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      Feeling powerless? How foreigners can survive the US election without complete nervous collapse | Van Badham

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      There are only 24 hours to go until the polls close on the American election. Which is surprising, because the campaign feels like it has been going for eleventy-million-billion years.Americans, at least, get to vote. For the rest of the world, the whole experience is like waking up in a cinema that only shows The Fast and the Furious movies, and all of the exits are sealed shut with cement.We’ve been stuck in here with loud noises, annoying characters and zero plot development for months, eating the curtains for food and desperately hoping it all comes to an end without actual loss of life. Or, you know, a massively increased prospect of nuclear war.What it’s like to be trapped in America’s version of that cinema right now is unimaginable. Circumstances suggest it’d involve a lot of audience members holding guns, cheers ringing out whenever stupid lines are delivered and way too much coughing for anyone to feel comfortable.Elections in other countries universally elicit two responses from those foreign to them: “She seems nice” or “That’s a worry.” Jacinda Ardern may have transformed New Zealand into the world’s idea of Magical Happy Hug Land, but in their last election how many internationals were furiously scanning weighted polling averages at 2am because Wairarapa seemed too close to call?Now, millions of us around the world recently sport what I call the “FiveThirtyEight Pallor” – a face-bound, sleepless waxiness that results from relentlessly refreshing US poll sites to see if there’s any projected movement in Maine’s second district. Vast hordes of non-farming, non-Americans now intimately familiar with the price of soybeans in Iowa is a terrifying symptom of these anxious times.Is there a way for powerless, poll-watching foreigners to get through the next 24 hours – and the aftermath – without complete nervous collapse? Probably not. But let’s delude ourselves into thinking that we can follow the below advice and go through this with a sense of calm.1. We must admit to ourselves we are powerless over the US, and to think otherwise will make our lives unmanageableAs much as you may want scream HOW CAN YOU VOTE FOR THIS LARGE ORANGE CLOWN to Americans visible on Twitter, don’t. This very publication is haunted by the failure of “Operation Clark County” back in 2004, where British Guardian readers wrote letters of persuasion to a swing district of American voters, requesting politely they not vote for George W Bush. “Real Americans aren’t interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions” began one of the gentler replies.2. Prepare American-themed delicacies for the occasionIf you’re short on time, grab some traditional spray cheese-in-a-can or some Twinkies, but to really immerse yourself for the US election, follow the YouTube directions to whip up a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto Turkey with all the trimmings. Then, don’t eat this food; stare at it. Stare at the thick, plastic cheesiness. The sugary crustiness. The holy-god-how-is-any-of-this-still-legally-considered-food heart-endangering carbohydration of it all and ask yourself both a) does Britain really want a trade deal with these people? and b) is doing this to human food in any way culturally understandable to you? No. No, it isn’t. Do you think you can intuit their political choices now? No. No, you can’t.3. Don’t watch Fox News coverageThere are those who believe that Fox is some kind of foul, relentless rightwing propaganda hydra managed by a clan of vampiric undead that wilfully spreads lethal misinformation for fun. This is not true. It’s actually a sophisticated marketing operation for mass sales of anti-anxiety medication that no one needs until they watch one single uninterrupted minute of its programming. Save your money, and your cardiovascular health: avoid.4. Believe the polls: it’s not 2016 any moreThe 2016 election was a confluence of black swan events: an unpredictable Republican campaign, a polarising Democratic candidate, dark digital operations, WikiLeaks-dumped cache of stolen correspondence, and the FBI’s improbable decision to reopen the dead investigation into Clinton’s emails collided with outdated polling techniques. This year, poll techniques are updated, and as much as the Republicans are trying to make Hunter Biden’s laptop happen, it’s not going to happen.5. Don’t believe the polls, have you forgotten 2016?Remember the surety everyone had on election day morning that Clinton would be president by night-time and the tiny-pawed tangerine vagina-grabber would be left hustling for gigs on celebrity baking shows and charity golf events? By midnight we were coiled in foetal balls on the living room floor in shock, our cold hands begging for the comfort of a security blanket, or at least a wizard companion to guide us through a new, dark and terrifying realm.6. Vacuum the living room floor. Locate a security blanket. Order a wizardUS polling website Fivethirtyeight.com still gives the carrot-coloured super-spreader a 10% chance of victory.There’s one thing we know about The Fast and the Furious. Just when you think that the franchise is finally finished is when you’ll find out they’re making a sequel. More

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      Judge orders US Postal Service to take 'extraordinary measures' to deliver ballots on time

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      A federal judge ordered the US Postal Service on Sunday to take “extraordinary measures” to ensure mail ballots arrive on time.
      USPS is seeing a severe dip in on-time delivery rates leading up to the 3 November presidential election, according to the data from the agency. Some of the largest mail delays are in battleground states where late ballots could make the difference in which candidate wins the state – and possibly the election.
      The judge’s ruling involves USPS using its express mail service to deliver ballots within one to two days, which will be crucial in states that require that ballots be received by election day.
      On-time rates during the week of 17 October – when about 20 million Americans were sending in their mail-in ballots – fell to the lowest they had been all year. Only 81% of first-class mail was delivered on time.
      Nationwide on-time rates for first-class USPS mail have plummeted in recent weeks.
      The mail delays have been especially notable in some key swing states. In the central Pennsylvania mailing district, where Philadelphia is located, on-time rates fell to 66% after being at about 90% just months earlier.
      In 2016, Democrats won Philadelphia by nearly 750,000 votes, but Trump made up the deficit with big wins in the more rural counties to win Pennsylvania by just 44,000 votes.
      Line chart showing in the Philadelphia mailing district, on-time rates plummeted.
      In the Detroit mailing district, on-time rates for first-class mail fell to 63%. It was above 90% at the beginning of the year. Detroit and the surrounding suburbs are where Democrats accrued most of their margin in 2016, when Trump won the state by less than 11,000 votes.
      Line chart showing in Detroit on-time rates plummeted.
      In both states, a record number of people have already voted by mail. But there are still hundreds of thousands of ballots that were requested but have yet to be returned.
      A mail delay could make the difference between whether a ballot is counted. For example, in Pennsylvania mail ballots must arrive by 6 November at 5pm.
      The postal service has come under scrutiny after Donald Trump’s ally Louis DeJoy was appointed postmaster general in May. DeJoy implemented cost-cutting changes to make the postal service more efficient, but that caused on-time rates to plummet.
      After complaints that USPS was purposely slowing down mail to help Trump’s re-election, Dejoy said he would suspend the changes until after the election. Soon thereafter, on-time rates rebounded – but they are now dropping again. More

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      US braces for historic election amid fears democracy is in danger

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      Americans are bracing for an election day unlike any in US history, shadowed by threats of manipulation and violence, stoking fears that democracy itself is at stake when the polls close on Tuesday night.
      It marks the end of a campaign that has been unprecedented in many ways. More than 94 million Americans had already cast their ballots by Monday, a record for early voting, in the midst of a pandemic. It was equivalent to 70% of the 2016 turnout even before election day dawned.
      It is also the first election in which the incumbent president has said he would try to stop the vote count if early returns on election night show him to be ahead and has openly encouraged acts of intimidation by his supporters.
      On Monday, a high “non-scalable” fence, last seen during the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, was being erected around the White House. In anticipation of unrest, businesses in Washington and major city centres across the country boarded up their windows. The DC business district advised residents to “take precautions such as securing outdoor furniture and signage that can be used as a projectile”.
      A poll by USA Today and Suffolk University found that three out of four voters were worried about possible violence, with only a quarter of the electorate “very confident” there would be a peaceful transfer of power if the Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, won the election.
      Delivering his closing message on the last day of the campaign, Biden repeated his campaign message that the election was a “battle for the soul of the nation”.
      “The character of America is literally on the ballot,” he said at a drive-in rally in Cleveland, Ohio. “It’s time to take back our democracy.”
      On his final campaign stops, Trump has sought to portray his opponent’s future response to the coronavirus pandemic as a dystopian lockdown that would stifle economic and social life.
      “The Biden plan will turn America into a prison state locking you down, while letting the far-left rioters roam free to loot and burn,” he told a rally in Iowa.
      The air of apprehension has been deepened by repeated threats from Trump that he would seek to portray all votes not counted by election night as illegitimate. He said “we are going in with our lawyers” as soon as voting closes.
      Vote-counting routinely continues for days and sometimes weeks after a US election, but the result is usually called by news agencies based on projections from incomplete counts. That is less likely to be possible this time because of the heavy early and postal voting. More

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      Latest election polls show Biden ahead but race tightening in key states

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      Joe Biden is still favoured to win Tuesday’s presidential election, according to the final opinion polls, but a tightening race in several key states offers Donald Trump rising hopes of a pathway back to the White House.
      The Democratic candidate holds a significant lead in national polling, at anywhere between four and 10 percentage points, according to a cluster of polls released on Monday. The poll aggregator fivethirty.eight.com shows Biden with an 8.3-point advantage overall, while Real Clear Politics reflects a lead of 6.5.
      But the Republican president is performing better in some of the battleground states he must win to secure a second term.
      In Florida, largest of the handful of crucial swing states, Trump has cut Biden’s lead to a single point, according to fivethirtyeight.com. Analysts agree that Trump must retain Florida, which he won from Hillary Clinton by only 1.2 points in 2016, and its 29 electoral college votes if he is to stand any chance of reaching the winning figure of 270.
      Florida also offers Biden the cleanest and quickest path to victory. Early votes in the state will be tallied through the day on Tuesday, meaning a declaration is possible before midnight if the race is not too close.
      If Biden loses Florida, attention will turn to Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, three so-called Blue Wall states that Trump prised from Democratic hands four years ago.

      In Pennsylvania, which offers 20 electoral votes, Biden holds an average 4.2-point advantage. In Michigan, with 16 votes, his lead is 5.1 points, and in Wisconsin, which has 10 votes, it is 6.6 points. Victory in all three, plus the retention of states won by Clinton in 2016, would see Biden elected as the 46th president. However, margins of error built into opinion polling mean such races are probably tighter than they appear.
      Democrats are also wary as polls released just before the 2016 election showed Clinton with a similar national advantage over Trump. She won the popular vote by more than 3m ballots, but defeat in several battleground states handed the White House to Trump.
      On Monday, Trump and Biden spent the final day of campaigning in such vital states. Biden was heading to Pennsylvania for a rally after a stopover in Ohio, where polls show he trails Trump by a sliver. Barack Obama, the former president, was rallying for Biden in Florida. Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, was also in Pennsylvania, underlining the state’s importance.
      Trump was barnstorming four states in his final push for victory. After a midnight rally in Miami, Florida, on Sunday, the president was heading for North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and two appearances in Michigan. More

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      ‘Non-scalable’ fence to be erected around White House before election

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      Federal authorities were expected to re-erect a “non-scalable” fence around the White House on Monday, a day before a presidential election many fear may lead to mass protest, civil unrest and even armed insurrection.
      Amid speculation that the election result will not be immediately known and signs Republicans will either declare victory early or mount legal challenges if Donald Trump appears to have lost, multiple news outlets reported the White House plan, citing anonymous sources.
      “The White House on lockdown,” the NBC News White House correspondent, Geoff Bennett, wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
      “A federal law enforcement source tells NBC that beginning tomorrow, crews will build a ‘non-scalable’ fence to secure the [White House] complex, Ellipse and Lafayette Square. Two hundred and fifty national guardsmen have been put on standby, reporting to metro police officials.”
      The barricade will form a square perimeter around the White House, on 15th Street, Constitution Avenue, 17th Street and H street.
      Fencing was put up during the summer, amid national protests against police brutality and systemic racism in the aftermath of the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd, an African American man. According to CNN, the new “unscalable” barricade is the same type of fence.
      In the summer, amid protests near the White House at which federal agents confronted and assaulted mostly peaceful demonstrators, it was reported that Trump was taken to a protective bunker under the executive mansion. Trump insisted the visit was brief and for inspection purposes.
      The summer protests also saw confrontations between law enforcement and protesters, and widespread looting, in other major cities. As the election looms, stores in New York, Washington and elsewhere have been boarding up windows in case of trouble.
      Law enforcement agencies are preparing to deploy. Patrick Burke, executive director of the Washington DC Police Foundation, recently told CNN: “If there’s no winner, you will see significant deployments of officers at all levels across the capital.”
      In New York, the police commissioner, Dermot Shea, sent a memo to department members in mid-October, indicating that the majority of officers must report to duty in uniform – and be ready to deploy, including officers not normally in uniform, including detectives. The department said it expected protests could become larger and more frequent into early 2021, NBC New York reported.
      The NYPD has told businesses in midtown Manhattan to ramp up security in the event of mass protests, according to the Wall Street Journal. There and elsewhere in New York City, such as the SoHo shopping district downtown, windows were smashed and stores were looted this summer.
      Curbed noted that other cities, including San Francisco and Washington, saw businesses boarding up windows as a protective measure. More

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      US election set to be £1bn betting event with Biden firm favourite

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      The 2020 US election is shaping up to be the biggest betting event of all time, with one player placing a record-breaking £1m bet on a victory for the Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.People were still rushing to place bets on Monday on the eve of the election and Matthew Shaddick, the head of political betting at Ladbrokes Coral Group, said it estimated about £1bn would be wagered globally across the industry. Donald Trump’s odds of re-election grew slightly over the weekend, but Biden remained a clear favourite in online betting markets. Betters on the British exchange Smarkets give Biden a 65% chance of winning, while Trump’s prospects have improved to 35% from 34%.Betfair said it also recorded an improvement in Trump’s odds, at the same level. One person had placed £1m on Biden, Betfair said, in the biggest political bet of all time. If Biden wins, the player will bag £1.54m.The former vice-president has a substantial lead in national opinion polls, although the contest is slightly closer in the battleground states that are likely to decide the race.“Florida is one where the polls suggest Biden is the more likely winner, but the [betting] markets have Trump as favourite [there],” Shaddick said. “The GOP have tended to overperform the polls quite regularly in that state.”The election is on track to be by far the biggest betting event, with £271m bet so far, Betfair said. Most of the big-money betting occurs outside the US as betting on politics is illegal there. More

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      'Putin could only dream of it': how Trump became the biggest source of disinformation in 2020

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      It seemed like the nightmare of 2016 all over again.
      On 21 October, less than two weeks before election day, US intelligence and law enforcement officials convened a last-minute press conference to warn that foreign adversaries were once again interfering in American democracy. Iran was spreading false tales about “allegedly fraudulent ballots” and sending spoofed emails purporting to contain threats from the Proud Boys, “designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President Trump”, said John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence. Meanwhile, both Russia and Iran had obtained access to voter information that could be used to “cause confusion, sow chaos and undermine your confidence in American democracy”, he warned.
      It was everything that Democrats and disinformation experts have been warning about for the last four years, except, well, not quite.
      The email operation had been relatively small and immediately debunked, while voter roll information is either public or easy to obtain. Senior intelligence officials quickly raised doubts about Ratcliffe’s emphasis on the threat from Iran over Russia and questioned whether his motives for the public announcement were political, the New York Times reported.
      “It was very difficult to see those men in suits talking about interference in the election when the White House is the one interfering with the election,” said Claire Wardle, the executive director of First Draft, a group that researches and combats disinformation.
      After all, when it comes to intimidating voters or inciting social unrest, nothing has had more impact than the constant drumbeat of lies and disinformation from Donald Trump. Years of preparation by the press, social media platforms, and civil society groups for a foreign interference campaign against the US electoral process have been upended by the bizarre reality that the biggest threat to American democracy right now is almost certainly the commander-in-chief, and that his primary mode of attack is a concerted disinformation campaign.
      Because how much impact can a few thousand faked emails telling voters in Florida and Alaska to “vote for Trump or else” have on voters compared with Trump directly ordering the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist street gang, to “stand back and stand by” before a television audience of 73 million people? And what kind of false tale of voter fraud could Iran possibly seed that could undermine Americans’ faith in the electoral process more than the disinformation about voter fraud and mail-in ballots coming straight from the White House and Trump’s campaign?
      “‘Don’t trust the electoral system, don’t trust the CDC, don’t trust your neighbor because they’re probably antifa, don’t trust the left,’” Wardle said of Trump’s re-election message. “It’s not about persuading people one way or the other, it’s about making them scared and causing confusion and chaos,” she added.
      “The media’s been obsessed with Russians under the bed, but to have the president of the United States telling people in the US that they can’t trust the results of the election – Putin could only dream of that kind of thing.”
      Social media tactics
      Russia’s disinformation campaign in the 2016 presidential election had two main vectors: a social media campaign to sow division and distrust among voters, and a “hack and leak” operation that resulted in the theft and publication of emails and documents stolen from Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That hack and leak operation was incredibly successful, with caches of stolen material proving irresistible both for the mainstream press and for conservative activists and conspiracy theorists.
      The 2020 iteration of the hack and leak tactic – Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani pushing dubious emails and text messages supposedly obtained from a hard drive linked to Joe Biden’s son Hunter – has been something of a damp squib, however. “You don’t see the same kind of credulous, knee-jerk out-of-control amplification that you saw in 2016,” said Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse University and author of The Oxygen of Amplification, a report examining how the press served the purposes of media manipulators, trolls and hate groups in 2016. The top newspapers have debunked and deflated Giuliani’s claims, and the idea of the pilfered hard drive has failed to capture the public’s interest in the same way that troves of stolen emails did.
      But while the Trump re-election campaign may have failed to recapture the magic of 2016 when it comes to hacked emails, the president has taken Russia’s 2016 social media playbook and supercharged it with the power of the White House.
      “I’m sure that there is some foreign influence stuff happening and we might know more about it later,” said Phillips. “But so much of the pollution is trickling down from the White House itself, and people have been absolutely overwhelmed with falsehoods and confusion over Covid and ballots … When people get overwhelmed, they either fight or flee. [Trump] is making it almost impossible for people not to get totally burned out and disgusted.” More

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      Donald Trump tries to stoke fears of Covid lockdown under Joe Biden

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      In the final hours before election day, one of Donald Trump’s closing messages to Americans is an exaggerated threat: that a Joe Biden presidency will result in a national Covid-19 lockdown.
      Speaking in Iowa on Sunday, the president said the election was a “choice between a deadly Biden lockdown … or a safe vaccine that ends the pandemic”.
      Coronavirus cases are surging in the US and most battleground states are particularly badly affected. On Friday, the total case count surpassed 9m while the daily count set a new world record, at about 100,000. On Sunday 81,493 new cases were reported, according to Johns Hopkins University, and 447 new deaths. Nearly 231,000 people have died.
      In Iowa, painting a dark and dystopian vision, Trump told a crowd of closely packed supporters, many not wearing masks: “The Biden plan will turn America into a prison state locking you down, while letting the far-left rioters roam free to loot and burn.”
      That came after he told a rally in Pennsylvania, another swing state, there would be “no school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgivings, no Christmas, no Easters, no Fourth of Julys” under a Biden administration.
      In an interview in August, Biden was asked if he would shut the US down if scientists said he should do so. He said: “I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientists.” Biden has since clarified that he was referring to whether he would follow advice, saying: “There’s going to be no need, in my view, to be able to shut down the whole economy.”
      In October, Biden said: “I don’t think there’s a need to lock down.”
      If national and battleground state polling proves accurate and he wins on Tuesday, Biden has pledged to introduce a “Beat Covid-19” plan that includes a national mask mandate, a $25bn vaccine plan guaranteeing free access to every American, improved test-and-trace efforts, and help for schools and small businesses.
      On Sunday, he told a drive-in event in Philadelphia: “The truth is, to beat the virus, we first have to beat Donald Trump – he is the virus!”
      The former vice-president added: “When America is heard, I believe the message is going to be clear: It’s time for Donald Trump to pack his bags and go home. We’re done with the chaos, the tweets, the anger, the hate.”
      Trump has repeated his anti-lockdown message across his social media accounts and campaign ads.
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      On Twitter, he wrote: “Biden wants to LOCKDOWN our Country, maybe for years. Crazy!” A campaign ad, entitled “Don’t let Joe Biden lock down our economy”, places footage from the August interview when Biden said he would shut down if scientists advised alongside news footage from lockdowns in Europe and scenes of protest.
      With very few voters still undecided, Larry Sabato, director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Trump’s approach was not about converting voters – rather it is about “revving up his base”.
      “He is depending on a tremendous turnout tomorrow, and he may get it,” Sabato told the Guardian. “The whole point of it is to remind voters, or the voters remaining, that Trump’s ace card is the economy, and that he’s determined to restore it – even if it means, frankly, more infections and deaths.
      “He’s made a clear choice and Biden has chosen the other path, which is to do what Europe’s doing – not necessarily a complete lockdown, but a substantial lockdown and a mask mandate, all the things that Trump and his supporters won’t like. He’s trying to rev them up. And they’re revved up.”

      Citing recent incidents in Texas, where Trump supporters appeared to try to force a Biden campaign bus off the road, and in New York and New Jersey on Sunday, when hundreds of cars flying Trump flags blocked traffic, Sabato said: “It’s shocking, really. We’ve never had anything like this … it just suggests what’s going to happen if he [Trump] loses.”
      At a midnight rally in Florida, Trump threatened to fire Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert. To chants of “fire Fauci”, he said: “Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election. I appreciate the advice. I appreciate it.”In an interview with the Washington Post, Fauci said the US should prepare for “a whole lot of hurt” and predicted a winter of 100,000-plus cases a day and more deaths.
      “It’s not a good situation,” he said. “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.” More