Voter Fraud (Election Fraud)

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      Voting Takes Center Stage During US Midterm Elections

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      “I want to do everything I can to use my voice to create the kind of democracy that deserves to exist,” one voter said.They had been assured that they were wasting their time. That the fix was in. That a fair outcome was impossible, what with all that Democratic ballot-rigging — or was it Republican voter suppression?But millions of Americans gave voting a go anyway on Tuesday, dutifully turning up across the country to cast ballots at schoolhouses, libraries and V.F.W. posts.After a campaign marked by the direst of claims, it was, in its way, a small act of faith.“It’s going a little bit too far left,” said one voter, Lucas Boyd, 43, explaining what had brought him to a polling place in Haymarket, Va. “We are trying to bring it back to a middle ground, and that is really why I came today.”Cheryl Arnold, who was also casting a ballot in Haymarket, had a different outcome in mind. A sales worker in her 50s, she said her aim was “not furthering the Republican agenda.”But she and Mr. Boyd, a software salesman, shared at least one fundamental belief: that voting might make a difference.“I want to do everything I can to use my voice to create the kind of democracy that deserves to exist,” Ms. Arnold said.A voter dropping off a ballot in American Fork, Utah, on Tuesday.Kim Raff for The New York TimesStill, it was an Election Day of unusual tensions, in keeping with a campaign in which accusations of voting fraud were sometimes cast even before the ballots themselves were, and in which some private citizens took it upon themselves to take up arms and “guard” absentee ballot boxes.“I definitely know where the exits are,” said one poll worker in Flagstaff, Ariz., Brittany Montague. “Now more than ever, we’re so polarized, and there isn’t a lot of trust in the system.”In Arizona on Tuesday morning, reports of dozens of malfunctioning ballot-counting machines in Maricopa County prompted a surge of voter fraud claims across right-wing media.“None of this indicates any fraud,” said Bill Gates, chairman of the Maricopa County board of supervisors, a Republican. “This is a technical issue.”A video captured election workers trying to reassure voters.“No one’s trying to deceive anybody,” one poll worker says.“No, not on Election Day. No, that would never happen,” the person recording the video replies sarcastically.Even before the day began, more than 40 million Americans had cast early ballots, and millions more were joining them on Tuesday.In Michigan, the abortion issue was a big draw at the polls. After the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade, Michigan was one of five states that had abortion-related measures on the ballot. In Birmingham, an affluent community outside Detroit, a slow stream of people turned out to vote on Proposal 3, a ballot measure to protect abortion rights.Outside the Baldwin Public Library, where Birmingham city workers had turned metered parking into “voter-only parking” for the day, Alexandra Ayaub said supporting the measure was her main reason for voting.“Michigan should be a safe place for women,” said Ms. Ayaub, 31, who described herself as leaning Democratic.In nearby Warren, Rosemary Sobol also said the initiative was her main motivation for voting — even if she was still undecided.“I’m not completely anti-abortion, but I’m also a Catholic,” said Ms. Sobol, an 81-year-old retired principal. “It’s a very hard decision.”For some voters, it was a day to reconsider past positions.Andrew O’Connell said that he had been born into a Democratic family and that he had long taken pride in switching up his votes between the parties, but at 6:30 Tuesday morning, he could be seen standing outside a busy polling location on Staten Island holding a sign displaying all of the Republicans on the ballot. Everything changed with the social unrest in 2020, he said.“I believe safety took a back seat back when the protests were going on,” Mr. O’Connell said. “We sat back and watched that happen and some folks didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.”A family voting in Miami Beach, Fla., on Tuesday.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesFor other voters, it was a day to reconsider life choices — like where to live.When Albert Latta, 67, left a polling place in Kenosha, Wis., he had a weary look. The most important issue for him in this election? “Honesty,” he said.Mr. Latta said that he had voted Democratic in the races for governor and the Senate and that he was so tired of deception from Republicans — on election integrity, among other issues, he said — that he was considering picking up and moving across the state line into the blue of Illinois.“How Wisconsin goes in this election may have a lot to do with that decision,” he said. “I call today’s vote the biggest I.Q. test this country has ever taken.”For some voters, a hop across state lines, it appeared, might not do the trick.In the city of Folsom, in one of liberal California’s more conservative regions, John Butruce, 66, offered a fairly succinct synopsis of his take on things before casting his ballot.“I don’t like the taxes, I don’t like the inflation, I don’t like the crime,” Mr. Butruce said. “I don’t like the state of the country or the state of the state.”In Kenosha, where voters were deciding whether to re-elect Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, the shadow of the demonstrations and riots that tore through the city in August 2020 after a police shooting loomed large.“I just want to get him out,” said Abraham Gloria, 40. “He could have stopped what happened with the riots, and he didn’t.”But as she headed into a church in Kenosha to vote, Phyllis Sheets, 60, said she was supporting the Democrats. Democracy, she said, depended on it.“I’m tired of people co-signing foolishness,” Ms. Sheets said. “It’s like people are drinking the silly juice around here: conspiracy theories, not conceding elections, QAnon, Jan. 6. It’s not American.”Christine Grant looking over information while filling out her ballot in Detroit on Tuesday.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesNot everyone was thinking about this election, even as it was still unfolding. They were too busy talking about the next one, and news of a “very big announcement” from a Republican politician in Florida.In Warren, Mich., Mike Smith, 58, had just one quibble.“I hope he comes back sooner than 2024,” Mr. Smith said. “I still don’t accept 2020.”Word that Donald J. Trump might soon make formal what has long been expected played out at polling sites across a polarized country to a mix of elation and fear.“I am terrified,” said Liz Lambert, 57, a marketing manager in Scottsdale, Ariz., clutching a coffee cup as she headed to work after casting her ballot. “This country has been through enough. We need stability and maturity and leadership.”In Haymarket, Va., Gloria Ugbaja declined to get engaged by a possible Trump announcement about another run for president.“I thought it was a distraction,” said Ms. Ugbaja, 47, who works in health care management.“Whether he announces or not is his business,” she said. “Every American has to keep moving forward. Whether he tries to run or not, it indirectly does not affect what the average American has to do on a daily basis.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      GOP Begins Ballot Watching Push Ahead of Election Day

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      Tedium and suspicion mix as skeptical observers monitor the largely monotonous work at a sprawling elections office near Las Vegas.NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — The questions began soon after the doors opened to the public at a sprawling elections office inside a warehouse, and they kept coming until the sky was dark and a cold wind was blowing outside. Hundreds of thousands of ballots for Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas, are processed, sorted and counted here, against a backdrop of mountains and desert.Because elections in America are more fraught than ever, the scrutiny of ballot counting now starts well before Election Day, and the legal challenges have already begun.The Republican Party and allied groups, many seized by Donald J. Trump’s falsehoods about fraud in elections, are training monitors around the country to spot what they see as irregularities at absentee ballot counting centers. The monitors are told to take copious notes, which could be useful for potential court challenges, raising the prospect of a replay in state and local elections of Mr. Trump’s attempt to use the courts to overturn his loss two years ago.The activity has not produced reports of major disruptions or problems. But on Thursday, local officials were taking no chances at the vote counting center in Clark County: For almost every observer, the elections office had an “ambassador” to escort and observe the observers. Suspicions ran high.“What are those boxes for?” an older woman in a red coat inquired, pointing to a couple of empty bins. She was sitting behind a glass barrier encircling a cavernous vote tabulation area that had been transformed into a large fishbowl. A county official assured her that he would check; he later said they were used to store damaged ballots. Then she asked why county workers were allowed to bring in bags, fretting that they could be used to smuggle ballots, and was told they were most likely used by the staff to carry in their lunches.Another observer wanted to know what was written on some blue sticky notes that were too far away to read. (They are used to alphabetize unopened ballots.) And a third, a 61-year-old dental hygienist named Caryl Tunison, asked, “Why do you not have cameras in every area here?” while she paused from writing in a notebook on her lap. She was sitting face to face with a young woman about three yards away, a county worker who sat on the other side of a glass partition and was placing envelopes in a bin.In a statement, the county elections department said that it “goes above and beyond what the law requires for observation.”“We recognize the value of helping observers understand the process and responding to their questions, and work to provide answers to their wide variety of questions every day,” the statement read.Sealed ballot boxes stored in cages at the Clark County Election Department on Friday.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesMonitoring elections has long been part of the voting process. But this year, the Republican National Committee has worked alongside outside groups like the Election Integrity Network to seek out activists who believe conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and elections in general being corrupted. The Election Integrity Network is a group led by Mark Meadows, who served as White House chief of staff during the Trump administration, and organized by Cleta Mitchell, one of Mr. Trump’s former lawyers.A number of Republican candidates around the country have stated that they may not accept election results if they lose, heightening concerns among many elections experts. But election officials say that they, too, are far better organized this time around. That high level of organization — and the scrutiny from election denial activists — was evident on a recent visit here.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.Many of the observers are people like Ms. Tunison, who believes the 2020 election was stolen and who said she was encouraged in her newfound activism by her pastor. She repeated a conspiracy theory, which circulated on social media after the 2020 election, that several swing states simultaneously halted counting to thwart Donald Trump. “Who was able to call all the counties and get them to stop counting all at once?” she asked.“I just think the whole system is kind of messed up,” she added in an interview as she was leaving. “We could do much better. I think the whole system should be scrapped and started over with something that’s actually secure.”And what would it be replaced with? “I’m not exactly sure, but I know that it should be mechanical,” she said, with “no internet access to any machine.” But she also said maybe tabulation could be done with “something like the blockchain,” referring to the same technology that is at the heart of Bitcoin.Baseless theories about foreign plots to hack voting machines have ricocheted around the right-wing media for two years and have been pushed by well-funded Trump allies, including Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive.In fact, there is no evidence of widespread fraud or malfeasance in elections. And while there is a criminal investigation underway of election tampering in Georgia, it is examining the conduct of Mr. Trump and his circle of advisers.Still, a number of Republican lawyers have primed poll monitors to search for irregularities that could be used to bring legal challenges to the results later on.That would repeat a strategy used in some states in 2020, but many involved say they are better organized this election cycle. Even as the monitoring was taking place on Thursday in Clark County, a local judge rejected a bid by the R.N.C. to have more representation on panels that verify ballot signatures.At the Clark County office, ballots come in from polling places and drop boxes and are brought to a loading dock in the back of the warehouse. Then they are moved through a series of stations where observers from the public can view how they are handled.The number of observers fluctuated throughout the day and into the night. There was a woman in a leather hat complaining that she had been treated rudely by a county worker, a man watching while he twiddled a Rubik’s Cube.A young man from the R.N.C., who declined to comment, monitored late into the evening, while toting around a book by Ray Dalio, the hedge fund manager, called “The Changing World Order,” which ponders the rise of China and the twilight of America.Placards throughout the office inform the observers of state law and guidelines. They are prohibited, the placards say, from “talking to workers within the central counting” area or from “advocating for or against a candidate.”Much of the work is monotonous. In one area, stacks of ballots that had been through a sorting machine were hand counted for verification purposes. Watching the workers count the ballots was a tedious business. One observer, whose hair was pulled back in a pink scrunchie, paused from her own note taking to lean over and whisper to a reporter who was taking his own notes. She offered the friendly admonition of an armchair editor: “It’s going to be a boring article.”Unopened mail-in ballots being sorted at the Clark County Election Department on Friday.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesIn another room, a group of seven observers watched as ballots were fed through the ballot sorting machine. Those that looked good were put into green bins set out on a long table in the middle of the room. Ballots with signatures that could not be verified using county records were sorted into red bins for further review. The sound of the thrumming machine was not unlike a train going over tracks.“I was being lulled to sleep,” said Matt Robison, a 60-year-old service technician for a propane company who came with his wife of 39 years, Sandra. They had not come on behalf of any particular group, but because of their own concerns about the last election.“These people have a job to do, and it looks like they’re doing their job,” said Mr. Robison. “If there’s ballots being shredded or anything like that, there’s no way that we’ll ever be able to see that. But I personally feel like there had been — I don’t know about necessarily in Nevada — but there had been election tampering in 2020. But the thing is I think that what we’re able to witness here shows people doing their jobs.”Election officials have long hoped that letting skeptics into the process would convince them to reject the conspiracy theories. That seemed a tall order in Clark County.Mr. Robison described himself as uncomfortable with “woke ideologies” and as a fan of “2000 Mules,” the film promoting conspiracy theories that have been discredited by experts, media outlets and government agencies.“You know, Dinesh D’Souza’s film?” he said, referring to the film’s director, who was pardoned by Mr. Trump after pleading guilty to campaign finance fraud. The film’s two star experts, Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, were recently jailed for contempt of court.Still, he was cautious about what he thought about the 2020 election. “Unless I can see it, unless I actually witness something, then I can’t confirm,” he said, adding that if he “put my right hand in the air and swear solemnly to tell the truth and the whole truth,” the “truth would be I don’t know.”His wife, a gun training instructor, is more strident in her views and has come more often to observe. Her husband said, jokingly, that “she’s addicted.”Ms. Robison expressed dissatisfaction with the county and the observation process and wanted to see the ballots being unloaded in the back of the building — “the entire chain of custody,” as she put it.The county elections department said in its statement that its “observation plan was reviewed by the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office and upheld by the court before the primary election” and that “this included identifying the areas where observation would be provided.”For Trump supporters like Ms. Robison, the 2020 election was a catalyst.“There’s no question in my mind and a lot of other people’s minds that 46 should not be in the White House,” she said, referring to President Biden. “It was a stolen election.” More

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      Town That Inspired Debunked Voter Fraud Film Braces for Election Day

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      It was a jumpy, 20-second video clip that touched off a firestorm: During a local primary election two years ago, the former mayor of this farm town of San Luis, Ariz., was filmed handling another voter’s ballot. She appeared to make a few marks, and then sealed it and handed a small stack of ballots to another woman to turn in.That moment outside a polling place in August 2020 thrust this town along the southern border into the center of stolen-election conspiracy theories, as the unlikely inspiration for the debunked voter fraud film “2,000 Mules.”Activists peddling misinformation and supported by former President Donald J. Trump descended on San Luis. The Republican attorney general of Arizona opened an investigation into voting, which is still ongoing. The former mayor, Guillermina Fuentes, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation for ballot abuse — or what the attorney general called “ballot harvesting” — a felony under Arizona law.Ms. Fuentes is one of four women in San Luis who have now been charged with illegally collecting ballots during the primaries, including the second woman who appears on the video. But there have been no charges of widespread voter fraud in San Luis linked to the presidential election. Liberal voting-rights groups and many San Luis residents say that investigators, prosecutors and election-denying activists have intimidated voters and falsely tied their community to conspiracy theories about rampant, nationwide election fraud. The film “2,000 Mules,” endorsed by Mr. Trump, has helped to keep those claims alive, and is often cited by election-denying candidates across the country.But the episode also unleashed long-simmering and real frustrations in San Luis over political control. Some residents cheered what they call a long-overdue crackdown on local corruption, which they say is a real issue.It has all added up to a sense of division and unease in a close-knit city of roughly 37,000 where Cesar Chavez died, a place built by generations of Mexican farm workers, where lines of migrant workers travel back and forth every day across the border to harvest lettuce and broccoli.“They’re running scared,” Luis Marquez, a retired police officer and school board member, said of voters. “They feel they’re going to get nailed if they do something wrong.”Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesThe border wall in San Luis, on Sunday. Lines of migrant workers from this close-knit town travel back and forth every day across the border to harvest lettuce and broccoli.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesNow, many here say they are afraid to cast ballots or help with voting in the midterms, for fear of receiving a visit from investigators, being monitored by activists or running afoul of a relatively new Arizona ballot abuse law that largely prohibits collecting ballots on behalf of voters other than family members or housemates.The practice is legal in more than a dozen states, and often used to help housebound seniors or people in low-income neighborhoods and rural areas vote. Conservative critics have called it a potential source of voter manipulation and fraud, though their allegations of widespread election fraud are unfounded. The terms “mule” or “ballot harvesting” are used to describe the practice of illegally ferrying other voters’ ballots to polls.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Biden’s Speech: In a prime-time address, President Biden denounced Republicans who deny the legitimacy of elections, warning that the country’s democratic traditions are on the line.State Supreme Court Races: The traditionally overlooked contests have emerged this year as crucial battlefields in the struggle over the course of American democracy.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.“They’re running scared,” Luis Marquez, a retired police officer and school board member running for re-election in San Luis, said of voters. “They feel they’re going to get nailed if they do something wrong.”As early voting began last month, Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced that two more San Luis residents — one of them a current city councilwoman — had been indicted on charges of ballot abuse during the 2020 primary election. Separately, the Yuma County sheriff is investigating 26 potential voting cases across this county in Southwest Arizona.José Castro, a local Baptist pastor, has been trying to persuade his congregants to go to the polls. Two longtime friends, Tere Varela and Maria Robles, normally visit a senior center during elections to guide Spanish-speaking retirees through the ballots. But they said they were planning to stay away in November.“We don’t want to help,” Ms. Robles said one recent afternoon. “We’re afraid.”“Is that the purpose of this?” Ms. Varela asked. “To keep us from voting?”Members of the Sol Azteca dance company performed on Sunday at a church fund-raising festival at San Judas Tadeo Catholic Church in San Luis.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesA sunset view from San Judas Tadeo Catholic Church on Sunday.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesSan Luis offers a glimpse into the tensions unfurling across this strained democracy as Election Day approaches. So far, more than 33 million early votes have been cast nationwide with few reported problems, but there have also been flashes of volatility: election workers have been threatened, poll watchers have staked out ballot boxes and elected officials are girding for challenges to the legitimacy of the midterm results.Arizona was a flash point in Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims immediately after the 2020 presidential election, and the scene of a divisive partisan audit of ballots. Crowds of angry, armed Trump supporters gathered nightly outside election offices.Since then, Republican nominees for statewide office have spread falsehoods about election fraud, and several voters have filed complaints saying that they had been filmed and questioned by strangers at ballot drop boxes. The volunteer poll watchers, some masked or armed, described themselves as there for “election security.” Their presence is part of an organized national effort by conservative groups galvanized by lies that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump.The authorities in the Phoenix area have stepped up security in response. The sheriff of Maricopa County has referred two incidents to prosecutors, and said his officers would sit outside polling places “if that’s what we have to do to protect democracy.”Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is also Arizona’s Democratic candidate for governor, has referred six voter-intimidation complaints to the U.S. Justice Department. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Arizona restricted election-monitoring activists from filming voters, carrying weapons near polling sites or spreading election falsehoods online.The upheaval over voting in San Luis erupted shortly after the 2020 primaries. That year, the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office announced on Aug. 7 that it had opened an investigation in coordination with the attorney general’s office after local elections officials received complaints of election tampering.Some of those complaints had originated with two local Republicans, David Lara and Gary García Snyder.Campaign signs, including for Luis Marquez, seen on Sunday near the border wall in San Luis.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesMayor-elect Nieves Riedel in San Luis on Monday.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesAfter they complained to law enforcement, Mr. Snyder and Mr. Lara said they were contacted by two leaders with True the Vote, a conservative vote-monitoring group based in Houston that for years has promoted false claims of rampant fraud. The organization’s leaders, Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips, traveled to Arizona later in 2020 to meet with Mr. Snyder and Mr. Lara, the men said.Inspired by what they heard in Yuma, True the Vote focused on proving, through voter fraud, the existence of an elaborate national conspiracy to manipulate the outcome of the presidential election — a theory since debunked by experts, governmental agencies and media outlets that have looked into it.This spring, Salem Media Group, a conservative media company, and the conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza released “2,000 Mules,” which centered on Ms. Engelbrecht, Mr. Phillips and their claims. In the film, an unidentified woman from San Luis appears, saying that the city’s elections have been “fixed” for years by local politicians running a cash-for-votes scheme.Ms. Fuentes, the former San Luis mayor, and the woman seen on the video with her, Alma Juarez, were charged in December 2020 with violating Arizona’s ballot abuse law. Earlier this year, they each pleaded guilty to one count of ballot abuse, for accepting four ballots of other San Luis residents.Ms. Fuentes became the first person in Arizona sentenced to jail time under the law, enacted in 2016. Ms. Fuentes’s lawyer, Anne Chapman, criticized the sentence as “an unjust result in a political prosecution.”Activists with the Arizona Voter Empowerment Task Force, a voter-rights group, said the law prohibiting “ballot harvesting” had the effect of criminalizing ballot collection efforts that had helped older residents and people with disabilities in rural and low-income communities like San Luis get their ballots to the polls.People bought breakfast from a food truck before sunrise in San Luis on Monday.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesDavid Lara was one of two local Republicans who complained of election tampering in San Luis.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesWhile more than 80 percent of Arizona voters typically cast early ballots, many of them through the mail, there is no home-mail delivery in San Luis, limited public transportation and many people do not have cars, making it harder to vote.Ms. Fuentes has many admirers in San Luis who praised her for fighting to register and turn out voters.She first ran for office in 1994 and served multiple terms on the City Council and was still on the school board when she was sentenced last month to 30 days in jail. Now, she will be barred from holding elected office or voting.“My mom is not a criminal,” said her daughter, Lizette Esparza. “It’s a political persecution.”Ms. Fuentes had also been charged with forgery and conspiracy, but ultimately pleaded guilty only to a charge relating to ballot collection. A sentencing report from her defense team said she was “extremely remorseful for her involvement in this matter” but had done nothing fraudulent. Her lawyers wrote that in the Election Day video in which Ms. Fuentes handled another voter’s ballot, she was actually checking to make sure the ovals were properly filled.But other residents said the criminal investigation shined light on real corruption and bare-knuckle politics inside their city. In 2012, for example, Ms. Fuentes and others in city government challenged a political rival’s ability to hold office based on her limited English proficiency.In interviews, several residents said they had grown cynical about politics in San Luis. They felt that local officials hoarded power and traded votes for government jobs and benefits. In a court filing, prosecutors with the attorney general’s office said the video of Ms. Fuentes indicated she had been “running a modern-day political machine seeking to influence the outcome of the municipal election in San Luis, collecting votes through illegal methods.”Nieves Riedel, who runs a prominent home-construction business, is a Democrat who rejects lies about the 2020 election. But she was also convinced that some of her city’s leaders had for years tilted local races and manipulated voters into casting ballots for powerful incumbents.“Was voter fraud being committed in the city of San Luis? Yes,” she said. “But not at the national level. It’s small-town politics.”Over the summer, Ms. Riedel won an election to become San Luis’s next mayor. She said she was concerned with improving the jammed two-lane roads and providing better jobs and colleges to keep young adults from leaving. She said she was dismayed, but not surprised, to see outsiders latch onto her city’s troubles for their own ends.“Both parties are capitalizing on this, to settle scores and prove points,” Ms. Riedel said. “I can assure you that both parties can care less about the people of San Luis.”As voting gets underway in San Luis and the candidates for City Council and school board knock doors and plant campaign signs along the desert roads, Mr. Lara said he would again be on the hunt for irregularities. He is coordinating efforts to monitor the main ballot drop box in San Luis.“We have our people,” he said, but declined to be more precise about their activities. “We don’t want to tip off the enemy.” More

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      Bolsonaro Supporters Protest Across Brazil After Election

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      There were more than 200 blockades across Brazil on Tuesday as protesters said they were trying to draw military intervention, hoping it was a path to overturn the election results.Brazil entered its second day of silence from President Jair Bolsonaro following his election loss as his supporters around the country blocked roadways and other infrastructure with demands that the election be overturned.On Tuesday, protesters partially blocked the highway leading to the nation’s largest airport in São Paulo, forcing the cancellation of at least 25 flights. Protesters also set up hundreds of blockades across the rest of the country, disrupting traffic, according to the federal highway police.The demonstrators said they were trying to shut down or “paralyze” the country in order to draw intervention from the military, hoping it was a path to overturn the results of Sunday’s election, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist, defeated the far-right incumbent. Echoing baseless claims from Mr. Bolsonaro ahead of the vote, protesters claimed in interviews and in posts on social media that the vote was stolen — and that they believed they were carrying out what the president wanted.“We want to hear from our president,” said Reginaldo de Moraes, 45, an evangelical pastor standing on the side of the highway leading to São Paulo’s airport. “He has to speak, and we are going to listen. He is our president.”Mr. Bolsonaro has, so far, not spoken publicly. For years, the president has attacked Brazil’s election system as rife with fraud, despite a lack of evidence, and said repeatedly in recent months that he would only accept an election that he believed was “clean.”Blockades along the road leading to Guarulhos International Airport forced the cancellations of at least 25 flights.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesHis silence left one of the world’s largest democracies on edge that there might not be a peaceful transition of power.Several government ministers urged the president to concede on Monday, according to three government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings. By Monday evening, Mr. Bolsonaro had retired to the presidential palace to finish drafting a public response, according to one of the officials, a senior member of Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration. The president planned to release that response on Tuesday, though what exactly he would say and when remained unclear, the senior official said.The officials stressed that the president would make the final decision.The result was confusion inside the government and across the nation. Even as the president stayed silent, his chief of staff spoke with two top advisers to Mr. da Silva, according to the president-elect’s spokesman, who added that officials in Mr. Bolsonaro’s government were giving signs that there would be a normal transition. In Rio de Janeiro, the federal highway police and state police spoke with protesters before they partially blocked a key bridge linking the city with a neighboring area. Maria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York TimesWhile the protests by Bolsonaro supporters were largely nonviolent and were smaller than the mass demonstrations that some officials had feared ahead of the vote, the disruptions were expanding.The federal highway police said that there were 220 active blockades in 21 of Brazil’s 27 states as of Tuesday morning, and that they had broken up 288 blockades since the election ended.In some cases, it appeared that some law enforcement officials were not intervening in the protests. On Monday, three federal highway police officers stood and watched as protesters blocked the main highway between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil’s two largest cities. In Rio de Janeiro, the federal highway police and state police spoke with protesters before they partially blocked a key bridge linking the city with a neighboring area. The police watched for two hours before the protesters dispersed amid heavy rains. Posts and videos on social media also showed the federal highway police not taking immediate action against blockades across the country.Late Monday, Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice, ordered the federal highway police and state police to clear all federal highways. Under the order, the director of the federal highway police faced arrest and a $20,000 fine if his agency did not comply.Around the same time, hundreds of protesters had begun blocking the road to São Paulo’s main airport, Guarulhos International Airport, causing long lines of traffic and forcing airlines to cancel 12 flights on Monday and 13 flights on Tuesday. Just after 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, the federal highway police sprayed a chemical agent toward dozens of protesters who were still blocking two of the three lanes of the airport highway, clearing the blockade. Traffic was flowing within minutes. The police arrested one protester. Demonstrators then stood on the side of the highway waving flags, as authorities warned them to stay off the roadway.Police officials dispersing pro-Bolsonaro protesters on the road to São Paulo’s main airport on Tuesday.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesReginaldo de Moraes, the evangelical pastor who helped lead the protest, said he and other demonstrators were demanding that the military investigate the voter fraud they believed rigged Sunday’s election.“We want the truth about the voting machines,” he said. “We don’t believe them, and we want the Army to take over and count the votes correctly.”Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice, had already issued an order against the federal highway police earlier this week. On Election Day, federal highway officers stopped at least 550 buses carrying voters to polls, questioning people aboard. Alexandre de Moraes, who is also Brazil’s elections chief, then ordered the agency’s director to explain why. Election officials said the traffic stops delayed some voters, but did not prevent anyone from voting.The head of the federal highway police has posted extensively about Mr. Bolsonaro on his official Instagram account. That includes a post on the eve of the election that urged people to vote for Mr. Bolsonaro, according to O Globo, one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers. (The kind of message he posted automatically disappears from Instagram after 24 hours and was no longer visible.)While the protesters are calling for military intervention, a military spokesman said on Tuesday that the blockades were a police matter. The president, Brazil’s Congress or the Supreme Court have the power to order the military to contain crowds in emergencies, and some government officials and academics had worried before the election that Mr. Bolsonaro could try to use that power if he refused to concede. As of Tuesday, the military had not commented publicly on the election.Mr. Bolsonaro has attacked Brazil’s electronic voting machines for years, claiming that they are vulnerable to fraud. As a result, three out of four of his supporters trust the machines only a little or not at all, according to various polls in recent months. There is no credible evidence of fraud in the voting machines since they were introduced in 1996, and independent security experts said that while the machines are not perfect, multiple layers of security prevent fraud or errors.Jack Nicas and André Spigariol reported from Brasília and Laís Martins reported from São Paulo. Victor Moriyama contributed reporting from São Paulo, Ana Ionova from Rio de Janeiro and Flávia Milhorance from Barra Mansa, Brazil. More

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      Inquiry Scrutinizes Trump Allies’ False Claims About Election Worker

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      Prosecutors are seeking testimony from three people who took part in the pressure campaign against the worker, Ruby Freeman, after the 2020 election.ATLANTA — One is a 69-year-old Lutheran pastor from Illinois. Another is a celebrity stylist who once described herself as a publicist for Kanye West. A third is a former mixed martial-arts fighter and self-described “polo addict” who once led a group called “Black Voices for Trump.”All three individuals now find themselves entangled in the criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia after former President Donald J. Trump’s loss there, with prosecutors saying they participated in a bizarre plot to pressure a Fulton County, Ga., election worker to falsely admit that she committed fraud on Election Day in 2020.The three — Trevian Kutti, the publicist; Stephen C. Lee, the pastor; and Willie Lewis Floyd III, the polo fan — have all been ordered to appear before a special grand jury in Atlanta, with a hearing for Mr. Lee scheduled for Tuesday morning at a courthouse near his home in Kendall County, Ill.None have been named as targets of the investigation or charged with a crime. Yet the decision to seek their testimony suggests that prosecutors in Fulton County are increasingly interested in the story of how the part-time, rank-and-file election worker, Ruby Freeman, 63, was confronted by allies of Mr. Trump at her home in the Atlanta suburbs in the weeks after he was defeated by President Biden.Ms. Freeman and her daughter were part of a team processing votes for the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections on election night. Soon after, video images of Ms. Freeman and her daughter handling ballots were posted online and shared widely among some Trump supporters, who claimed falsely that the video showed the two women entering bogus votes to skew the election in Mr. Biden’s favor.Mr. Trump helped spread the fiction. During his now-famous telephone call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Jan. 2, 2021, when Mr. Trump implored Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to “find” the votes Mr. Trump needed to win the state, Mr. Trump referred several times to Ms. Freeman, calling her a “vote scammer” and “hustler.”Ms. Freeman processing ballots in Atlanta during the 2020 general election.Brandon Bell/ReutersMs. Kutti, 52, is a Trump supporter based in Chicago who was once registered as an Illinois lobbyist supporting the cannabis industry; she had also previously worked as a publicist for R. Kelly, the disgraced R&B singer. Prosecutors sought her testimony in a May court filing; it is unclear if she has appeared before the special grand jury, which meets behind closed doors.But Ms. Kutti unquestionably met with Ms. Freeman on Jan. 4, 2021, after showing up in her neighborhood, cryptically claiming to work for “some of the biggest names in the industry.”After persuading Ms. Freeman to meet her at a police station in Cobb County, outside Atlanta — the police had been summoned when Ms. Kutti came to her home, and an officer recommended that they talk at the station — Ms. Kutti warned her that an event would soon occur that would “disrupt your freedom,” according to police body-camera video of the meeting. Ms. Kutti also offered help, telling Ms. Freeman that she was going to call a man who had “authoritative powers to get you protection.”Understand Georgia’s Investigation of Election InterferenceCard 1 of 5An immediate legal threat to Trump. More

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      Justice Dept. Questions Drop Box Monitoring in Arizona

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      The Justice Department has weighed in on the debate over election activists who have been stationing themselves — at times with guns — near ballot boxes in Arizona, saying that their activity may not be constitutionally protected if it has the potential to intimidate voters.“The First Amendment does not protect individuals’ right to assemble to engage in voter intimidation or coercion,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, wrote in a brief filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix. “Nor does it transform an unlawful activity for one individual — voter intimidation — into a permissible activity simply because multiple individuals have assembled to engage in it.”The filing was made in a case that the League of Women Voters of Arizona brought last week against two groups that have been organizing ballot box monitoring, the Lions of Liberty and Clean Elections USA, as well as some of their principals. On Friday, the plaintiff asked the court for an injunction against those groups to stop the activity. That petition is still pending.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.A Pivotal Test in Pennsylvania: A battle for blue-collar white voters is raging in President Biden’s birthplace, where Democrats have the furthest to fall and the most to gain.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Biden’s Agenda at Risk: If Republicans capture one or both chambers of Congress, the president’s opportunities on several issues will shrink. Here are some major areas where the two sides would clash.Ohio Senate Race: Polls show Representative Tim Ryan competing within the margin of error against his G.O.P. opponent, J.D. Vance. Mr. Ryan said the race would be “the upset of the night,” but there is still a cold reality tilting against Democrats.The judge overseeing the case, Michael T. Liburdi, on Friday refused to issue an injunction in a parallel lawsuit against Clean Elections USA, claiming that the Constitution protected the activities of citizens who wish to gather near ballot boxes.The Justice Department’s intervention represents a rebuke to that ruling by Judge Liburdi, a longtime member of the Federalist Society who was appointed in 2019 by President Donald J. Trump.The Justice Department’s brief addresses numerous points made by the judge, including the idea that taking pictures of voters and their car license plates is equivalent to filming police officers in the line of duty. The brief also draws comparisons to numerous past instances of apparent attempts to intimidate or deter voters. In one example from 2004, involving operatives in South Dakota who followed Native American voters and recorded their license plate numbers, a federal judge issued an injunction.The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is weighing an emergency appeal to Judge Liburdi’s ruling filed by the plaintiffs in that case, the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Voto Latino, on Saturday; a lawyer for Clean Elections USA said the group was rushing to file a response later on Monday.And in a hearing on Monday on the League of Women Voters’ case, Judge Liburdi dismissed the Lions of Liberty and its parent organization, the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, from the suit after its leaders pledged in court not to engage in any more election monitoring activities. “We are standing down,” a board member, Jim Arroyo, told the judge. An evidentiary hearing on the injunction petition is scheduled for midday on Tuesday.The founder of Clean Elections USA, Melody Jennings, has not appeared in court. In a Saturday appearance on “War Room,” a podcast hosted by the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, she said that her group was changing its name to the Drop Box Initiative in Arizona, but would retain the Clean Elections USA moniker in the rest of the country.“We are going to rebrand a little bit,” Ms. Jennings said, adding that while she was still looking for volunteers in most places, “I don’t need any more people in Arizona, honestly.”In a second “War Room” interview, on Monday, she asked listeners to consider donating money to True the Vote, a right-wing group focused on voter fraud, to support her legal defense. More