knowledge of those tactics, but with the expectation in fact that there will be more people in positions of authority or willing to endorse those tactics than there were in 2020.”Looking back at the 2020 election, Benson now sees two things she wishes she had done differently. First, the pandemic restricted the amount of in-person interaction Benson could have with voters, limiting her ability to answer questions. Second, she said, her office didn’t plan enough for the possibility of attempts to interfere in the vote-counting process.“We thought at that point that the 2020 election, and our work in it, would be done. Because our work was to make sure that the process went well and everything else would play out the way it always has,” she said. “We drastically underestimated the post-election challenges that we endured for the months following November 2020. And we won’t make that mistake again.”Michigan was at the forefront of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Human error in a rural county helped feed conspiracy theories of a stolen vote. A chaotic scene at a central ballot-counting station in Detroit led to baseless allegations of malfeasance. All of that culminated in an enormous pressure campaign from Trump and his allies for local bipartisan boards of canvassers not to certify the election. Several reviews have affirmed Joe Biden’s victory in the state and there is no evidence of fraud.Republicans have spent the last two years focused on the state’s election infrastructure. Some officials on local canvassing boards who voted to certify the results of the 2020 election have been quietly replaced by Republicans. There has been a well-organized effort to recruit and train people who doubt the 2020 election results to work the polls, leading to increased concern about intimidation.That potential for violence on election day is one of the things that Benson is worried about as the midterms approach.“What January 6 taught us is that there is no bottom to how far someone will go, especially armed with misinformation to interfere with the fair and free elections of our country and of our state,” she said. “Because of that variable, because of that unknown and because of that potential, I am every day hopeful but concerned that people will show up to vote on election day and instead of finding a serene and even joyful experience, it will be a stressful one at best. Or that violence will erupt either during or after the election.”She’s also worried that some people, after a barrage of misinformation about election lies, may simply decide not to vote at all. “That breaks my heart,” she said. “I worry that the attacks that democracy has endured over these years, and the misinformation that has only escalated in toxicity, will ultimately lead many people to give up on politics altogether.”Even before she was a secretary of state, Benson recognized the enormous overlooked power these state officials have. She literally wrote a book on the topic: in 2010, long before secretaries of state were household names, she authored State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process. More than a decade later, there’s more attention on secretaries of state than ever after an election in which their power over election rules came into clear focus.“I’ve been really gratified that there is increased attention on these positions. And then also similarly really dismayed to see people seeking to fill these roles who have no interest in protecting or serving or expanding democracy,” she said. “I’m deeply concerned about the actual harm that election deniers can do through these offices. And I’m just as concerned about the misinformation that they may validate and spread about their colleagues, about their systems, through these positions. And how that cumulatively will dismantle potentially from within.“And then all of that is just metastasized when you have someone like that in a battleground state. Like in Michigan. Or in Georgia. Where they’re going to get extra pressure, as Brad Raffensperger did in Georgia. And you know, what if they say, ‘yes, I will find those 11,000 votes’ next time?” she added, alluding to an infamous Trump call during the 2020 election.When Benson meets people on the campaign trail who still doubt the results of the last presidential election, she listens and tries to narrow down what the specific questions they have are. “I want every voter to have rightly placed faith in the system. Because they should,” she said. “I welcome the questions. I welcome the scrutiny. Because I have so much faith in the security of the elections.”But Benson also recognizes that there are some instances when, despite her position, she might not be able to get through to someone. “There are some cases in which someone else answering them, like a Republican state senator, Ed McBroom, may be more effective. They may be more likely to hear the answer from someone else. So if that happens, then you adjust accordingly,” she said.“I think ultimately if people are willing to listen to each other, and if people are willing to listen to the facts, we can get to a place, even not all the time, but sometimes, where folks understand or are willing to entertain the possibility that they have been misled,” she said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022MichiganUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS elections 2020interviewsReuse this content More

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      How Michigan Republicans’ campaign is a ‘direct attack on democracy’

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      How Michigan Republicans’ campaign is a ‘direct attack on democracy’ As the key swing state heads into the midterms, Republicans have launched a coordinated effort to pack the process of overseeing electionsChristopher Thomas spent 36 years as director of Michigan’s elections, overseeing the laborious but uncontentious running of presidential vote counts.Then came 2020. Within hours of the polls closing in the presidential race, roving bands of Donald Trump’s supporters were moving from table to table at one of Detroit’s principal counting centres, flinging around accusations of vote rigging as they challenged and intimidated poll workers in the key swing state.US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracyRead more“These folks rolled in as a result of social media telling them to get down there because everything was being stolen. So they all came in, pretty revved up. I’m not expecting that,” said Thomas.Several hundred descended on the convention centre where about 170,000 postal ballots were collated in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Some yelled “stop the count”. Others taunted the vote counters. Groups of Trump supporters, locked out when the situation became too unruly, pounded on windows and doors.In the end, the count continued and Joe Biden overturned Trump’s slim victory in Michigan four years earlier, helping to push the then president out of the White House.But as Michigan heads into crucial midterm elections, and with the next presidential race swinging into view, both sides have learned lessons.The state’s Republicans have launched a coordinated effort to pack the process of overseeing elections with partisan poll monitors, while recruiting lawyers and sympathetic law enforcement officials ready to wade in to disputes, in what appears to be a strategy to create enough confusion and disagreement that unfavorable results are thrown into doubt. That potentially opens the way for the courts or, in the electoral college process for the presidential election, the Republican-controlled state legislature to intervene.All of this fits with the “precinct strategy” pushed by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist who has been sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress, to shoehorn grassroots Trump supporters into low-level positions across the country, such as election administration and on school boards, in order to take control “village by village … precinct by precinct”.Thomas, who retired as elections director in 2017 but continues to consult for the Detroit city clerk, is concerned.“I’m watching these efforts to enlist partisan poll workers with some scepticism,” he said.Michigan’s 83 elected county clerks oversee elections in their jurisdictions with some authority delegated to city and township election officials. They include Barb Byrum, a Democrat who has spent the past 10 years as Ingham county clerk after five years as a state legislator.“We really started seeing the attack on our elections over six years ago but it has really ramped up,” she said.“There’s a concerted effort by the Republicans to encourage individuals to be hired by local clerks to work the election but then also serve as spies basically for the Republican party. They have been encouraged to sneak cellphones into the absentee county boards and call select Republican attorneys during election day.”Byrum, who was once barred from speaking during an anti-abortion debate in the Michigan legislature for using the word “vasectomy”, said illicit cellphones, which are barred from the count, put the “secrecy of the ballot at risk”.Political parties also get to appoint challengers who can question whether a person is qualified to vote. Byrum said that opens another avenue for disruption if the challengers make bad faith interventions that create long lines in strongly Democratic areas and discourage people from voting.In June, Politico revealed video recordings of the Republican National Committee election integrity director for Michigan, Matthew Seifried, telling party activists that there was going to be “an army” of poll challengers at work in Detroit and beyond who would be kept in touch with legal teams ready to move in at any claim of irregularity.“We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?” he said.Politico also obtained recordings of the legal counsel to the Trump-aligned Amistad Project, Tim Griffin, discussing plans to mobilise sympathetic district attorneys to launch investigations into allegations of voter and counting irregularities.“Remember, guys, we’re trying to build out a nationwide district attorney network. Your local district attorney, as we always say, is more powerful than your congressman,” Griffin told activists. “They’re the ones that can seat a grand jury. They’re the ones that can start an investigation, issue subpoenas, make sure that records are retained, etc.”Last year, Michigan’s Republican party chose a Trump supporter, who said he would not have certified Biden’s election victory, to serve on the body that certifies elections in Detroit and its surrounding county. Robert Boyd said he regards the 2020 presidential election results as “inaccurate” because of events at the disrupted Detroit count.Boyd, who has blamed the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol on Black Lives Matter and antifa “agitators”, is one of two Republicans on the Wayne county board of canvassers alongside two Democrats. If they deadlock on whether to certify future elections, that could open the way for legal challenges to the result and the intervention of the state legislature. The Republican legislature has the authority to overturn the popular vote and appoint its own choice of delegates to the electoral college for the president, although it would be an unprecedented move that it declined to take in 2020.Still, Byrum said Republican attitudes had hardened and she saw a concerted effort to create disruption and disputes to open the way for legal and political intervention to challenge election results they don’t like.“I think this is a direct attack on our democracy because this is a concerted effort to undermine the integrity of our elections, and ultimately, attack our democracy,” she said.In response to the disruption, the state’s elections board has tightened regulations to prevent groups of poll monitors from roaming around from one counting table to another to prevent intimidation. Thomas said there are already regulations in place to prevent frivolous or repeated challenges against voters. They have rarely been used in the past.“We have certainly reorganised how we control the environment there compared to 2020 having never seen anything like that in the years before,” he said.Thomas took some comfort from the relatively smooth passing of August’s primary elections.“There’s one group, called Election Integrity Group, they can be a bit on the obnoxious side. But we can all tolerate a little bit of obnoxiousness. They didn’t interfere with the process,” he said.“Of course, the Republicans didn’t really have much at stake in the city of Detroit in the August primary. So we’ll see when stakes go up as we get to the general.”Justin Roebuck, the Republican county clerk and chief elections officer for Ottawa county, said the atmosphere was fraught, with his office still dealing with a flood of freedom of information requests looking for evidence of fraud in the presidential election.“Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the level of disinformation that came out of the 2020 election cycle has really amplified and solidified in some ways. That misinformation has really taken root in a certain percentage of our population,” he said.“Folks are still asking to see all sorts of things like the voted ballots from the 2020 election. They’re asking to see the digital imaging of our software that was used to programme the 2020 election. They’re coming from all over the place, and not just voters here in my jurisdiction or in Michigan. They’re coming from around the country.”Roebuck, like clerks in other counties, has sought to reassure voters with greater transparency about how the counting process works and in the training of poll workers. He said that many of them are persuaded of the legitimacy of the vote once they see the system at work. But, like Thomas, he said there was a small hardcore intent on challenging any outcome they do not like.“There’s probably about a 10% portion of the population that has truly bought into the notion that our elections were stolen, and I’m not sure how successful I will be in convincing those folks because I have had a lot of those conversations where it’s just very difficult to get through to people with the facts,” he said.The democratic process is also under pressure from some local officials spreading false accusations that the elections they are overseeing may be rigged.Last year, Michigan’s bureau of elections stripped the Republican clerk of Adams township, Stephanie Scott, of her authority to run the municipal election after she refused to submit a vote tabulating machine for routine testing.“The county clerk’s office and now secretary of state are demanding I drop off my machine for unfettered access, and God only knows doing what to it,” she told the Bridge Michigan news site.“When you have the fox guarding the henhouse, somebody’s got to stand up and guard those hens.”The township supervisor, Mark Nichols, backed Scott, saying that voting machines “have been a tool to steal our elections” and 2020 was “the year of the lie” .The Michigan bureau of elections director, Jonathan Brater, wrote to Scott accusing her of making “numerous false statements” when she questioned the integrity of the vote at a township public meeting.“By communicating false or misleading information about elections in Michigan, you risk not only undermining confidence in democracy in your community, but also amplifying threats and intimidation of your fellow election officials across our state which, fueled by misinformation, continue unabated,” Brater told Scott.‘The Trump playbook’: Republicans hint they will deny election resultsRead moreBrater also had to warn local election officials to ignore a cease and desist letter from the Republican candidate for Michigan attorney general next month, Matthew DePerno, demanding they cancel planned voting machine maintenance because it could “destroy or alter” voting records he alleges are fraudulent. DePerno beat two Republican rivals after Trump backed him in the primary election.One Michigan county clerk hired a Trump supporter to recruit poll workers who was filmed urging people to storm the Capitol in Washington on 6 January 2021 and joined white nationalist Proud Boys rallies at the state legislature.All of this leaves Roebuck despairing of his own party: “Our voters deserve honesty. Sometimes it can be a political advantage for candidates to go down a different path to use talking points about election integrity or election misinformation, but I don’t think it’s an advantage to our society in the long term,” he said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022MichiganUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Michigan G.O.P. Candidates Show Unity as Midterm Campaigns Enter Homestretch

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      CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — As the midterm campaign enters the homestretch, it’s time for unity rallies.Here in Michigan, that meant bringing the Republican candidates for governor, secretary of state and attorney general together in an empty lot outside a church on a breezy Friday night to speak to a few hundred supporters, who had been amped up by a soundtrack strikingly similar to the set list played before a Trump campaign rally. And each candidate focused their remarks on issues currently animating Republican voters.Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for governor, anchored her stump speech to the issue that helped drive Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia to victory just a year ago: education.“It is crucial to get our kids back on track,” she said, spending nearly the first half of her speech on issues surrounding education. “We want to see 25 hours of tutoring for every student, and the funding is there.”She was introduced by Riley Gaines, the collegiate swimmer who has been a vocal critic of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. Ms. Dixon embraced the college sports cause at the very top of her speech. “Did you ever think we would be here, where we have to defend women’s sports?” Ms. Dixon said.Matthew DePerno, the candidate for attorney general, ticked off crime statistics. Kristina Karamo, the candidate for secretary of state, made allegations of election impropriety against her opponent, Jocelyn Benson, the current secretary of state and a Democrat.That all three candidates have been campaigning together would have seemed unlikely during the primary, when a contentious nominating convention caused a fracture in the Michigan Republican Party. Many moderate Republican donors swore off Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo, fearful that they could tank a ticket. Ms. Dixon offered tepid support during the primary for the two of them, though she did not endorse anyone before the convention.Now, with polls showing Ms. Dixon gaining ground but still trailing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, the entire slate was looking for support from this Republican-leaning county.In a brief news conference after her speech, Ms. Dixon said she was encouraged by her team’s election apparatus in the state, but declined to directly answer whether she would accept the results on election night.“We feel like we have a good team out there watching the election, a lot stronger than in 2020,” she said. “I feel strong about the election.” More

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      Can Campaigning on Abortion Rescue the Democrats?

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      Lisa Chow and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWith an unpopular president and soaring inflation, Democrats knew they had an uphill battle in the midterms.But the fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer the party a way of energizing voters and holding ground. And one place where that hope could live or die is Michigan.On today’s episodeLisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.A demonstrator in Detroit supporting a ballot measure that would bolster abortion protections in Michigan.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesBackground readingSome top Democrats say that their party has focused too much attention on abortion rights and not enough on worries about crime or the cost of living.The outcome of the midterms will affect abortion access for millions of Americans. Activists on both sides are focused on races up and down the ballot.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Lisa Lerer contributed reporting.Fact-checked by Susan Lee.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly. More

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      FBI arrests two alleged far-right Boogaloo Boys group members

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      FBI arrests two alleged far-right Boogaloo Boys group members The arrests come amid concerns about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm elections The FBI has arrested two alleged members of the far-right anti-government group the Boogaloo Boys, as authorities express increasing concern about the potential for violence around next week’s US midterm elections.Timothy Teagan was expected to appear on Wednesday in federal court in Detroit, where charges against him would be unsealed, an FBI spokesperson said.In a criminal complaint filed on Monday, the FBI said there was enough evidence to charge Aron McKillips, of Sandusky, Ohio, with illegal possession of a machine gun and the interstate communication of threats. The complaint said McKillips was a member of the Boogaloo Boys and was believed to be in a militia group called the Sons of Liberty.Penn State students outraged over invitation to far-right Proud Boys founderRead moreMcKillips’s lawyer, Neil McElroy, said he had asked for McKillips to be released pending a 9 November detention hearing in Toledo.Teagan’s arrest on Tuesday came a week before election day. Election workers have been targeted by threats and harassment since the 2020 election, which Donald Trump has refused to admit he lost.Federal authorities have charged at least five people already this year. Election officials are concerned about conspiracy theorists signing up to work as poll watchers. Some groups that have trafficked in lies about the 2020 election are recruiting and training watchers.In Phoenix on Tuesday, a federal judge agreed to put limits on a group monitoring outdoor ballot drop boxes in Arizona.The US district court judge, Michael Liburdi, said he would issue a temporary restraining order against Clean Elections USA and also the Lions of Liberty and the Yavapai County Preparedness team, which are associated with the far-right anti-government Oath Keepers group.Those groups or anyone working with them will be barred from filming or following anyone within 75ft (23 metres) of a ballot drop box or the entrance to a building that houses one. They cannot speak to or yell at individuals within that perimeter unless spoken to first. It is the standard distance maintained around polling sites under Arizona law, but it has typically never applied to drop boxes.The order also prohibited members of the groups or agents working on their behalf from carrying firearms or wearing body armor within 250ft (76 metres) of a drop box.In Michigan, Teagan was among a dozen or so people who openly carried guns while demonstrating in January 2021 outside the state capitol in Lansing. Some promoted the “boogaloo” movement, a slang term that refers to a second US civil war.Teagan told reporters the purpose of the demonstration was “to urge a message of peace and unity to the left and right, to the members of [Black Lives Matter], to Trump supporters to Three Percenter militias to antifa”.Some boogaloo promoters insist they aren’t genuinely advocating for violence. But the movement has been linked to domestic terrorism plots.In the criminal complaint against McKillips, the FBI alleges that he made online threats including one to kill a police officer and another to kill anyone he determined to be a federal informant. The FBI also contends that McKillips provided equipment to convert rifles into machine guns.“I literally handed out machine guns in Michigan,” McKillips said in a recording, the complaint states.In September 2021, he said in a private chat group: “Ain’t got a federal badge off a corpse yet, so my time here ain’t near done yet lol.”In May this year, McKillips and another user in the Signal messaging system threatened to kill a different user in the belief the person was an informant for the FBI or Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the complaint says.In July, McKillips threatened in a Signal group to “smoke a hog”, meaning kill a police officer, if conditions worsened following a fatal police shooting in Akron, it says.McKillips frequently advocated violence against police officers, federal agents, government buildings and stores like Walmart and Target, and even threatened to blow up Facebook headquarters, the complaint says.TopicsFBIThe far rightDetroitMichiganOhioUS elections 2020US midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      As Stakes Rise, State Supreme Courts Become Crucial Election Battlegrounds

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      Pivotal issues like abortion, gerrymandering and voting have been tossed into state justices’ laps. Politicians, ideological PACs and big money are following.WASHINGTON — State supreme court races, traditionally Election Day afterthoughts, have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy, attracting a torrent of last-minute money and partisan advertising.In Ohio, an arm of the national Democratic Party funneled a half-million dollars last month into a super PAC backing three Democratic candidates for the high court. In North Carolina, a state political action committee with ties to national Republicans gave $850,000 last week to a group running attack ads against Democratic state supreme court candidates.On another level entirely, Fair Courts America, a political action committee largely bankrolled by the Schlitz brewing heir and shipping supplies billionaire Richard E. Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, has pledged to spend $22 million supporting deeply conservative judicial candidates in seven states.The motivation behind the money is no mystery: In states like Ohio, North Carolina and Michigan, partisan control of supreme courts is up for grabs, offering a chance for progressives to seize the majority in Ohio and for conservatives to take power in North Carolina and Michigan. In Illinois, competing billionaires are fueling court races that offer Republicans their first chance at a Supreme Court majority in 53 years.The implications of victory are profound. As the U.S. Supreme Court continues to offload crucial legal questions to the states, state courts have abruptly become final arbiters of some of America’s most divisive issues — gun rights, gerrymandering, voting rights, abortion. In heavily gerrymandered states, justices have the potential to be the only brake on one-party rule.And as Republican politicians continue to embrace election denialism, high courts could end up playing decisive roles in settling election disputes in 2024.Undertones of politics are hardly new in state court campaigns. But the rise of big money and hyperpartisan rhetoric worries some experts.Once, it was businesses that sought to elect judges whose rulings would fatten their bottom lines, said Michael J. Klarman, a constitutional scholar at Harvard University.“The contest now is over democracy,” he said, “over gerrymandering, over easing restrictions on the ballot, over efforts to re-enfranchise felons.” “It’s not a stretch to say the results affect the status of our democracy as much as what the Supreme Court does,” he said.An abortion rights demonstrator in Detroit in June after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a constitutional right to abortion.Emily Elconin/Getty ImagesMany judicial candidates shy away from being perceived as politicians. Even candidates in hotly fought races tend to follow legal ethics guidelines limiting statements on issues they might have to decide.But others can be increasingly nonchalant about such perceptions.State Representative Joe Fischer is openly running for the nonpartisan Kentucky Supreme Court as an anti-abortion Republican, with $375,000 in backing from a national G.O.P. committee whose ads cast him as a firewall against the “socialist agenda” of President Biden. Fair Courts America is pouring $1.6 million into backing him and two others seeking judicial seats.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.The three Republicans on the Ohio Supreme Court ballot — all sitting justices — raised eyebrows by appearing at a rally in Youngstown on Sept. 17 for former President Donald J. Trump, who repeated the lie that the 2020 election “was rigged and stolen and now our country is being destroyed.”Mr. Trump singled out the three for praise, saying, “Get out and vote for them, right? Vote. Great job you’re doing.” Later, two of the three declined to confirm to The Columbus Dispatch that the 2020 election results were legitimate, saying judicial ethics forbade them from commenting on issues under litigation. (The state ethics code indeed bars comments on pending legal issues in any state, though its scope is unclear. A spokesman for the candidates said a challenge to the election had recently been filed in Michigan.)Three weeks later, Cleveland television station WEWS reported that the three had stated on candidate surveys compiled by Cincinnati Right to Life that there is no constitutional right to abortion — an issue under review, or sure to be reviewed, in state courts nationwide.“People are starting to feel like judges are nothing more than politicians in robes,” said William K. Weisenberg, a former assistant executive director of the Ohio State Bar Association. “What we see evolving now — and it’s very, very dangerous for our society — is a loss of public trust and confidence in our justice system and our courts.”The battles reflect the rising stakes in rulings over voting and electoral maps that conceivably could determine control of Congress in close elections.The Ohio Supreme Court voted 4-3 this year — several times — to invalidate Republican gerrymanders of state legislative and congressional districts. Those maps remain in effect, under federal court order, but the court chosen this month will decide whether new maps that must be drawn for the 2024 election are valid.In North Carolina, another 4-3 vote struck down Republican-drawn gerrymanders in January, changing a map that guaranteed Republicans as many as 11 of 14 congressional seats into one that split the seats roughly equally.Michigan’s court ordered an abortion-rights referendum onto the November ballot after a canvassing board deadlocked along party lines on Aug. 31 over whether to do so. The next Supreme Court in Illinois is likely to decide disputes over abortion and gun rights.The courts’ role has also been amplified as political norms have lost sway and some legislatures have moved to expand their power.In Wisconsin, the Republican-gerrymandered State Senate has given itself broad authority over the composition of state boards and commissions simply by refusing to confirm new board members nominated by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. The state court upheld the tactic by a 4-3 vote along ideological lines in June, allowing Republican board members to keep their seats even though Governor Evers has statutory power to nominate replacements.Not all states elect members of their highest courts. Governors fill most of the 344 posts, usually with help from nominating commissions, though that hardly takes politics out of the selection.In the 22 states that elect judges — some others require periodic voter approval of judges in retention elections — most races are fairly free of mudslinging and big-ticket intervention by outside groups.But rising politicization nevertheless has had a measurable and growing impact.Since in the late 1980s, voters’ choices in state supreme court races have aligned ever more consistently with their political preferences in county elections, the University of Minnesota political scientist and legal scholar Herbert M. Kritzer found in a 2021 study.“At this stage,” he said, “identification with the parties has become so strong in terms of what it means for people that I don’t know if you’ve got to say another thing other than ‘I’m a Republican’ or ‘I’m a Democrat.’”An analysis of social science studies by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University also suggested that campaign pressures influence how judges rule. The analysis found that judges facing re-election or retention campaigns tended to issue harsher rulings in criminal cases.One telling statistic: Over a 15-year span, appointed judges reversed roughly one in four death sentences, while judges facing competitive elections — which frequently are clotted with ads accusing them of being soft on crime — reversed roughly one in 10.If past elections are any guide, the final days of midterm campaigning will see a deluge of spending on advertising aimed at drawing voters’ attention to contests they frequently overlook.Many ads will be negative. Indeed, ads financed by outside groups — virtually all focused on abortion rights or crime — markedly resemble ones for congressional or statewide offices.Ohio is typical. In one commercial run by a PAC representing the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, a young girl with a backpack strolls down a neighborhood street. An announcer warns: “There’s danger among us. Jennifer Brunner made it easier for accused murderers, rapists, child molesters to return to our streets.”Ohio Supreme Court justice Pat Fischer speaks during the Fairfield County Lincoln Republican Club banquet in March.Paul Vernon/Associated PressAnother ad, by the progressive PAC Forward Justice, reprises the recent story of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had to leave the state to obtain an abortion after being raped. An announcer adds: “Pat DeWine said women have no constitutional right to abortion. Pat Fischer even compared abortion to slavery and segregation.”Ms. Brunner, a Democrat and an associate justice of the Supreme Court, is running to be chief justice. Mr. Fischer and Mr. DeWine, both Republican associate justices, are seeking re-election.Candidates and interest groups spent at least $97 million on state supreme court races in the 2020 election cycle, according to the Brennan Center. Spending records are all but certain to be set this year in some states, said Douglas Keith, the Brennan Center’s counsel for democracy programs.Conservatives have long outspent liberals on state court races. Besides Fair Courts America’s $22 million commitment, the Republican State Leadership Committee, an arm of the national party long involved in state court races, plans to spend a record $5 million or more on the contests.Supreme Court races in Illinois are legendary for being matches of billionaire contributors — on the left, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose family owns the Hyatt hotel chain, and on the right, Kenneth C. Griffin, a hedge-fund manager.But outsiders are rivaling their contributions. An Illinois group backed by trial lawyers and labor unions, All for Justice, said it will spend at least $8 million to back Democratic candidates.Outside spending has been exceedingly rare in states like Kentucky and Montana, but even there, things are becoming more politicized. In Montana, where a 1999 State Supreme Court ruling recognized abortion as a constitutional right, conservative groups are seeking to unseat a justice appointed by a Democratic governor in 2017. The state’s trial attorneys and Planned Parenthood have rallied to her defense.In northern Kentucky, the Republican anti-abortion candidate, Joseph Fischer, is opposing Justice Michelle M. Keller, a registered independent.Mr. Fischer did not respond to a telephone call seeking an interview. Ms. Keller said the partisan attacks from independent groups swirling around her race were “new ground.”“This will have a chilling effect on the quality of judges if we’re not careful,” she said. “Good lawyers, the kind of people you want to aspire to the bench, won’t do it. You can make much more money in private practice.” More

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      How Michigan’s abortion referendum could decide key congressional race

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      How Michigan’s abortion referendum could decide key congressional race Democratic candidate Elissa Slotkin says abortion is a top issues in the state and fear of a ban will motivate voters to re-elect her: ‘I’ve never seen anything like it’Elissa Slotkin is a straight shooter. She doesn’t miss a beat when asked a tough question. She speaks up often, and forcefully, against things she perceives as unjust – whether perpetrated by her opponents or her own Democratic party. But when asked what she’ll think if the proposal to enshrine abortion rights in Michigan’s state constitution doesn’t pass this November, she clams up.‘This is a blueprint’: abortion rights ballot proposal takes off in MichiganRead moreSlotkin fidgets, stroking one thumb over the other, in a repetitive, soothing motion.Is she discombobulated?“Yes,” she answers, back to her usual, rapid-fire pace.Why?“I’ll tell you this,” Slotkin begins. “If it fails to pass, I won’t be re-elected. Because it means I’m fundamentally out of touch.”She pauses, cautiously, and adds: “But I don’t believe that to be the case. I think I’m going to win.”That’s a big statement. Slotkin is running in one of the country’s most tightly contested seats, as a Democrat who won Trump voters back from the Republican party in both 2018 and 2020.She is also running in a midterm election full of twists and turns – one that has seen Democrats’ hopes to avoid the typically poor showing of the party in power begin to rise, only to plummet again. But even with a mixed economy, rising inflation and unfavourable polling for the president, people are putting their money on Slotkin in huge numbers: the race for Michigan’s seventh, a newly drawn district pitting Slotkin against state senator Tom Barrett, has become the most expensive race in the country in terms of outside spending. Outside spending, generally, is a good barometer for how important a race is, with the largest amounts coming from the national parties – and in the case of the seventh, $27m has been poured into the race.The race had been neck-and-neck the whole time, but in September something strange happened: Slotkin surged by 18 points. She has held at least a six-point lead over Barrett ever since.The key reason? Abortion.“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Slotkin. “Everywhere I go, Democrats, Independents and Republicans are talking about this issue. They’re talking about how scared they are of a 1931 abortion ban coming back in Michigan. They don’t want it.”Across the country, the Democrats need to hold on to just a handful of congressional seats this year to keep a majority in the House of Representatives. That has made Michigan’s seventh, and other races like it, so important: whereas single issues, other than the economy aren’t usually enough to turn an entire election, this year several key battleground states are fighting over whether to protect or ban abortion – and that might just be the issue that decides the races.As Slotkin puts it, if the Democrats can win districts in Michigan, the so-called swingiest of swing states, “We still have a path to winning the House.”Still, Slotkin faces a tough challenger in Barrett, an army vet who fought in Iraq and may play to voters in a manufacturing district as the safe choice. He hails from Charlotte, a city in the newly drawn seventh, while the redistricting process – which was decided on by an independent panel to reduce political gerrymandering – has placed Slotkin in a separate district to the family farm where she used to live; she has now moved to Lansing, to live in the area where she’s fighting the race.“He’s really familiar to a good number of the people in this district, which is also quite conservative,” says Jenna Bednar, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. “Tom Barrett doesn’t present himself in any sense as a threatening force. And he is likely to enjoy a lot of support from the rural communities in the district.”But he too has a good challenger in Slotkin – a fiercely bipartisan politician who worked as a CIA analyst and served under both the Bush and the Obama administrations.Recent political maneuvers suggest Barrett, who has previously called himself “100% pro-life” starting from conception, knows his positioning on abortion is unpopular: this summer, he changed his campaign website to soften his anti-abortion stance. Barrett has since stated that his stance hasn’t changed – that he remains anti-abortion, including in cases of rape and incest, and claimed his website was changed by his campaign team, probably to reflect “more salient” issues such as inflation, crime, and the border.Slotkin disputes that.“They’re reading polling,” she asserts. “They realize that in this moderate district, an extreme position does not work … and they have bent over backwards to try and mix the position they really believe in with something that will get them elected.”Indeed, in Michigan, abortion is one of the top issues that comes up on the doorstep, perhaps on par – depending where you are in the state – with inflation. Voters are particularly concerned about impacts on doctors and the health of pregnant people. They see women miscarrying in Texas, and being turned away from the hospital until they “‘come back sicker, with a higher fever, bleeding harder’,” according to Slotkin.“So many nurses are super freaked out,” she says. “And of course, the doctors are fearing litigation. It’s too much, even for Republican pro-life women.”Erika Farley, 45, is one of those Republican women. Despite working for the GOP in Michigan for 20 years, this year she says she will vote for Slotkin. “I was really disturbed by the overturning of Roe v Wade, and I know where Senator Barrett stands on that,” she says.In many ways, being from such a competitive district keeps Slotkin in tune with voters, she thinks. She gave a speech on the House floor in September about a bill that Republicans were trying to delay, that would allow veterans access to abortion care if raped. On that issue, she says, “Republicans were so out of touch with the average American. I was coming from a very competitive district, [whereas] all three of [those trying to delay the bill] were from very easy, ruby-red Republican districts. The only debate they’ve ever had on abortion is who’s more pro-life.”Jeff Timmer, a Republican strategist for more than 30 years before turning away from the party because of Donald Trump, agrees with her take on those Republicans. “They don’t even recognize that their position is in such a distinct minority – that every time [Barrett] utters [his pro-life stance], it repels far more voters than it attracts.”Slotkin believes there is a level of anger floating below the surface for women that she hasn’t seen before. She sees it, she says, because people come to elected officials with their pain.“People tell me some of the most intimate things – things I could barely tell my close friends. They just want me to hear it and say that I’m going to do something about it,” she says.One group she says she is seeing come over to the Democrats because of their anger is women without a college degree. Those are the women, she points out, who, if denied abortion care, would have the hardest time taking time off work, who don’t necessarily have the money to travel to another state for abortion care, “who don’t have the privilege of just escaping from their life, to drive five hours or more to Canada or Chicago for an abortion”.But she accepts the Democrats have their own issues being trusted in the midterms. She mentions Michigan families who have had to cut back because of rising costs: she reckons that’s every family she’s spoken to.“There’s real frustration at the party in power. There’s no doubt – that’s the lead foot for my opponent. [He] is almost gleeful about the economy when gas prices start ticking up,” she says.Slotkin doesn’t hold back from criticizing her own party, either – especially on abortion. Asked whether it was misleading for Biden to promise to codify Roe if the Democrats win the election, Slotkin scoffs.“He does not have the authority to do that – it just doesn’t get anywhere in the Senate.” What’s worse, she says, is that none of this would have been needed had the Democrats done a better job at codifying Roe in the first place.“We have to own the fact that we had a real failure at the federal level to protect women’s rights,” she says. “Over the 50 years since Roe has been in place, no one ever backed it up in legislation. Holy moly – that, to me, feels like we missed a major opportunity.”And she was frustrated to see the national party without a plan after Roe fell. “They were totally taken by surprise,” she says.What bothers Slotkin most, and the reason she couldn’t answer my first question about what happens if proposal 3 doesn’t pass, is that for other states, she feels it’s too late. “If you’re in Alabama, I don’t know what you do.”That’s why the fight for Michigan’s seventh seems to her like a harbinger of America’s future.“The United States is going through something. We’ve had these periods of instability in our past, where the average American wondered if the country was going to continue as they knew it – if their kids and grandkids were going to have the same opportunities they had. So to me, this election is a marker of: are we coming out of this period of extremes?”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022MichiganUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More