Reuters
As Republicans prepare to contest election, Democrats play defense
By Luc Cohen
October 17, 202410:07 PM GMT+6Updated 31 min ago
- Summary
- Republicans involved in 130 election-related lawsuits
- Democrats rely on existing systems to ensure fair election
- Potential battles loom over election certification
Oct 17 (Reuters) – Republicans and their allies are preparing to contest the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, filing lawsuits state-by-state to challenge potential losses and forcing Democrats into a defensive posture for fear of post-vote chaos.
“The 2020 election was free, fair, and secure, and Democrats are making sure that 2024 is the same,” the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said in a statement on Tuesday.
Republicans are involved in 130 lawsuits they say aim to make sure votes are counted properly and that people don’t vote illegally, after then-President Donald Trump in 2020 falsely claimed his defeat to President Joe Biden was marred by fraud.
Vice President Harris and Trump, the Republican former president are locked in a tight race, particularly in the seven swing states controlling 94 of the 270 Electoral College votes a candidate needs to win.
Democrats and their allies say their opponents’ lawsuits aim to sow doubts about the legitimacy of the election after some 60 or so lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies following the 2020 vote failed to overturn his loss.
Rather than counter with a similarly proactive legal campaign, Democrats are largely relying on existing systems to ensure a fair election while seeking to thwart perceived threats to voting access or certification procedures.
Democrats’ comfort with the status quo stems in part from statewide officials responsible for elections in the battleground states having dismissed Trump’s false fraud claims. These include governors, attorneys general and secretaries of state from both parties.
Unlike Republicans, Democrats broadly assert that election administration was fair in 2020 and likely will be so again. They have also been bolstered by expansions to mail-in and early voting in battleground states that will decide the election.
“Democrats, and groups favoring or aligned with Democrats, are mostly playing defense at the moment,” said Justin Levitt, a former adviser to the Biden administration on voting access and a law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
Democrats’ strategy was on display on Monday when a state judge in Georgia said local officials have a duty to certify elections – a blow to a Republican county election administrator who had argued she had discretion if she had concerns with the process.
The Democratic National Committee had intervened, saying the case sought to convert the routine process of certification into a hunt for election irregularities.
“We have protected our elections from far-right Republicans trying to disrupt them,” the Harris campaign said in a Tuesday statement on the Georgia decision.
In another case in Georgia, a judge on Tuesday temporarily halted a new rule passed by the state’s conservative election board requiring poll workers to hand-count ballots. Democrats had argued the change would sow chaos and delay results.
And in Arizona, a judge on Oct. 11 rejected a conservative group’s bid to force the state’s largest county to do more extensive checks to make sure non-citizens were not on voter rolls. Democrats had sought to intervene in the case, calling the lawsuit “little more than political theater.”
Non-citizens already are barred from voting in the U.S.
Claire Zunk, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, accused Democrats on Tuesday of scheming to dismantle election safeguards and said Republicans were committed to protecting every legal vote.
In a statement Zunk said Republicans had secured important wins in voting-related cases, such as a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in August reviving proof of citizenship requirements for Arizona elections and a Georgia ruling last week denying a push by voting rights groups to extend the registration deadline due to hurricanes.
CERTIFICATION BATTLES
Since the 2020 election, more than 30 local officials have refused to certify valid election results or threatened to do so, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning public policy institute.
But none of those efforts succeeded because state officials and courts intervened.
In the 2022 midterm elections, for example, an Arizona state judge declared that the board of supervisors of conservative, rural Cochise County did not have the right to block certification, after Republican board members resisted due to concerns about voting machines, which the state disputed.
In battleground states, judges may issue orders compelling reluctant local officials to certify election results, and those who refuse to do so can face civil or criminal penalties, according to the Brennan Center.
“These state administrators are by and large nonpartisan, professional and competent,” said Jennifer Victor, a political science professor at George Mason University in Virginia. “Democrats are depending on that.”
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Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller
November 5, 20249:16 AM GMT+6Updated 4 hours ago
Item 1 of 2 Oct 20, 2024; Austin, Texas, USA; Joe Rogan talks to fans in the paddock at the Formula 1 Pirelli United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. Mandatory Credit: Aaron E. Martinez-Imagn Images/File Photo
[1/2]Oct 20, 2024; Austin, Texas, USA; Joe Rogan talks to fans in the paddock at the Formula 1 Pirelli United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. Mandatory Credit: Aaron E. Martinez-Imagn Images/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who recently interviewed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for nearly three hours, said on Monday he has endorsed the former president in the race to the White House.
Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 U.S. election in what polls show to be a tight race. Harris has got multiple celebrity endorsements.
“For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump,” Rogan said on X while posting a clip of his interview with billionaire Elon Musk, who has also endorsed Trump. Rogan said in his post that Musk made the “most compelling case for Trump.”
Trump’s recent interview with Rogan lasted about 3 hours and was released on YouTube and Spotify in late October. The two discussed a range of topics and the interview got over 45 million views on YouTube.
The former president criticized Rogan in August on Truth Social, his social media platform, after the podcaster praised then-independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has since pulled out of the race and endorsed Trump. Trump later called Rogan a “good guy.”
Trump and Harris have courted voters with appearances on podcasts, in addition to more traditional rallies and media interviews.
Spotify (SPOT.N), opens new tab said in March “The Joe Rogan Experience” had 14.5 million followers, almost triple the platform’s second most popular program. Rogan also has more than 19 million followers on Instagram and 18 million followers on YouTube.
A poll by YouGov last year found that 81% of his listeners are male and 56% are under 35 years old, a demographic that tends to support Trump over Harris.
Harris’ team had been in touch with Rogan’s program about a possible appearance but her campaign said in late October she will not appear on his podcast.
Rogan joins a list of celebrities like Musk and wrestler Hulk Hogan to have endorsed Trump.
Harris has a much bigger list of celebrity endorsements – ranging from basketball superstar Lebron James and actress Meryl Streep to comedian Chris Rock and former talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Superstar singers Beyonce and Taylor Swift have also endorsed her.
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Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Raju Gopalakrishnan
By Kanishka Singh and Sheila Dang
November 5, 20249:52 AM GMT+6Updated 4 hours ago
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – False or misleading claims by billionaire Elon Musk about the U.S. election have amassed 2 billion views on social media platform X this year, according to a report, opens new tab by non-profit group Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The platform is also playing a central role in enabling the spread of false information about the critical battleground states that will likely determine the outcome of the presidential race, election and misinformation experts said on Monday.
A spokesperson for X said the company’s Community Notes feature, which lets users add additional context to posts, is more effective at helping people identify misleading content than traditional warning flags on posts.
Since taking over the company formerly known as Twitter, Musk has curtailed content moderation and laid off thousands of employees. He has thrown his support behind former President Donald Trump, who is locked in an exceptionally close race against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.
Musk’s massive reach with nearly 203 million followers helps enable “network effects” in which content on X can jump to other social media and messaging platforms such as Reddit and Telegram, said Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on disinformation. “X is a conduit from one platform to another,” she said.
At least 87 of Musk’s posts this year have promoted claims about the U.S. election that fact-checkers have rated as false or misleading, amassing 2 billion views, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s report.
In Pennsylvania, one of the seven key swing states, some X users have seized on instances of local election administrators flagging incomplete voter registration forms that would not be processed, falsely casting the events as examples of election interference, said Philip Hensley-Robin, Pennsylvania executive director at Common Cause, during a press briefing on Monday.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan organization that promotes accountable government and voting rights.
Some X accounts implied “that there was voter fraud, when in fact, we know very clearly that election officials and election administrators in all of our counties were following the rules and … therefore only eligible voters are voting,” Hensley-Robin said.
Cyabra, a firm that uses AI to detect online disinformation, said on Monday that an X account with 117,000 followers played a key role in helping spread a fake video purporting to show Pennsylvania mail-in ballots for Trump being destroyed.
X’s spokesperson said the platform took action against many accounts that shared the video.
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Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Sheila Dang in Austin; Additional reporting by Stephanie Burnett; Editing by Lincoln Feast
By Reuters
November 5, 20244:36 AM GMT+6Updated 9 hours ago
- A person picks up a sticker while voters head to a polling station as Georgians turned out a day after the battleground state opened early voting, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., October 16, 2024. REUTERS/Megan Varner/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – The top court in the battleground state of Georgia ruled on Monday that Cobb County cannot extend the deadline for counting about 3,000 absentee ballots that were sent out shortly before Election Day, handing a victory to the Republican National Committee and presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Siding with the RNC, the Georgia Supreme Court overturned a judge’s ruling extending the deadline until Friday in Cobb County, located in suburban Atlanta. The court decided that only absentee ballots that arrive by 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday (0000 GMT Wednesday) can be counted.
Civil rights groups had sued last week seeking to extend the deadline, arguing that the county violated state law by failing to promptly send out about 3,000 absentee ballots. County officials said they were overwhelmed by a surge in requests.
The Republican National Committee had argued that extending the deadline would violate state law.
“Election Day is Election Day – not the week after,” RNC Chair Michael Whatley wrote in a post on social media.
Cobb County is a large and racially diverse area in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. The county voted for Democrat Joe Biden over Trump by 14 percentage points in the 2020 election. Biden defeated Trump in Georgia in 2020.
A spokesperson for Cobb County did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The state high court ordered that ballots received after Election Day be separated from other ballots and set aside. Voters who did not receive an absentee ballot or did not have enough time to mail it can vote in person on Tuesday.
Georgia is one of seven closely contested states expected to decide the outcome of the race between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Scott Malone and Will Dunham
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