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      Georgia County Signs Up to Use Voter Database Backed by Election Deniers

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      The decision ignores warnings from voting rights groups and some election experts.A suburban county in Georgia agreed on Friday to use a new voter information database endorsed by the election denial movement, a move that defied warnings from voting rights groups, election security experts and state election officials.Columbia County, a heavily Republican county outside Augusta, is the first in the country known to have agreed to use the platform, called EagleAI. Its supporters claim the system will make it easier to purge the rolls of ineligible voters.Among the leading backers for this new system is Cleta Mitchell, a central figure in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and the leader of the Election Integrity Network, a national coalition of activists built around the false idea that the 2020 election was stolen.Ms. Mitchell and others have billed EagleAI as an alternative to the Election Registration Information Center, a widely used interstate system that made it easier for officials to track address changes and deaths as they maintain the voter rolls. That system, known as ERIC, has become the subject of conspiracy theories and misinformation that prompted nine states to withdraw with few backup plans.Ms. Mitchell declined to answer questions about the county’s decision.At an election board meeting Friday, around 40 people packed a room, with all speakers favoring the new system, according to Larry Wiggins, a Democratic member of the board who said he voted in favor.Mr. Wiggins said he was hopeful the tool would help the county handle an expected influx of voter eligibility challenges next year. A 2021 law made it easier for individuals to challenge large numbers of other voters’ registrations at once. Those challenges have often come from the same community of Republican activists now helping to push the EagleAI software.EagleAI was developed by a retired doctor in Columbia County, John Richards Jr., who did not response to a request for comment.Georgia state officials, who reviewed the EagleAI presentations, have found them riddled with errors and said the tools were unnecessary, according to documents provided by the groups American Oversight and Documented.In May, William S. Duffey Jr., the chairman of the State Election Board in Georgia, sent a letter to the county board of elections warning that EagleAI’s software might violate state privacy laws and state election statutes.The county responded in November that it would not allow access to private voter information and that the use of the tools would be limited.In a statement, the Georgia secretary of state’s office noted that the state still belonged to the Election Registration Information Center and that counties needed to follow state laws.Election experts have labeled the new system unnecessary and flawed.“EagleAI cannot be trusted to provide reliable information regarding who on the voter rolls is not eligible to remain there,” wrote seven voting rights and election organizations in a letter to Columbia County commissioners. It continued: “It will point you towards false positives and waste your staff’s time.”But Mr. Wiggins said the board wasn’t convinced. “We don’t put much faith in letters from outside groups,” Mr. Wiggins said. “We pay more attention to local individuals.” More

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      Is Trump Disqualified From Holding Office? The Question Matters, Beyond Him.

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      State courts in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and elsewhere have so far declined to rule in favor of challenges asserting that Donald Trump should be disqualified from holding the presidency again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. (Cases in Michigan and Colorado have been appealed.)Challengers assert that Mr. Trump is barred because, as stated in Section 3, he was an officer of the United States who, after taking an oath to support the Constitution, “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the country, or gave “aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Mr. Trump and his campaign have called this claim an “absurd conspiracy theory” and efforts to bar him “election interference.” Some election officials and legal scholars — many of them otherwise opposed to the former president — have also been critical of the efforts.The Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, writes that invoking Section 3 “is merely the newest way of attempting to short-circuit the ballot box.” Michael McConnell, a former judge and professor at Stanford Law School, claims that keeping Mr. Trump off the ballot on grounds that are “debatable at best is not something that will be regarded as legitimate.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      For Election Workers, Fentanyl-Laced Letters Signal a Challenging Year

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      As overheated rhetoric and threats rise, people are leaving election jobs in record numbers.For the people who run elections at thousands of local offices nationwide, 2024 was never going to be an easy year. But the recent anonymous mailing of powder-filled envelopes to election offices in five states offers new hints of how hard it could be.The letters, sent to offices in Washington State, Oregon, Nevada, California and Georgia this month, are under investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the F.B.I. Several of them appear to have been laced with fentanyl; at least two contained a vague message calling to “end elections now.” The letters are a public indicator of what some election officials say is a fresh rise in threats to their safety and the functioning of the election system. And they presage the pressure-cooker environment that election officials will face next year in a contest for the White House that could chart the future course of American democracy.“The system is going to be tested in every possible way, whether it’s voter registration, applications for ballots, poll workers, the mail, drop boxes, election results websites,” said Tammy Patrick, chief executive for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. “Every way in which our elections are administered is going to be tested somewhere, at some time, during 2024.”Ms. Patrick and other experts said they were confident that those staffing the next election would weather those stresses, just as poll workers soldiered through a 2020 vote at the height of a global pandemic that all but rewrote the playbook for national elections.But they did not minimize the challenges. Instead, they said, in some crucial ways — such as the escalation of violent political rhetoric, and the increasing number of seasoned election officials who are throwing in the towel — the coming election year will impose greater strains than in any of the past.Temporary employees at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix processed mail-in ballots last year.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesBy several measures, an unprecedented number of top election officials have retired or quit since 2020, many in response to rising threats and partisan interference in their jobs.Turnover in election jobs doubled over the past year, according to an annual survey released last week by the Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore. Nearly one-third of election officials said that they knew someone who had left an election post, at least in part because of fears over safety.Another recent report by Issue One, a pro-democracy advocacy group, said that 40 percent of chief election administrators in 11 Western states — in all, more than 160 officials, typically in county positions — had retired or quit since 2020.“They feel unsafe,” said Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials. “They have great amounts of stress. They don’t feel respected by the state or the public. So they find other employment.”A certain number of departures is normal, and in many cases, experienced subordinates can take over the tasks.But departures can create collateral damage: Promoting an insider to a top elections job leaves a vacancy to be filled at a time when it is increasingly difficult to recruit newcomers to a profession that is only becoming more stressful. Experts also worry that the aura of nastiness and even danger attached to election work will drive away volunteers, many of them older Americans, who are essential to elections in all states except the handful in which residents largely vote by mail.Each election requires many hundreds of thousands of volunteers to staff polls. At a recent meeting of election administrators, roughly half were “really worried” about recruiting enough help for next year’s elections, said David J. Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.Experts worry that threats to election workers could drive away volunteers, many of whom are older Americans.Anna Watts for The New York TimesLike Ms. Patrick, of the election officials association, Mr. Becker said he expected that any election-season staffing problems next year would be localized, not widespread. He noted, for example, that groups that are new to recruiting poll workers, such as sports teams, universities and private businesses, are helping to find volunteers.One wild card is the extent to which threats to election workers and other attempts to disrupt the vote will ramp up as the presidential-year political atmosphere kicks in.Harassment and threats against election officials were widely reported in the months after former President Donald J. Trump began to claim falsely that fraud had cost him a victory in the 2020 election. But election officials say that the threats have not stopped since then.In June, the downtown office of Paul López, the Denver clerk and recorder, was attacked overnight with a fusillade of bullets, pockmarking the building’s facade and a ballot drop box and bursting through a window into an office cubicle. And from mid-July to mid-August, the Maricopa County elections office in Phoenix recorded 140 violent threats, including one warning that officials would be “tied and dragged by a car,” Reuters reported.The challenges go beyond threats to demands that can make the requirements of the job feel limitless.In the last year, for example, election offices nationwide have been bombarded with requests, usually from election skeptics and allies of Mr. Trump, for millions of pages of public records relating to voter rolls and internal election operations. Similarly, offices in some states were hit this year with challenges to the legitimacy of thousands of voter registrations.In both cases, the ostensible purpose was to serve as a check on the integrity of the ballot. The practical effect — and sometimes the intent, experts say — has been to disrupt election preparations and, in some cases, to make it harder for some people to vote.“It’s impacting thousands of election officers,” Ms. Patrick said. “It isn’t the case that those who are driving the narrative are numerous. But we know there are large numbers of people listening to them and reiterating what they hear.”Election offices nationwide have been bombarded with requests for millions of pages of public records relating to voter rolls and internal election operations.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesSome of the language is beyond the bounds of normal political discourse.Mr. Trump, in a speech in New Hampshire this month used language more in keeping with fascism than democracy when he threatened to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”Such toxic language has an effect, said Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on political violence and the rule of law at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.“There is a very clear link between the rhetoric of politicians and other leaders who both dehumanize and posit another group as a threat to incidents of political violence,” she said. “Trump himself seems to have a particular knack for this.”“What’s distressing,” Ms. Kleinfeld added, “is not just that election officials are quite worried by these threats, but that they’re not dissipating” in what should have been a quiet period between national elections.Ms. Patrick said she was distressed as well. “I feel like we’re in a very tenuous time, but there are bright lights to see,” she said. “In 2022, we had candidates who lost and conceded admirably and civilly. This month, we saw people continuing to serve as poll workers and people raising their hands to run for office on platforms of truth and legitimacy. As long as we have people who are willing to believe in facts, we’ll get through this.” More

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      Federal Judge Rules Undated Mail-In Ballots in Pennsylvania Must Be Counted

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      The judge said that a state law requiring voters to date the return envelope violated the voting protections of the Civil Rights Act.A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled on Monday that mail-in ballots that are received on time but are undated should be counted, arguing that a state law rejecting such votes violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.The ruling was an opening victory for voting rights groups in a case with national implications heading into the 2024 election, as Republicans and conservative advocacy groups continue to push for stricter voting laws.“We applaud today’s court decision,” said Susan Gobreski, a vice president of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, which is a plaintiff in the case. She added: “Pennsylvania citizens must have complete and unfettered access to the ballot box, free from unnecessary obstacles or interference.”The ruling is likely to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, where the court’s most conservative members have previously supported the state law that requires voters to write the date on the return envelope when sending in their ballots.The Republican National Committee, a defendant in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.In a 77-page opinion, Judge Susan Paradise Baxter of the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania said that the law violated the voting protections of the Civil Rights Act because the requirement that voters date their ballots was not “material to the act of voting.”“The provision protects a citizen’s right to vote by forbidding a state actor from disqualifying a voter because of their failure to provide or error in providing some unnecessary information on a voting application or ballot,” Judge Baxter wrote in her opinion, adding that “the ballots of the individual plaintiffs should be counted because their statutory rights have been violated.”Judge Baxter was first nominated for her position by President Barack Obama and was ultimately appointed by President Donald J. Trump.A protracted legal battle has raged over the validity of undated mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered state officials a week before the 2022 election to refrain from counting ballots that were undated, after the Republican National Committee and other party-aligned groups sued to block those votes from being counted.The N.A.A.C.P. and several other voting rights groups then sued to reverse the order, arguing that failing to count votes because of a missing or incorrect date would potentially disenfranchise thousands of voters. More

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      A Crisis at Gaza’s Hospitals, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes.The Indonesian Hospital in Gaza earlier this month. The enclave has 36 hospitals.Anas al-Shareef/ReutersOn Today’s Episode:Critical Trauma Care Is Not Possible at Any of Gaza’s Hospitals, the W.H.O. Says, by Farnaz FassihiFederal Court Moves to Drastically Weaken Voting Rights Act, by Nick Corasaniti‘Lost Time for No Reason’: How Driverless Taxis Are Stressing Cities, by Yiwen LuEmily Lang More

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      Supreme Court Delays Efforts to Redraw Louisiana Voting Map

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      The Louisiana dispute is one of several voting rights cases churning through the courts that challenge a state’s congressional map.The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower-court ruling that delays an effort to redraw Louisiana’s congressional map, prolonging a bitter clash over the representation of Black voters in the state.The order temporarily leaves in place a Republican-drawn map that a federal judge had said diluted the power of Black voters while an appeal moves through the lower courts.Civil rights groups had sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court abruptly canceled a scheduled hearing aimed at drafting a new map for Louisiana. That map was to include two districts in which Black voters represent a large enough share of the population to have the opportunity to select a candidate. The appeals court said that the state legislature should have more time to redraw its own map before a lower court stepped in.The Supreme Court’s order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications, and there were no public dissents.Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a brief concurring opinion, emphasized that Louisiana should resolve the dispute in time for the 2024 election.In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, the plaintiffs had argued that delays in the case could complicate efforts to instate a new map by the next election, leaving the state with a version that lumps Black voters from different parts of the state into one voting district, diluting their power.By the time the Supreme Court issued its order on Thursday, a hearing date had passed. Another has been set for February.The consolidated cases, Galmon v. Ardoin and Robinson v. Ardoin, are part of a larger fight over redistricting. State lawmakers in the South have contested orders to refashion congressional maps and establish additional districts to bolster Black representation. The outcomes could help tilt control of the House, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.Weeks earlier, the court refused a similar request by Alabama, which had asked the justices to reinstate a map with only one majority-Black district. A lower court had found that Republican lawmakers blatantly disregarded its order to create a second majority-Black district or something “close to it.”At issue in Louisiana is a voting map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in the winter of 2022. The map carved the state into six districts, with only one majority-Black district, which joined Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the state’s two largest cities. About a third of the population in the state is Black.The case has reached the Supreme Court before.A coalition that included the N.A.A.C.P. Louisiana State Conference, the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice and Louisiana voters sued state officials and said the map unfairly weakened the power of Black voters.A district court, siding with the plaintiffs, temporarily blocked Louisiana from using its map in any upcoming elections. A new map, it said, should include an additional district where Black voters could choose a representative. The court gave the Legislature until June 20, 2022, to sign off on a redrawn map.Louisiana immediately appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, and a three-judge panel unanimously denied the request. The state then asked the Supreme Court to intervene.The Supreme Court paused the case until it ruled in the Alabama case, Allen v. Milligan, which concerned similar questions. That essentially allowed the Republican-drawn map in Louisiana to go into effect during the 2022 election.The court lifted the pause in June after a majority of the justices, in a surprise decision, found Alabama’s map had unfairly undercut the power of Black voters. The justices said the appeals court should review the case before the 2024 elections. More

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      Black Voters Fuel Democratic Hopes in Deep-Red Mississippi

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      The fall of a Jim Crow-era election law and a restoration of felons’ voting rights have given Black voters new sway in the state. Democrats’ underdog nominee for governor is looking to capitalize.Just three years ago, Mississippi had an election law on its books from an 1890 constitutional convention that was designed to uphold “white supremacy” in the state. The law created a system for electing statewide officials that was similar to the Electoral College — and that drastically reduced the political power of Black voters.Voters overturned the Jim Crow-era law in 2020. This summer, a federal court threw out another law, also from 1890, that had permanently stripped voting rights from people convicted of a range of felonies.Now Mississippi is holding its first election for governor since those laws fell, the contest is improbably competitive in this deep-red state, and Black voters are poised to play a critical role.Black leaders and civil rights groups in Mississippi see the Nov. 7 election as a chance for a more level playing field and an opportunity for Black voters to exercise their sway: Roughly 40 percent of voters are Black, a greater share than in any other state.“This election is going to be one that is historical,” said Charles V. Taylor Jr., the executive director of the Mississippi state conference of the N.A.A.C.P. “It’d be the first time we don’t have to deal with this Jim Crow-era Electoral College when it comes to the gubernatorial race. And also, we’re at a point in our state where people are fed up and frustrated with what’s currently happening.”Democrats are trying to harness that energy behind Brandon Presley, the party’s nominee for governor. Mr. Presley, who is white, is seeking to ride his brand of moderate politics and his pledges to expand Medicaid to an underdog victory over Gov. Tate Reeves, an unpopular Republican incumbent who has been trailed by a welfare scandal.Black Mississippians lean heavily Democratic: Ninety-four percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, according to exit polls. Any path to victory for a Democrat relies on increasing Black turnout and winning over some crossover white voters.“If you want to win in the South, it takes time,” said Charles V. Taylor Jr., the executive director of the Mississippi state conference of the N.A.A.C.P.Emily Kask for The New York TimesMr. Presley, a member of the Mississippi Public Service Commission and a second cousin of Elvis Presley, has made outreach to Black voters central to his campaign, seeking to win them over on Medicaid expansion, addressing a rural hospital shortage and providing funding for historically Black colleges.On a recent October weekend, Mr. Presley navigated the tents and barbecue smokers at the homecoming tailgate for Alcorn State University, one of six historically Black colleges in the state. As he darted from tent to tent, wearing a purple-and-gold polo to support the home team, Mr. Presley introduced himself to unwitting voters and took selfies with his backers, many who flagged him down amid the din of music and aroma of smoking ribs.“Let’s go Brandon!” came a tongue-in-cheek call from one purple-and-gold tent packed with chairs.LaTronda Gayten, a 48-year-old Alcorn State alumna, ran over to flag Mr. Presley down. The candidate eagerly obliged, high-fiving and hugging supporters, proclaiming, “Come Nov. 7, we’re going to beat Tate Reeves!”Ms. Gayten and her friends made sure to get a picture before Mr. Presley ran off to the next tent. “He’s looking out for the people of Mississippi,” she said. “I’m from a rural area and Wilkinson County, and I don’t want our local hospitals to close down.”Many of the state’s rural areas, however, are heavily white, and any Democrat seeking statewide office must cut into Republican margins there. Mr. Presley routinely notes in his stump speech that he is “building a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, independents, folks who might not ever agree on politics.”The race’s limited polling shows Mr. Presley within striking distance but running consistently behind Mr. Reeves. Mr. Presley outpaced the governor in the most recent fund-raising period by $7.9 million to $5.1 million, but Mr. Reeves enters the final stretch with $2.4 million more in cash on hand.Elliott Husbands, the governor’s campaign manager, said in a statement that Mr. Reeves “has been meeting with voters in every single community across the state, including many Black voters, to work to earn their support.” Mr. Reeves’s campaign shared a social media post with pictures of Mr. Reeves meeting with Black leaders, but declined to offer further details.As Mr. Presley tries to bridge Mississippi’s stark racial gap, he has not shied away from that history.“Black Mississippi and white Mississippi have been purposely, strategically and with intent, divided over racial lines,” Mr. Presley told a lunchtime crowd at a soul-food joint in Jackson. “Intentionally divided. For two things: money and power, money and power, money and power.”Mr. Presley has tried to bridge Mississippi’s stark racial gap but has not shied away from the state’s history.Emily Kask for The New York TimesHe added that Mr. Reeves and his allies were “hoping that Black voters do not come vote in November. That’s what they’re banking on.”Mr. Taylor and the local N.A.A.C.P. have begun a new program to reach out to Black voters.Every day, canvassers fan out across a predominantly Black neighborhood of low-propensity voters, seeking to have extended conversations about the issues that are important to them and what would make them more likely to vote.Calling themselves the Front Porch Focus Group, the canvassers — run by Working America, a labor organization, in collaboration with the national and local N.A.A.C.P. — have knocked on nearly 5,000 doors. Voters’ top priorities are clear: economic opportunities, affordable housing and health care.Yet the canvassers’ resulting study found that Black voters “did not identify voting as a mechanism to solve those issues.”“Among the people with whom we spoke, 60 percent shared a version of, ‘Voting does not make a difference,’” the study says. “One voter told us they ‘would rather work that hour and make 18 more dollars than spend an hour being miserable to vote.’ Jahcari, a 34-year-old man in Jackson, said, ‘In the state of Mississippi, I feel like Black people will never be on top, so we don’t really have that much we can do when it comes to voting.’”Mr. Taylor is hoping to change such attitudes, and the new voting landscape is the beginning. Under the old election law, candidates for statewide office had to win both the popular vote and a majority of State House districts, with maps that were often drawn to pack Black voters together and limit their voting power. The state’s law barring those convicted of certain felonies from voting also disproportionately affected Black voters, disenfranchising one in every six Black adults, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.Black Mississippians, Mr. Taylor said, are some of the voters who have been least “invested in”; the state is so deeply red and so gerrymandered that national Democrats rarely spend money there.Three years ago, Mississippi ditched a Jim Crow-era law that had aimed to marginalize Black voters.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThat is why the local N.A.A.C.P. has increased its budget for this election cycle to nearly $1 million, compared with roughly $500,000 in 2019. Mr. Taylor is also overseeing a vast program of traditional door-knocking, direct mail, targeted digital advertising and ads on Black radio. He is focusing in particular on races connected to criminal justice, like those for district attorney.Mr. Presley’s viability, as well as recent victories in Georgia Senate races and friendly rulings by the Supreme Court, could be paving a path for Black voters to build a stronger voice in the South.“I’m so greatly appreciative to all of the folks that did incredible work in Georgia,” Mr. Taylor said in an interview in his local N.A.A.C.P. office. “If you want to win in the South, it takes time.” Next door, original windows from the civil rights era were still scarred by bullet holes. “We have to look at winning over the span of decades, not just one election.”Mr. Presley’s campaign believes that one election may be now. It has made what it calls a multimillion-dollar investment in outreach to Black voters, including an effort to deputize volunteers and supporters to reach out to their personal contacts.Still, he must win over skeptics.As Mr. Presley meandered through the Alcorn tailgate, a D.J. offered him his mic for a quick word.“We’ve got to beat Tate Reeves, and I need you with us, and I need you to go vote,” Mr. Presley thundered. “God bless you.”Mr. Presley’s campaign has made what it calls a multimillion-dollar investment in outreach to Black voters, including an effort to deputize volunteers and supporters to reach out to their personal contacts.Emily Kask for The New York TimesBut the D.J., who declined to give his name, wasn’t letting Mr. Presley off easy.“We need you to be here next year when you win, and that you will continue to come, and guess what, you’re going to support our H.B.C.U.s,” the D.J. said. “Let me hear you say it: You will support all H.B.C.U.s.”He handed the mic back to Mr. Presley, who borrowed a line from his stump speech.“All H.B.C.U.s, and we’re going to get the $250 million back to Alcorn State University that was taken from them,” Mr. Presley said, referring to a letter the Biden administration sent Mr. Reeves last month saying that Mississippi had underfunded the institution by that amount over 30 years.The D.J. gave him an overhand clap before playing the next song, and Mr. Presley walked to the next tent. More

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      Conservative Election Activists Use Virginia as a Dry Run for 2024

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      Inspired in part by Donald Trump’s baseless rigged-election claims, the activists are trying to recruit supporters to serve as poll watchers and election workers in the state’s legislative contests.In 2021, after Republican victories in Virginia, conservative activists were so proud of their work training poll watchers, recruiting election workers and making other attempts to subtly influence the voting system that they wrote a memo called “The Virginia Model.” The memo detailed ways that other states could follow Virginia’s lead in protecting so-called election integrity.Now these activists are turning their attention back to Virginia, which is a month away from tossup elections that will decide control of the state’s closely divided legislature and offer both national parties clear evidence of their electoral strengths and weaknesses heading into 2024.Every Tuesday night, Virginia Fair Elections, the group that drafted “The Virginia Model,” holds trainings for poll watchers aligned with its mission and encourages conservative activists to register to work at the polls. The organization also hosts trainings for new members of local election boards.The trainings are permeated by an undercurrent of mistrust in the electoral system: Poll watchers are encouraged to arrive early and insist on being as close as legally possible to election workers, voters and ballot machines; to make sure to inspect those machines; and to look for any evidence of potential fraud.“All of us have eyes on,” Clara Belle Wheeler, a former member of the Virginia State Board of Elections who now leads the trainings, said at the end of an hourlong training session for poll watchers last Tuesday, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. “I’m watching.”The group, like many others across the country, is taking its cues from former President Donald J. Trump, who has continued to make baseless claims that American elections are rigged. Behind the scenes and at public events, conservative activists who share his beliefs have been working to overhaul voting laws and recruit activists and supporters to serve as poll watchers and election workers.In numerous counties and localities across Virginia, conservative activists have been appointed to local election boards, the bodies that are in charge of determining early voting hours and locations, leading some to move early polling locations or reduce voting access on the weekends. The state also withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC, an interstate clearinghouse for voter data that helps ensure secure elections, but became a flashpoint on the right based on a widely debunked conspiracy theory.Democrats and voting rights groups say these moves could have significant consequences — that seemingly small changes and pressures on the system could add up and potentially affect the outcome of an election. They worry that overly aggressive poll watchers could intimidate voters, or that conspiracy-minded Trump supporters who insert themselves in the election process could interfere with the results.“This is sort of like a death by 1,000 cuts, and there’s no necessarily one thing that you can point to and say, ‘That’s what’s going to swing the election,’” said Aaron Mukerjee, the voter protection director for the Virginia Democratic Party. “Taken together, the goal is to disenfranchise enough voters that they can win the election.”It is often difficult to determine whether changes to election laws or other attempts to intervene in the voting process ultimately affect outcomes. Turnout alone does not determine how many voters may have been affected. In the Trump era, changes in voting patterns have scrambled the longtime presumption that higher turnout helps Democrats and lower turnout aids Republicans.And there is no evidence that Republican election activists aided victories in Virginia in 2021, nor that their policies and activities necessarily benefit either party. During that election, poll watchers at 13 voting sites were observed being disruptive, according to reports filed by elections workers.In the run-up to the 2021 election, activists trained by Virginia Fair Elections collected claims of malfeasance and filed a lawsuit challenging at least 390 ballot applications that were missing Social Security numbers. The suit was dismissed, but conservative news outlets focused on the complaint and began to argue that the coming vote in Virginia would be “stolen,” as many activists believed had happened in 2020. (Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, ended up winning, and his party made gains in the legislature.)Nonetheless, Republican-aligned groups like Virginia Fair Elections continue to try to tighten voting laws.Virginia Fair Elections is managed by the Virginia Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that was formed in 1996 with moderate fund-raising in the low six figures annually. But as the think tank shifted its focus to so-called election integrity efforts after the last presidential contest, it raised over $508,000 in 2021, according to data kept by ProPublica.That money included a $125,000 grant earmarked for the “Virginia Fair Elections project” from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a major funder of groups that have proliferated myths about voter fraud. Its board includes Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer who played a key role in trying to overturn the 2020 election.In 2021, the “Virginia Model” executed by Virginia Fair Elections became the blueprint for the Election Integrity Network, a national coalition guided by Ms. Mitchell that quickly became one of the most influential organizations seeking to change voting laws and recruit local activists.Last year, Virginia Fair Elections hosted a two-day gathering conceptualized by Ms. Mitchell. The group boasted of having trained 4,500 poll watchers and election officials, and of covering 85 percent of polling locations in Virginia on Election Day in 2021 and during the 45 days of early voting.Cleta Mitchell has guided the Election Integrity Network, one of the most influential organizations seeking to change voting laws and recruit activists to serve as poll watchers and election workers.Matt Rourke/Associated PressIn August, Virginia Fair Elections held a similar meeting at a Sheraton hotel outside Richmond. The daylong event featured 12 discussions, including a keynote speech from Mollie Hemingway, a well-known conservative columnist. A panel discussion held just after lunch highlighted one front in which the network has made significant gains: county election boards and registrars, who serve as the chief election officials in Virginia localities.“The most important thing we do, however, is the hiring, and sometimes the firing, of the general registrar, and I think just as critical, if not more so, is the appointment, the training and potentially the dismissal of election officers,” John Ambrose, a Republican who serves as the vice chair of the electoral board of Richmond, told the audience to loud applause, according to an audio recording of the panel obtained by Documented, a liberal investigative group, and shared with The Times.Ms. Wheeler and the president of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy did not respond to text messages seeking comment. Virginia Fair Elections did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Under a peculiarity of Virginia law, the party of the most recently elected governor holds the advantage in the partisan makeup of local election boards. After Mr. Youngkin won the governor’s office in 2021, boards across the state flipped to 2-to-1 Republican control from 2-to-1 Democratic control.Groups like Virginia Fair Elections worked to place people they had trained on local election boards across the state, which meant that in many places, conservative priorities became policy.At least 10 counties in Virginia, including at least four with predominantly Black populations, have canceled Sunday voting for the coming elections. Some of the 10 counties, among them Richmond, Spotsylvania, Virginia Beach and Chesterfield, contain major population centers.Sundays are popular voting days for Black communities, where “Souls to the Polls” events led by churches have a long history of fostering community and helping protect against intimidation at the polls.“Democracy is coming under attack, whether it’s the Republican-led electoral boards throughout different localities who are cutting down on Sunday voting, or even closing early-vote locations that were in predominately Black communities,” said Joshua Cole, a pastor and a Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates in the Fredericksburg area. He pointed to the Mattaponi Baptist Association of Virginia, a local association of Black churches, several of which are no longer able to hold Souls to the Polls events.“Don’t take that right away from Christians, especially African American Christians, when it’s been a staple in the community for years,” he said.Joshua Cole, a Democratic candidate for the House of Delegates, has been critical of the push for counties to cancel Sunday voting, which are traditionally popular voting days for Black communities. Ryan M. Kelly/Associated PressSome local election officials acknowledged that the shift in partisan control was the main cause for the changes.“The reason Sunday voting is no longer an option for the City of Richmond is because the political representation from our electoral board has changed from Democratic to Republican since 2021,” said Katherin Cardozo-Robledo, the executive assistant to the electoral board in Richmond, a city whose population of about 230,000 is roughly 45 percent Black.Others, however, said there simply wasn’t enough demand.“We have elections every November in Virginia, so we did not continue it last year, either,” said Mary Lynn A. Pinkerman, who oversees elections in Chesapeake, which is roughly 30 percent Black. “Our city has approximately 176,000 voters, and when we tried it after being told there would be busloads coming, we only had 170 voters come that day. We do not have enough of a demand for it in our city.”With just a month left before polls close in Virginia, both parties are focused on the legislative elections, but the conservative activists have larger goals in mind.“What we’re doing is so critical,” Sheryl Stanworth, an attendee at the Tuesday training, said during the gathering. “We’ve got a presidential election to be looking forward to.” More