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      in Elections

      Democrats fail to persuade swaths of rural America's heartlands

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      America’s rural heartland stuck firmly with Donald Trump on Tuesday, dashing Joe Biden’s hope of a decisive victory that would have allowed him to claim he had reunited the country, as well as undercutting Democratic expectations of winning the US Senate.
      Results across the midwest showed the US still firmly divided as Trump again won a solid victory in Iowa, a state that twice voted for Barack Obama, and the Republicans held on to crucial Senate seats targeted by the Democrats.
      Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, a close Trump ally, proclaimed that the Democrats were now history in her state as the president’s base turned out in force.
      “We have proven without a doubt that Iowa is a red state,” she told a rowdy victory rally in Des Moines where few Republicans wore masks.
      Trump was ahead in Iowa by more than seven points with over 90% of the vote counted, a victory just two points short of his 2016 win.
      In Iowa and Missouri, Trump’s support in rural counties generally held up or strengthened. In some states that delivered him victory. In others, such as Wisconsin, Biden triumphed after a surge of urban votes.
      But the president’s solid performance in rural America could cost the Democrats control of the Senate after what the party regarded as its best shot at two midwestern seats in Iowa and Kansas flopped.
      Iowa’s Republican senator, Joni Ernst, beat her Democratic rival, Theresa Greenfield, by more than six points in a race that opinion polls for many months said would be closer. Ernst won the seat from a Democrat in 2014.
      Results showed that the president dominated in rural counties that he took from the Democrats four years ago. Opinion polls said that in recent weeks voters’ primary concern shifted from coronavirus to the economy which helped swing independent voters the president’s way to supplement his core support.
      “The economy was doing well before coronavirus. That was a big thing for me, said Elysha Graves as she clutched her toddler after voting for Trump in Urbandale, Iowa.
      “They tried to blame him for the pandemic. I don’t know how anybody else would have handled it. It’s a hard situation. He just seems real. He’s not a politician. He’s more relatable. I trust him more than I trust Biden.”
      Left: Elysha Graves and her son Parker Peters of Urbandale Iowa pose for a photo after Graves cast her vote on election day in Urbandale, Iowa. Right: A sign informs residents of a voting location on election day in Urbandale, Iowa on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Photographs by KC McGinnis/The Guardian
      Democrats disappointed
      Iowa is not a crucial state for Biden but his failure to significantly reduce the size of Trump’s 2016 victory there is evidence that the Democrats failed to persuade swaths of rural America that the party had much to offer them or was even paying attention to their communities and concerns.
      Biden was counting on the president defeating himself with his style of governing and handling of coronavirus as the economy collapsed. But large numbers of midwestern voters were prepared to forgive Trump his hostile tweeting and other sins because, in a widely heard refrain, “he is not a regular politician”, a quality they regard as central to their support of him.
      They also did not blame Trump for the economic downturn, saying it would have happened no matter who was in the White House. While the president’s handling of coronavirus was widely scorned in other places, there is a popular view in the rural midwest that Trump got it right when he opposed lockdowns as too economically damaging. More

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      in Elections

      'Truly remarkable': Arizona activists celebrate as conservative stalwart shifts blue

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      Ten years ago in Arizona, a night like 3 November 2020 would have seemed impossible.
      Back then, the conservative stalwart of the south-west was not just a state with strong Republican leadership on almost every level – it was a state whose staunch anti-immigration stance would go on to shape policy in the party for years to come, and would gain a reputation as the birthplace of Trumpism.
      A Republican super-majority state legislature had passed SB1070, a law requiring local law enforcement to ask for proof of legal immigration status from anyone deemed suspicious. Hardline anti-immigration sheriff Joe Arpaio – the Donald Trump of Maricopa county before Donald Trump became the Donald Trump he is today – was not just in power, he seemed near untouchable.
      “We would host know-your-rights sessions, with backyards full of over a hundred people because there was so much fear,” said Alejandra Gomez, co-executive director of advocacy group Living United for Change in Arizona (Lucha). “There were literally checkpoints that we would have to go monitor that Sheriff Arpaio put in common intersections. There were phone trees that the community had to give each other heads up of when Arpaio and his posse were going to be there.”
      Gomez smiled. “We don’t have that any more. And that’s because of the resistance of Arizona and the strategic calculations that this community has made.”
      On Tuesday, Arizona began to shift blue. While a number of ballots remained to be counted, the Associated Press called the race for Joe Biden, who was leading by 5 percentage points, saying that the remaining ballots would not be enough for Trump to close the gap to victory in Arizona. With 99% of precincts reporting, Democratic candidate Mark Kelly leads Republican Martha McSally with 52.63% of the vote in the race for John McCain’s former senate seat. Alongside Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who won her US Senate seat in 2018, this marks the first time Arizona would have two sitting Democrats in the US chamber in a lifetime. The state legislature is also expected to flip to a Democratic majority in both chambers for the first time since 1966, though with narrower margins in some races than previously hoped.

      “In 10 years, we went from a super-majority Republican state, and now, in 2020, we’re going to flip the legislature to a majority blue, our electoral votes will be a deciding factor in electing Joe Biden, and we are going to have not one, but two United State senate seats going out to Washington DC to represent our voices,” said Democratic state representative Athena Salman, who won her re-election bid Tuesday.
      “It is truly remarkable and so exciting to be living in this state right now.”
      But Tuesday was no fluke. It was the culmination of more than 10 years of tireless boots-on-the-ground organizing, campaigning, marching, protesting and door-knocking.
      It was never about politics for these organizers and activists. It was never about Republican or Democrat, red state or blue state, conservative or liberal.
      “This was not a state where you got involved in politics because you wanted to do work in politics,” said Tomas Robles, co-executive director of Lucha. “For us, it wasn’t about attaching ourselves to a political party. In 2010, both political parties deserted us. There were Democrats who did not vote against SB1070, folks who did not even bother showing up.”
      For them, it was a fight for their lives. It was a fight to keep families together, to prevent the deportation of loved ones, the criminalization of an entire race.
      “The 10 years of this, it’s a sign that Arizona is moving in the direction that we envisioned since 2010,” Robles said. “You have eight-year-olds who experienced the heartbreak of watching their families stand there in fear because of SB1070. They’re now 18-year-old voters. You have a ton of people that have grown up experiencing what it is to organize and what it is to build collective political power in a state that used to have none of it.”
      In the pandemic, 90% of the members of Unite Here Local 11, a union representing predominantly Latinx and immigrant hospitality workers in southern California and Arizona, lost their jobs. So instead, they took to the streets, knocking on doors to campaign for Biden and Kelly, sometimes in the sweltering 120-degree Fahrenheit Arizona heat.
      In July, union organizers met with epidemiologists specifically to find ways for their members and volunteers to safely continue knocking on doors. Since then, they estimated that they’ve knocked on 800,000 doors and had at least 250,000 conversations.
      “People know,” said Unite Here Local 11 co-president Susan Minato. “They’re not stupid. They know there are a lot of negative things going on and our country is way worse than it was before Trump started. That’s why people are here. There are children today, 550 of them, who are in cages. No one even knows who they are, who their parents are. They were taken from their parents arms. If we live in a country where that can happen, then anything can happen.
      “If people know that in their gut, then they’re here in the heat, they’re here, separated from their own children and loved ones temporarily, they’re here knocking on the doors of strangers in a pandemic, and they’re loving it because they know this is how we save our country.”
      Local organizers and activists have much to celebrate after Tuesday. Beyond the wins, beyond turning Arizona blue, the state saw historic youth and Latinx voter turnout, they said.

      Vivian Ho
      (@VivianHo)
      “Tonight, we claim victory. We claim victory because we were told that Latinos don’t show up. And we showed up.” @LUCHA_AZ pic.twitter.com/VMpnhw5vym

      November 4, 2020

      But they’re also already looking ahead. Minato noted that they have just two years to go before the governor’s race. And Robles pointed out that winning the election is just half the battle.
      “This is a marker in a very long marathon,” Robles said. “We’re going to have to prepare our members and prepare our leaders and also prepare our elected officials that our voters put in those seats. Election Day is just when you get the job. The job has only just begun. We’re ready and prepared to deal with whoever is in charge with crafting policy that will affect our families.” More

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      in Elections

      Record number of Native American women elected to Congress

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      The 117th Congress will have a record number of Native American women after voters elected three to the House of Representatives.Democrats Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo member representing New Mexico, and Sharice Davids, a Ho-Chunk Nation member representing Kansas, both retained their seats after becoming the first Native American women elected to Congress, in 2018.They are joined by Yvette Herrell, who is Cherokee. Herrell, a Republican, beat the Democratic incumbent Xochitl Torres Small for her New Mexico congressional seat.The wins for Herrell and Haaland mean that New Mexico will be the first state to have two indigenous women as congressional delegates. The state also became the first to elect women of color as all three of its delegates in the US House of Representatives.According to a Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) report, 18 indigenous women were running for congressional seats this year – a record in a single year. Native American women made up 2.6% of all women running for Congress this year, the highest percentage since CAWP started collecting data in 2004.There have been four Native Americans in the US Senate and a handful of indigenous US representatives. All were men until Haaland and Davids were elected in 2018.In Kansas, Stephanie Byers, who is Chickasaw and a retired teacher, became the state’s first transgender lawmaker when she won her race for a seat in its house of representatives.“We’ve made history here,” Byers said on Tuesday. “We’ve done something in Kansas most people thought would never happen, and we did it with really no pushback, by just focusing on the issues.”Also in Kansas, Christina Haswood, a Navajo Nation member, became the youngest person in the state legislature at 26. A third member of the Kansas house , Ponka-We Victors, a Tohono O’odham and Ponca member, won her re-election campaign.The US House of Representatives will have its highest number of indigenous representatives after Tuesday’s election, according to the independent Native American newspaper Indian Country Today.Six candidates, including Haaland, Davids and Herrell, won their elections. Two Oklahoma representatives, Tom Cole, who is Chickasaw, and Markwayne Mullin, who is Cherokee, won their re-elections, and Kaiali’i “Kai” Kahele, who is Native Hawaiian, won an open seat for Hawaii. There were previously four indigenous members of Congress, all in the House of Representatives. More

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      in Elections

      Mail-in ballot tracker: counting election votes in US swing states

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      This piece is published in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published
      An unprecedented number of Americans have voted by mail this year to avoid Covid-19 risk. Joe Biden’s supporters said they were more likely to vote by mail while Donald Trump’s supporters said they were more likely to vote in person. With postal delays, rejected ballots and a dearth of funding, the process isn’t always smooth – ballots can be rejected for multiple reasons, and due to court challenges, election rules are changing even while voting is underway. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republican officials have spent the last months casting doubt on the mail-in voting process, paving the way for legal battles during the vote count.
      Propublica badge
      With data from University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald, the Guardian and ProPublica are tracking votes in politically competitive states through the election to find out how many people are voting by mail, how their votes are counted, and what it means for the 2020 election. Our tracker will be updated as we obtain updated information, as well as other state data. We will also be investigating any aberrations and issues in the mail-in voting process as we find them, and telling the stories of the people and communities affected most.
      Georgia
      16 electoral votes
      Democrats believe Joe Biden may be able to win a state long seen as a Republican bastion, which would be a coup for the campaign. More people have already returned their ballots than voted by mail in total in 2016. The state has thousands of outstanding ballots to count, and liberal cities like Atlanta are expected to skew more towards Biden. Voters must return their ballots to election offices by election day in order to have them counted.

      Wisconsin
      10 electoral votes
      Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes, a year when voter turnout in key cities such as Milwaukee was also low. This year, voting rights groups are pushing the state to count ballots if they are postmarked by election day but arrive afterward. Currently, mail-in ballots must be received by 3 November at 8pm.

      Pennsylvania
      20 electoral votes
      Home to some of the most intense legal battles of the election, the state where Joe Biden was born could be the deciding factor in 2020. Pennsylvania had been a Democratic stronghold for six presidential elections until Trump carried the state by 0.7% in 2016. It’s very possible that the election result in Pennsylvania will not be known for days. That’s because Philadelphia, the state’s biggest city, could take days to count its mail-in ballots, according to officials there. Ballots must be postmarked by election day and received by 6 November at 5pm to be counted.

      Florida
      29 electoral votes
      Few states were more important on election night than Florida, where Trump has already been projected the winner. Voters must return their ballots to election offices by 7pm on election night to have them counted. Local election officials are required to contact voters if the signature on their ballot does not match the one on file.

      North Carolina
      15 electoral votes
      A battleground state Donald Trump carried in 2016, North Carolina is in the spotlight for being still too close to call. The state has seen an unprecedented surge in mail-in voting, not typically used widely in the state. Ballots must be postmarked by election day and received no later than 12 November at 5pm.

      Michigan
      16 electoral votes
      Michigan is one of the midwestern states that offer a clear path of victory for Joe Biden. The state has seen a massive change in voting procedures since 2016, including a constitutional amendment that gives everyone in the state the right to vote by mail without an excuse. Ballots must be postmarked by election day and received that day by 8pm.

      Ohio
      18 electoral votes
      Trump won the swing state easily in 2016, and was declared the projected winner on Tuesday night. Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by 2 November, or in person on election day, and received by 13 November at 7.30pm.

      Iowa
      Six electoral votes
      Donald Trump won Iowa on election night, while Democrats failed to oust the first-term GOP senator Joni Ernst. Anyone in Iowa is eligible to vote by mail and must return their ballot to election officials by the close of the polls on election day to have it counted.

      Minnesota
      10 electoral votes
      Trump claimed he could win Minnesota this year, though he lost the reliable blue state in 2016 by 1.5%, because of rural voters who favor the president. But after police killed the unarmed Black man George Floyd in the state earlier this year, it also launched the biggest protest movement and civil unrest in decades – a factor that could play into voter turnout. Ballots must be postmarked by 3 November, and received by 10 November. More

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      in Elections

      Vote totals expected to swing back and forth as key US states continue to count

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      Many Americans woke up bleary-eyed Wednesday morning after a late night of watching presidential returns as key places in battleground states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia, continue to count votes.The message from experts and election officials to Americans have been to stay patient as the votes are counted because there’s nothing unusual about the ongoing count. Election officials and experts have said for months that counting was likely to extend past election night because of a surge in mail-in ballots that take longer to tally.Donald Trump falsely claimed early Wednesday morning that he won the election and pledged to go to take legal action to stop counting, including going to the US supreme court, even though there were still a significant number of ballots to be counted.Vote totals are expected to swing back and forth on Wednesday in key states as different places report their counts. The president suggested Wednesday the swings were evidence of nefarious activity, but that’s not true. The swings reflect the fact that different parts of a state that have different political leanings are reporting their results at different times.Democratic-friendly areas such as Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia have been slower to report their results than other jurisdictions in their respective states because of the higher volume of ballots. Republicans who control the state legislatures in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania also refused to move up the deadline to count absentee ballots, contributing to the delayed counts Wednesday.To win the presidency, Joe Biden needs to win at least the states of Wisconsin and Michigan, key battlegrounds that Trump won in 2016. In Michigan, Biden holds a narrow lead, but officials in some of the state’s largest places, including Detroit, are still counting ballots. It’s difficult to know when the state will have final results, but Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, said Wednesday there should be a more “complete picture” in the state by the end of the day.As counting continued, the United States Postal Service (USPS) released new data Wednesday morning showing poor on-time delivery rates for ballots across the country. In the Detroit postal district, about 79% of ballots were delivered within the agency’s window for on-time delivery, and in the area that covers most of Wisconsin, 76% were delivered on time. In the Philadelphia district just 66.3% were on time. Michigan and Wisconsin both require voters to return their ballots by the close of polls on election day in order to have them counted.But USPS said in a legal filing the numbers are “unreliable” and do “not reflect accurate service performance” because they don’t reflect mail taken out of normal process to be delivered faster closer to election day.A federal judge in Washington DC is also set to hold a hearing Wednesday after USPS failed to comply with an order to perform a last-minute sweep of election facilities after the agency said there were 300,000 ballots that did not have an outgoing scan. The agency has cautioned these ballots may not contain that scan because they were expedited.Democrats had urged voters to avoid the mail and return their ballots in person, and that message appears to have successfully gotten that message out in Milwaukee.In recent weeks, a sorting facility in the overwhelmingly Democratic city was processing about 3,000 absentee ballots daily, but only sent through 44 ballots on Tuesday, said Ron Kania, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers branch 2. The deadline for ballots to count in Wisconsin was 8pm on election day.“We trickled down to practically zero the last couple days,” Kania said. His facility conducted regular sweeps for ballots throughout election day and expedited any that they found.“As far as I know, everything we received went out,” he added.If Biden does carry Wisconsin and Michigan, he only needs to carry Nevada to win the presidency. Biden holds a narrow lead in the state, but the secretary of state’s office said Tuesday no more vote totals would be reported until Thursday morning. Trump’s campaign foreshadowed legal action in the state Wednesday morning, saying it was confident the president would carry the state if all “legal ballots” were counted.In Pennsylvania, vote totals at 1pm showed Trump leading by about 469,000 votes. But the state still needs to count “millions of ballots”, Kathy Boockvar, the state’s top election official, said Wednesday. In Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold, the city’s top election official said officials had counted 141,000 out of 351,000 mail-in votes Wednesday morning.In Pennsylvania, there’s also an additional complication. Because of a state supreme court ruling, the state is legally required to count ballots that arrive by Friday. It’s unclear how many ballots will arrive between now and Friday.There are also about 200,000 votes that still need to be counted in Georgia, the state’s top election official said Wednesday. The state, long seen as a Republican bastion, is considerably closer this year. Trump led as of Wednesday morning by 109,000 votes and there are at least 107,000 outstanding votes in Democratic-leaning counties, the Journal-Constitution reported.Tom Perkins contributed to this report More

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      in US Politics

      Democracy in Trumpland: I won because I say so | Ed Pilkington

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      It was the grand, carefully choreographed victory speech that Donald Trump never got to make in 2016. Hail to the Chief was playing in the background as the president took to the stage around 2am, a phalanx of Stars and Stripes at his back and in front of him a maskless crowd of progeny and devotees screaming “We love you!”
      In 2016 Trump was so stunned by his own unexpected triumph that he looked quite taken aback. His victory speech was written in such a hurry it contained profuse praise for Hillary Clinton, the woman who had been subjected to chants of “lock her up”.
      Having stumbled four years ago, Trump did it on Wednesday morning his way, amid the grandeur of the East Room of the White House. “Frankly, we did win this election,” he said, the room erupting in a frenzy of cheers.
      It was a spectacle that spoke volumes about the man, and about the nation at this singularly damaged and dangerous moment in its 244-year history. An incumbent president declares victory even though he hasn’t won, then claims that fraud is being committed on the American public in the middle of an election that has seen the largest turnout of any presidential race in 120 years.
      Democracy in Trumpland.
      As the president was playing out his little victory fantasy, Democrats were going through their own version of hell. If the story of the night for Trump was about him pretending to have won just the way he liked it, for Joe Biden and his Democratic cohorts it was about dutifully following the rule book just the way they hate it.
      For them, too, the ghosts of 2016 loomed large. It was around 10.30pm on election night 2020 that the jitters began to start with early results in from Florida that sent an all-too familiar chill across the nation.
      Here we go again. Buckle up, you’re in for a rough ride. More

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      in US Politics

      Don't underestimate the threat to American democracy at this moment | Corey Brettschneider

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      In the early morning hours after election day, the president of the United States showed his authoritarian ambitions. He launched an attack on our democratic system at a moment when it is at its most fragile in recent memory. His lies about the results of the election erode trust in the fairness of the democratic process and risk provoking violence. Now we are dependent on media, especially the outlets most popular with Donald Trump’s base, to rein in the chaos he is encouraging.
      This grave threat comes from the president’s false declaration of victory, despite no evidence that he had won the election, and with millions of valid votes yet to be counted. He referred to any suggestion that he had lost as “a fraud on the American public”. In one breath, he declared that “we want all voting to stop” and that “we don’t want any ballots to be found at four in the morning.” This conflation of voting after election day and counting votes after election day – a standard practice in every election – is deeply misleading and deeply dangerous.
      In this respect, its damage is far worse than many of the many fibs Trump has made while in office. His suggestion is a direct lie, one that comes while millions of voters look to him to understand who our legitimate president will be. In past elections, the media – specifically TV networks – served as the main gatekeepers of results, but this president communicates directly to his base through social media, avoiding the reputable news organizations that could factcheck him in real time. This means that his unsubstantiated claims of victory – and of electoral fraud perpetrated by Democrats – are being fed directly to his base. Many will believe him, undermining confidence in the ultimate legitimate results and sowing discord and potentially violence.
      The problem of Trump’s unfiltered reach coupled with his blatant lying is compounded by social media executives’ inadequate handling of the situation. Facebook and its irresponsible CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, refused to directly challenge the president, even while receiving credit from some observers for reminding voters that “final results” may take days. They did not call Trump’s statement a lie or take strong steps to counter it. Twitter went far enough to say that the president’s message might be “misleading”, but it too failed to take a strong and definitive stand on a statement that is not just possibly, but indisputably, incorrect.
      Surprisingly, Fox News might be the media outlet that holds the country together. The network called Arizona for Joe Biden around the same time as the Associated Press and has insisted on reporting real numbers, with its reputable non-partisan news anchors leading the coverage. Ultimately, a large number of Trump voters might turn to Fox to decide whether to trust official results or their president, who has told them that those disputing his victory are committing fraud. If Fox continues to say that any early declaration of victory is incorrect, viewers might be more likely to have the patience required to wait for what might be days, with twists and turns as more ballots are reported, until a winner is declared.
      Still, it is not only the media outlet that should be tasked with maintaining the public’s confidence in our electoral machinery. Part of Trump’s pattern of deception to his base involves invoking bizarre and completely erroneous legal claims. On Tuesday night, Trump promised to take up his concerns about ongoing ballot counting to the US supreme court. However, if ballots are received on or before election day, there is no serious legal claim to support Trump’s seeming contention that any ongoing ballot counting after the election is fraudulent. Indeed, in a decision the president disparaged on Twitter, the US supreme court refused to undo the Pennsylvania supreme court’s decision that even ballots that arrived three days after election day would count as long as they were postmarked by election day.
      I cannot overstate the danger of this moment. Right now, it is essential that Republican members of Congress and the vice-president make it clear that the ballots need to be counted. Both candidates and parties should be modeling respect for our democratic process, patiently waiting for the legitimate results, and encouraging all Americans to do the same. Instead, Trump’s claims risk sowing violence, confusion and an erosion of faith in the bedrock principles of American democracy.
      Amid this chaos, what is left for us to do? Americans who believe that every person’s ballot should count in an election must insist on truth and spread this message as widely as possible on social media, at our dinner tables and, if need be, through peaceful demonstrations. That is the only way to counteract Trump’s lies and his threat of upending our democracy.
      Even if Biden does win and the results are accepted, we will have lived through a moment that showed our democracy is less stable than we assumed. Strengthening it and reinforcing its protections must be a priority of a Biden presidency.
      Corey Brettschneider is a political science professor at Brown. He is the author of The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents and the editor of the new book The Decisions and Dissents of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, part of his new series, Penguin Liberty More

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      in US Politics

      Election night in New York City: anxiety, uncertainty and empty streets

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      New York City prepared for the final act of the most consequential election in a generation on Tuesday. There was reason to worry.
      During the city’s 10 days of early voting, many of the 1.1 million New Yorkers were forced to spend large parts of the day in socially distant lines that stretched across multiple city blocks – including some who had decided to vote in person after a mail-in ballot snafu. Even the mayor waited almost four hours, after which he and the governor suggested a complete overhaul of the board of elections. More