Presidential Election of 2020

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      A Brief History of Messy Elections

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      Three times the results were disputed after the votes were in.This article is part of A Kid’s Guide to the Election, a collection of stories about the 2024 presidential election for readers ages 8 to 14, written and produced by The New York Times for Kids. This section is published in The Times’s print edition on the last Sunday of every month.America is the world’s oldest democracy. And part of why it has worked for so long is that people have faith that its elections are fair and honest. But not every election has gone smoothly. In the more than two centuries that we’ve been electing presidents, there have been a handful of elections in which people disputed the results.1876: A divided nationAbout a decade after the Civil War ended, America was still deeply divided between North and South. The 1876 election, between Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, and Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican, came down to three Southern states where the results were disputed. Neither candidate had a majority of the Electoral College without those three states. So Congress appointed a committee to decide, and a deal was struck: Hayes would become president. But in exchange, the federal government would ease control over the Southern states that had been part of the Confederacy.2000: A 537-vote winThe 2000 election was very, very close. The Democratic candidate, Al Gore, won more votes across the country than his competitor, George W. Bush. But he didn’t have a majority in the Electoral College. It all came down to a single state, Florida, where Bush had a very slim lead. Gore went to court to challenge the vote counts in several counties there. But after a 36-day legal battle, the Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 to end the recounts. That left Bush with just 537 more votes in Florida, which meant that he won the Electoral College and the presidency. After that, Gore conceded. “I accept the finality of this outcome,” he said.2020: A capitol riotIn 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by seven million votes nationwide and won the Electoral College. But Trump wouldn’t accept the loss. He filed many lawsuits and pressured state officials, the Justice Department and his own vice president to help switch the results to him. It didn’t work. On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told supporters to march to the Capitol, where Congress was counting the Electoral College votes. His supporters stormed the Capitol, and many people were hurt. Eventually, the police cleared the mob out, and Congress declared Biden the winner. More

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      Millions of Movers Reveal American Polarization in Action

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      Aside from their political views, Joshua Fisher and Ryan Troyer have a lot in common. In 2020, they lived across the street from each other in Sioux Falls, S.D. They are both white men of a similar age. Mr. Fisher, 42, is an auto technician; Mr. Troyer, 39, is a sanitation worker. They are both […] More

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      Secret Files in Election Case Show How Judges Limited Trump’s Privilege

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      The partly unsealed rulings, orders and transcripts open a window on a momentous battle over grand jury testimony that played out in secret, creating important precedents about executive privilege.Court documents unsealed on Monday shed new light on a legal battle over which of former President Donald J. Trump’s White House aides had to testify before a grand jury in Washington that charged him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, showing how judges carved out limits on executive privilege.The trove — including motions, judicial orders and transcripts of hearings in Federal District Court in Washington — did not reveal significant new details about Mr. Trump’s efforts to cling to power. But it did open a window on important questions of presidential power and revealed how judges grew frustrated with Mr. Trump’s longstanding strategy of seeking to delay accountability for his attempts to overturn his defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr.The documents also created important — if not binding — precedents about the scope of executive privilege that could influence criminal investigations in which a current or former president instructs subordinates not to testify before a grand jury based on his constitutional authority to keep certain internal executive branch communications secret.Starting in the summer of 2022, and continuing with the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel later that year, the Justice Department undertook a wide-ranging and extraordinary effort to compel grand jury testimony from several close aides to Mr. Trump. Prosecutors believed the aides had critical information about the former president’s attempts to overturn the results of the election.The effort, which ended in the spring of the following year, was largely intended to obtain firsthand accounts from key figures who had used claims of executive privilege and other legal protections to avoid testifying to investigators on the House committee that examined the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the events leading up to it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Two Brothers Charged With Assaulting Officers in Jan. 6 Riot

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      Roger and Reynold Voisine, from upstate New York, used weapons that included a pipe, a police shield and a table leg studded with nails, prosecutors said.Two brothers from upstate New York were arrested Thursday on charges of attacking law enforcement agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and of participating in the violent mob that attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Roger A. Voisine Jr., 48, and Reynold R. Voisine, 47, face felony charges including civil disorder and assaulting an officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon.The Voisine brothers started the day on Jan. 6 by attending former President Donald J. Trump’s rally at the Ellipse, in front of the White House, according to a news release issued Thursday by Matthew M. Graves, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. They appear to have prepared for trouble. As they left the rally and walked to the Capitol, each man put on a paintball mask. Roger Voisine also carried a two-way radio, a GoPro camera mounted on a stick and a tripod inside his jacket.As the mob attacked officers with the U.S. Capitol Police and forced its way into the building, “both brothers played active roles in the day’s violence,” according to the news release.Reynold Voisine was seen assaulting officers with a crutch, a stolen police riot shield and a blue pole, the authorities said. When images from the riot circulated online, private citizens analyzed the pictures, trying to identify individuals in the mob. The blue pole earned Reynold Voisine the online nickname #BlueJavelin, according to a statement of facts that prosecutors released.At around 3:20 p.m., he was among a group of rioters seen violently beating an officer and dragging the officer from the Lower West Terrace Tunnel, site of some of the day’s most violent attacks against law enforcement, an officer with U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement wrote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republicans Who Led 2020 Election Denial Now Sowing Doubt in 2024 Votes

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      The efforts could help lay the groundwork for what could become another push to undermine the results if former President Donald J. Trump loses again.Starting in late 2020, Representative Scott Perry was one of the ringleaders of the Republican plot to use the House’s constitutional role in certifying the electoral count to delegitimize the results in a bid to help Donald J. Trump overturn the outcome.Now, Mr. Perry and a handful of his Republican colleagues are taking action to also call into question an aspect of this year’s election, helping to lay the groundwork for what could become another effort to undermine the results should Mr. Trump lose again.Mr. Perry and five other Republican members of Congress from Pennsylvania are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against their state’s government that seeks to set aside ballots from members of the military and Americans living overseas, charging that the system for verifying them is insufficient.Mr. Trump has encouraged the notion. He posted on Truth Social last month: “The Democrats are talking about how they’re working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas. Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT!”Election officials and other experts say that the claims from Mr. Trump are meritless and that the overseas voting system is safe from fraud. Yet the case is one of about 100 filed this year by Republican allies of Mr. Trump — about 30 have been lodged so far in the two months before Election Day — many of which make unfounded claims about voter rolls and noncitizen voters.They coincide with widespread claims by Mr. Trump and others that the election will be rigged. Together they could help pave the way for yet another challenge to the results if the former president is defeated.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With Election Day 2 Weeks Away, 15 Million Voters Have Already Cast a Ballot

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      Since the pandemic, early voting has become a broadly accepted part of American elections. But it is difficult to glean partisan advantage.With two weeks until Election Day, more than 15 million people have already cast their ballots, the clearest sign yet that voting habits were forever changed by the coronavirus pandemic and that early voting has become a permanent feature of the American democratic process.While many people cast a mail-in ballot or voted early in the 2020 election out of necessity amid a dangerous pandemic, a lot of voters are choosing to vote early in this election, too. Some are taking advantage of new laws that expanded early voting options; others simply favor the process that exploded in popularity four years ago.Many states have set records for the first day of early voting. On Thursday, more than 353,000 ballots were cast in North Carolina, a record for the swing state still reeling from Hurricane Helene. On Friday, nearly 177,000 voters cast a ballot in Louisiana, a record for the deep-red state.The shift has been starkest in Georgia, where voters have set a daily record for in-person early voting nearly every day since polls opened last Tuesday. More than 1.5 million voters have already cast an early ballot in the critical battleground state.The persistent preference of many Americans to vote early — both by mail and in person — comes after the 2020 election prompted a sea change in voting habits for the country. With many fearful of voting in person during the pandemic, 65.6 million people voted by mail that year, and another 35.8 million voted early in person in an attempt to avoid large crowds.Yet as people flood early voting centers this time around, distilling a partisan advantage or what the early vote presages for overall turnout is difficult.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Man Who Brought Knife to Jan. 6 Riot Pleads Guilty to a Felony

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      Christopher D. Finney was charged after federal investigators found images of him during a search of a “militia” group chat, prosecutors said.A New York man pleaded guilty on Friday to a felony charge of civil disorder for storming the U.S. Capitol while armed with a knife on Jan. 6, 2021, as supporters of former President Donald J. Trump sought to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.The man, Christopher D. Finney, 32, of Hopewell Junction, entered his plea before Judge Trevor N. McFadden of federal court in the District of Columbia, according to court documents.Mr. Finney’s sentencing is scheduled for January. His lawyer, Christopher Macchiaroli, said Mr. Finney “accepted full responsibility for his presence inside the U.S. Capitol” and looked forward to the “closure” he believed sentencing would bring.Mr. Finney is among more than 1,500 people to be criminally charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, in which supporters of Mr. Trump, including members of far-right groups, violently tried to stop Congress from certifying President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.Like many of those charged, Mr. Finney had traveled to Washington to attend a rally, according to court documents. A video Mr. Finney recorded before the rally showed him wearing plastic goggles and a protective plate-carrier vest, with a knife holstered to his hip and plastic flex cuffs in the vest’s pouches, prosecutors said.“We’re going to storm the Capitol,” Mr. Finney recorded himself saying, according to prosecutors. “We’re going to make sure that this is done correct and that Donald Trump is still our president.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ignore the Polls

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      Here’s a bit of advice to help maintain your sanity over the next few weeks until Election Day: Just ignore the polls. Unless you’re a campaign professional or a gambler, you’re probably looking at them for the same reason the rest of us are: to know who’ll win. Or at least to feel like you know who’ll win. But they just can’t tell you that.Back in 2016, Harry Enten, then at FiveThirtyEight, calculated the final polling error in every presidential election between 1968 and 2012. On average, the polls missed by two percentage points. In 2016, an American Association for Public Opinion Research postmortem found that the average error of the national polls was 2.2 points, but the polls of individual states were off by 5.1 points. In 2020, the national polls were off by 4.5 points and the state-level polls missed, again, by 5.1 points.You could imagine a world in which these errors are random and cancel one another out. Perhaps Donald Trump’s support is undercounted by three points in Michigan but overcounted by three points in Wisconsin. But errors often systematically favor one candidate or the other. In both 2016 and 2020, for instance, state-level polls tended to undercount Trump supporters. The polls overestimated Hillary Clinton’s margin by three points in 2016 and Joe Biden’s margin by 4.3 points in 2020.In a blowout election, an error of a few points in one direction or another is meaningless. In the California Senate race, for example, Adam Schiff, a Democrat, is leading Steve Garvey, a Republican, by between 17 and 33 points, depending on the poll. Even a polling error of 10 points wouldn’t matter to the outcome of the race.But that’s not where the presidential election sits. As of Oct. 10, The New York Times’s polling average had Kamala Harris leading Trump by three points nationally. That’s tight, but the seven swing states are tighter: Neither candidate is leading by more than two points in any of them.Imagine the polls perform better in 2024 than they did in either 2016 or 2020: They’re off, remarkably, by merely two points in the swing states. Huzzah! That would be consistent with Harris winning every swing state. It would also be consistent with Trump winning every swing state. This is not some outlandish scenario. According to Nate Silver’s election model, the most likely electoral outcome “is Harris sweeping all seven swing states. And the next most likely is Trump sweeping all seven.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More