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      Arizona elections error could affect eligibility of nearly 100,000 voters

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      Arizona’s top elections official said Tuesday that a newly identified error in the state’s voter registration process needs to be swiftly resolved, as early ballots are set to go out to some voters as soon as this week.Election staff in the Maricopa county recorder’s office identified an issue last week, which concerns voters with old drivers licenses who may never have provided documentary proof of citizenship but were coded as having provided it and therefore were able to vote full ballots. The state has a bifurcated system in which voters who do not provide documentary proof of citizenship cannot vote in local or state elections, only federal ones.Because of the state’s very close elections and status as a swing state, the issue affecting nearly 100,000 voters will likely be the subject of intense scrutiny and litigation in the coming weeks. Arizona has more than 4.1 million registered voters.Governor Katie Hobbs directed the motor vehicles division to fix the coding error, which the secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said was already resolved going forward.It’s not clear if any of these voters have unlawfully cast a ballot or if they have already provided proof of citizenship. People who register to vote check a box on registration forms, under penalty of perjury, declaring they are citizens.“We have no reason to believe that there are any significant numbers of individuals remaining on this list who are not eligible to vote in Arizona,” Fontes said in a press conference Tuesday. “We cannot confirm that at this moment, but we don’t have any reason to believe that.”The error, reported by Votebeat on Tuesday, relates to several quirks of Arizona governance.Since 1996, Arizona residents have been required to show proof of citizenship to get a regular driver’s license. And since 2004, they have been required to show proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections.State drivers licenses also do not expire until a driver is age 65, meaning for some residents, they will have a valid license for decades before needing renewal. These factors play into the error.The issue has split the Republican recorder in the state’s largest county, Maricopa, and the Democratic secretary of state. Recorder Stephen Richer is arguing that these voters should only be able to cast a federal-only ballot, while Fontes says the state should keep the status quo of allowing them to vote full ballots given how soon the election is. Fontes directed counties to allow these residents to cast full ballots this year.Arizona is home to a strong election denial movement, and the issue is likely to play into these narratives. Republicans have for months been stoking fears about non-citizens voting in the November election in Arizona and nationwide, despite a lack of evidence that non-citizens are voting in any meaningful numbers.Richer wrote on X that his office would be suing Fontes’s office over this, saying because they disagree, the courts will provide “a clear answer”. Richer’s office identified the issue, which affects all counties in the state. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday afternoon, and in it, the recorder’s office said it had discovered the issue by identifying a non-citizen who was erroneously registered to vote, though the person had not cast a ballot in the past.“All of these people have attested under penalty of law that they are U.S. citizens. And, in all likelihood, they [are] almost all U.S. Citizens,” Richer wrote on X, adding that they had not provided proof.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe group in question contains approximately 98,000 voters. Fontes said the “plurality” of these residents are Republican and between ages 45 and 60, receiving driver’s licenses before 1996.“If you are on this list, rest assured you will be contacted soon by Arizona elections officials,” Fontes said Tuesday. But, he added, elections offices first want the courts to weigh in before reaching out to voters “willy-nilly”.As described by Votebeat, the problem relates to people who “first obtained their Arizona driver’s license before October 1996 and then were issued a duplicate replacement before registering to vote sometime after 2004”.Elections officials would look at voter registration forms to see when licenses were updated to see if the dates meant people had submitted the required proof of citizenship. For dates after October 1996, officials assumed paperwork was in order. But, unbeknownst to elections officials, the motor vehicles division’s system would update the license issuance date when people replaced or updated their licenses, making it look like the license was newer and would have included proof of citizenship.The error has occurred, seemingly unnoticed, since 2005, the lawsuit says. More

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      Senate Republicans block bill to ensure IVF access for second time

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      Senate Republicans voted on Tuesday afternoon to block a bill that would have ensured access to in vitro fertilization nationwide.Every Republican, except Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against the measure. Though a majority of 51 voted in favor, the bill needed 60 votes to pass. Democrats had brought the measure back to the floor after Republicans previously blocked it from advancing in June.Democrats have been pushing the issue this year after Alabama’s supreme court ruled that frozen embryos could be considered children under state law, leading several clinics in the state to suspend IVF treatment.Republicans, including Donald Trump, have scrambled to counter what could be a deeply unpopular stance against IVF.“Senate Republicans put politics first and families last again today by blocking the Right to IVF Act for the second time since June,” said Emilia Rowland, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee.The vote marked Democrats’ latest election-year attempt to force Republicans into a defensive stance on women’s health issues.The bill had little chance of passing, but Democrats are hoping to use the do-over vote to put pressure on Republican congressional candidates and lay out a contrast between Kamala Harris and Trump in the presidential race, especially as the former president has called himself a “leader on IVF”.Rowland warned that Donald Trump would jeopardize access to fertility treatments if he wins in November.“Voters know the difference between words and actions,” she said. “And between now and November, they will turn out against Republicans from the top to bottom of the ballot.”The push started earlier this year after the Alabama supreme court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law. Several clinics in the state suspended IVF treatments until the Republican-led legislature rushed to enact a law to provide legal protections for the clinics.Democrats quickly capitalized, holding a vote in June on the congressional bill from the Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth and warning that the US supreme court could go after the procedure next after it overturned the right to an abortion in 2022. The legislation would also increase access to the procedure and lower costs.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on the floor on Tuesday morning that the vote was a “second chance” for Republicans.“Americans are watching, families back home are watching, and couples who want to become parents are watching, too,” Schumer said.Meanwhile, Republicans have scrambled to counter Democrats on the issue, with many making clear that they support IVF treatments. Trump last month announced plans, without additional details, to require health insurance companies or the federal government to pay for the fertility treatment.In his debate with Harris earlier this month, Trump said he was a “leader” on the issue and talked about the “very negative” decision by the Alabama court that was later reversed by the legislature.But the issue has threatened to become a vulnerability for Republicans as some state laws passed by their party grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process. Before its convention this summer, the Republican party adopted a policy platform that supports states establishing fetal personhood through the constitution’s 14th amendment, which grants equal protection under the law to all US citizens. The platform also encourages supporting IVF but does not explain how the party plans to do so.Democrats say that if Trump wants to improve access to the procedure, then Republicans should vote for their legislation.Duckworth, a military veteran who has used the fertility treatment to have her two children, has led the Senate effort on the legislation. “How dare you,” she said in comments directed toward her Republican colleagues after the first vote blocking the bill.Republicans have tried to push alternatives on the issue, including legislation that would discourage states from enacting explicit bans on the treatment, but those bills have been blocked by Democrats who say they are not enough.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Trump launches new cryptocurrency venture but declines to share details

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      Donald Trump launched his family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, on a livestreamed interview on the social media platform X on Monday. The Republican presidential nominee gave few details about the venture but did offer his first public comments on the apparent assassination attempt against him a day earlier.Trump did not discuss specifics about World Liberty Financial on Monday or how it would work, pivoting from questions about cryptocurrency to talking about artificial intelligence and other topics. Instead, he recounted his experience on Sunday, saying he and a friend playing golf “heard shots being fired in the air, and I guess probably four or five.“I would have loved to have sank that last putt,” Trump continued. He credited the Secret Service agent who spotted the barrel of a rifle and began firing toward it as well as law enforcement and a civilian who he said helped track down the suspect.World Liberty Financial is expected to be a borrowing and lending service used to trade cryptocurrencies, which are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. Exchanges often charge fees for withdrawals of bitcoin and other currencies.Other speakers after Trump, including his eldest son, Don Jr, talked about embracing cryptocurrency as an alternative to what they allege is a banking system tilted against conservatives.Experts have said a presidential candidate launching a business venture in the midst of a campaign could create ethical conflicts.“Taking a pro-crypto stance is not necessarily troubling, the troubling aspect is doing it while starting a way to personally benefit from it,” Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said earlier this month.During his time in the White House, Trump said he was “not a fan” of cryptocurrency and tweeted in 2019: “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.” However, during this election cycle, he has reversed himself and taken on a favorable view of cryptocurrencies.He announced in May that his campaign would begin accepting donations in cryptocurrency as part of an effort to build what it calls a “crypto army” leading up to election day. He attended a bitcoin conference in Nashville this year, promising to make the US the “crypto capital of the planet” and create a bitcoin “strategic reserve” using the currency that the government currently holds.Hilary Allen, a law professor at American University who has done research on cryptocurrencies, said she was skeptical of Trump’s change of heart on crypto.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think it’s fair to say that that reversal has been motivated in part by financial interests,” she said.Crypto enthusiasts welcomed the shift, viewing the launch as a positive sign for investors if Trump retakes the White House.Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s campaign has not offered policy proposals on how it would regulate digital assets like cryptocurrencies.In an effort to appeal to crypto investors, a group of Democrats, including New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, participated in an online Crypto 4 Harris event in August. Neither Harris nor members of her campaign staff attended the event. More

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      We live in an era of political violence. The rich and famous aren’t the primary targets | Moira Donegan

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      It is not a good sign for US politics that an apparent second assassination attempt against the former president and current Republican nominee, Donald Trump, seems to be fading into the media’s background noise as a relatively minor story. In part, this might be because of the particulars of the incident at Trump’s Palm Beach golf club in Florida, not far from his resort home at Mar-a-Lago.For one thing, the suspect never fired a shot, though he was armed with an AK-47-style assault rifle with the serial number scratched off; having hidden in the bushes on the golf course for an estimated 12 hours, apparently waiting for Trump to appear, the would-be shooter was apprehended by Secret Service agents, who shot at him and missed.That makes this apparent second attempt somewhat less severe than the first, fewer than three months ago, at a Trump rally outside Pittsburgh, where a sniper on a nearby roof not only managed to fire shots at Trump, but was able to graze the former president’s ear.This time, the former president was never in real danger; he was hundreds of yards away at the time, and the Secret Service said on Monday that the alleged gunman did not have Trump in his sights. The golf course seems to have been relatively empty at the time; there have been no reports of other players being endangered by the plot. Unlike at most of Trump’s public outings, there were no crowds – which means that fewer people were at risk. And unlike most of Trump’s public outings, there were also no cameras – which means that his campaign will have a harder time spinning the incident into pro-Trump propaganda.In fact, no one seems to have been shot at all in Palm Beach. Though the Pittsburgh shooting injured several and claimed the life of one of Trump’s rally-goers, Corey Comperatore, a Butler county resident, in the Palm Beach shooting, not even the alleged assailant himself was harmed: though he fled the scene, he was captured later in a traffic stop as he headed north. That means he may well become one of those rare historical creatures: the would-be presidential assassin who lives long enough to stand trial. For that much, we can all breathe a sigh of relief: despite the gunshots that were fired and the powerful weapons that the suspect possessed, no one was hurt.Another reason why the apparent second attempt on Trump’s life this cycle may not make much of a dent in the media ecosystem is because the suspect appears recognizably unstable, rendering the case one of the US’s de rigueur tragedies in which profound mental illness mixes with easy access to guns. It’s true that Ryan Wesley Routh, the alleged gunman, did seem to have some degree of political agenda: he appears, oddly enough, to be a partisan of the Ukraine war effort. But Ruth’s long, checkered past and odd personal statements make it seem unlikely that his political motives were coherent.They were certainly not partisan. Routh voted for Trump in 2016 and has made public statements supporting other candidates since, seeming to mostly believe in a hawkish foreign policy. He has voiced support for Nikki Haley, for example; he seems to have hoped, during 2024’s abortive Republican primary, that she would run for vice-president on a ticket topped by the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. His decades-long criminal record includes arrests for writing bad checks, a hit and run, resisting arrest, a concealed weapons violation and possession of a weapon of mass destruction – with that last charge, a felony, stemming from an incident in which he barricaded himself inside a house with an automatic weapon.Perhaps not the most lucid political thinker, Routh nevertheless followed his passion to Ukraine in recent years, when he was interviewed by several news outlets reporting on a minor trend of Americans traveling to eastern Europe to fight against the Russian invasion. He told the New York Times back in 2022 about a cockamamie scheme he cooked up there, in which Afghans who had previously fought the Taliban would be transported, somehow at his own direction, to Ukraine, to join the anti-Russian cause. The Times reporter who interviewed Routh said that at the time that he thought the man seemed out of his depth. That might be an understatement.Routh, then, does not appear to be a leftwing extremist or Democratic partisan, motivated by fear of what Trump would do to the country. He seems, rather, like an addled man, perhaps not entirely in possession of his own mind, with a penchant for violence and persistent fantasies of Rambo-like military heroism. Among the devices that the Secret Service discovered at the suspect’s hiding spot in the bushes at the Palm Beach golf course was a GoPro: whatever he imagined he was going to do there, it seems that he intended to stream it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn another country, Routh’s thin political understandings and ardent delusions of grandeur would make him marginal, an outcast or perhaps someone seen as in need of help. In ours, he is a public danger. Despite being a felon, Routh was able to get himself a weapon of war; despite having been violent and dangerous to others in the past, he was still free, without any apparent restraints on his movement or psychiatric care. We are all very lucky that it wasn’t worse.But living in the US, now, means taking a risk that the combination of a man’s grievance and insanity will collide with our dangerously lax gun laws in a way that will cost you your life. Immigrant Americans may be massacred in a Walmart by nativist scaremongers for having the temerity to come to this country. Black Americans may be gunned down in a grocery store by a white supremacist. Women may be slaughtered by husbands, boyfriends or exes who decide that their inability to control them is an insult that demands the sacrifice of their lives. These, too, are the product of our polarized, hateful and hierarchical culture, and yet these incidents do not get described as “political violence”. And yet our politics has become highly violent, and usually, the rich and famous are not its primary targets. Every American risks getting shot in public. Most of us do not get to face that risk with Secret Service protection.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Melania Trump has a memoir coming out – and she’s acting pretty strangely | Arwa Mahdawi

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      There’s something weird going on with Melania Trump. I know that’s an evergreen statement – but bear with me, OK, because we’ve got a bit of a mystery on our hands. The former first lady, you see, has a memoir coming out on 8 October. There’s nothing particularly surprising about this: every grifter who spent five minutes in the Trump White House seems to have written a tell-all book. It was inevitable she would put pen to paper at some point. After all, if there’s a dollar to be squeezed from something – be that Mother’s Day jewellery, Bibles, steaks or cryptocurrency – you can be sure to find a Trump with their hands out.What is surprising is how little fanfare there has been around this new book – which is simply titled Melania. Indeed, unless you keep a close eye on the Trumps, you may have missed news of the forthcoming memoir altogether. We’re only a few weeks away from the release date and there hasn’t been a big press tour. This seems bizarre. Presuming Melania wants to sell as many books as possible, you’d have thought she would have spent the last few months doing nonstop PR to drum up preorders. Then again, she may assume there is no need for marketing if the Republican National Committee does what it did with Donald Trump Jr’s “bestselling” book in 2019 and just bulk buys copies.I’m not saying there has been no PR, of course. There was a press release in July that described the book as “a powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has carved her own path, overcome adversity and defined personal excellence”. It also revealed the cover, which is about as basic as you can get: a black background with MELANIA in white type on it. Although, to be fair, the collector’s edition (a mere $150) is white with black type and comes with a digital collectible. So a little thought went into the design.Melania also tweeted a simple promotional video to go with the press release, saying, “May your experience reading my book be as enjoyable as the writing process was for me.” Which begs the question: what was her writing process? Did she stay up into the early hours like Rumaan Alam, who smashed out his first novel between 7pm and 2am? Did she emulate Haruki Murakami’s schedule and start writing at 4am every morning? Or is it possible – just throwing it out there – that she might have lounged by a pool and dictated a few stories to a ghostwriting minion? It’s a mystery we might never solve.The handful of cryptic promotional videos, which have a David Lynch-like quality to them, and brief quotes to Fox News that have followed haven’t shone much light on Melania’s writing process or the contents of the book, although there are a few intriguing titbits. In a 5 September video, for example, Melania says she feels “a responsibility to clarify the facts [and share] the truth”. Then, in a video posted on 10 September, she implies the July assassination attempt on Trump might have been a conspiracy and says: “There is definitely more to this story and we need to uncover the truth.” What she leaves out, alas, is whether her new book uncovers any of this “truth” or whether it’s just a bunch of photos of fancy rugs with fanciful captions. (During the riots on 6 January, Melania was reportedly in the middle of a photoshoot of decorative objects she had amassed at the White House for a rumoured coffee table book.)The ever hopeful mischief-making part of my mind would like to think that Melania’s memoir contains some exciting truths we haven’t heard before. Some insights into where the proverbial bodies are buried – and why Ivana Trump’s actual body is interred on the former president’s golf course. Perhaps Melania, who is rumoured to hate politics and her husband, has played the long game and her memoir contains an October surprise that will sink Trump’s election chances?You don’t need to tell me this is all wishful thinking. Rather than any bombshells, one imagines the book contains glossy photos of ugly and incredibly expensive knick-knacks interspersed with self-aggrandising drivel about her charity initiatives. The truth about Trump is out there but it’s not going to be in Melania’s memoir. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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      Democrats face campaign dilemma after second apparent Trump assassination plot

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      In comments to Fox News Digital on Monday, Donald Trump blamed Democrats for the repeated attempts on his life. “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out,” he said.Also on Monday, the former president released a list of quotes that the campaign described as incendiary. At the top of that list was a quote from Kamala Harris saying: “Trump is a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”The election is seven weeks away. Though Democrats want to place the threat of a repeat of political violence such as the January 6 attacks at the center of their political argument, Trump can adopt the language of victimhood, because he is a victim in this case – the target of a second apparent assassination attempt in less than two months. Democrats face a dilemma about how to effectively campaign against a candidate who has been the target of violence and who continues to claim that the other side’s rhetoric is inciting that violence.Democrats still talk about Trump as a threat to democracy. But they don’t lead with it any more. Instead, Trump is “weird”. Project 2025 is nightmarish and unpopular. Abortion will be illegal. It’s harder for Trump to allege that Democrats are inciting violence when they’re talking about unpopular policies.Leaders can also effectively reinforce social norms against violence, said Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins University, who studies political violence in the US electorate. “It can be pretty simple. You can just say ‘political violence has no place in a democratic election,’” she said. “Make it very clear, and often a very simple rejection of violence will make people step back.”Joe Biden delivered just that message Monday, condemning political violence in remarks in Philadelphia at the National HBCU Week Conference.There is “no place for political violence in America – none. Zero,” Biden said. “In America, we resolve our difference peacefully at the ballot box, not at the end of a gun.” Violence “solves nothing. It just tears the country apart. We must do everything we can to prevent it and never give it any oxygen.”Anti-violence political messaging is most effective when it comes from the political perspective of those who have committed violence, Mason said. “The problem with these attempts on Trump is that it’s really perpetrators who are not clearly from one side or the other.”Such is the apparent case with Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old entrepreneur from Hawaii who had donated to Democrats and supported Ukraine’s war against Russia, but also voted for Trump in 2016 and advocated for Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy to win the Republican nomination.Louisville mayor Craig Greenberg remembers how people reacted when a gunman shot at him in his campaign headquarters as he was running for office two years ago. There was an outpouring of support from both Democrats and Republicans, he said.“I think extremists on all sides need to turn down the heat of their rhetoric,” Greenberg said. “I think antisemites and racists have no place in political discourse.”Quintez Brown, a social justice activist running for the Louisville metro council, walked into Greenberg’s office on Valentine’s Day and shot at him six times. One bullet passed through Greenberg’s sweater before staffers could barricade the door. Support for Greenberg was bipartisan, though the rhetoric wasn’t always nonpartisan.“I think candidates and elected officials should be held to the highest standards and encourage civil discourse that does not fan the flames of hatred and violence,” Greenberg said. “This often happens, sometimes directly, more often indirectly, with dog whistles and metaphors and tweets.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStill, some see the need for Democrats to tread carefully as unnecessary, given Trump’s history of inciting violence.The idea that Trump – after the events of January 6 and recent fabrications about the conduct of Haitian refugees that have led to school closures amid threats – could offer criticism on incitement raised the rancor of David Brand, a Democratic activist and operative in Atlanta.“We have strongly condemned in the strongest possible term what he did, what this individual did and called for swift justice,” Brand said. “It is ironic also that he is being prosecuted by a Haitian American immigrant who will be protecting Donald Trump’s civil rights. Donald Trump never gave Paul Pelosi the same respect that we are giving again, and the same respect for the rule of law.”But Trump’s campaign described criticism of this contradiction as itself an incitement.But concerns among Democrats about how to effectively campaign may be short-lived. The most surprising thing about political violence right now is how quickly people move on, Greenberg said.“Whether it’s with the assassination attempts now on President Trump or other acts of political violence or violence in general,” he said. “I mean, just look at Georgia two weeks ago. [A] horrible school shooting. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but how quickly people seem to forget how much gun violence is impacting our country.” More

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      Why Republicans are raising double the money in down-ballot races

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      Since Kamala Harris launched her presidential bid in July, Democrats have showered her campaign with cash. Last month alone, the vice-president raised $361m, tripling Donald Trump’s fundraising haul of $130m for the month. According to Harris’s campaign, she brought in $540m in the six weeks after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race.Democratic congressional candidates appear to be benefiting from this financial windfall as well, as Republicans sound the alarm about their fundraising deficit in key races that will determine control of the House and Senate in November.But in one crucial area, Republicans maintain a substantial cash advantage over Democrats: state legislative races. In recent years, Republicans have controlled more state legislative chambers than Democrats, giving them more power over those states’ budgets, election laws and abortion policies.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which supports the party’s state legislative candidates, has raised $35m between the start of 2023 and the end of this June, the committee told the Guardian. In comparison, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) – which invests in an array of state-level campaigns, such as supreme court races, in addition to legislative campaigns – has raised $62m in the same time period.That resource gap is now rearing its head in key battleground states, the DLCC says. In Pennsylvania, a crucial state for the presidential and congressional maps, Republican state legislative candidates have spent $4.5m on paid advertisements, compared with $1.4m for Democratic candidates.“When we think about the context of what’s at stake, we think about more than 65 million people being covered by our target map this year,” said Heather Williams, president of the DLCC. “And that means that the rights of all those people will be determined by who’s in power the day after the election.”A race to fill the funding gapDemocratic party leaders seem aware of the high-stakes surrounding state legislative races. Earlier this month, the Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced a transfer of $25m in funds to help down-ballot candidates, including $2.5m for the DLCC. Williams said the transfer represented the party’s largest investment to date focused solely on winning state legislative chambers.“The underlying story here is that the Harris campaign, our federal officials [and] the party believe that we need to win up and down the ballot,” Williams said. “We know that our freedoms are on the line, that democracy is on the line in the states, and so investing in state legislatures is really an emerging cornerstone of Democrats’ strategy to protect against Maga [‘Make America great again’] extremism.”But the $2.5m investment, while significant, does not come close to closing with DLCC’s resource deficit against the RSLC. Democratic-aligned outside groups, such as the States Project and the Super Pac Forward Majority, are trying to help close that gap: Forward Majority is now on track to spend $45m this election cycle on promoting Democratic state legislative campaigns, the group announced on Wednesday. The States Project has also announced plans to spend $70m this cycle, after investing heavily in state legislative races two years ago.Forward Majority formed in 2017, after Republicans notched significant victories up and down the ballot in 2016. At the time, Democrats controlled 31 legislative chambers compared with Republicans’ 68. In the years since, Democrats have chipped away at that disadvantage, now controlling 39 chambers.“It was incredible in that decade or so to see people pay more attention to it, to recognize this level of the ballot is critically important,” said Leslie Martes, chief strategy officer at Forward Majority.Despite that progress, Martes warned against complacency, as Republican-aligned groups have shown a willingness to invest heavily in state legislative races as well. During the legislative races in Virginia last year, the conservative Pac Americans for Prosperity spent $2.2m, which represented the largest contribution of any outside group.“We can’t let the Republicans flood the zone with late money,” Martes said. “They have access to it, and we can never underestimate their ability to come in late.”Post-Roe momentumDemocrats had a good year in 2022 when it came to state legislative elections. They flipped the Minnesota senate and both chambers of the Michigan legislature, giving them governing trifectas in both states thanks to the Democratic governors there. Some of that momentum was attributed to Democratic voters’ increased focus on state legislatures after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOf the 22 states that currently enforce an abortion ban of some kind, 19 of them are fully controlled by Republicans. (A judge struck down North Dakota’s abortion ban on Thursday, but the law had not yet been enjoined as of Friday afternoon.) Meanwhile, several states controlled by Democrats – including California, Minnesota and New Jersey – have expanded abortion rights since Roe was overturned. That contrast has enlightened many voters on the importance of state elections, Martes argued.“I think most people did not believe that Roe was going to fall,” she said. “And I think it’s been incredibly impactful for people to now know it’s up to the states … I think that’s really helped people focus in on state legislatures.”Williams hopes that greater awareness will translate into electoral success down ballot, as Democrats look to sustain the trifectas they won in 2022 and flip more legislative chambers.The DLCC’s to-do list for November is long. Democrats want to keep their control of the Michigan house and the Pennsylvania house, where they repeatedly defended their slim majority through several special elections since 2022. The party also hopes to break a Republican supermajority in North Carolina, where the state legislature was able to override the Democratic governor’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban. And in Arizona, Republicans have only one-seat majorities in both chambers, giving Democrats an opportunity for their first governing trifecta in the state since 1966.It is no coincidence that much of Democrats’ state legislative map overlaps with their presidential and congressional maps, Martes said.“The key to winning back Congress also runs through a path of picking up state legislative seats and protecting important incumbents,” Martes said.While leaders of both political parties are fond of saying that every vote matters, the truism is particularly relevant when it comes to state legislative races. Because the voting pool is smaller compared with a congressional or presidential race, a couple hundred votes often separate the winner from the loser in state legislative elections.In one stunning case that arose in 2018, a tied Virginia legislative election was decided by pulling a name out of a bowl, and the lucky Republican winner gave his party control of the house of delegates.While the narrow margins of such races may seem daunting, they can also be motivating, Williams argued.“It’s going to take one vote at a time and one legislative win over and over in all of these states,” Williams said. “I think we’re at such a moment where those efforts – seemingly small efforts – will make a huge difference. And we’ll be able to protect the rights of millions of people across the country.” More

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      There’s a danger that the US supreme court, not voters, picks the next president | David Daley

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      It’s frighteningly easy to imagine. Kamala Harris wins Georgia. The state elections board, under the sway of its new Trump-aligned commissioners, grinds the certification process to a slow halt to investigate unfounded fraud allegations, spurring the state’s Republican legislature to select its own slate of electors.Perhaps long lines in Philadelphia lead to the state supreme court holding polls open until everyone has a chance to vote. Before anyone knows the results, Republicans appeal to the US supreme court using the “independent state legislature” (ISL) theory, insisting that the state court overstepped its bounds and the late votes not be counted.Or maybe an election evening fire at a vote counting center in Milwaukee disrupts balloting. The progressive majority on the state supreme court attempts to establish a new location, but Republicans ask the US supreme court to shut it down.Maybe that last example was inspired by HBO’s Succession. But in this crazy year, who’s to say it couldn’t happen? The real concern is this: if you think a repeat of Bush v Gore can’t happen this year, think again.There are dozens of scenarios where Trump’s endgame not only pushes a contested election into the courts, but ensures that it ends up before one court in particular: a US supreme court packed with a conservative supermajority that includes three lawyers who cut their teeth working on Bush v Gore, one whose wife colluded with Stop the Steal activists to overturn the 2020 results, and another whose spouse flew the insurrectionist flag outside their home.That’s why those scenarios should cause such alarm, along with very real actions and litigation over voting rolls already under way in multiple states. Meanwhile, in Georgia, Arizona, Texas and elsewhere, Republican legislators and boards that might otherwise fly under the radar are busy changing election laws, reworking procedures, altering certification protocols, purging voters and laying the groundwork for six weeks of havoc after Americans vote on 5 November but before the electoral college gathers on 17 December.Lower courts may brush aside this mayhem, as they did after the 2020 election. But if the election comes down to just one or two states with a photo finish, a Bush v Gore redux in which the court chooses the winner feels very much in play. The court divided along partisan lines in 2000; its partisan intensity, of course, has greatly intensified in the two decades since.What’s terrifying is that the court has already proved the Republican party’s willing ally. The Roberts court laid much of the groundwork for this chaos in a series of voting rights decisions that reliably advantaged Republicans, empowered Maga caucuses even in swing states, then unleashed and encouraged those lawmakers to pass previously unlawful restrictions based on evidence-free claims of voter fraud.Right now in Georgia, a renegade state election board – with Trump’s public gratitude – has enacted broad new rules that would make it easier for local officials to delay certifying results based on their own opinion that “fraud” occurred. Democrats have filed suit to block these changes; even the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, has sought to rein them in. But if those efforts fail, it could create a cascade of litigation and missed deadlines in perhaps the closest state of all.That, in turn, could jeopardize the certification of Georgia’s slate of electors – and even encourage the Republican state legislature, a hotbed of election denialism in 2020, to select their own.If that creates a terrifying echo of Bush v Gore, it should. In his influential 2000 concurrence, then chief justice William Rehnquist noted that Florida’s legislature would have been within its rights to name electors if court challenges threatened the state’s voice from being heard as the electoral college met. (A young Brett Kavanaugh explained the nascent independent state legislature theory to Americans during Bush v Gore; on the bench two decades later he would elevate it in a Moore v Harper concurrence that weaponized it for this post-election season.)Georgia’s not-so-subtle chicanery was enabled by the court’s 2013 decision in Shelby county v Holder, which freed state and local entities in Georgia, Arizona and elsewhere from having to seek pre-approval before making electoral changes.This was known as preclearance. It was the most crucial enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act and required the states with the worst histories on voter suppression to have any changes to election procedures pre-approved by the Department of Justice or a three-judge panel in Washington DC.Its evisceration has had far-reaching consequences. Nearly all of them have helped Republicans at the ballot box by allowing Republican legislatures or other bodies to change the rules and place new barriers before minority voters, most of whom vote overwhelmingly Democratic.If preclearance remained intact, these changes – and a wide variety of voter ID schemes, voter purges in Texas, Virginia and elsewhere that confuse non-citizens and naturalized citizens and perhaps intimidate some from voting, as well as new laws about absentee ballots and when and how they are counted – would have certainly been rejected by the Biden justice department. Much of Trump’s predictable post-election madness could have been brushed aside before it did damage.That’s not the case now. Make no mistake: many actions underway at this very moment, with the very real risk of sabotaging the count, slowing the process and kicking everything into the courts, are Shelby’s demon chaos agents, bred for precisely this purpose.Whether enabling extreme gerrymanders, freeing radicalized lawmakers to change procedures they could not touch without supervision only a few years ago, or transforming Rehnquist’s footnote into the dangerous ISL theory, the conservative legal movement and the court’s own decisions, time and again, have made it easier for a contested election to land on its doorstep.And in that case, 180 million Americans might vote for president this fall, but the six Republicans on the US supreme court will have the final say. It shouldn’t surprise anyone if those robed partisans manufacture the theory to ensure the winner they prefer.

      David Daley is the author of the new book Antidemocratic: Inside the Right’s 50 Year Plot to Control American Elections as well as Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count More