Debate day is here: Five things to watch for in the high-stakes Harris-Trump faceoff

(ATLANTA) — The Republican-led Georgia State Election Board on Friday passed a major rule change just a few weeks before the November election requiring the hand-counting of all ballots, prompting fears from both sides of the aisle of potential long delays in the reporting of election results.

The rule, passed 3-2 with the Republican members leading the way, now requires the hand counting of ballots at each precinct in addition to the customary machine count.

Under the new rule, poll workers would need to unseal and remove ballots from the machine scanners and three poll officers would need to independently hand count the total number of ballots in stacks, arriving at the same total.

Proponents of the rule change downplayed fears of delays and concerns about breaks in chains of custody, during a heating hearing and argued the change would bring more integrity and transparency to the state’s election procedures.

“You’re pulling them out of a pile and you’re strictly going to go to the corner and you’re just going to count those ballots. Now, how difficult is that? That is not a big deal. I mean, in my opinion, that’s not a big deal,” Sharlene Alexander, who helped present the measure to the board, said.

Former President Donald Trump has publicly praised the push from the Republican members to implement additional measures. He continues to claim fraud in the 2020 election and that he won Georgia without any legitimate evidence.

During an Atlanta rally in August, Trump called the Republican board members who have pushed the changes “pit bulls fighting for victory.”

He also specifically praised the proposal that would require the independent verification of ballots from three different election workers, asking the crowd, “Who could be against that? Who could be against it?”

“My last comment is this vote, this board voted to have on the record that we’ll be going against the advice of our legal counsel by voting in the affirmative. We will have no further discussion,” Chairman John Fervier, who was appointed Chair by Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, said Friday as he strongly criticized the board’s decision.

Many state officials have already raised concerns about the feasibility and legality of the last-minute changes, and during the meeting election workers spoke up about the burdens this rule change would have on election workers.

“What I do in my county is not what my neighboring county does. They do not have the resources to do that. So, to say that it would not cause delays on election night is not true or accurate. It will cause delays for certain counties,” Rebecca England, an election worker from Greene County, said during a discussion about the burden the change would put on election officials.

The election board rejected a proposal that would have required hand-counting during early voting, which begins on Oct. 15.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, opposed the rule changes and his office issued a warning to the board ahead of today’s meeting, specifically laying out how approving the hand-counting proposal likely violates state law warned the board that it may not be lawful.

“There are thus no provisions in the statutes cited in support of these proposed rules that permit counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level prior to delivery to the election superintendent for tabulation,” his office wrote in a letter to the election board Thursday.

“Accordingly, these proposed rules are not tethered to any statute- — and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do,” the letter continued.

An attorney for Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, who was allegedly pressured by Former President Donald Trump not to certify the 2020 election, also sent a letter to the board warning the board not to go through with the changes at such a late stage.

While raising concerns about potential delays, Raffensperger assured voters that he “fully anticipate[s]” election results will be certified by Nov. 12, in compliance with state law.

Vice President Kamala Harris and other groups have filed lawsuits against the changes contending that they will cause disruptions to the certification process.

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(NEW YORK) — Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is among those pushing back on past comments made by President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the next defense secretary, who was critical of women being allowed to serve in combat units.

“I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles,” Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, said in a recent podcast interview that aired last week.

“It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” he said on the “The Shawn Ryan Show”.

Hegseth’s comments have raised concerns among former servicemembers with first-hand experience serving in integrated units, and from the former Defense Secretary Panetta, who in 2013 lifted the Pentagon’s ban on women serving in ground combat units.

“Those kinds of comments come from a past era and I think it’s important for him to take the time to really look at how our military is performing in an outstanding fashion,” Panetta told ABC News in an interview.

“We’ve got the best military in the world, and the reason is because we have the best fighting men and women in the world who are part of it,” he added.

“I just think that anybody who takes the time to really look at how women are performing in combat will come around and say that that’s exactly where they belong,” he said.

In the podcast interview, Hegseth said that the decision to allow women to serve in ground combat units has lowered the physical standards for those wishing to serve in those units.

Panetta recalled that in the lead-up to his decision, he pushed back on the notion that allowing women to serve in combat units would lower physical standards.

“We shouldn’t lower the standards. We should require that women have to meet exactly the same standards as men do, and that’s what they do,” he says he argued at the time. “They wouldn’t be in those positions if they weren’t able to be able to meet the standards that are required.”

Panetta said, “The mere fact that that has just not become an issue at all in terms of how the military has performed, is a reflection that the simple reason is because both men and women are living up to the same standards when it comes to fighting for America.”

Of the more than one million active-duty military personnel, 17.5% are women according to the Pentagon’s latest statistics.

The process of integrating women into combat units was a gradual one that began in 1993 when Defense Secretary Les Aspin issued an order that allowed women to fly in combat.

But women were not allowed to serve in ground combat units until 2013, when Panetta rescinded the ban that was subsequently enhanced in 2015 by Defense Secretary Ash Carter who cleared the path for women to serve in the jobs that were still limited to men, including some in special operations.

By 2019, more than 600 female Sailors and Marines were serving in combat arms units previously restricted to men, while more than 650 women held Army combat roles and over 1,000 had accessed Army combat specialties.

Currently more than 2,500 women serve in previously closed ground combat jobs, 152 women have passed the elite Ranger School test, and 10 of them serve as Rangers in the 75th Ranger Regiment, according to a review of military personnel information compiled by Retired Army Col. Ellen Haring, with the Service Women’s Action Network.

Haring points out that the full integration of women into combat units actually occurred during President Trump’s first term and that standards have never been lowered to accommodate women.

“Women have been serving in combat jobs for almost 10 years now and there is absolutely no evidence that women have harmed combat units,” she told ABC News. “In fact, many standards had to be established when they were considering admitting women because they had previously been loosely defined.”

“Those who claim they have been lowered have no actual knowledge of the training requirements or how women have been held to the exact same requirements,” she said. “If they think standards have changed or are different for women then I challenge them to go to Fort Moore today and watch the execution of training.”

Twenty years ago, Allison Jaslow headed a convoy security unit in Iraq that regularly came under smalls arms fire and was exposed to explosions from roadside bombs.

“Women have not only been in combat for some time, but many are tougher than many of their male counterparts. Need proof? Look at the women who’ve graduated from Ranger School, which is so grueling that around half of the men who enter it fail out,” said Jaslow in a statement issued in her role as the CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

“Those women deserve a Secretary of Defense who is aware of that reality and also ensures that the culture in the military embraces that reality – especially as we still continue to confront a recruitment crisis,” she added.

Garrett Jordan, a former Army captain, served in integrated combat units, and counts some of his female classmates at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as among those who are now Army Rangers or have commanded infantry and armor companies.

“Women have served in combat arms units, in both command and enlisted positions, and continue to do so and excel,” he said.

As a former Army officer, Jordan said he is “well aware of the physical endurance, technical competence, and mental fortitude that it takes to serve in a tank unit and to perform the duties and responsibilities as a soldier in a combat arms branch.”

Jordan said women in the training classes he commanded “maintained the standard, just as much as their male counterparts,” he said.

“Ultimately, gender does not determine whether or not someone has the physical strength, or competency to serve in these units,” said Jordan. “There is a standard, and if soldiers, regardless of gender are meeting it, then they should have the opportunity to serve in these units.”

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(PHOENIX) — Kristin and Dave Gambardella never expected the journey of growing their family to include an abortion procedure, but in summer 2023, the married couple nevertheless found themselves in a Planned Parenthood parking lot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a seven-hour drive from their home in Tucson, Arizona.

A week beforehand, a routine blood test at 17 weeks into Kristin’s pregnancy had come back with devastating results. A follow-up ultrasound confirmed her doctors’ fears. The fetus had a severe genetic abnormality.

“They told us it was really a guaranteed short life, full of pain and surgeries and constant medical care,” Gambardella said. “Dave is a stoic person,” she said of her husband, “and I remember he just broke down and lost it. And that’s when I really felt that feeling in my gut that was like, wow, this is pretty catastrophic.”

In deciding to end the pregnancy, the Gambardellas realized they weren’t only tasked with an agonizing decision for their family — they also had an Arizona law to contend with, which would prevent them from seeing any of their own doctors for the procedure.

“The doctor, I remember, she looked at me and her eyes just looked really sad. And she said, ‘No, you can’t come here. We can’t do that procedure for you. You’d have to leave the state’,” Gambardella said.

Arizona’s abortion ban

In Arizona — one of 21 states that has enacted abortion restrictions since the end of Roe v Wade — abortion is banned after 15 weeks, except for medical emergencies endangering the life of the mother. Gambardella didn’t qualify for that exception.

“As someone who has always believed in a woman’s right to make decisions about her own bodies, it was such a turning point in my understanding on just how much abortion care is interconnected with fertility care and the act of wanting to have a baby,” Gambardella said.

The experience inspired her to join the campaign to pass Proposition 139, a ballot measure that would enshrine in Arizona’s state constitution the right to an abortion until fetal viability.

Arizona is one of 10 states in the country that have such measures on the ballot this November, including Florida, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska.

This large push nationwide comes as abortion access remains one of the most important issues to voters this election — and the top issue for women under 30, according to an October survey by KFF, the nonpartisan health policy organization.

Where the candidates stand

Democrats hope that the issue could drive enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris, who has centered her campaign on restoring reproductive rights and attacking former President Donald Trump for nominating the conservative Supreme Court justices that voted to overrule Roe v. Wade.

Trump, who has repeatedly shifted his position on abortion from supporting a federal ban to declaring that he would not pass one, while remaining open to other reproductive health care restrictions, maintains that he will “protect women,” but is sparse on details.

It’s not clear, however, if abortion-access ballot measures will alter the outcome of the presidential race in a swing state like Arizona. Voters could split the ticket — voting to enshrine abortion access, but prioritizing other issues in their presidential choice.

Trump is leading Harris in Arizona by two points, according to 538’s latest polling average, even as polling so far has shown the abortion access amendment in Arizona to be widely popular, with about 60% of likely voters saying they’ll support it.

That level of support is in line with the success of abortion rights ballot measures in other states over the last two years since Roe v. Wade was overruled. Reproductive rights ballot measures have passed every time they’ve been on the ballot, whether the state leans Republican, Democrat or is closely divided like Arizona.

Susan Ashley, a retiree and a volunteer for the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign, says her “fury” over Roe vs. Wade being overturned drove her to make the initiative her “full-time job right now.”

“I’ve been an active voter, but I’ve never been involved in an event where there were so many passionate volunteers. And so this struck a nerve,” Ashley said.

Efforts on the ground

Athena Salman, a former Arizona state representative and director of Arizona campaigns for Reproductive Freedom for All, was at Ashley’s side for door-knocking in mid-October, in the 90-degree heat.

The two women spoke to nearly a dozen registered Independents in a neighborhood of Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. Each voter they spoke to said they were supporting the ballot measure.

“I think it really shows that Arizonans are just fed up with their reproductive freedom being up in the air and they’re ready to take action and get the government interference out of our personal decisions,” Salman said.

Though Arizona currently bans abortion at 15 weeks, the state saw all abortions halted for four months in the summer of 2022 when a ban from 1864 was revived. It nearly took effect again in the spring of 2024, but the Arizona state legislature repealed it after massive outcry from residents and a push from the Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes.

To Cindy Dahlgren, spokesperson for the campaign against the abortion access ballot measure, the legislature’s decision to repeal the near-total abortion ban and keep a 15-week ban should put people at ease.

“Proponents play on those fears and that confusion by saying there’s a ban when there’s not a ban,” she said, arguing that the current law only curtails the procedure but doesn’t fully ban it. “I would also point out that it was the legislature that repealed that law. And there doesn’t seem to be an appetite to put that law back in.”

Her campaign, called “It Goes Too Far,” argues that enshrining abortion access until fetal viability would remove too many restrictions around abortion, leaving it too unregulated.

“The choice really in November is not between abortion or no abortion. It’s between limited abortion and safety precautions and a doctor and parents involved or unlimited and unregulated abortion,” Dahlgren said.

Asked about cases like Gambardella’s, where pregnancy complications arise in the second trimester, or women who experience rape or incest and do not qualify for an exception, Dahlgren said, “we do not have to enshrine a very extreme abortion amendment to care for those victims.”

But Dr. Misha Pangasa, an OB-GYN with Planned Parenthood, one of only nine clinics in Arizona providing abortion care, said she doesn’t want to leave reproductive rights up to the political makeup of the state legislature anymore.

“The idea that Arizonans health care is at the whims of whichever legislature is holding the majority is never going to be the best way for people to get the best care,” Pangasa said.

There are currently around 40 laws that restrict abortions in the state of Arizona, which Pangasa said have already significantly impacted her ability to provide care to pregnant patients.

“Pregnancy is complicated and decisions at various stages are hard. And I am the one there helping support them. And what I wish that our government would do is just let me,” Pangasa said.

Pangasa said she sees patients like the Gambardellas on a regular basis.

“To be honest, it’s a really heartbreaking moment to be in when I talk to my patients and say, if you were in a different state with me right now, I would tell you that these are your options. But because we’re in Arizona, an abortion is just not an option,” she said.

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