Associated Press
Presidential politics move fast. What we’re watching heading into the final week of the 2020 campaign:
Days to general election: 1
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THE NARRATIVE
It’s almost over. By this time next week, and hopefully much sooner, we’ll likely know who will occupy the Oval Office for the next four years.
The ghosts of 2016 are keeping Democrats on edge, but they are hopeful that voters will make President Donald Trump the first incumbent to lose reelection since George H.W. Bush in 1992. Democrat Joe Biden is running significantly ahead of where Hillary Clinton was in most polls the day before the election.
Some Republicans are pointing to a shift on the ground in Florida in particular that portends good news for Trump. The problem for Republicans is that Trump must win Florida — and several more battleground states — if he’s going to have any chance to keep his job.
Can Trump pull an inside straight again? Anxious Democrats will be the first to tell you it’s possible. But veteran Republican strategists will also tell you it isn’t likely. There are fewer undecided voters this time, and no strong third-party candidates to siphon votes.
Democrats had an advantage in early voting, but Trump’s vaunted ground game is well-positioned to turn out its voters en masse on Tuesday.
What makes this election different from those in the past are the swirling questions about voter intimidation, lawsuits and counting delays related to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has already indicated he may reject the result of the election if he loses.
Buckle up. This could get messy.
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THE BIG QUESTIONS
Will the loser of this election accept the result?
The stage is set for a chaotic finish no matter what the final numbers say.
Trump has sought to undermine the election results for several months by raising debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud. He has repeatedly refused to say whether he would agree to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses.
Biden has promised to accept the results no matter what, but that doesn’t mean that Democrats won’t end up in an extended court battle in certain states if things don’t go their way — particularly if there are any Election Day disruptions or court rulings that throw out a significant numbers of mail ballots.
Never before in modern U.S. history has there been such uncertainty looming over basic rules of democracy on the eve of an election.
What is the “red mirage” scenario?
Don’t be fooled by the early numbers. Because of the way ballots will be counted by different states, the final vote tally could look dramatically different from the early returns — especially if Democrats look to be struggling.
The so-called red mirage scenario would show Trump having a good night based on the votes cast in person on Tuesday. But pivotal states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin aren’t expected to count all their mail ballots, the preferred voting method by many Democrats, until after in-person votes are counted.
That raises the likelihood that Republicans will look to be having a strong showing earlier in the night than they will once all the votes are in.
Trump has falsely raised just this scenario as an example of voter fraud, but it’s actually a completely legitimate function of the way different states process ballots. And because of complications related to the pandemic, several states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Minnesota, will accept mail ballots received several days after polls close.
Will fewer people vote on Election Day than voted early?
Election Day turnout remains a mystery. As of Sunday afternoon, more than 93 million Americans had already voted. That’s two-thirds of all ballots cast in the 2016 election. Tens of millions more votes are expected on Tuesday, but it’s hard to imagine that Election Day turnout will exceed the early vote count.
Never before have more than 140 million Americans voted in a single presidential election.
Both sides acknowledge that Trump will have an advantage among voters who cast ballots on Tuesday because Democrats were more likely to vote by mail. Presumably, the more people who show up on Election Day, the better the final outcome will be for the Republican president.
Democrats are particularly concerned about turning out their infrequent voters — especially young people, Blacks and Latinos — who historically vote Democrat but aren’t necessarily excited to show up for Biden.
Republicans rightly claim an advantage on the ground in several states. Even before Trump’s first election, the GOP began investing heavily in field offices and staff across the country to build relationships in key communities designed to turn out hard-to-reach voters when it matters most.
Democrats have not made the same investment, and more than that, they’ve largely avoided the door-to-door get-out-the vote operations of years past, relying on texts, phone calls or emails to communicate with their supporters.
Will Election Day be peaceful?
We’re coming to you from downtown Washington, where most local businesses have covered their first-floor windows with plywood. No, there’s not a hurricane on the way.
Washington’s business owners are bracing for the possibility of election-related violence. And given the rioting that has already accompanied civil unrest in several states in recent months, it’s not hard to imagine protests turning violent well beyond Washington this week.
At the same time, there are real questions about the possibility of voter intimidation at the ballot box on Tuesday.
Tensions are high on both sides, but most eyes will be on Republican poll watchers given the party’s history of bad behavior and Trump’s repeated calls for his die-hard supporters to be on the lookout for voting fraud.
This is the first election in decades that Republicans have been allowed to install official poll watchers. The GOP was banned from the practice by federal courts that found repeated evidence in past elections of Republicans intimidating or trying to exclude minority voters in the name of preventing fraud.
We’re all hoping for a peaceful Election Day, but the conditions are ripe for disorder.
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THE FINAL THOUGHT
This is probably our last dispatch for a while. We want to thank you for following along over this past year. We’ve tried our best to take you behind the curtain to see the 2020 presidential contest from an insider’s perspective.
And while we’ll all need a break once this election is settled, recent history suggests that the jockeying for the next presidential election will begin almost immediately; 2024 Watch may be just around the corner.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
3 comments
gary
November 2, 2020 at 1:49 pm
The democrats never accepted the loss in 2016! Why in the world would they accept this loss?!
LINDIESUE
November 2, 2020 at 2:25 pm
Philly Mayor just said that it only makes sense that ballots will continue to and need to be counted days after the election. PA can count up to 9 days after the election during which time many fraudulent ballots can be filled out and counted.
Texas AG has arrested and charged over 200 people for ballot fraud. Turns out all of them involved with the Dems.
The Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database has been around for four years. With the addition of our latest batch of cases, we are up to 1,285 proven instances of voter fraud. Examples include impersonation fraud at the polls; false voter registrations; duplicate voting; fraudulent absentee ballots; vote buying; illegal assistance and intimidation of voters; ineligible voting, such as by aliens; altering of vote counts; and ballot petition fraud. Millions of mailed ballots have been misdirected or gone missing in prior elections. Electronic signatures are too imprecise and easily duplicated, and should not be accepted. Automatically mailing a ballot to all registered voters is an open invitation to fraud and abuse. Not every new resident at an address throws out the ballot that is still being automatically mailed to a former resident, and third parties may canvass neighborhoods looking for those “extra” ballots—with some being tempted to cast those extra votes. States should ban “vote harvesting” and not allow candidates, party activists, or political consultants who have a stake in the outcome, to collect absentee ballots from voters
Following accusations of widespread fraud, voter intimidation, and ballot theft in the May 12 municipal elections in Paterson, N.J., four men were charged with voter fraud – including the vice president of the City Council and a candidate for that body. In the City Council election, 16,747 vote-by-mail ballots were received, but only 13,557 votes were counted. More than 3,190 votes, 19% of the total ballots cast, were disqualified by the board of elections. Due to the pandemic, Paterson’s election was done through vote-by-mail. Over 800 ballots in Paterson were invalidated for appearing in mailboxes improperly bundled together – including one mailbox where hundreds of ballots were in a single packet. The bundles were turned over to law enforcement to investigate potential criminal activity related to the collection of the ballots. The board of elections disqualified another 2,300 ballots after concluding that the signatures on them did not match the signatures on voter records.
In a USPS memo, it says mail carriers may have to leave mail behind at distribution centers in order to make it on time to their delivery routes. One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that – temporarily – we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks…….
Judicial Watch Finds Millions of ‘Extra’ Registrants on Voting Rolls – Warns California, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Colorado, Virginia to Clean Up Voting Rolls or Face a Federal Lawsuit
A voter registration group is sending hundreds of thousands of mail-in and absentee ballots to voters in states that do not automatically mail the ballot applications themselves. The mailings contain legitimate ballot applications, but at first glance appear to be from a government source, which is “potentially misleading” for recipients, according to election officials. The organizations have repeatedly sent voters incorrect information. This week, hundreds of thousands of voters in Virginia had incorrect election office addresses on their prepaid return envelopes. Earlier this summer, the Center for Voter Information sent thousands of North Carolina voters forms that were invalid because the group had partially filled them out, a practice made illegal by a new state law.
Puerto Rico forced to partially suspend primary voting because of lack of ballots. Hundreds of frustrated voters who wore the required face masks were turned away from centers across Puerto Rico.
Philly Fraud Case Expands
The U.S. Justice Department this past week charged former Democratic congressman Michael Myers with stuffing ballot boxes, bribing an elected official, falsifying records, obstructing justice and voting multiple times in federal elections in Philadelphia. Myers was the second official charged in the scheme. Domenick DeMuro, a Democratic ward chairman in that city, admitted in a plea deal that he had “fraudulently stuffed the ballot box by literally standing in a voting booth and voting over and over, as fast as he could, while he thought the coast was clear,” prosecutors said. DeMuro allegedly had a network of clients who paid him significant sums of money to rig elections over several years.
California voter fraud conviction exposes Skid Row scheme. In February, 62-year-old Norman Hall pled guilty in a scheme to pay money and cigarettes to homeless people on Los Angeles’ Skid Row in exchange for false and forged signatures on ballot petitions and voter registration forms. Hall got a year in jail.
Illinois let non-citizens register to vote in blunder. In January, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White disclosed in a letter to the Legislature that a “programming error” in a signature pad at driver services facilities led to 574 non-U.S. citizens accidentally being registered as voters. At least one, and perhaps as many as 15, non-citizens may have voted in the 2018 election. White’s office says the problem has been fixed.
Double voting in Arizona. Last month, Randy Allen Jumper pleaded guilty in Arizona to attempting to vote in two states during the 2016 general election: Arizona and Nevada. He was also charged with falsely signing a statement vowing not to vote in the general election anywhere but Arizona.
After NPR report that more than 550,000 primary absentee ballots were rejected in 2020, experts urge Americans to make plans to vote early and track ballots.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ohios-franklin-county-sees-nearly-50k-voters-getting-wrong-absentee-ballots-elections-officials-say
7000 residents in the township of Teaneck, #NewJersey have received mail-in #ballots with the wrong Congressional Representatives’ names printed on them. The mistake affected one-quarter of all ballots for Teaneck, elections officials said.
Texas mayoral candidate arrested for mail-in ballot fraud. Zul Mohamed is running to become the mayor of Carrollton, Texas.
More than 100 undelivered absentee ballots found in Kentucky dumpster
10/28/20 Another employee for the U.S. Postal Service is facing federal charges in the latest instance where mail-in ballots were discovered dumped in the trash in Kentucky.
Postal and law enforcement officials are investigating after four dozen mail-in ballots were found undelivered at a post office in Florida.
U.S. Postal Service Office investigators said Saturday they found six completed ballots and 42 blank ballots among piles of undelivered mail in a post office near Homestead on the Florida peninsula’s southern tip. Video taken by a postal worker shows they had been sitting there for more than a week.
James Robert Miles
November 2, 2020 at 7:18 pm
The A.P. strikes again! No one but Trump has EVER questioned the legitimacy of an election or threatened NOT TO ACCEPT the results of an election! I am sure that with there “both sides do it” nonsense that this is another story that they have “invented!” They have given themselves a legitimate reason especially in this case to call themselves “fake news!” Trump is the only President ever to not promise a smooth transition in U.S. history! That alone tells you all that you need to know about Trump and his fascist, authoritarian agenda!
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