Reuters
Early voting begins in storm-ravaged North Carolina
October 18, 20241:07 AM GMT+6Updated 15 min ago
Item 1 of 4 Voters wait in line to cast their ballots on the first day of early in-person voting in one of the mountainous counties badly affected by Hurricane Helene, in Marion, North Carolina, U.S. October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
[1/4]Voters wait in line to cast their ballots on the first day of early in-person voting in one of the mountainous counties badly affected by Hurricane Helene, in Marion, North Carolina, U.S. October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
- Summary
- Storm-ravaged southeastern United States starts voting in Nov. election
- Parties try to assess impact of storm on voter turnout
- Georgia, North Carolina could tip presidential race
HENDERSONVILLE, North Carolina, Oct 17 (Reuters) – Polls opened for early voting on Thursday in North Carolina – a critical battleground in the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election – just weeks after Hurricane Helene left some residents still without power, running water or phone service.
North Carolina could be crucial in determining a winner in the race between U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, and Republican former President Donald Trump because its voting preferences could swing either way. Polls show a very tight race overall with a handful of swing states likely to determine the winner.
Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people across six states and caused billions of dollars in damage, has sparked questions on how it might impact voter turnout.
Harvey Neal, a 71-year-old retiree, voted at the lone early voting site in Hendersonville, North Carolina, as a steady stream of voters filed in and out of the center on Thursday morning.
Neal cast his vote for Harris. “She’s young, she’s a Democrat,” he said. “And, you know, what’s the alternative?”
Neal considers himself relatively fortunate following the hurricane as nothing hit his house, though he had been without power for four or five days.
First-time voter Trevor Miller, a 21-year-old student, said he voted for Trump. “I just want to be able to live the best way possible, and I felt like with my vote that that could happen.”
Trump and Harris are in a dead heat in North Carolina, with Trump showing 48% support in state polls, versus 47.5% for Harris, according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
Some of the state’s hardest hit counties lean both Republican and Democratic. For instance, Buncombe County – home to the city of Asheville – supported President Joe Biden in the 2020 election versus Trump, while neighboring Yancey County favored Trump.
North Carolina’s state elections board has spent weeks assessing storm damage to polling locations. On Thursday, 76 early voting sites were set to open to voters in the 25 western North Carolina counties listed in the federal disaster declaration. That compares to 80 planned before the storm.
Early voting has been the most popular way for North Carolinians to cast a ballot in both the 2020 and 2016 elections, according to the state. Early voting started on Tuesday in Georgia, another closely contested state that was hit by storm damage.
Still, near polling sites in western North Carolina were reminders of the destruction the region has faced, with trees uprooted and debris piled on the sides of roads. In Swannanoa, buildings still lay reduced to rubble and a house-sized chunk of the ground was caved in along a main street.
Gene Dickinson, a 75-year-old resident of Asheville, said he had been planning to vote for Trump this year but has been too busy helping run supplies to those in need since the hurricane to think about voting.
“With everything that’s going on, I haven’t even thought about that,” he said outside of a FEMA recovery center. “I’ve heard about it, but we don’t have any TV or anything.”
In Burnsville, Tina Veitch, a 49-year-old graphic designer, said the road to her family’s house was destroyed by the storm. But one of the reasons she has stayed in the area, instead of seeking refuge with family in Florida, is so she can vote.
She said on Wednesday that the process to vote by absentee ballot was too arduous, adding: “The amount of hoops you have to jump through to just do it was not worth it … So we were like, ‘We’re just going to stay ’til tomorrow at least and vote’.”
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Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in North Carolina; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Michelle Nichols, Stephen Coates, Diane Craft and Alistair Bell
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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