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      Two Republicans Face Disqualification in Michigan Governor’s Race

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      Two top Republican candidates for governor in Michigan are in danger of being denied a spot on the primary ballot after the state’s election bureau invalidated thousands of signatures submitted by their campaigns, saying many of the names had been forged and were collected by fraudulent petition circulators.The Michigan Bureau of Elections recommended on Monday that James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, and Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman, be excluded from the Aug. 2 primary, finding that neither candidate met the requirement of submitting signatures from at least 15,000 registered voters.Republicans in the state characterized the move as a politically motivated effort from a Democratic-led agency, while Mr. Craig pointed to his standing in the race.“They want me out,” Mr. Craig said, alluding to Republicans and Democrats. “I’ve been leading.”Three other lesser-known Republican candidates for governor also fell short of the threshold, the bureau determined, meaning that five of the party’s 10 candidates who filed to run for the state’s top office would be ineligible.In its review of the nominating petitions for both candidates, the elections bureau issued a stinging indictment of the methods used by their campaigns to collect signatures and the operatives working for the candidates.“The Bureau is unaware of another election cycle in which this many circulators submitted such a substantial volume of fraudulent petition sheets consisting of invalid signatures,” the bureau said, but clarified that it saw no evidence that the candidates had any knowledge of the fraud.Mr. Craig said in an interview on Tuesday that he would go to court to challenge any effort to deny him access to the ballot.“None of the candidates knew about the fraud,” Mr. Craig said. “Certainly, I didn’t. There needs to be an investigation and prosecution, if, in fact, there is probable cause that they did in fact commit fraud.”While the final say over the candidates’ eligibility rests with the Board of State Canvassers, a separate panel that will meet on Thursday, the recommended disqualification of Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson threatened to create chaos for Republicans in their quest to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.Perry Johnson was also widely viewed as one of the top candidates in the state’s Republican primary for governor.Daniel Shular/The Grand Rapids Press, via Associated PressBoth Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson were widely viewed as front-runners for the party’s nomination in a key battleground state, where Republicans have clashed with Democrats over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and pandemic restrictions.More than half of the 21,305 signatures submitted by Mr. Craig’s campaign were rejected, leaving him with 10,192 valid signatures, the bureau said in its report, which noted that little effort was made to vary handwriting.“In some cases, rather than attempting varying signatures, the circulator would intentionally scrawl illegibly. In other instances, they circulated petition sheets among themselves, each filling out a line,” the bureau said of the petitions for Mr. Craig.Mr. Craig identified Vanguard Field Strategies, an Austin, Texas, firm, as helping to manage the canvassing effort, one that he said relied on several subcontractors that were previously unknown to him. He said that the onus was on the firm to have checks and balances to detect fraud, and he called it “shortsighted” and unrealistic to expect that a busy candidate would verify more than 20,000 signatures.Vanguard Field Strategies confirmed on Tuesday that 18 of the people identified in the elections bureau’s report as circulating the fraudulent petitions had been working for another firm that it had subcontracted to help it gather signatures. The company would not identify the subcontractor, which it characterized in a statement on Tuesday as a nationally respected Republican firm.“The allegations of fraudulent activity, and individuals infiltrating Chief Craig’s campaign in an effort to sabotage it, is very concerning,” Joe J. Williams, Vanguard’s president, said in a statement. “I hope the individuals charged with fraud (none of which worked for or were paid by Vanguard) are held responsible if the allegations are true.”According to Vanguard, Mr. Craig’s campaign retained its services about two months ago, having collected just 500 signatures at the time — the deadline to submit them was April 19.The elections bureau rejected 9,393 of the 23,193 signatures submitted by Mr. Johnson’s campaign, leaving him with 13,800 valid signatures. Some of the fraudulent signatures represented voters who had died or moved out of the state, the bureau said.John Yob, a campaign strategist for Mr. Johnson, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. In a series of tweets on Monday night, Mr. Yob said that the move to disqualify Republican candidates en masse was politically motivated and criticized the head of the state agency that the elections bureau is part of: Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is secretary of state.Mr. Yob said that the campaign would contest the bureau’s recommendation.“We strongly believe they are refusing to count thousands of signatures from legitimate voters who signed the petitions and look forward to winning this fight before the Board, and if necessary, in the courts,” he said.On Tuesday, Ron Weiser, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, slammed the move to exclude the Republicans from the primary ballot on Twitter.“This is far from over,” Mr. Weiser said. “Democrats claim to be the champions of democracy but are actively angling behind the scenes to disqualify their opponents in an unprecedented way because they want to take away choice from Michigan voters.”Tracy Wimmer, a spokeswoman for Ms. Benson, said in an email on Tuesday night that the election bureau was not swayed by politics.“The Bureau of Elections is staffed by election professionals of integrity who conducted their review of candidate submissions in a nonpartisan manner in accordance with state law,” Ms. Wimmer said.Election officials said that they had identified 36 people who had submitted fraudulent petition sheets consisting entirely of invalid signatures. On Monday, a total of 19 candidates learned that they had not met the signature requirement to get onto the ballot, including three Republicans and one Democrat seeking House seats, and 10 nonpartisan candidates seeking judicial posts.Democrats had separately challenged the petitions of Mr. Craig and Mr. Johnson, but the bureau did not take action because those candidates did not have enough signatures. Mark Brewer, a former chairman of the Michigan Democrats and a lawyer who challenged Mr. Craig’s petitions, defended the steps taken by the elections bureau on Twitter.“What kind of message does it send if any candidate with forged signatures is allowed on the ballot?” Mr. Brewer said on Tuesday. In a 17-page report detailing its findings on Monday, the elections bureau said that the head of one canvassing firm used by the candidates to gather signatures had pleaded guilty to two counts of election fraud in 2011 in Virginia. He was accused of instructing two individuals to sign as a witness on dozens of petition sheets filled with signatures they did not collect, the bureau said.The report did not identify the person, but cited links to news stories and court cases that pointed to Shawn Wilmoth, a political operative based in Michigan, and Mr. Wilmoth’s company, First Choice Contracting LLC.A person who answered the phone at the company on Tuesday said that Mr. Wilmoth was not available, and Mr. Wilmoth did not respond to messages seeking comment.When asked if Mr. Wilmoth or his firm had done work for his campaign, Mr. Craig said on Tuesday that he had learned only that day of a potential nexus.“I don’t want to make excuses,” Mr. Craig said. More

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      Herschel Walker, backed by Trump, sails to the G.O.P. nomination in Georgia’s Senate race.

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      Herschel Walker, the former University of Georgia football star pressed into politics by former President Donald J. Trump, won Georgia’s Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, cruising past a crowded field. His victory, called by The Associated Press, sets him up to challenge the Democratic nominee, Senator Raphael Warnock, in November.With Mr. Trump’s endorsement, Mr. Walker faced five opponents for the nomination — but no real challenge. His closest competitor was Gary Black, the state’s agriculture commissioner. Mr. Walker ran largely on Mr. Trump’s endorsement and his own popularity in the state, which has lingered since he powered the University of Georgia to a national championship in 1980 and then won the Heisman Trophy in 1982.Though Mr. Black ultimately could not compete, he may have caused trouble for Mr. Walker. He doggedly raised allegations of domestic violence against Mr. Walker, some of which Mr. Walker admitted to and some of which he denied, as well as questions about Mr. Walker’s inflated claims of academic and business achievements.Mr. Black called the accusations of violent behavior and the mental health struggles that Mr. Walker had admitted to “disqualifying,” and said he could not endorse him in the general election.Other Republicans in the state have also said Mr. Walker needs a better answer to charges that he threatened to kill himself and his wife, threatened to kill a girlfriend and stalked a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader when he played professional football.But the Republican electorate appeared comfortable with its choice. At large rallies with Mr. Trump and smaller stump speeches, Mr. Walker was cheered for his displays of humility, his story of transformation from an overweight boy with a speech impediment to a star in football, track and even bobsledding, and his assurances to largely white audiences that racism is overblown.Mr. Walker is a political newcomer who has never held elective office. But Mr. Warnock, who was the pastor at the same church where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, does not have much more experience, with just two years in the Senate. And in what is expected to be a strong year for Republicans, the general election contest between the two could be among the closest, most expensive and most closely watched in the country. More

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      3 Questions About Tuesday’s Big Elections

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      Will Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” candidates accept defeat? Can Democrats find reasons for hope? And for other Republicans, what’s the price of Trump’s cold shoulder?Tuesday’s primaries will give us fresh data on the electoral power of Donald Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 presidential election, while offering clues as to how energized Democrats are for November.In Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia, we’ll get more tests of Trump’s endorsement sway, with two Senate seats and three governor’s mansions up for grabs in November. As our colleague Azi Paybarah notes, Trump has taken some “noteworthy losses” thus far this year.In Texas, which is holding runoff elections today, we’ll learn if Democrats in Laredo want to re-elect their anti-abortion congressman for a 10th term, or if they are looking for progressive change in the Rio Grande Valley. And we’ll find out if the state’s scandal-ridden attorney general can defeat the scion of a fading political dynasty.Polls will close tonight in Georgia at 7 p.m. Eastern time, Alabama at 8 p.m., Arkansas at 8:30 p.m. and Texas between 8 and 9 p.m. There’s also a special U.S. House election in Minnesota to replace the late Representative Jim Hagedorn. You can find live results here and our live election night analysis here.Our colleague Maya King sent you her questions about today’s contests this afternoon. Here are a few more to ponder as the results start trickling in:Perdue has trailed badly behind Gov. Brian Kemp in polls.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIf Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ candidates lose, will they accept defeat?In Pennsylvania, lawyers for the top two finishers in the Republican primary for Senate are still duking it out over whether certain ballots should be counted or not — a fight that the former president and two national party committees are already wading into. The candidates, Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, are separated by about 1,000 votes, and a recount appears almost certain.We don’t know if any of Georgia’s big contests will be that close. Although Gov. Brian Kemp is comfortably ahead of David Perdue in the Republican primary for governor, there has been scant polling on the secretary of state’s race. The Trump-backed candidate, Representative Jody Hice, faces Brad Raffensperger, the incumbent secretary who provoked Trump’s wrath in 2020 by refusing his demand that he “find 11,780 votes” and declare him the winner.Perdue, an avid proponent of Trump’s baseless election claims, told reporters this week that he would have to see if there was “fraud” before committing to accept Tuesday’s results. The Hice-Raffensperger grudge match could be tight enough for a runoff, and it’s anybody’s guess what Trump will say or do in that scenario.There’s also a controversy brewing in the attorney general’s race over John Gordon, a lawyer who is challenging Chris Carr, the Republican incumbent. Like Hice and Perdue, Gordon has insisted that Trump won Georgia in 2020, and called that year’s election a “coup d’état.”But Gordon faces questions about his eligibility for office, fueled by the Carr campaign, which has challenged whether Gordon has been an active member of the State Bar of Georgia for the required seven years. If Gordon wins the primary, expect litigation.Stacey Abrams is preparing for a rematch against Kemp, who narrowly beat her in 2018.Audra Melton for The New York TimesCan Democrats find hope in today’s outcomes?The mood on the left is grim, with reports that some Democrats are searching for a replacement for President Biden atop the ticket in 2024. Inflation is at a 40-year high, with the average price of gasoline creeping toward $5 a gallon. To the alarm of party leaders, youth turnout — typically a Democratic strength — has been low in recent elections.All that aside, Democratic donors are still pouring money into party committees and candidates at a fast clip — and the marquee campaigns in Georgia should be well financed, at least.Senator Raphael Warnock raised more than $13.5 million in the first three months of 2022, and has at least $23 million in the bank now. Those sums put him well ahead of Herschel Walker, the likely Republican nominee.Donors gave Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor for the second time, about $11.7 million in the first quarter. Abrams ran unopposed in the primary, but her campaign has been spending most of that money as it comes in; she entered January with $7.2 million in cash on hand and exited March with just $8 million.She’ll need far more than that if she is to knock off Kemp in November, assuming he defeats Perdue. More than $100 million was spent on the 2018 governor’s race, which Kemp won narrowly. Democratic super PACs have already spent at least $2 million to attack Kemp this campaign, and the Georgia arm of the Democratic Governors Association has donated $1 million to One Georgia, a leadership PAC set up to help Abrams’s campaign.“Stacey will absolutely have the resources to compete” in the fall, Representative Nikema Williams, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Georgia, said in an interview. “But it takes money to organize voters. This isn’t about waiting until after Labor Day.”For now, Abrams is getting some rhetorical help from the former president, who has said it would be “OK with me” if she ousted Kemp. Trump has attacked the governor relentlessly, including in a statement on Tuesday that called Kemp “very weak.” The former president added: “Most importantly, he can’t win because the MAGA base — which is enormous — will never vote for him.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      These Trump-Endorsed Candidates Are on the Ballot Today

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      Candidates endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump have had mixed success so far in contested Republican primaries for the 2022 midterm elections.Most of Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates are running unopposed or face little-known, poorly funded opponents. But many Republican candidates this year, whether endorsed by Mr. Trump or not, have embraced his style of politics, including false claims about the integrity of the 2020 elections.Here is a look at Mr. Trump’s endorsements in closely watched races today in Georgia, Arkansas and Texas.GeorgiaA campaign rally for former Senator David Perdue at the Wild Wing Café in Dunwoody, Ga., where he appeared on the John Fredericks Show, on Monday.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesDavid Perdue, the Trump-backed former senator, has trailed in public opinion polls and fund-raising in his effort to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican who angered the former president by refusing to help overturn the results of Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss in the state. Mr. Perdue has made lies about the 2020 election results a focal point of his campaign. Mr. Kemp has stood by the results, while supporting new restrictions on voting.Mr. Trump is also supporting Representative Jody Hice in his bid to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who also refused Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Mr. Hice, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, has made Mr. Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 elections the center of his own campaign.Herschel Walker, the former professional football player whom Mr. Trump endorsed, has led a crowded field in the Republican primary for Senate, looking to challenge Senator Raphael Warnock, a well-funded Democrat, for the seat Mr. Warnock won in a high-profile special election in early 2021. Mr. Walker has been accused of domestic abuse and embraced skepticism about the 2020 election, but his celebrity and the Trump’s backing have buoyed him in public polling and fund-raising.In the crowded race for an open congressional seat just north of Atlanta, Mr. Trump endorsed Jake Evans, the son of Randy Evans, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Luxembourg. Mr. Evans has been attacked by his rivals for past remarks criticizing Mr. Trump. He has raised less money than Rich McCormick, a former Marine and a physician who narrowly lost a House race in 2020. Dr. McCormick has echoed Mr. Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections and has refused to concede his own 2020 loss.ArkansasArkansas Republican gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders, second from right, with her husband Bryan Sanders, right, greeting supporters in Harrison, Ark., on May 20.Terra Fondriest for The New York TimesMr. Trump endorsed two candidates who are heavily favored to win their primaries today. Sarah Sanders, Mr. Trump’s former press secretary and daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, is facing Doc Washburn, a conservative talk radio host who was fired after not complying with the radio station’s vaccine mandate.In the race for attorney general, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, whom Mr. Trump endorsed, has raised and spent far more money than his rival, Leon Jones Jr., the state’s former labor secretary.TexasTexas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, in July 2021.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesAttorney General Ken Paxton has some problems. He has been indicted on criminal securities-fraud charges that are still pending. Several of his top aides claimed he abused his office by helping a wealthy donor. And he has faced abuse-of-power and bribery accusations. But he also has Mr. Trump’s endorsement and that could prove powerful enough to survive a re-election challenge from George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and nephew of former President George W. Bush who has clashed with Mr. Trump. More

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      McCormick Sues to Count Undated Mail-In Ballots, Trailing Oz

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      In a lawsuit filed on Monday in Pennsylvania, the Republican Senate candidate David McCormick demanded that undated mail-in ballots should be counted in his primary race against the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom he trailed by less than 1,000 votes.Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund chief, asked the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania to allow election officials in the state’s 67 counties to accept mail-in ballots from voters who turned them in by the May 17 deadline but did not write the date on the outer return envelopes.That step is required by a state law, one that Republicans have fought to preserve.The legal action could be a prelude to a cascade of lawsuits and challenges in one of the nation’s most intensely watched primaries, one that could ultimately determine control of the divided Senate. The seat will be open after Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican, steps down this year.The filing preceded a May 26 deadline for Pennsylvania’s secretary of state to determine whether a recount is triggered in the race, an automatic step when the top two candidates are within half a percentage point. About two-tenths of a percentage point separated Mr. McCormick on Monday from Dr. Oz, whom former President Donald J. Trump has been nudging to declare victory. The McCormick campaign was said to have invested heavily in its absentee-voting efforts.“These ballots were indisputably submitted on time — they were date-stamped upon receipt — and no fraud or irregularity has been alleged,” Ronald L. Hicks Jr., a lawyer for Mr. McCormick, wrote in the 35-page lawsuit.Mr. Hicks, a trial and appellate lawyer in Pittsburgh, was part of a phalanx of lawyers enlisted by Mr. Trump who unsuccessfully sought to challenge mail-in ballots after the 2020 presidential election. He later moved to withdraw from that case.In the McCormick campaign’s lawsuit, Mr. Hicks took the opposite view of mail-in ballots, saying that election boards in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania and Blair County in the central part of the state have balked at counting the undated ballots. Those counties, he said, were delaying taking action until after Tuesday when they are required to report unofficial results to the state.“The boards’ refusal to count the ballots at issue violates the protections of the right to vote under the federal Civil Rights Act and the Pennsylvania Constitution,” Mr. Hicks wrote.In the lawsuit, the McCormick campaign cited a recent ruling by a federal court panel that barred elections officials in Lehigh County, Pa., from rejecting absentee and mail-in ballots cast in the November 2021 municipal election because they were not dated.“Every Republican primary vote should be counted, including the votes of Pennsylvania’s active-duty military members who risk their lives to defend our constitutional right to vote,” Jess Szymanski, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCormick’s campaign, said in an email on Monday night.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More

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      Georgia, a New Battleground State, Is Once Again the Center of Attention

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      It’s the crucible of American politics.Georgia’s got everything: disputed elections, rapid demographic change, celebrity Democrats, a restrictive new voting law, an open criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election, a deep rural-urban divide and unending drama between the Trump wing of the Republican Party and the local G.O.P. establishment.It’s a longtime Republican stronghold that has become a battleground state. Trump won Georgia by more than 200,000 votes in 2016, then lost it by fewer than 12,000 votes four years later. Georgia was where President Biden made his doomed final push to pass voting rights legislation in the Senate. It was where Democrats picked up two crucial Senate seats on Jan. 5, 2021, giving them the barest control of both chambers of Congress.But those gains are fragile, and Republicans are confident they can win the governor’s race and regain one of the Senate seats. It’s largely for the usual reasons: high prices for the two Gs — gas and groceries — as well as Biden’s low job approval ratings. Either way, millions of campaign dollars will flow into Georgia between now and November.Before all that, though, we’ll have to get through Tuesday’s primaries. Here is what else is going on:Trump vs. PenceOn Monday, Trump and Mike Pence, his former vice president, held dueling events for their respective candidates in the Republican primary for governor: David Perdue, a former senator and Dollar General executive who entered the race at Trump’s insistence, and Brian Kemp, the incumbent.Pence attended a rally for Kemp at the Cobb County airport in suburban Atlanta, while Trump appeared remotely for Perdue, who took a racist swipe at Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic nominee, during a news conference at a wings-and-beer restaurant north of the city. As Jonathan Martin writes, Pence and Trump are circling each other warily in advance of a possible clash in the presidential primary in 2024, so their standoff in Georgia has national implications.It’s not looking good for Trump’s leading candidate in the state, for the reasons our colleagues Reid Epstein and Shane Goldmacher reported this weekend. Polls show Kemp ahead by an average of 25 percentage points, leading Perdue to try to reset expectations last week. “We may not win Tuesday,” he said, “but I guaran-damn-tee you we are not down 30 points.”Along with Representative Jody Hice, who is hoping to unseat Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Perdue is running a campaign that is almost single-mindedly focused on Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.Understand the Georgia Primary ElectionThe May 24 primary will feature several Trump-backed candidates in closely watched races.A New Battleground: Republicans have fought bitter primaries in Georgia. But just two years after Democrats flipped the state, it’s trending back to the G.O.P.G.O.P. Governor’s Race: David Perdue’s impending loss to Brian Kemp looms as the biggest electoral setback for Donald Trump since his own 2020 defeat.Trump vs. Pence: With the ex-president backing Mr. Perdue and his former vice president supporting Mr. Kemp, the G.O.P. governor’s race has national implications for 2024.Fighting Headwinds: Democrats in Georgia — and beyond  — are worried that even the strongest candidates can’t outrun President Biden’s low approval ratings.Perdue and Hice are speaking to a “small and shrinking crowd in Georgia,” said Chris Clark, the president and chief executive of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which is backing Kemp and Raffensperger.“Nobody asks about it at events,” Clark added, referring to the 2020 election. “They’re asking about jobs and inflation.”Alexis Hill, a canvasser with the New Georgia Project, went door to door in Fairburn, Ga., to encourage people to register to vote.Alyssa Pointer/ReutersDemocrats look ahead to a difficult autumnThe Rev. Raphael Warnock, the preacher turned senator, and Stacey Abrams, the former state lawmaker and voting rights champion, ran unopposed in their primaries for Senate and governor this year. That doesn’t mean they’ll have an easy time of it in the fall, with a base that leading Democrats are describing openly as “quite demoralized.”Abrams is one of those Democrats, like Beto O’Rourke in Texas or Amy McGrath in Kentucky, whose national stardom and appeal among activists sometimes outstrip their local support. Polls show her behind Kemp by about five points in head-to-head matchups.“When you lift someone up that high, people love to see you fall,” said Martha Zoller, a former aide to Perdue who now hosts a talk radio show in Gainesville, Ga.Abrams’s campaign released a memo on Sunday outlining what it described as her strengths heading into November. It makes three basic points:Democratic turnout is holding up. The Abrams team says that “Democrats are on track to break records” in Tuesday’s primary, a fact that has Republicans arguing that Georgia’s new voting law has not suppressed voting.As Nick Corasaniti and Maya King reported on Monday morning, however, “It is too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the true impact of the voting law cannot be drawn from topline early voting data alone.” We’ll know more after tomorrow.So-called crossover voters will go for Democrats in November. Abrams aides say they have identified “nearly 35,000 voters who we expect to vote for the Democratic ticket in November but who cast Republican ballots for the primary,” a group they are calling “crossover voters.” Of the 855,000 Georgia voters who had cast their ballots as of Friday, when early voting closed, the Abrams campaign estimates that more than half — 52.9 percent — were Republicans, while only 46.5 percent were Democrats. (Georgia does not register voters by political party.)The Abrams team spins this as “a remarkably close margin,” given all the attention the news media has paid to Georgia’s big G.O.P. primaries, which are more competitive than the major Democratic ones. But it also could be an ominous sign for Democrats that Republican voters are more energized heading into the fall.Georgia is growing more diverse, and that will help Democrats. The speed of voter registration has slowed in Georgia, which was once a model for the ability of grass-roots organizing to overcome entrenched obstacles to voting. That slowdown could hurt Democrats in the fall, although the Abrams campaign says it has identified about 42,000 Georgians who have already voted in this year’s primary but did not vote in the 2018 general election. Her team also says it has found more than 100,000 Black voters who skipped the 2018 primary but have already voted this year, as well as 40,000 additional white voters and an unspecified number of new Asian American and Latino voters. Abrams lost her first race for governor against Kemp by just under 55,000 votes, so those new voters could be significant.It’s not a safe assumption that voters of color will choose Democrats at the same rates they have in the past, however. Biden has lost support among Black and Latino Americans since taking office. As of April, the president’s approval rating was just 67 percent among Black adults, down 20 percentage points since the start of his term. Not only is turnout a question mark, but it’s also by no means clear that Democrats will be able to hang on to all of those voters if inflation continues to bite into their pocketbooks in November.What to readPresident Biden pledged to defend Taiwan against attack, moving a step beyond longstanding U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity.” Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker report from Tokyo and Seoul.Representative Mo Brooks, a hard-right Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, seems to be making an unlikely comeback after his low poll numbers prompted Donald Trump to take back his endorsement, Trip Gabriel reports.In Texas, the closely watched House race between Representative Henry Cuellar and his progressive challenger, Jessica Cisneros, encapsulates the tensions within the Democratic Party on immigration, Jazmine Ulloa and Jennifer Medina report.how they run George P. Bush talking to members of Texas Strong Republican Women before an event for the attorney general’s race.Shelby Tauber for The New York TimesPaxton’s legal troubles haven’t amounted to political onesKen Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has faced his share of legal concerns in recent years, something that George P. Bush, his rival in the primary this year and the state’s land commissioner, has seized upon as he seeks to oust him from office.But, if history is any indicator, Bush has his work cut out for him.In March, Paxton topped the primary field with 43 percent of the votes, short of the 50 percent required to win the nomination outright. Bush placed second with 23 percent, and their runoff election is on Tuesday.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Stefanowski, G.O.P. Hopeful in Connecticut, Tests Positive for Coronavirus

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      One day after attending an anti-mask group’s “Freedom Family Cookout,” Bob Stefanowski, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor in Connecticut, announced on Monday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.Mr. Stefanowski, 60, who is seeking to avenge his 2018 election loss to Ned Lamont, a Democrat, said in a statement that he was asymptomatic.“I just wanted to let everyone know that I tested positive for COVID-19 this morning after finding out I had a positive exposure,” Mr. Stefanowski said. “I am vaccinated, boosted, and feeling fine so far. I will continue to follow all C.D.C. protocols.”Mr. Stefanowski and his campaign would not elaborate about the circumstances of his exposure to the virus, which has come roaring back in Connecticut this spring, making the state one of the nation’s hotspots for infections.How cases, hospitalizations and deaths are trending in ConnecticutThis chart shows how three key metrics compare to the corresponding peak per capita level reached nationwide in January 2021. More

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      Early Voting Surges as Georgia Watches for Impact of Election Law

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      ATLANTA — Early voting turnout in Georgia’s primary elections surged past previous milestones, signaling an energized electorate in a newly minted political battleground that remains ground zero in the national fight over voting rights, and setting off a fresh debate over a major voting law that had largely been untested before this year.Republicans quickly pointed to the early totals — more than 857,000 ballots were cast in an early voting period that ended Friday, roughly three times as many as in the same period in the 2018 primary elections — to argue that the law, passed last year by the G.O.P.-led legislature, was not suppressing votes.Democrats and voting rights groups said that the numbers were evidence that their redoubled efforts to overcome the law’s effects by guiding voters through new rules and restrictions were paying off so far, and that any focus on total turnout ignored whether voting had been made harder or had placed new burdens on marginalized groups.It is too soon to draw any sweeping conclusions, because the true impact of the voting law cannot be drawn from topline early voting data alone. The picture will grow slightly clearer on Tuesday, when Election Day turnout can be observed; clearer still in the days afterward, when final absentee ballot rejection rates and precinct-level data will emerge; and will fully come into focus after the November general election, when turnout will be far higher and put more strain on the system.The early aggregate statewide turnout figures could obscure the effects of the new law on specific groups, like Black voters, that advocates contend were targeted by it.Ultimately, election experts cautioned, it remains unclear if the law made voting harder, if Democrats have been energized by the legislation or if some combination of the two is unfolding.“Just because turnout is up doesn’t mean that voters face no hurdles,” said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “It could well mean that voters overcame those hurdles, and that means that time and money were put into efforts to assure that voters could overcome those hurdles. And that seems unjustified if those hurdles serve no important anti-fraud or other purpose.”The top election official in the state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican running for re-election, underlined his confidence in the state’s elections under the new law, adding that he was sure county elections administrators would be adequately prepared for what will most likely be a steep increase in voter participation on Election Day.“It’s been tested and it’s coming through with straight A’s,” he said in a recent interview. “We’re having record turnout. We have record registrations, and lines have been short. Everything’s really been running very smooth.”Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and Georgia’s secretary of state, is running for re-election.Audra Melton for The New York TimesGeorgia was one of the first states to pass a new voting law after the 2020 election, when former President Donald J. Trump targeted the state with a flurry of falsehoods about its results.Republicans in the legislature passed the voting law to address what they argued were widespread problems with election oversight and expanded ballot access that could create openings for voter fraud. (Multiple recounts and audits after the election found no evidence of meaningful fraud or other wrongdoing.) Other states soon followed: At least 19 passed 34 laws last year that included new restrictions on voting or changed the way elections are administered.Democrats, civil rights groups, businesses and voting rights organizations denounced the Georgia law. President Biden called it “Jim Crow 2.0,” and Major League Baseball moved its All-Star game out of Atlanta in protest. But some of the public outcry focused on provisions that ended up being removed from the final version, such as banning voting on Sundays (the law allows counties the option of providing Sunday voting, and added a second mandatory Saturday of early voting).In this week’s primary, there are no major statewide battles for a Democratic nomination, with Stacey Abrams running largely uncontested for governor and Senator Raphael Warnock running as an incumbent for re-election. In the three weeks of early voting, 483,149 Republicans voted early, compared with 368,949 Democrats.The law instituted new regulations for mail voting, such as additional identification requirements and limits on how drop boxes could be deployed. During the 2020 election, counties across the state relied heavily on drop boxes, which were permitted by a ruling from the state’s election board, to help voters returning absentee ballots.But the new law sought to rein in their use, capping the number of drop boxes at one per 100,000 registered voters in a county — which could cut the amount of drop boxes in urban areas by as much as two-thirds — and limiting their availability to office hours. The law did, however, codify drop boxes as an option for voters into state election law.Overall turnout for absentee voting has been difficult to parse so far.During the 2020 election, when voters turned en masse to mail ballots because of the pandemic, more than 1.1 million Georgians voted by mail in the primary, and in 2018, fewer than 30,000 voted absentee. This year, more than 61,000 voted absentee in the primary, an increase over 2018 but less than 10 percent of the 2020 totals.Voters in primaries also tend to be more motivated and engaged than general-election voters, and they are more likely to be aware of new rules and willing to work through them to cast ballots.“The people who are highly engaged are the people who are voting in primaries, and those highly engaged people are often most equipped to get around any sort of change to voting,” said Michael McDonald, a voter turnout expert at the University of Florida.Gov. Brian Kemp, campaigning in the final days of his Republican primary race for governor, condemned Democrats for their criticism of the law, suggesting that their claims that it was “suppressive” were hyperbolic and politically motivated.Understand the Battle Over U.S. Voting RightsCard 1 of 6Why are voting rights an issue now? More