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Trump and Harris make final push before Election Day

Voters in the United States cast ballots Tuesday to choose their next president. Political polls show candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in a close race. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns has our story.
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Puerto Rico prepares for Election Day as a third-party candidate makes history

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The two parties that have dominated Puerto Rican politics for decades are losing their grip as they face the stiffest competition yet from a younger generation fed up with the island’s corruption, chronic power outages and mismanagement of public funds.

For the first time in the island’s governor’s race, a third-party candidate has a powerful second lead in the polls ahead of the U.S. territory’s election Tuesday — and some experts say there’s a possibility he could win.

“This election is already historic,” said political analyst and university professor Jorge Schmidt Nieto. “It already marks a before and an after.”

Juan Dalmau is running for Puerto Rico’s Independence Party and the Citizen Victory Movement, established in 2019. A Gaither international poll this month shows Dalmau closing in on Jenniffer González, a member of the New Progressive Party and Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress. She beat Gov. Pedro Pierluisi in their party’s primary in June.

Gaither’s poll shows Dalmau with 29% of support versus González’s 31% as he nearly caught up with her since a different poll in July showed him with only 24% compared with González’s 43%. Coming in third was Jesús Manuel Ortiz, of the Popular Democratic Party, followed by Javier Jiménez of Project Dignity, a conservative party created in 2019.

Under pressure

Puerto Rican politics revolve around the island’s status, and up until 2016, the New Progressive Party, which supports statehood, and the Popular Democratic Party, which supports the status quo, would split at least 90% of all votes during general elections, Schmidt said.

But that year, U.S. Congress created a federal control board to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances after the government announced it was unable to pay a more than $70 billion public debt load. In 2017, Puerto Rico filed for the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy in history.

The debt was accrued through decades of corruption, mismanagement and excessive borrowing, with Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority still struggling to restructure its more than $9 billion debt, the largest of any government agency.

Puerto Ricans have largely rejected and resented the board, created a year before Hurricane Maria slammed into the island as a powerful Category 4 storm, razing the electrical grid.

In 2020, Pierluisi won but received only 33% of votes. His opponent from the Popular Democratic Party received 32%. It marked the first time either party failed to reach 40% of votes.

The power outages that have persisted since the elections, coupled with the slow pace of hurricane reconstruction, have frustrated and angered voters.

Under Pierluisi, the government signed contracts with two companies, Luma Energy and Genera PR, which together oversee the generation, transmission and distribution of power. Outages have persisted, with the companies blaming a grid that was already crumbling before the hurricane hit due to a lack of maintenance and investment.

“Disastrous things have occurred during this four-year term, especially with the electric energy,” Schmidt said. “It has affected everyone, regardless of social class.”

Voters, he said, are viewing Tuesday’s elections “as a moment of revenge.”

Dalmau said he would oust both companies in an “organized fashion” within six months if he becomes governor. Ortiz said he would cancel Luma’s contract, while González has called for the creation of an “energy czar” that would review potential Luma contractual breaches while another operator is found.

However, no contract can be canceled without prior approval of the federal control board and Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau.

The candidates also are under pressure to create affordable housing, lower power bills and the general cost of living, reduce violent crimes, boost Puerto Rico’s economy, with the island locked out of capital markets since 2015, and improve a crumbling health care system as thousands of doctors flock to the U.S. mainland.

Dalmau, who suspended his campaign for two weeks in mid-October after his wife had emergency brain surgery, also has said he would eliminate tax breaks for wealthy U.S. citizens from the mainland.

Apathy dominates

Despite their promises to turn Puerto Rico around, candidates face persistent voter apathy.

In 2008, 1.9 million out of 2.5 million registered voters participated in that year’s election, compared with 1.3 million out of 2.3 million in 2020.

This year, nearly 99,000 new voters registered and more than 87,000 reactivated their status, according to Puerto Rico’s State Elections Commission.

“A much higher number was expected,” Schmidt said.

He noted that those middle age and older favor González and her pro-statehood party, while those younger than 45 “overwhelmingly” favor Dalmau, which means that if a majority of young voters participate on Tuesday and fewer older ones do so, he might have a chance of winning.

The Bad Bunny factor

The months leading up to the Nov. 5 elections have been contentious.

Reggaetón superstar Bad Bunny paid for dozens of billboard ads criticizing Puerto Rico’s two main parties. In response, the governor’s New Progressive Party financed a billboard ad suggesting an obscenity in reference to Bad Bunny.

On Friday, the singer published a page-long letter in a local newspaper deriding González’s pro-statehood party.

While the artist has not endorsed any local officials, the sole person he recently began following on Instagram was Dalmau.

On Sunday, he briefly appeared at Dalmau’s closing campaign. A hush fell over a crowd of tens of thousands of people as Bad Bunny spoke before singing, saying he doesn’t endorse a specific candidate or party.

“My party is the people. … My party is Puerto Rico,” he said as he later praised the alliance between Puerto Rico’s Independence Party and the Citizen Victory Movement.

Meanwhile, a so-called “cemetery of corruption” was set up Thursday in the capital, San Juan, featuring large black-and-white pictures of nearly a dozen politicians from the island’s two main parties who have been charged or sentenced by federal authorities in recent years. It was created by Eva Prados with the Citizen Victory Movement, who is running for Puerto Rico’s House. By Friday, police reported that the pictures were destroyed or stolen.

As the race heats up, the number of formal complaints about alleged electoral crimes also has increased. These include people who say they received confirmations for early voting when they made no such request.

A persistent question

Voters on Tuesday also will be asked for a seventh time what Puerto Rico’s political status should be.

The nonbinding referendum will feature three choices: statehood, independence and independence with free association, under which issues like foreign affairs, U.S. citizenship and use of the U.S. dollar would be negotiated.

Regardless of the outcome, a change in status requires approval from the U.S. Congress.

The push for a change in status doesn’t depend on whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump win in the U.S. mainland.
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Harris, Trump teams brace for legal battles if no clear winner on election night

Americans will vote Tuesday to elect the new occupant of the White House. The presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is so tight however, that their teams are on alert for the legal battles that might ensue to define the election’s outcome. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias explains.
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Federal judge lets Iowa challenge voter rolls; may affect naturalized citizens

DES MOINES, Iowa — A federal judge ruled Sunday that Iowa can continue challenging the validity of hundreds of ballots from potential noncitizens even though critics said the effort threatens the voting rights of people who’ve recently become U.S. citizens.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sided with the state in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in the Iowa capital of Des Moines on behalf of the League of Latin American Citizens of Iowa and four recently naturalized citizens. The four were on the state’s list of questionable registrations to be challenged by local elections officials.

The state’s Republican attorney general and secretary of state argued that investigating and potentially removing 2,000 names would prevent illegal voting by noncitizens. GOP officials across the U.S. have made possible voting by noncitizen immigrants a key election-year talking point even though it is rare. Their focus has come with former President Donald Trump falsely suggesting that his opponents already are committing fraud to prevent his return to the White House.

In his ruling Sunday, Locher pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court decision four days prior that allowed Virginia to resume a similar purge of its voter registration rolls even though it was impacting some U.S. citizens. He also cited the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on state electoral laws surrounding provisional ballots. Those Supreme Court decisions advise lower courts to “act with great caution before awarding last-minute injunctive relief,” he wrote.

Locher also said the state’s effort does not remove anyone from the voter rolls, but rather requires some voters to use provisional ballots.

In a statement Sunday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, celebrated the ruling.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for election integrity,” Reynolds said. “In Iowa, while we encourage all citizens to vote, we will enforce the law and ensure those votes aren’t cancelled out by the illegal vote of a non-citizen.”

A spokesperson for the ACLU said the organization did not immediately have a comment.

After Locher had a hearing in the ACLU’s lawsuit Friday, Secretary of State Paul Pate and state Attorney General Brenna Bird issued a statement saying that Iowa had about 250 noncitizens registered to vote, but the Biden administration wouldn’t provide data about them.

Pate told reporters last month that his office was forced to rely upon a list of potential noncitizens from the Iowa Department of Transportation. It named people who registered to vote or voted after identifying themselves as noncitizens living in the U.S. legally when they previously sought driver’s licenses.

“Today’s court victory is a guarantee for all Iowans that their votes will count and not be canceled out by illegal votes,” Bird said in the statement issued after Sunday’s decision.

But ACLU attorneys said Iowa officials were conceding that most of the people on the list are eligible to vote and shouldn’t have been included. They said the state was violating naturalized citizens’ voting rights by wrongfully challenging their registrations and investigating them if they cast ballots.

Pate issued his directive Oct. 22, only two weeks before the Nov. 5 election, and ACLU attorneys argued that federal law prohibits such a move so close to Election Day.

“It’s very clear that the secretary of state understands that this list consists primarily or entirely of U.S. citizens who have exactly the same fundamental core right to vote as the rest of us citizen Iowa voters,” Rita Bettis Austen, the legal director of the ACLU of Iowa, said during a Zoom briefing for reporters after the hearing.

The people on the state’s list of potential noncitizens may have become naturalized 

citizens after their statements to the Department of Transportation.

Pate’s office told county elections officials to challenge their ballots and have them cast provisional ballots instead. That would leave the decision of whether they will be counted to local officials upon further review, with voters having seven days to provide proof of their U.S. citizenship.

In his ruling, Locher wrote that Pate backed away from some of his original hardline positions at an earlier court hearing. Pate’s attorney said the Secretary of State is no longer aiming to require local election officials to challenge the votes of each person on his list or force voters on the list to file provisional ballots even when they have proven citizenship at a polling place.

Federal law and states already make it illegal for noncitizens to vote, and the first question on Iowa’s voter registration form asks whether a person is a U.S. citizen. The form also requires potential voters to sign a statement saying they are citizens, warning them that if they lie, they can be convicted of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Locher’s ruling also came after a federal judge had halted a similar program in Alabama challenged by civil rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the more than 3,200 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.

In Iowa’s case, noncitizens who are registered are potentially only a tiny fraction of the state’s 2.2 million registered voters.

But Locher wrote that it appears to be undisputed that some portion of the names on Pate’s list are registered voters who are not U.S. citizens. Even if that portion is small, an injunction effectively would force local election officials to let ineligible voters cast ballots, he added.

Democrats and Republicans have been engaged in a sprawling legal fight over this year’s election for months. Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied. Democrats have their own team of dozens of staffers fighting GOP cases.
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Harris, Trump head to battleground states 2 days ahead of election 

Seeking to sway the remaining few undecided voters and rally their supporters to the polls, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump trekked Sunday to political battleground states two days ahead of Tuesday’s national election for a new White House term starting in January.

Harris, the Democratic candidate, headed to Michigan in the upper Midwest, one of seven states where polling shows the contest is exceedingly close and the outcome uncertain. Political math shows that whichever candidate captures four or more of the seven battleground states is likely to become the country’s 47th president.

Trump, the Republican candidate looking to become only the second president to serve two non-consecutive terms, headed to three other battleground states, staging rallies in smaller cities where he hopes to run up big vote counts in rural areas to offset Harris’ expected large margins in Democratic-dominated cities.

Trump started his day in Lititz, Pennsylvania, before heading to Kinston, North Carolina in the afternoon and ending with an evening rally in Macon, Georgia.

It was the first day since last Tuesday that the two candidates had not campaigned in the same state. The focus on the battleground states is so pronounced that on Saturday, their planes shared a stretch of tarmac in Charlotte, North Carolina, where both candidates held rallies.

Harris attended a Black church service in Detroit, the hub of the U.S. auto industry in Michigan, before heading to stops in Livernois and Pontiac and a rally at Michigan State University in East Lansing in the evening.

More than 76 million people have already cast early ballots by mail or at polling stations, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, and early voting extends throughout much of the U.S. on Sunday and Monday. The total is nearly half the 158 million who voted through Election Day in 2020.

Both Trump and Harris sought in the closing days of the campaign to portray the other as unfit to govern the country over the next four years.

On his Truth Social media platform, Trump told voters, “Every problem facing us can be solved—but now, the fate of our nation is in your hands. On Tuesday, you have to stand up, and you have to tell Kamala that you’ve had enough, you can’t take anymore, “Kamala Harris, You’re Fired!”

At her rallies, Harris has sought to convince voters that she will cut the cost of living, which polling has shown to be the top concern across the country. She has also characterized Trump as dangerous and erratic and urged Americans to move on from Trump’s chaotic approach to politics.

“We have an opportunity in this election to turn the page on a decade of Donald Trump trying to keep us divided and afraid of each other. We’re done with that,” she said in Charlotte on Saturday.

Trump has contended that Harris, as the sitting vice president for nearly four years, should be held accountable for rising consumer prices and the tens of thousands of migrants crossing the Mexican border into the United States for the past several years. He has portrayed the migrants as a consequential political threat to the country and their presence damaging financially to state and local governments throughout the U.S.

“The only free aid they are going to get is a free ride back home,” he said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina on Saturday.

Harris made a surprise cameo appearance on NBC’s comedy sketch show “Saturday Night Live,” where she met up with actor Maya Rudolph, her doppelganger persona on the show.

Rudolph told Harris at the end of the skit, “I’m going to vote for us.”

“Great. Any chance you’re registered in Pennsylvania?” Harris asked, reflecting on the importance of the large eastern state to the national outcome.

“Nope, I am not,” Rudolph said.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” Harris replied, before the two delivered the show’s signature, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”

Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung belittled Harris’ appearance on the show, saying, “Kamala Harris has nothing substantive to offer the American people, so that’s why she’s living out her warped fantasy cosplaying with her elitist friends on Saturday Night Leftists as her campaign spirals down the drain into obscurity.” Trump hosted the show during his first run for the presidency in 2015.

Last-minute polling shows the Harris-Trump race all but tied in the battleground states, within the margin of statistical error.

ABC News polling shows Trump winning five of the seven battleground states, but The Washington Post says its aggregation of polls has Harris ahead in four. The New York Times says Trump is ahead in four, Harris two and the race tied in Pennsylvania.

The importance of battleground states cannot be overstated.

U.S. presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote but through the Electoral College, which turns the election into 50 state-by-state contests, with 48 of the states awarding all their electoral votes to the winner in those states. Nebraska and Maine allocate theirs by both statewide and congressional district vote counts.

The number of electoral votes in each state is based on population, so the biggest states hold the most sway in determining the overall national outcome, with the winner needing 270 of the 538 electoral votes to claim the presidency.

Polls show either Harris or Trump with substantial or comfortable leads in 43 of the states, enough for each to get to 200 electoral votes or more. Barring an upset in one of those states, the winner will be decided in the seven remaining battleground states, where both Harris and Trump have staged frequent rallies, all but ignoring the rest of the country for campaign stops.

Polling in the seven states is easily within the margins of statistical error, leaving the outcome in doubt in all seven.
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Opponents use parental rights, anti-trans messages to fight abortion ballot measures

CHICAGO — Billboards with the words “STOP Child Gender Surgery.” Pamphlets warning about endangering minors. “PROTECT PARENT RIGHTS” plastered on church bulletins.

As voters in nine states determine whether to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions, opponents are using parental rights and anti-transgender messages to try to undermine support for the ballot proposals.

The measures do not mention gender-affirming surgeries, and legal experts say changing existing parental notification and consent laws regarding abortions and gender-affirming care for minors would require court action. But anti-abortion groups hoping to end a losing streak at the ballot box have turned to the type of language many Republican candidates nationwide are using in their own campaigns as they seek to rally conservative Christian voters.

“It’s really outlandish to suggest that this amendment relates to things like gender reassignment surgery for minors,” said Matt Harris, an associate professor of political science at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, a state where abortion rights are on the ballot.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated constitutional protections for abortion, voters in seven states, including conservative Kentucky, Montana and Ohio, have either protected abortion rights or defeated attempts to curtail them.

“If you can’t win by telling the truth, you need a better argument, even if that means capitalizing on the demonization of trans children,” said Dr. Alex Dworak, a family medicine physician in Omaha, Nebraska, where anti-abortion groups are using the strategy.

Tying abortion-rights ballot initiatives to parental rights and gender-affirming is a strategy borrowed from playbooks used in Michigan and Ohio, where voters nonetheless enshrined abortion rights in the state constitutions.

Both states still require minors to get parental consent for abortions, and the new amendments have not yet impacted parental involvement or gender-affirming care laws in either state, said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University.

“It’s just recycling the same strategies,” Cohen said.

In addition to Missouri and Nebraska, states where voters are considering constitutional amendments this fall are Montana, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and South Dakota.

Missouri’s abortion ballot measure has especially become a target. The amendment would bar the government from infringing on a “person’s fundamental right to reproductive freedom.”

Gov. Mike Parson and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, both Republicans, have claimed the proposal would allow minors to get abortions and gender-affirming surgeries without parental involvement.

The amendment protects reproductive health services, “including but not limited to” a list of items such as prenatal care, childbirth, birth control and abortion. It does not mention gender-affirming care, but Missouri state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican and lawyer with the conservative Thomas More Society, said it’s possible that could be considered reproductive health services.

Several legal experts told The Associated Press that would require a court ruling that is improbable.

“It would be a real stretch for any court to say that anything connected with gender-affirming care counts as reproductive health care,” said Saint Louis University law and gender studies professor Marcia McCormick. She noted that examples listed as reproductive health care in the Missouri amendment are all directly related to pregnancy.

As for parental consent for minors’ abortions, she pointed to an existing state law that is written similarly to one the U.S. Supreme Court found constitutional, even before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Most states have parental involvement laws, whether requiring parental consent or notification. Even many Democratic-leaning states with explicit protections for transgender rights require parental involvement before an abortion or gender-affirming care for minors, said Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.

A state high court would have to overturn such laws, which is highly unlikely from conservative majorities in many of the states with abortion on the ballot, experts said.

In New York, a proposed amendment to the state constitution would expand antidiscrimination protections to include ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health care and autonomy.” The constitution already bans discrimination based on race, color, creed or religion.

The measure does not mention abortion. But because it is broader, it could be easier for opponents to attack it. But legal experts noted that it would also not change existing state laws related to parental involvement in minors getting abortions or gender-affirming care.

The New York City Bar Association released a fact sheet explaining that the measure would not impact parental rights, “which are governed by other developed areas of state and federal law.” Yet the Coalition to Protect Kids-NY calls it the “Parent Replacement Act.”

Rick Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health, the group behind South Dakota’s proposed amendment said it uses the Roe v. Wade framework “almost word for word.”

“All you have to do is look back at what was allowed under Roe, and there were always requirements for parental involvement,” Weiland said.

Caroline Woods, spokesperson for the anti-abortion group Life Defense Fund, said the measure “means loving parents will be completely cut out of the equation.” Weiland said those claims are part of a “constant stream of misinformation” from opponents.

If this campaign strategy failed in Michigan and Ohio, why are anti-abortion groups leaning on it for the November elections?

Ziegler, the University of California, Davis, law professor, said abortion-rights opponents know they may be “playing on more favorable terrain” in more conservative states like Missouri or in states like Florida that have higher thresholds for passing ballot measures.

“Anti-abortion groups are still looking for a winning recipe,” Ziegler said.
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Inspired by Harris, Black sorority and fraternity members help downballot races

HARTFORD, Conn. — U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes isn’t a member of the historically Black sororities and fraternities known as the “Divine Nine.”

But throughout her hotly contested reelection campaign this year, Hayes, the first Black woman to represent Connecticut in Congress, has sometimes felt like she’s a fellow soror, the term used by Black Greek organizations for sorority sisters. On their own, members have shown up to call voters, organize fundraisers, knock on doors, cheer Hayes on at campaign events and even offer pro bono legal help.

“I had people from Massachusetts come in to volunteer,” said Hayes, a Democrat who is seeking a fourth term. “I’ve had people who had previously been considering going to a battleground state like Pennsylvania and are saying, ‘No, we’re going to stay right here and help out in this race in Connecticut.'”

Downballot candidates like Hayes — particularly Black women — have benefited from a surge in support this year from volunteers who happen to be members of Black Greek organizations, many energized by Kamala Harris’ presidential run. The vice president is a longtime member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., which was founded at her alma matter, Howard University, in 1908. Harris pledged AKA as a senior at Howard in 1986.

Collectively known as the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the nine historically Black sororities and fraternities are nonpartisan and barred from endorsing candidates because of their not-for-profit status. The organizations focus on voter registration drives, civic engagement and nonelectoral initiatives and are careful not to show favor to a particular candidate. But many of the groups’ members, as individuals, have been “extremely active” in federal and state races around the country this year, said Jaime R. Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

“I think that’s a part of the Kamala Harris effect,” Harrison said during a recent visit to Connecticut.

There were women affiliated with all the D9 sororities on a recent get-out-the-vote bus tour through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland to support Black women on the ballot.

Along with other volunteers, they knocked on hundreds of doors, made thousands of calls and sent out hundreds of postcards, urging people to vote. The trip was organized by the Higher Heights for America PAC, a nearly 13-year-old organization that works to elect progressive Black women.

Members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. showed off their crimson and cream colors while stumping in Maryland for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks, a fellow Delta who is in a closely watched race against former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan.

Volunteers who are D9 sorority members also campaigned for Democratic U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha who is running for the U.S. Senate. If both candidates were elected, it would mark the first time two Black women have served in the Senate simultaneously.

Latosha Johnson, a social worker from Hartford, recently participated in a get-out-the-vote phone banking session for Hayes along with other Black women who, like her, are members of Alpha Kappa Alpha. She said there’s a realization among many Black and brown voters that the stakes in the election are particularly high. And if Harris wins, she’ll need allies in Congress, Johnson said.

“If we don’t get her a Congress that’s going to be able to move things,” Johnson said, “that becomes hard.”

Hayes is in a rematch against former Republican George Logan, a former state senator who identifies as Afro-Latino but has not seen an outpouring of support from D9 members, according to his campaign.

Both Harris and former President Donald Trump are courting Black voters in the final days of the presidential race. Harris’ campaign has expressed concern about a lack of voting enthusiasm among Black men.

While Trump’s favorability among Black Americans has risen somewhat since he left office in 2021, two-thirds still identify as Democrats. About 2 in 10 identify as independents. About 1 in 10 identify as Republicans, according to a recent poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Voter registration and nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts by the sororities and fraternities, coupled with the mobilization of individual members, could potentially have an impact on some of these races, said Darren Davis, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.

“In local elections, in statewide elections, where the Black vote is more powerful and concentrated as opposed to in national elections, D9 organizations have this tremendous untapped ability to reach and to mobilize disaffected voters,” Davis said.

The D9 fraternal groups were founded on U.S. college campuses in the early 1900s when Black students faced racial prejudice and exclusion that prevented them from joining existing white sororities and fraternities. In a tradition that continues today, the organizations focused on mutual upliftment, educational and personal achievement, civic engagement and a lifelong commitment to community service.

Many of the fraternities and sororities served as training grounds for future civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. member Brandon McGee is a former Democratic state representative who now leads Connecticut’s Social Equity Council on cannabis. As the father of two daughters, he is excited about helping Harris and Hayes win.

“I want my babies to see me working for a female who looks like their mother. And even beyond looking like their mother, a female,” he said. “And I want my babies to know, ‘You can do the same thing.'” 
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Presidential candidates make pitch to Black voters in North Carolina

North Carolina is one of seven so-called swing states that could determine the next U.S. president. Kamala Harris, Donald Trump and their surrogates have spent a lot of time campaigning in this southern state. Black Americans make up 22% of the population, and those voters could decide who gets North Carolina’s 16 Electoral College votes. Rafael Saakov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Videographer: Aleksandr Bergan
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California attempts to regulate election deepfakes

The state of California has passed several laws attempting to regulate artificial intelligence, including AI used to create realistic looking but manipulated audio or video — known as a deepfake. In this U.S. election season, the aim is to counter misinformation. But it has raised concerns about free speech. From California, Genia Dulot has our story.
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Georgia 2024: Inside a critical battleground state

Georgia appeared to be on track to elect former U.S. President Donald Trump earlier in the 2024 presidential campaign when President Joe Biden was still in the race. But Vice President Kamala Harris has put the state back into play for Democrats.
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US voters facing ‘heightened and dynamic’ threat landscape

Tuesday’s US presidential election is shaping up to be unlike any the country has seen before. Security and intelligence officials warn that voters are facing a heightened and dynamic threat environment, with dangers coming from both home and abroad. VOA National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin has more.
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Most Americans can vote before Election Day

More than 300,000 people in the state of Georgia cast their ballots for U.S. president on the first day of voting in the battleground state. These people were among the millions of Americans who are eligible to vote before Election Day, November 5.
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Supreme Court allows Pennsylvania to count contested ballots

DOYLESTOWN, Pennsylvania — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency appeal from Republicans that could have led to thousands of provisional ballots not being counted in Pennsylvania as the presidential campaigns vie in the final days before the election in the nation’s biggest battleground state. 

The justices left in place a state Supreme Court ruling that elections officials must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected. 

The ruling is a victory for voting-rights advocates, who had sought to force counties — primarily Republican-controlled counties — to let voters cast provisional ballots on Election Day if they had realized that their mail-in ballots were to be rejected for various garden-variety errors. 

As of Thursday, about 9,000 ballots out of more than 1.6 million returned had arrived at elections offices around Pennsylvania lacking a secrecy envelope, a signature or a date, according to state records. 

Pennsylvania is the biggest presidential election battleground this year, with 19 electoral votes, and is expected to play an outsized role in deciding the election between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris. 

It was decided by tens of thousands of votes in 2016 when Trump won it and again in 2020 when Democrat Joe Biden won it. 

The ruling came as voters had their last chance Friday to apply for  mail-in ballots in a bellwether suburban Philadelphia county, while a county  across the state gave voters who didn’t receive their ballots in the mail another chance to get them. 

A judge in Erie County, in Pennsylvania’s northwestern corner, ruled Friday in a lawsuit brought by the Democratic Party that about 15,000 people who applied for mail ballots but didn’t receive them may go to the county elections office and get replacements through Monday. 

The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot has passed in Pennsylvania. But the judge’s ruling means that Erie County’s elections office will be open every day through Monday for voters to go in, cancel the mail-in ballots they didn’t receive in the mail, and get ballots over the counter. 

In suburban Philadelphia’s Bucks County, a court set a deadline of 5 p.m. Friday for voters there to apply for and receive mail-in ballots. 

Lines outside the county’s elections office in Doylestown were long throughout the day — snaking down the sidewalk — with the process taking about two hours by Friday afternoon. 

Nakesha McGuirk, 44, a Democrat from Bensalem, sized up the line and said: “I did not expect the line to be this long. But I’m going to stick it out.” 

She faces a long work commute next week and worried about her ability to make it to the polls on Election Day. “I figured that rather than run into the risk of not getting home in time to go and vote, that it would be better to just do it this way early,” said McGuirk, a Harris supporter. 

Republican voter Patrick Lonieski, a Trump supporter from Buckingham, also found it more convenient with his work schedule to vote Friday in a county he called “pivotal” to the outcome. 

“I just want to make sure I get my ballot in, and it’s counted,” said Lonieski, 62, who was joined by his 18-year-old son, voting for the first time. 

The line steadily dwindled as 5 p.m. approached. One last straggler broke into a run to make it by the deadline as elections workers cheerfully counted down the seconds. “Let’s go! Hurry up! You can do it!” a bystander yelled. People broke into applause as she walked through the door — just in time. 

A Bucks County judge had ordered the three-day extension in response to a Trump campaign lawsuit alleging that voters faced disenfranchisement when they were turned away by county application-processing offices that had struggled to keep up with demand, leading to frustration and anger among voters. 
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What US election results could mean for Africa

JOHANNESBURG — Whoever U.S. voters choose as their next president — former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris — the election has global implications, with the probability it will affect other economies, foreign conflicts and personal freedoms, analysts told VOA.

South African independent political analyst Asanda Ngoasheng said the winner could usher in policies that affect ordinary people in Africa.

“I hope that as Americans vote, they’re aware that whatever decision they make, it’s going to determine the future of not only America but the rest of the world,” she said.

“How we engage with issues of termination of pregnancy, how we engage with issues of LGBT rights, how we engage with issues of race and racism will be determined by this election, not just for America but for everyone else and everywhere else in the world,” Ngoasheng continued.

The abortion issue is a particularly divisive topic for U.S. Republicans and Democrats.

While the United States is the largest funder of global reproductive health programs, Trump slashed that funding during his presidency by extending a policy that barred U.S. aid from going to any organization that supported abortion.

Experts said they believe that a second Trump presidency would likely do that again and could negatively affect PEPFAR, the U.S.’s key HIV/AIDS program.

Trade is another key area in which analysts think Harris and Trump would differ, given Trump’s “America first” policy.

African governments hope that next year the U.S. will renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a Clinton-era policy that gives countries duty-free access to the U.S. market.

Ray Hartley, research director of South African Brenthurst Foundation think tank, does not have high hopes for a second Trump presidency.

“I think that a Trump presidency would reinforce America’s isolationist approach in international affairs, and that might not be good for trade,” he said.

Other analysts said they believe general U.S. policy toward Africa won’t differ radically regardless of who wins.

They said that while Africa was often neglected in terms of U.S. foreign policy, that has shifted in recent years amid renewed competition with Russia and China on the resource-rich continent.

Moscow has strengthened military ties with many African governments, while U.S. troops have been kicked out of Niger and Chad. Beijing, meanwhile, is Africa’s largest trade partner and has been building infrastructure throughout the continent.

Ebenezer Obadare, senior fellow for Africa studies at U.S. research organization  Council on Foreign Relations, said, “Insofar as the United States is intent on competing with those powers in Africa, keeping its old alliances and building new ones, I don’t think one administration is likely to differ much from another, strictly in terms of their Africa policy.”

As vice president, Harris traveled to the continent, where she pushed President Joe Biden’s line that the U.S. was “all in on Africa.” The Biden administration also started holding an annual U.S.-African leaders’ summit.

And, as it increases competition with China, the current administration has also undertaken funding the biggest U.S. infrastructure project in Africa in generations: the Lobito corridor, a railway connecting Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo that will be used to transport critical minerals.

Biden was forced to reschedule a promised visit to Africa and is now expected in Angola in December. The choice of country has been criticized by some for what they say is Angola’s shoddy human rights record.

Trump’s signature initiative involving the continent was creating Prosper Africa, a U.S. agency designed to assist American companies doing business in Africa.

However, he also offended many Africans during his first term, using a derogatory term to refer to countries on the continent and mispronouncing Namibia’s name. More recently he raised ire by comparing himself to South African icon Nelson Mandela.

Analysts said that while Harris and Trump have generally ignored Africa over the course of their campaigns, whoever becomes America’s next president would do well to keep up engagement with the continent, which boasts the world’s youngest population.
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Elon Musk loses bid to move $1 million voter prizes case

A U.S. judge on Friday denied Elon Musk’s bid to move a Pennsylvania lawsuit over his $1 million voter prizes to federal court, moving the case back to state court.

It was not immediately clear if the decision would affect the billionaire’s plan to keep awarding money until the U.S. presidential election Tuesday.

The decision was issued by U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert in Philadelphia federal court.

Musk has been giving $1 million checks to randomly selected registered voters who sign a petition supporting free speech and gun rights.

Musk’s America PAC had awarded $1 million prizes to 14 people as of Friday and said the final prize will be given out Tuesday.

Democratic Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence Krasner sued Musk and his political action committee, which backs Republican former President Donald Trump, on Monday in a state court to try to block the giveaway. Krasner called the program an illegal lottery.

Two days later, Tesla CEO Musk and his America PAC sought to move the case to federal court, arguing Krasner’s lawsuit raised questions about free-speech rights and election interference that belong in federal court. That prompted the state judge who had been overseeing the case to put it on hold.

In arguing that the case belonged in state court, Krasner called Musk’s maneuver an attempt to “run the clock until Election Day.” Krasner did not allege the giveaway violates federal law.

Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania, one of seven battleground states likely to determine the outcome of the race between Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Musk’s offer is limited to registered voters in the seven states expected to decide the election — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Musk gave away the first $1 million at an October 19 America PAC rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital.

The giveaway falls in a gray area of election law, and legal experts are divided on whether Musk could be violating federal laws against paying people to register to vote.

The U.S. Department of Justice warned America PAC the giveaway could violate federal law, according to media reports, but federal prosecutors have not taken any public action.

Musk has so far given nearly $120 million to America PAC, according to federal disclosures.
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Pennsylvania’s Erie County is pivotal in presidential race 

Erie, Pennsylvania — During next Tuesday’s election, a lot of nervous voters, pollsters and campaign officials will be paying close attention to Erie County in Pennsylvania, which has chosen the victor in the past four presidential contests.

Over the past decade, the margins between the winner and loser have tightened, reflecting the national trend of closer elections. That is perhaps no big surprise. After all, bellwether “Erie County is such a microcosm of the entire nation,” said Jeff Bloodworth, a history professor at Gannon University in downtown Erie.

Erie County, the largest county by area in the state, is “slightly whiter, it’s slightly poorer and it’s slightly less educated than the average in Pennsylvania,” explained Bloodworth.

Both the Democratic and Republican party presidential nominees campaigned here in the closing weeks of the race.

“Erie County, you are a pivot county. How you all vote in presidential elections often ends up predicting the national result,” Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat, informed a recent rally at the Erie Insurance Arena.

Former president Donald Trump, the Republican, during his appearance at the Bayfront Convention Center, told the crowd, “I’m here in Erie, Pennsylvania, with the workers who used to be Democrats, but now they’re all Trump Republicans because they know that Trump is going to take them to the Promised Land.”

Democrats traditionally prevail in the city limits. But the party is not taking anything for granted — pushing for maximum turnout in both the city and the county.

“We’re past the persuasion point and it’s a matter of getting our base voters out to vote, and nothing works better than a knock at the door and face-to-face contact,” said local party chairman Sam Talarico.

The visits to Erie by the presidential contenders “do make a difference as far as enthusiasm goes,” according to Talarico.

With the lead in polling going back and forth and possibly unreliable in such a tight contest, “the only thing we can rely on is enthusiasm, and we know that the enthusiasm in Erie County is off the charts,” added Talarico.

It is in the more rural communities of Erie County where Republicans are strongest.

Harold Ross has been knocking on doors in Erie County and neighboring Warren County, where he lives, on behalf of Trump.

“You knock on a door, and you don’t know what you’re going to walk into. You could walk into a hardliner — a Democrat. You kind of try to stay neutral with it because you don’t want to make it look pushy,” explained Ross, wearing a shirt displaying the former president’s mugshot of when he was arrested in 2023 in Georgia after being accused of trying to illegally overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.

“I’ve run into Democrats who actually tell me they’re flipping — that they’re going to vote for Donald Trump,” said Ross.

Linda Pezzino manages the Trump campaign office in the town of Corry. Pezzino said she had been experiencing sleepless nights worrying about Trump’s fate in the election.

“All of a sudden something came over me and I said, ‘He won. He’s winning. He’s going to win Pennsylvania,’” Pezzino recalled.

Erie experienced a long period of being on the losing side — regardless of the party in power. Jobs and people left as factories closed and Pennsylvania became part of America’s Rust Belt.

A renaissance is attracting recreational tourism with activities from boating to wine tasting.

Overseeing a second generation of family vineyards is Mario Mazza. His father and uncle were immigrants from Italy and grew the family business, nestled along the shore of Lake Erie, over more than half a century into one that has more than 240 hectares under grape and grain cultivation.

Some in the county, according to Mazza, are fatigued by all the attention paid to voters by the presidential campaigns.

“I don’t know anyone who is soaking it up and basking in the amount of attention,” he said.

Mazza said he wanted to hear more pragmatism and nuances of policy from the presidential campaigns and less of the pithy soundbites and inflammatory language, especially on an issue critical to his industry — immigrant labor.

“Without labor, the agricultural machine in this country will grind to a halt. And I think anybody in agriculture knows that. Anybody in the food supply chain knows and realizes that,” Mazza said, standing at the edge of a field of recently harvested grape vines behind the family’s main Mediterranean-style rustic winery in the borough of North East township.

The winery is more upscale than the typical casual places to grab a quick meal that dot the city of Erie, a half-hour drive southwest.

At La Cocina Coqui, customers stream in for their lunchtime takeout orders of plantain sandwiches and empanadillas. Many are Spanish speakers, craving the Puerto Rican-inspired dishes of owner Leida Rodriguez.

An influx of Hispanics, especially those from Puerto Rico or whose parents were born in that Caribbean territory of the United States, has helped offset Erie’s population decline in recent years.

Rodriguez said, in this election season, her customers also hunger for a president who will devour inflation.

“The cost of food. The rent is going up in here. They’re just looking at stuff like that — who would help out,” she says during a brief break from the small restaurant’s kitchen.

Democrats’ edge in voter registration and their campaign organization here would seem to give Harris the advantage, but Professor Bloodworth said that assumption may be outdated.

“Before Trump, you would look at this and go ‘The Democrats are going to win. They’re organized. They have a dozen paid staffers in a county of 200,000. That just has to be meaningful.’ Unless it’s not, because Donald Trump has kind of changed the rules of American politics.”

Democrats and Republicans in Erie County appear to agree on only one thing right now — they are on edge because of the high stakes ahead of Election Day in this must-win county in a must-win state.
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Pennsylvania’s Erie County pivotal in presidential race

In Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, a lot of eyes will be on Erie County, Pennsylvania, where voters have chosen the winner of the past four presidential contests. During the past decade, the margins between the winner and loser have tightened. VOA’s chief national correspondent Steve Herman reports from Erie, Pennsylvania.
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Kurdish immigrants running for local office in Minnesota

Moorhead, Minnesota, is home to more than 3,000 Kurds, some of whom have been there since the mid-1970s. They are the town’s largest minority group and hope this election might bring them representation in local government. Dakhil Shammo of VOA’s Kurdish service went to Minnesota and met with two local candidates in this story narrated by Amy Katz.
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