ВИБОРЧА ГАЗЕТА

Christian nationalist streak runs through US Republican Party

There is a significantly large group of U.S. voters who believe one religion should dictate the nation’s laws. But that notion is a divisive issue between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. VOA’s senior Washington correspondent Carolyn Presutti looks into the phenomenon of Christian nationalism. VOA footage by: Mary Cieslak, Saqib Ul Islam, Henry Hernandez.
…

Though voter fraud rare, US election offices feature safeguards to catch it

NEW YORK — You’ve heard the horror stories: Someone casting multiple ballots, people voting in the name of dead relatives, mail-in ballots being intercepted. 

Voter fraud does happen occasionally. When it does, we tend to hear a lot about it. It also gets caught and prosecuted. 

The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, according to current and former election administrators of both parties. 

America’s elections are decentralized, with thousands of independent voting jurisdictions. That makes it virtually impossible to pull off a large-scale vote-rigging operation that could tip a presidential race — or almost any other race. 

“You’re probably not going to have a perfect election system,” said Republican Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state and the advisory board chair of the Secure Elections Project. “But if you’re looking for one that you should have confidence in, you should feel good about that here in America.” 

What’s stopping people from committing voter fraud? 

Voting more than once, tampering with ballots, lying about your residence to vote somewhere else, or casting someone else’s ballot are crimes that can be punished with hefty fines and prison time. Non-U.S. citizens who break election laws can be deported. 

For anyone still motivated to cheat, election systems in the United States are designed with multiple layers of protection and transparency intended to stand in the way. 

For in-person voting, most states either require or request voters provide some sort of ID at the polls. Others require voters to verify who they are in another way, such as stating their name and address, signing a poll book or signing an affidavit. 

People who try to vote in the name of a recently deceased friend or family member can be caught when election officials update voter lists with death records and obituaries, said Gail Pellerin, a Democratic in the California Assembly who ran elections in Santa Cruz County for more than 27 years. 

Those who try to impersonate someone else run the risk that someone at the polls knows that person or that the person will later try to cast their own ballot, she said. 

What protections exist for absentee voting? 

For absentee voting, different states have different ballot verification protocols. All states require a voter’s signature. Many states have further precautions, such as having bipartisan teams compare the signature with other signatures on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign. 

That means even if a ballot is erroneously sent to someone’s past address and the current resident mails it in, there are checks to alert election workers to the foul play. 

A growing number of states offer online or text-based ballot tracking tools as an extra layer of protection, allowing voters to see when their ballot has been sent out, returned and counted. 

Federal law requires voter list maintenance, and election officials do that through a variety of methods, from checking state and federal databases to collaborating with other states to track voters who have moved. 

Ballot drop boxes have security protocols, too, said Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. 

She explained the boxes are often designed to stop hands from stealing ballots and are surveilled by camera, bolted to the ground and constructed with fire-retardant chambers, so if someone threw in a lit match, it wouldn’t destroy the ballots inside. 

Sometimes, alleged voter fraud isn’t what it seems 

After the 2020 election, social media surged with claims of dead people casting ballots, double voting or destroyed piles of ballots on the side of the road. 

Former President Donald Trump promoted and has continued to amplify these claims. But the vast majority of them were found to be untrue. 

An Associated Press investigation that explored every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found there were fewer than 475 out of millions of votes cast. That was not nearly enough to tip the outcome. Democrat Joe Biden won the six states by a combined 311,257 votes. 

The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the voting. Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots. In one case, a man mistakenly thought he could vote while on parole. In another, a woman was suspected of sending in a ballot for her dead mother. 

Former election officials say that even more often, allegations of voter fraud turn out to result from a clerical error or a misunderstanding. 

Pellerin said she remembered when a political candidate in her county raised suspicion about many people being registered to vote at the same address. It turned out the voters were nuns who all lived in the same home. 

Patrick said that when she worked in elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, mismatched signatures were sometimes explained by a broken arm or a recent stroke. In other cases, an elderly person tried to vote twice because they forgot they had already submitted a mail ballot. 

“You really have to think about the intent of the voter,” Patrick said. “It isn’t always intuitive.” 

Why voter fraud is unlikely to affect the presidential race 

It would be wrong to suggest that voter fraud never happens. 

With millions of votes cast in an election year, it’s almost guaranteed there will be a few cases of someone trying to game the system. There also have been more insidious efforts, such as a vote-buying scheme in 2006 in Kentucky. 

In that case, Grayson said, voters complained, and an investigation ensued. Then participants admitted what they had done. 

He said the example shows how important it is for election officials to stay vigilant and constantly improve security in order to help voters feel confident. 

But, he said, it would be hard to make any such scheme work on a larger scale. Fraudsters would have to navigate onerous nuances in each county’s election system. They also would have to keep a large number of people quiet about a crime that could be caught at any moment by officials or observers. 

“This decentralized nature of the elections is itself a deterrent,” Grayson said. 
…

Last-minute change in US swing state’s election rules alarms some

leesburg, georgia — In the town of Leesburg in the U.S. state of Georgia, slightly more than a dozen election workers sit at card tables, each thumbing through stacks of 50 blank pieces of paper, practicing counting ballots by hand.

With the U.S. presidential vote only weeks away, the Georgia State Election Board, led by a pro-Donald Trump majority, passed a controversial requirement in September that counties manually hand count their ballots, a move that has caused alarm in the closely watched swing state.

Veronica Johnson, who is leading the training session as the Lee County director of elections and registration, says hand counting the ballots is unlikely to pose major operational problems in her small county.

But logistics are far from election officials’ only concern.

Georgia officials from both sides of the political aisle say the count is not only superfluous — machines already count the ballots — but also a potential tool to sow doubt by slowing the process and creating space for disinformation should discrepancies arise via error-prone human counting.

“I don’t feel it’s necessary. I have no problem saying that. I think that at our precincts here in Lee County we’re already balancing our numbers,” Johnson told AFP.

The change is all the most notable given Republican candidate Trump’s alleged election tampering in the state in 2020, pushing for Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.

‘Misguided’

Lee is among Georgia’s 159 counties, which encompass major metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and rural regions like the area surrounding Leesburg, with populations ranging from majority white to majority Black.

Like many of its rural counterparts, Lee County voted heavily in 2020 for Trump, who received 72 percent of its votes.

Poll workers such as those at the training will be stationed across the county’s 10 voting precincts on November 5, when U.S. voters choose between Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, in addition to candidates in hundreds of down-ballot races.

Because of lawsuits, Johnson is unsure if hand counting will actually happen.

“Honestly, every election director I know really just wants to serve the people and not get bogged down by the political ramifications,” she said, emphasizing that ballots are already counted by machine three times.

Calling the rule change “misguided,” Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that “activists seeking to impose last-minute changes in election procedures” only “undermine voter confidence and burden election workers,” while Georgia’s Republican attorney general has stated the new rule is likely illegal.

The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia sued to block the rule last week with the Harris campaign’s backing.

‘Untrusting’

The state election board passed the rule by a three-to-two vote — those in favor being staunch Trump backers praised by the ex-president as “pit bulls” fighting for “victory.”

Along the same three-to-two lines, the board passed another rule in August allowing county election boards to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results.

Like the hand count requirement, the measure is being challenged in court, with critics particularly worried about the vagueness of the word “reasonable.”

Mitchell Brown, director of the election administration program at Auburn University in Alabama, told Agence France-Presse that such a rule is unnecessary given that election officials “have meetings regularly where they go through the documentation and the information with the certifying body.”

“The bigger, more interesting question to me is, what happens if a body chooses not to certify?”

Back in Lee County, Donna Mathis, who has served as a poll worker since 2018, noted that the “country is divided so much.”

Asked about the hand count and reasonable inquiry rule, she said, “the hand count doesn’t bother me” given how quickly they were able to tabulate the votes.

But “I think you can inquire too much, it ties things up,” she added. “People are just so untrusting anymore that they question everything.”
…

Wisconsin’s Dane County could hold key to White House

One county in the battleground U.S. state of Wisconsin plays a disproportionate role in deciding whether Democrats or Republicans win the White House in November, analysts say. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias takes us to Dane County, where the fight to sway votes is getting hotter as the election draws near.
…

Republicans, Democrats work to preempt fraud claims ahead of election

ANN ARBOR, FLINT AND DETROIT, MICHIGAN — U.S. election officials in battleground states are pushing back against disinformation about election integrity and working to assure Americans that their votes will be counted.

Officials from both major parties in six states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — met in Ann Arbor, Michigan, last month for panel discussions hosted by the nonpartisan group Keep our Republic. The group seeks to educate the American public about threats to the U.S. election system and build trust in the electoral system.

They’re working to avoid a repeat of November 2020 scenes in nearby Detroit and other American cities where supporters of then-President Donald Trump, riled up by his baseless accusations of election fraud, pressured officials to stop counting the votes.

This year, many Trump supporters who spoke with VOA say they worry about fraud in this election.

“Right now, our government, you’re going to question everything about it,” said Marvin Minton, a Trump supporter who attended the Republican presidential nominee’s town hall event in Flint, Michigan, in September. “I wish I could say differently, but that’s not how America feels. We don’t trust nobody.”

Angelina Kandow, who was also at the Flint event, said, “Was [the 2020 election] stolen or not? One case, one case is enough to question the whole system.”

Some Trump supporters quoted alleged instances of 2020 election fraud that were disproven during court cases triggered by the more than 60 lawsuits filed by Republicans and the Trump campaign after that year’s election.

Disinformation around election integrity has gained traction among Republicans, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts poll, released in August.

The poll found 67% of Republicans trust Trump and his campaign for accurate information on the outcome of the election. Only 51% of Republicans said they trust the government’s certification of election results.

In contrast, 87% of Democrats trust government certifications, while 82% trust Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s presidential nominee, and her campaign.

Dangerous disinformation

Officials in battleground states say disinformation can be dangerous.

“They can in some cases lead to people making threats to election officials or worse, based on lies or misinformation they have been told about elections,” said Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections.

“Even if it doesn’t result in any sort of physical violence, it does undermine trust long term in the election system, which is bad for our republic and is bad for our democracy,” he told VOA.

Meagan Wolfe, an election official in Wisconsin, another battleground state, has been targeted with intimidation, even death threats. Republicans loyal to Trump have attempted to oust her over false claims that she helped to rig the 2020 vote in favor of President Joe Biden.

Wolfe encouraged people who don’t trust the election process to become involved.

“They can become a poll worker. They can become a poll observer. They can watch the audits of the voting equipment,” she told VOA.” All of that is open for [the] public to view.”

In many states, efforts to ensure voters that elections are secure are supported by Republicans. Justin Roebuck, a Republican election official in Ottawa County, Michigan, acknowledges it’s an uphill battle.

“Our political leaders at every level need to also seek facts and to seek data,” he told VOA. “And I think until that happens, we will have a problem in terms of our confidence and trust in the process.”

Roebuck said he is working directly with citizens, instead of through the campaigns.

“We have very decentralized elections in the United States. There are always things that we can do better,” he said. “Sometimes we have to work through those challenges and work through those messes.”

Messy in Michigan

It’s already looking like it could become messy in Michigan. Republicans loyal to Trump have sued Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, over absentee ballot processing guidelines and voter registration lists.

“If Jocelyn Benson is not responding to what is required under the law, we will take her to court to get the courts to compel her to do that,” Michigan Republican Party chairperson Pete Hoekstra told VOA.

Benson dismissed it as a Republican strategy to create a “false sense of irregularities in the process.”

“In general, we see lawsuits masquerading as a legal strategy when they’re really a PR strategy to get misinformation or sow seeds of doubt about our elections into the narrative,” she told VOA.

She said that there are “more checks and balances in place than ever before” to ensure the integrity and accuracy of the election process.

Both parties have launched election-related lawsuits in various battleground states, which could mean chaos in the November election.

“Any kind of legal challenge happening this close to an election, typically, is lawyers putting a placeholder in case they may not win in a state or may not have an outcome they like, and it gives them the ability to challenge the election after the fact,” said Kim Wyman, senior fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project in Washington.

There are other potential disruptions, including efforts to delay election certification by county officials who support Trump.

“We’ve seen some legal maneuvers and some boards of elections that have changed the rules that allow more scrutiny over the canvas period and the certification of the election,” Wyman told VOA.

After Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss culminated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters, Congress sought to prevent such events from recurring by passing the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act.

Mandatory deadline

The reforms set a new mandatory December 11 deadline for states to submit certified slates of presidential electors, provided expedited court access to resolve challenges and raised the threshold for objecting to election results in Congress.

Battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina have passed legislation to ensure that canvasses, recounts, audits and legal challenges meet the new deadline.

Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have not, leaving their electoral systems vulnerable to partisan lawsuits and political pressures that could force them to miss the certification deadline.

This could leave uncertain the fate of 29 electoral college votes. A presidential candidate needs at least 270 electoral college votes to win.

VOA’s Rivan Dwiastono contributed to this report.
…

Razor-thin margins: Why Wisconsin is crucial in the 2024 presidential race

Wisconsin, a Midwestern U.S. state known for its dairy farms and beer production, has emerged as a crucial battleground in the 2024 presidential election. With a history of extremely close races, Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes could determine who becomes the next president. The state’s unique mix of urban and rural voters, along with key issues like the economy and abortion rights, make it a microcosm of the nation’s political divide.
…

Republicans, Democrats preempt claims of voter fraud ahead of election

Former U.S. President Donald Trump and many of his supporters claim, without evidence, the 2020 election was stolen and warn that the same could happen in 2024. Democratic and Republican election officials in Michigan dispute those claims and are working to assure Americans that their votes are secure. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara brings us this story from Michigan. Videographer: Rivan Dwiastono
…

US bulletin says Iranian hackers targeting political campaigns

…

Not all elections look the same. Here are some of the different ways states run their voting

washington — The U.S. general election on Nov. 5 will decide the country’s direction, but it is far from a nationally administered contest. The 50 states and the District of Columbia run their own elections, and each does things a little differently.

Here’s a look at some notable variations in the 2024 election:

Maine and Nebraska allocate electoral votes by congressional district

To win the presidency outright, a candidate must receive at least 270 of the 538 votes in the Electoral College. In 48 states, the statewide winner gets all of that state’s electoral votes, and that’s also the case in the nation’s capital. 

In Maine and Nebraska, the candidate who receives the most votes in each congressional district wins one electoral vote from that district. The candidate who wins the statewide vote receives another two. 

In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden received three of Maine’s four electoral votes because he won the popular vote in the state and its 1st Congressional District. Republican Donald Trump received one electoral vote from the 2nd Congressional District. Trump won four of Nebraska’s five votes for winning the popular vote in the state as well as its 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts; Biden received one electoral vote for winning the 2nd Congressional District. 

Alaska and Maine use ranked choice voting 

In ranked choice voting, voters rank candidates for an office in order of preference on the ballot. If no candidate is the first choice for more than 50% of voters, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Voters who chose that candidate as their top pick have their votes redistributed to their next choice. This continues, with the candidate with the fewest votes getting eliminated, until someone emerges with a majority of votes. 

Maine uses ranked choice voting in state-level primaries and for federal offices in the general election. That means Maine voters can rank presidential, Senate and House candidates on ballots that include the Democrat and the Republican who advanced out of their respective party primaries, plus third-party and independent candidates who qualify. 

The presidential ballot will include Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris, plus three other candidates. In the six years since implementing ranked choice voting, the state has used it twice in races for Congress in its 2nd Congressional District. The 2020 presidential race did not advance to ranked choice voting, with the winners of the state and in each congressional district exceeding 52% of the vote. 

Alaska holds open primaries for statewide offices and sends the top four vote-getters, regardless of party, to the general election, where the winner is decided using ranked choice voting. In all legislative and statewide executive offices, Alaskans can rank up to four names that can include multiple candidates from the same party. 

The exception is the presidency, which is eligible for ranked choice voting in Alaska for the first time. This year, there will be eight presidential tickets on the ballot, and Alaskans can rank all candidates if they choose to. The last time the winner of the presidential contest in Alaska failed to surpass 50% of the vote was in 1992, when third-party candidate Ross Perot won almost 20% of the national popular vote. 

But in 2022, both Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski won their elections after both went to ranked choice voting. 

Another wrinkle this year? In Alaska, where ranked choice voting was implemented by ballot measure in 2020, there’s a voter initiative on the ballot this fall to repeal it. 

In California and Washington, candidates from the same party can face off 

California and Washington hold open primaries in which all candidates run on the same ballot and the two top vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party. This year, there are two House races in Washington that include candidates of the same party, one with two Republicans and one with two Democrats. There are four in California: three with only Democrats and one with only Republicans. 

The winning party in those six districts will be reflected in The Associated Press’ online graphic showing the balance of power in the House at poll close, rather than once a winner is declared because the party of the winner is a foregone conclusion. 

Louisiana holds a ‘primary’ on Nov. 5 

Louisiana holds what it refers to as its “open primaries” on the same day the rest of the country holds its general election. In Louisiana, all candidates run on the same open primary ballot. Any candidate who earns more than 50% of the vote in the primary wins the seat outright. 

If no candidate exceeds 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters advance to a head-to-head runoff, which can end up pitting two Republicans or two Democrats against each other. Louisiana refers to these contests as its “general election.” 

That will change for elections for the U.S. House starting in 2026 when congressional races will have earlier primaries that are open only to registered members of a party. Certain state races will continue to hold open primaries in November, but the change will prevent future members of Congress from waiting until December — a month later than the rest of the country — to know whether they are headed to Washington. 

Nebraska has two competing abortion measures on the ballot, but only one can be enacted 

In Nebraska, any measure that receives approximately 123,000 valid signatures qualifies for the ballot. This year, two measures relating to abortion met this threshold. 

One would enshrine in the Nebraska Constitution the right to have an abortion until fetal viability or later, to protect the health of the pregnant woman. The other would write into the constitution the current 12-week ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the pregnant woman. 

This marks the first time since the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade that a state has measures that seek to roll back abortion rights and protect abortion rights on the ballot at the same time. 

It’s possible voters could end up approving both measures. But because they’re competing and therefore cannot both be enshrined in the constitution, the measure with the most “for” votes will be the one adopted, according to the Nebraska secretary of state. 

Georgia holds runoff elections if a candidate doesn’t win a majority of votes 

In primary elections, a handful of states, mostly in the South, go to runoffs if no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote. In races with more than two candidates, runoffs in those states are common. Several states held primary runoffs this year. 

Georgia uses the same rules in general elections. The last three Senate races there went to runoffs because a third-party candidate won enough of the vote to prevent the Republican or Democratic nominee from exceeding 50% of the vote. 

But this year, runoff possibilities may be confined to downballot races such as state legislature. There’s no Senate race there this year, and the U.S. House races have only two candidates on the ballot. 

Texas, Florida and Michigan report a lot of votes before final polls are closed 

This is common in states that span multiple time zones. In most states, polls close at the same time in each time zone. 

The AP will not call the winner of a race before all the polls in a jurisdiction are scheduled to close, even if votes already reported before that time make clear who will win the race. So if there is a statewide race in a state where polls close at 8 p.m. local time, but some of the state is in the Eastern time zone and some of the state is in Central time zone, the earliest the AP can call the winner is 8 p.m. CST/9 p.m. EST. 

The AP will still show the results as they arrive from counties with closed polls. 

Some of the biggest states with split poll close times are Florida, Michigan, Texas and Oregon. Tennessee is an exception, as even though the state is in both the Eastern and the Central time zones, all counties coordinate their voting to conclude at the same time. 
…