Category: Politics

(WASHINGTON) — With just 16 days until Election Day, the Democratic governors of the three “Blue Wall” battleground states touted the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris’ ground game, and predicted she would prevail in their states but acknowledged how close the presidential race is.

“I think Kamala Harris wins, but make no mistake, it’s close,” Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz. “We’re not afraid of that… It causes us to get out and work, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Shapiro, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers sat down with Raddatz in the Pittsburgh area for an exclusive interview that aired Sunday. The interview came during the governors’ bus tour through the critical battlegrounds that some pundits say represent Harris’ best path to the presidency.

The three so-called “Blue Wall” swing states are key to a Democratic victory. All three voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — the first time since 1992 that they backed the Republican candidate. Four years later, President Joe Biden won them back.

If Harris wins Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — plus the single electoral vote in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District — she would hit the 270-electoral vote threshold needed to win the White House, even if she lost the other four battleground states.

The race is statistically tied in all three “Blue Wall” states, according to 538 polling averages.

“Listen, the only people that are not surprised about these polls are us three. We all expect this. We are not upset about it, we’re not scared. We’re determined to make sure we do everything in our power to win this thing,” Whitmer said.

Evers said he believes the race is still “undecided” at this point because many voters simply aren’t paying much attention yet.

“I talk to people just about every day that are, are torn about what to… how they’re going to vote. And so I think there are people that can be convinced, absolutely,” Evers said. “There are people that, frankly, don’t follow this on a daily basis.”

With 19 electoral votes up for grabs — the most of the battleground states — Pennsylvania is the prize both campaigns want to win. The margins have been exceedingly close in recent presidential elections, with Trump taking the state by 0.7 of a percentage point in 2016 and Biden winning by 1.2 points in 2020.

No Democrat has won the presidency without Pennsylvania since 1948. Both campaigns have invested heavily in the Keystone State, pouring in more than $500 million collectively in TV ad spending and reservations through the end of the year, the New York Times reported.

“I think it’s a must-win, and we want to win here,” Shapiro said. “I think both candidates believe that Pennsylvania is critical. I just think we’ve got a better candidate. We got a better message.”

But Trump’s message resonates with about half of the voters in their states, polls show. Asked to explain Trump’s appeal, Shapiro acknowledged that people are frustrated with government.

“I think what people are craving are leaders who know how to get stuff done for them,” Shapiro said. “Donald Trump talks a good game about that. Now he has a history of failing to deliver over and over and over again. And I think part of our responsibility here is to make sure we’re letting folks know that … when he had the keys to the White House before, he failed the American people time and time again.”

“He’s a charlatan,” Whitmer added. “He’s convinced people that he is strong when he’s actually very weak.”

In all three states, Democrats need to see high turnout among the voting blocs that traditionally back their candidates, like Black voters concentrated in the metropolitan areas.

In Wisconsin, the decline in Black voter turnout since 2012 has been steep, dropping from 78% in 2012 to 43% in 2020, according to Census data.

But Evers said his state is in “a much better place this time” and pointed to an improved ground game to reach voters.

“I feel confident that it’s going to be much larger than the last time. And it’s important to make sure that all people in Wisconsin feel that this election means something to them, and so we’ve upped the ground game in all our areas around the state, whether it’s rural, whether it’s in the Milwaukee area,” he said.

In neighboring Michigan, Democrats remain concerned that Arab and Muslim American voters will not turn out for Harris due to frustrations with the Biden administration’s support for Israel as the war and suffering in Gaza continue a year after Hamas’ brutal attack against the U.S. ally.

Michigan is home to nearly 400,000 Arab Americans, according to the Arab American Institute. The Uncommitted Movement decided not to endorse a candidate in the presidential race, and the Abandon Harris campaign put its support behind Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s bid.

Pressed on how to convince these voters to support Harris, Whitmer said that dialogue is important. She also argued that Harris is the only candidate committed to finding solutions.

“At the end of the day, do you want a leader who’s going to throw gas on the fire to keep you angry so that you tune out?” asked Whitmer. “Or do you want one who’s going to try to get in there and solve problems?… That’s what Kamala Harris offers.”

Given what happened after Trump lost the 2020 election, whether he concedes defeat if he loses to Harris remains an open question. Trump has already started to cast doubt on the integrity of the election, baselessly claiming last week in a podcast interview, “If the election is not rigged, we’re going to win. If it is rigged, I guess that’s a different story.”

All three governors voiced confidence in the citizens of their states to lawfully administer election law and count the votes, while raising concerns about Trump.

“He’s already laying the groundwork to undermine the outcome of this election,” Whitmer said. “They are trying to pull the wool over the American public’s eyes once again, and we’re anticipating that they’ll continue to try to do that when they lose this election, assuming they lose this election. But I’m going to make sure every vote gets counted.”

“I’ve got great confidence in the good people in Pennsylvania to count the votes accurately and to respect the will of the people. I do not have confidence that Donald Trump won’t whine about it, won’t put out dangerous rhetoric and mis- and disinformation,” Shapiro added. “We’re prepared for anything Donald Trump throws at us, and we’re going to make sure the will of the people is protected.”

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Politicos in Washoe County, Nevada, proudly refer to their home as “the swingiest county in the swingiest state,” where voters in the sprawling and sparsely populated swath of desert might very well tilt the scales of a deadlocked presidential election in November.

But Washoe has also carved out a reputation as the epicenter of a troubling nationwide trend: County officials refusing, for one reason or another, to certify election results.

Despite a legal requirement to accept the vote tally and pass the results along to state election officials, county supervisors in at least eight states have bucked this ministerial duty in recent election cycles, according to one watchdog group, prompting concern among democracy experts that it could upend voters’ faith in the election process.

“What was a sort of wild and desperate idea in 2020 has caught on with certifying officials in the last couple of elections,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, a voting rights expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit think tank. “It won’t be a successful tactic to overturn the outcome of our election, or to stop certification. But it will cause chaos and distrust in the meantime.”

In Washoe County, two members of the county board of commissioners have emerged as symbols of the broader dispute over vote certification: Alexis Hill, the Democratic chair of the board, and Michael Clark, a Republican commissioner. During board meetings, the two sit less than ten feet from each other on the dais. But when it comes to just about everything else — including the role of the commission in certifying election results — they are miles apart.

Hill, 41, lives just blocks from downtown Reno, the county’s most populous city, with her husband and 3-year-old daughter. Most days, she commutes to the county offices on her e-bike. Clark, 73, decamps each day to his ranch near Washoe Lake, where he tends to his horses, mules and dogs. On weekends, he rides his Harley.

‘A dark afternoon’

In the commissioners’ chambers, Hill and Clark regularly tangle over budgets and policy. But no issue fires them up more than election integrity. And in July, Clark and two Republican colleagues made national headlines when they refused to certify the outcome of two local races — prompting fears of what might come to pass in November.

“It was a dark afternoon,” Hill told ABC News’ Senior National Correspondent Terry Moran. “Decisions like that, they break institutions … they make people believe that we don’t have a fair and free election.”

Clark relented a week later under “extreme duress,” he explained at a commission meeting in July. The state’s attorney general had threatened him with felony prosecution for failing to execute a duty of his office.

In an interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran, Clark said he is not an election denier, but believes county election officials have failed to properly maintain the voter rolls. Clark pointed to thousands of mail-in ballots that were sent out to registered voters but returned to the county as undeliverable, which he characterized as evidence of poor recordkeeping by the registrar of voters.

“I believe that the people that are running the registrar of voters office can’t keep accurate records,” Clark said in the interview. “When I see sloppy bookkeeping, I don’t trust it.”

Washoe County Manager Eric Brown has acknowledged that the returned ballots might represent voters who had moved, thereby complicating their ability to vote — but he said at a recent meeting that the county had upgraded its voter registration system, which he said “has enhanced tracking and certification capabilities.”

“Moving forward, keeping track of voter records is going to be — we’ll be able to do that much more accurately,” Brown said.

Clark also said his vote to not certify results in July — which was the third time in his two-year tenure on the commission that he did so — was precipitated by what election experts have called erroneous legal advice from a county attorney who told commissioners to vote their conscience.

Clark’s vote “shocked” the state’s elections chief, Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar.

“It is a ministerial duty to certify the election,” Aguilar, a Democratic, told ABC News’ Terry Moran. “If there are concerns and questions about the election — about the election process, about the election administration — [the commission has] the power to schedule an agenda item to have a conversation about how elections work.”

‘That’s just not their job’

All fifty states make election-certification by county officials a mandatory duty of their job to prevent local partisan politicians from meddling in election results. Election disputes, which frequently arise, are typically resolved through audits, recounts, and the courts.

“It may seem odd to people that [the county officials] who are certifying the election aren’t necessarily the ones that investigate all the things that happened in the election,” Morales-Doyle said. “But that’s just not their job.”

But in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when former President Donald Trump sought to challenge the outcome of the vote, some county officials have refused to certify results.

It began in Wayne County, Michigan, where Trump reportedly pressured two county officials to not certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to the Detroit News. In the intervening election seasons, more than two dozen officials in eight states, including key swing states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania, have followed suit, according to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

In Arizona, two Republican supervisors in Cochise County were charged with felonies for delaying certification of the 2022 midterm election until a court ordered them to do so. Both have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to go to trial next year. Both also remain in their seats on the county board.

And in Georgia, a state judge this week issued a directive that county officials cannot block the certification of votes due to allegations of fraud or error, ruling that officials “have a mandatory fixed obligation to certify election results.”

‘How you undermine democracy’

Back in Nevada, election officials say they are preparing for any possible challenge to the upcoming election results.

“So is this a contagion?” Moran asked Aguilar. “Do you see this happening in other counties this time around?”

“It may, but I think we are prepared, and we have been preparing for the last 18 months to address any issue that comes up. This was one of them,” Aguilar said. “I’ve been working extremely hard with the attorney general to anticipate some of these situations.”

“We have pre-drafted legal filings — kind of like a Mad Libs, right?” Aguilar said. “You know the county, you fill in the county name, you fill in the date, you fill in the facts. And you file that thing as soon as you can before the Nevada Supreme Court.”

Experts say the failure of county officials to certify results is unlikely to succeed in delaying or altering the outcome of the presidential election. But that does not mean it should not alarm American voters.

“Every time this has been tried before, courts have put a quick end to it. And they will again this year,” Morales-Doyle said. “But what it might do is undermine the public’s faith in our process. And that’s really damaging in and of itself.”

“That’s really harmful,” he said. “Democracy works because people have faith in the outcome of their elections. If you undermine that enough, that’s how you undermine democracy.”

In Washoe County, Hill said she would “absolutely” certify the results, regardless of the outcome in the presidential race or in her own reelection race for commissioner.

“I feel like we are ready to go for this general election. And I have no concerns,” she said. “I do believe that there are really good people who are trying to hold the house together.”

Clark, for his part, offered a more reserved commitment.

“Are you going to certify an election in November?” Moran asked him.

“Well, I guess I’m going to have to,” Clark said. “I don’t want to have an argument with the attorney general. The attorney general and the state of Nevada have much deeper pockets than I have.”

ABC News’ Hannah Prince contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Some ex-pats living abroad, including active-duty service members and their family members, are sounding the alarm after Republicans in three swing states have tried to delay accepting and counting overseas absentee ballots.

And there is already fear among Americans at home and abroad that no matter what the result, the damage has already been done, according to Sarah Streyder, the executive director of Secure Families Initiative, a nonpartisan non-profit that advocates for military families’ rights.

“We are already hearing military voters from all states who feel discouraged from participating, if they have concern that their ballot won’t even be counted,” Streyder, who is stationed in England with her husband a Space Force member, told reporters in a video news conference with other advocates Friday.

Election officials and other political science experts say the suits filed in Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina in the last couple of weeks have no merit. The Republican plaintiffs, however, claim state election offices created loopholes that could allow ineligible people to vote through overseas absentee ballots.

GOP casts doubt on absentee ballots, election officials push back

On Sept. 30, five Pennsylvania GOP House members running for re-election — Guy Reschenthaler, Dan Meuser, Glenn Thompson, Lloyd Smucker and Mike Kelly — filed a suit against Al Schmidt, the secretary of the Commonwealth and Deputy Secretary for Elections Johnathan Ivlarks accusing them of providing guidance to local election offices to not allow ID requirements for their foreign absentee voters.

“The Commonwealth’s practice is an illegally structured election process which makes Pennsylvania’s elections vulnerable to ineligible votes by individuals or entities who could purport to be…eligible, register to vote without verification of identity or eligibility but receive a ballot by email and then vote a ballot without providing identification at any step of the process,” the plaintiffs in the Pennsylvania suit alleged.

Reschenthaler is the only member of the five plaintiffs with military experience as he previously served as a United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps attorney from 2009 to 2012, according to his bio. He was deployed to Iraq during his tenure with JAG.

The Pennsylvania Secretary of State’s office said in a statement that the lawsuit is “nothing more than an attempt to confuse and frighten people ahead of an important election,” and the state law ensures that all overseas ballots that are sent out are eligible.

“Ballots cast by ineligible voters occur at extremely low rates and are routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate authorities when they occur. Individuals registering to vote must affirm that the information they submit is accurate, with any false statement subjecting them to a potential felony conviction, prison sentence and substantial fine,” the office said in a statement.

Pennsylvania election officials could not immediately provide ABC News data on how many absentee ballots have currently been sent overseas and how many of those ballots have been returned.

The Republican National Committee filed a pair of lawsuits in North Carolina and Michigan last week arguing their state rules are violating federal law and allowing ex-pats to vote despite never residing in their state.

In both suits, the RNC officials allege that the states’ election officials have not created a secure system to verify that an overseas voter is an American and have specifically called out provisions in their election laws that permit spouses or dependents of military or overseas voters to vote in elections based on the residency of the military or overseas voter.

“As a result, certain people who have never resided in Michigan (or perhaps anywhere else in this country) are registering to vote and voting in Michigan elections,” the plaintiffs in the Michigan case claim in their filing.

Similar language was used in the North Carolina lawsuit.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed amicus briefs this week seeking to dismiss her state’s case, contending that the plaintiffs have no standing in their claims.

“Challenging a decades-old statute in this frivolous manner is both irresponsible and abusive. Their actions are a clear attempt to sow doubt about the integrity of the election and suppress the legitimate votes of American citizens,” she said in a statement.

Nessel noted that absentee ballots have already been sent out to Michigan voters living overseas, and the RNC failed to file a timely notice of intent to sue under the Michigan Court of Claims Act.

Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, echoed that sentiment and maintained the state law allowing military family members to vote in the state is valid.

“North Carolina lawmakers adopted this law more than 13 years ago, as a way to implement a federal law that required states to make voting more accessible for military families and other citizens living abroad. It has been part of our state’s law for every election since then,” he said in a statement.

As of Friday afternoon, over 22,000 Michigan military and overseas voters have requested ballots for the general election, according to data from the Michigan Secretary of State’s office. Of that number, almost 8,000 voters have already completed and submitted their ballots to be counted, the data showed.

As of Friday afternoon, 8,451 North Carolina absentee ballots have been requested by military members and 20,571 ballots have been requested by civilians living overseas, according to data from the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

Of those requests, 8,331 ballots were sent to the military members and 2,434 of those have been returned and accepted, the board said. There have been 20,449 absentee ballots sent to other ex-pats, and 10,481 of those ballots have been returned and accepted, according to the data.

Veterans, ex-pats furious over the move

Ray Kimball, a veteran who serves as an Arizona volunteer for the nonpartisan advocacy group Veterans for All Voters, told reporters on Friday he was furious about allegations made by officials who questioned the validity of absentee ballots back in 2020.

Kimball, a former Pennsylvania voter who said he mostly voted by mail when he was deployed overseas, said he was appalled that “partisan actors are doubling down,” despite the lack of evidence to their claims.

“I took that as a personal insult to what I and tens of thousands of Americans including service members and civilians abroad have been doing for years prior to this narrative,” he said.

One of the biggest concerns from legal experts and overseas voters is the request in all three lawsuits to segregate the foreign absentee ballots and stop counting them until the person can be verified.

Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, the president and CEO, of U.S. Vote Foundation, a nonprofit group that provides ex-pats with resources to help cast their vote, told reporters that this move was done to “just reduce the number of ballots counted overall.”

“It is a complete disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens,” Dzieduszycka-Suinat, who lives in Munich, said. “We are U.S. citizens. We do have a secure voting process.”

Philadelphia City Commissioner Lisa Deeley told reporters that she has concerns that if the request is granted, it would put extra unnecessary work on the already overtaxed election workers.

“All that time, energy and effort doing that, that further chips away at people’s confidence in the election,” she said.

Lawsuits are just the beginning: Expert

Michael Traugott, research professor emeritus in the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan, told ABC News that the three suits are part of a strategy by Republican leaders aimed at sowing doubt in the election results in the months to come.

He predicted the three suits will be dismissed, especially in Michigan where he said the secretary of state’s office has been efficient for determining voter eligibility.

“They do this in a very careful and systematic way and it’s worked,” he said.

Traugott said that election offices will be prepared for these attacks but they may not be able to control the public relations damage that the suits cause.

Kimball, however, said he believed that the majority of voters want more access to their right to cast a ballot.

“Bottom line this should not be a partisan issue. We should get behind the idea of Americans voting wherever they are all over the world,” he said.

Copyright © 2024, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(PHOENIX) — In the final weeks of a divisive, high-stakes campaign season, state election officials in political battleground states say they are bracing for the unpredictable and emergent threat posed by artificial intelligence, or AI.

“The number one concern we have on Election Day are some of the challenges that we have yet to face,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said. “There are some uncertainties, particularly with generative artificial intelligence and the ways that those might be used.”

Fontes, a Democrat, said his office is aware that some campaigns are already using AI as a tool in his hotly contested state and that election administrators urgently need to familiarize themselves with what is real and what is not.

“We’re training all of our election officials, to make sure that they’re familiar with some of the weapons that might be deployed against them,” he said.

During a series of tabletop exercises conducted over the past six months, Arizona officials for the first time confronted hypothetical scenarios involving disruptions on Election Day on Nov. 5 created or facilitated by AI.

Some involved deepfake video and voice-cloning technology deployed by bad actors across social media in an attempt to dissuade people from voting, disrupt polling places, or confuse poll workers as they handle ballots.

In one fictional case, an AI-generated fake news headline published on Election Day said there had been shootings at polling places and that election officials had rescheduled the vote for Nov. 6.

“They walk us through those worst case scenarios so that we can be critically thinking, thinking on our toes,” said Gina Roberts, voter education director for the nonpartisan Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission and one of the participants in the exercise.

The tabletop exercise also studied recent real-world examples of AI being deployed to try to influence elections.

In January, an AI-generated robocall mimicking President Joe Biden’s voice was used to dissuade New Hampshire Democrats from voting in the primary. The Federal Communications Commission assessed a $6 million fine against the political consultant who made it.

In September, Taylor Swift revealed on Instagram that she went public to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris to, in part, refute an AI-generated deepfake image that falsely showed her endorsing Donald Trump.

There have also been high profile cases of foreign adversaries using AI to influence the campaign. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, says it shut down a secret Iranian effort to use its tools to manipulate U.S. voter opinion.

The Justice Department has also said that Russia is actively using AI to feed political disinformation on to social media platforms.

“The primary targets of interest are going to be in swing states, and they’re going to be swing voters,” said Lucas Hanson, co-founder of CivAI, a nonprofit group tracking the use of A.I. in politics in order to educate the public.

“An even bigger [threat] potentially is trying to manipulate voter turnout, which in some ways is easier than trying to get people to actually change their mind,” Hanson said. “Whether or not that shows up in this particular election it’s hard to know for sure, but the technology is there.”

Federal authorities say that while the risks aren’t entirely new, AI is amplifying attacks on U.S. elections with “greater speed and sophistication” at lower costs.

“Those threats being supercharged by advanced technologies — the most disruptive of which is artificial intelligence,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said last month.

In a bulletin to state election officials, the Department of Homeland Security warns that AI voice and video tools could be used to create fake election records; impersonate election staff to gain access to sensitive information; generate fake voter calls to overwhelm call centers; and more convincingly spread false information online.

Hanson says voters need to educate themselves on spotting AI attempts to influence their views.

“In images, at least for now, oftentimes if you look at the hands, then there’ll be the wrong number of fingers or there will be not enough appendages. For audio, a lot of times it still sounds relatively robotic. In particular, sometimes there will be these little stutters,” he said.

Social media companies and U.S. intelligence agencies say they are also tracking nefarious AI-driven influence campaigns and are prepared to alert voters about malicious deepfakes and disinformation.

But they can’t catch them all.

More than 3 in 4 Americans believe it’s likely AI will be used to affect the election outcome, according to an Elon University poll conducted in April 2024. Many voters in the same poll also said they’re worried they are not prepared to detect fake photos, video and audio on their own.

“In the long term, if you can see something that seems impossible and it also makes you really, really mad, then there’s a pretty good chance that that’s not real,” Hanson said. “So part of it is you have to learn to listen to your gut.”

In states like Arizona, which could decide a razor tight presidential race, the stakes are higher than ever.

“AI is just the new kid on the block,” Fontes said. “What exactly is going to happen? We’re not sure. We are doing our best preparing for everything except Godzilla. We’re preparing for about everything, because if Godzilla shows up, all bets are off.”

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(NEW YORK) — A presidential election tradition dating back to 1960 brought some laughs in New York City on Thursday night, but for the first time in 40 years, only one candidate will be on the dias.

Former President Donald Trump spoke at the New York Archdiocese’s annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner at the New York Hilton, where he was joined by his wife Melania Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris announced last month that she could not attend due to a conflicting campaign event but appeared at the dinner in a video.

“She is going to be campaigning in a battleground state that day, and the campaign wants to maximize her time in the battlegrounds this close to the election,” a campaign official told ABC News on Sept. 23.

The vice president campaigned in Wisconsin on Thursday.

Trump alternated between making jokes about Harris and some of the other attendees and the regular lines that he uses while campaigning, but he did acknowledged the event’s tradition of self-deprecating jokes and said one was coming before admitting, “Ah, I got nothing.”

Harris appeared in her video with “Saturday Night Live” character Mary Katherine Gallagher, played by Molly Shannon as an awkward Catholic school girl who dreams of being a superstar.

Harris asked Mary Katherine for advice on how to address the Catholic gathering.

“Is there anything that you think that maybe I shouldn’t bring up tonight?”

“Um, well, don’t lie,” Mary Katherine replied. “Thou shalt not bear false witness to thy neighbor.”

“Indeed, especially thy neighbor’s election results,” Harris said.

Trump chastised Harris in a Truth Social post before the event for not showing up.

“They didn’t give me the option of a video message, nor would I have done it. This is very disrespectful to everyone involved,” he said adding that Harris should lose the Catholic vote over this.

After Harris’ video played, Trump repeated that sentiment.

“It’s been a long tradition for both Democrat and Republican candidates for president of the United States to attend this dinner. Always. It’s a rule. Otherwise, bad things are going to happen to you from up there,” he said. “You can’t do what I just saw on that screen. But, my opponent feels like she does not have to be here, which is deeply disrespectful to the event and in particular, to our great Catholic community. Very disrespectful.”

Later, mentioning the charity behind the dinner, Trump took another shot at Harris, saying, “I guess you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis, and she would have been here, guaranteed.”

Since 1960, the black-tie event has hosted both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and allowed them to “share self-deprecating humor” and raise money for the archdiocese’s charitable organizations.

It is named in honor of Alfred E. Smith, the former New York governor who was the first Catholic to be nominated to a major party’s presidential ticket.

The last time a presidential candidate could not attend the dinner was in 1984, when Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale bowed out.

The event was emceed by comedian Jim Gaffigan, who currently plays Gov. Tim Walz on “Saturday Night Live.”

Trump confirmed his attendance in a Truth Social post on Sept. 23, not long after Harris’ campaign announced she would not show up.

“It’s sad, but not surprising, that Kamala has decided not to attend,” he said in the post.

In the same post, Trump accused Harris of being anti-Catholic and repeated past claims, without evidence, that the administration was persecuting Catholics. President Joe Biden is the second Catholic president in American history and attends mass weekly.

In the past, the presidential candidates have roasted each other and appeared to be in good spirits throughout the night. However, things were different in 2016, the last time both of the presidential candidates attended the event in person.

Trump was booed during his 2016 Al Smith dinner speech for repeatedly attacking Sec. of State Hilary Clinton.

During Clinton’s remarks, the Democratic nominee made some self-deprecating jokes about her stamina and paid speeches, before turning her attention to Trump, where she jabbed him on everything from his temperament to his ties to Russia.

Trump did not laugh or appear to be amused by his opponent’s jokes.

ABC News’ Soo Rin Kim, Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys have asked the judge overseeing his federal election interference case to further delay the release of a redacted appendix containing evidence amassed by special counsel Jack Smith in his probe of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to a Thursday morning court filing.

The release of the redacted appendix, which was an attachment to the immunity motion unsealed two weeks ago by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that included new details about Trump and his allies’ actions leading up to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, is currently scheduled for Thursday.

In their motion Thursday, Trump’s attorneys requested that Chutkan delay the release of the appendix until Nov. 14 — after the presidential election — when Trump’s own reply brief appendix is due. The former president is expected to argue that his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6 should be immune from prosecution.

“Here, President Trump requests only that the Court briefly continue its existing stay of the Order, such that the redacted versions of the SC Appendix and President Trump’s forthcoming appendix may be released concurrently,” the filing said. “Although this stay will not eliminate the harms President Trump identified in his prior opposition filings, certain harms will be mitigated. For example, if the Court immediately releases the Special Counsel’s cherry-picked documents, potential jurors will be left with a skewed, one-sided, and inaccurate picture of this case.”

“If the appendices are released simultaneously, at least some press outlets will attempt to report both sides of this case, reducing (although, again, not eliminating) the potential for irreversible prejudice,” the filing said.

The filing includes arguments that could draw direct a rebuke from Judge Chutkan, after she previously warned Trump’s attorneys to not level any further allegations of partisanship at Smith’s team without providing evidence.

Trump’s attorneys also argue that while Chutkan has previously said the election will play no role in her decisions in the case, she should address “the public’s interest in ensuring that this case does not unduly interfere, or appear to interfere, with the ongoing election.”

Smith did not respond to Trump’s request for a delay, the filing says.

Trump last year pleaded not guilty to federal charges of undertaking a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to remain in power.

Smith subsequently charged Trump in a superseding indictment that was adjusted to respect the Supreme Court’s July ruling that Trump is entitled to immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken as president.

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(WASHINGTON) — There were many mistakes made on the day of the July assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump by the Secret Service, but an independent review by the Department of Homeland Security revealed systemic issues within the organization and found that without reforms to the agency, “another Butler can and will happen again.”

In the aftermath of the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assigned a panel of four former law enforcement and national security officials to examine what went wrong, and how they recommend the Secret Service moves forward after the attempt on former president’s life.

“The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission,” the letter addressed to Secretary Mayorkas said, which was included in the report. “The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved.”

On the independent panel are former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, former Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, former Maryland State Police Superintendent David Mitchell and former Deputy National Security Adviser Fran Townsend.

The scathing 35-page report from the independent panel said the findings illustrated “deeper concerns” within the U.S. Secret Service.

“The Panel has observed that many of the Secret Service personnel involved in the events of July 13 appear to have done little in the way of self-reflection in terms of identifying areas of missteps, omissions, or opportunities for improvement,” the report said. “July 13 represents a historic security failure by the Secret Service which almost led to the death of a former president and current nominee and did lead to the death of a rally attendee.”

The panel said that even a “superficial” level of reflection would have been meaningful.

Plaguing the Secret Service are “corrosive cultural attitudes” regarding resourcing events – a “do more with less” attitude, according to the report.

The report also found there was a troubling “lack of critical thinking” by Secret Service personnel “before, during and after” the assassination attempt.

“A prominent instance of this is the fact that personnel had been read into significant intelligence regarding a long range threat by a foreign state actor against former President Trump, but failed to ensure that the AGR building was secured despite its proximity to the rally stage and the obvious high angle line of sight issues it presented,” the report found.

Other instances “revealed a surprising lack of rigor in considering the specific risks posed to particular individual protectees.”

The report said, for example, Trump, though not formally the Republican nominee at the time, had essentially clinched it months before and thus the Secret Service’s approach was formulaic “rather than an individualized assessment of risk.”

The failure to take ownership of planning the Butler rally and the lack of cohesion with state and local law enforcement during the planning of events, a lack of experienced agents to perform “certain critical security tasks,” a lack of auditing mechanisms to learn from mistakes in the field, a lack of training facilities, and a lack of agents feeling comfortable to speak up.

In particular, the operational tempo for younger agents who came up during the COVID-19 pandemic was slower than most election years, and thus those agents did not get as much experience in the field as agents would normally get.

The panel is calling for new leadership at the Secret Service – saying the agency needs a change with people from outside the agency.

“Many of the issues that the Panel has identified throughout this report, particularly regarding the Panel’s “deeper concerns,” are ultimately attributable, directly or indirectly, to the Service’s culture,” the report said. “A refreshment of leadership, with new perspectives, will contribute to the Service’s resolution of those issues.”

Among the other recommendations the panel made are a restructuring of the agency’s protective office, new training initiatives, new communication technologies that are more reliable and an evaluation “of the Secret Service’s method for how it resources protectees to ensure that it is risk-based, and not overly formulaic or reliant on a protectee’s title for making resource determinations.”

“The Panel also recognizes the bravery and selflessness exhibited by Secret Service agents and officers who put themselves in harm’s way to protect their protectees, including in Butler after Crooks fired at former President Trump and others. However, bravery and selflessness alone, no matter how honorable, are insufficient to discharge the Secret Service’s no-fail protective mission.”

Specific to July 13, the panel’s findings are in line with the Secret Service’s mission assurance review that came out last month.

Some of the findings are an absence of law enforcement to secure the AGR building where Thomas Matthew Crooks eventually fired from, the failure to mitigate the line of site from that building, having two communications rooms, the failure of anyone to encounter Crooks despite spotting him 90 minutes before Trump took the stage, the failure to inform the former president’s detail and the drone detection system not working.

The panel recommends the Service has integrated communications, a mandatory situation report when a protectee arrives, better counter-drone technologies and an advanced line of site mitigations.

A footnote in the report says the second assassination attempt against Trump didn’t impact the panel’s work but might’ve reinforced the report.

The panel recommends the Service implement the Butler reforms no later than March 31, 2025, and the broader reforms by the end of 2025.

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(RALEIGH, N.C.) — As North Carolinians continue to recover from the devastating impacts of Hurricane Helene, early voting begins Thursday in the critical swing state.

State election officials expect a majority of North Carolina voters to cast their ballot in-person over the next two weeks, with early voting concluding on Nov. 2.

More than 400 early voting sites are in operation across the state’s 100 counties.

“To have almost all early voting sites open after such a devastating storm is an effort all North Carolinians should be proud of,” North Carolina State Board of Elections executive director Karen Brinson Bell said Tuesday.

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris remain neck-and-neck in the critical swing state, with Trump holding a 0.4% lead over Harris in 538’s polling average for the state.

Both candidates have visited North Carolina since the remnants of Hurricane Helene brought deadly floods to the state, where 95 people died and 92 remain missing. Trump has repeatedly made false claims about the federal response to the disaster, claiming that the state would be deprived of emergency aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency because of undocumented immigrants.

“They got hit with a very bad hurricane, especially North Carolina and parts of Georgia. But North Carolina really got hit. I’ll tell you what, those people should never vote for a Democrat, because they held back aid,” Trump said during an interview last week.

While visiting a church in Greenville, North Carolina, on Sunday, Harris stopped short of naming Trump while criticizing the spread of disinformation about the relief efforts in the state.

“Right now, fellow Americans are experiencing some of the most difficult moments in their lives,” Harris said. “Yet instead of offering hope, there are those who are channeling people’s tragedies and sorrows into grievance and hatred, and one may ask why, and I think, sadly, frankly, the motives are quite transparent: to gain some advantage for themselves, to play politics with other people’s heartbreak.”

With recovery efforts ongoing, election officials have expressed optimism about the state’s early voting plans. In the 25 western counties included in the federal disaster declaration, 76 early voting sites have been confirmed — four fewer than originally planned.

“We lost just a few despite the extensive damage, loss of power, water, internet and phone service, and the washing out of roads throughout the region,” said Brinson Bell.

In past presidential elections, the majority of the state’s voters have cast their ballot during early in-person voting, with 65% using that method in 2020 and 62% in 2016. Election officials expect a similar portion of voters to vote early in person, and have enacted a series of measures to improve voting access in the counties hardest hit by Helene.

Voters in the impacted counties can drop off their absentee ballot at any early voting site throughout the state, and the state plans to deploy “multipartisan assistance teams” that can assist with absentee voting at disaster shelters.

This will also be the first presidential election where voters will need to provide photo identification to vote, after lawsuits delayed implementation of the state’s controversial voter ID law following its passage in 2018. Voters can provide a drivers’ license, student ID, or passport to vote, though exceptions are permitted in the case of natural disasters.

The only county to offer fewer early voting sites is hard-hit Buncombe County, whose officials opted to reduce their number of sites from 14 to 10 because of the ongoing emergency response.

“Our office has been preparing for the 2024 election for years, but we certainly didn’t expect this,” said Buncombe County director of election services Corinne Duncan.

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(GEORGIA) — One day after a Georgia judge invalidated the state’s controversial “hand count” rule, a separate judge Wednesday evening invalidated even more rules that were passed by the Republican-led state election board, declaring them “unlawful and void.”

Fulton County Judge Thomas Cox ruled after an hours-long hearing to invalidate seven rules total, including the hand count rule, finding in part that the board did not have the authority to enact them.

Cox made clear that the State of Georgia and the State Election Board “are hereby DIRECTED TO IMMEDIATELY REMOVE THESE RULES FROM THEIR ROLES AND OFFICIAL REPORTING” and to “IMMEDIATELY INFORM ALL STATE AND LOCAL ELECTION OFFICIALS THAT THESE RULES ARE VOID AND ARE NOT TO BE FOLLOWED,” in his decision.

The rules now invalidated include a rule calling county officials to certify election results after “reasonable inquiry.”

Cox wrote in his order that rule “adds an additional and undefined step into the certification process” and that it is “inconsistent with and unsupported” by state law.

He also invalidated a rule that “requires that a person delivering an absentee ballot provide a signature and photo ID at the time the absentee ballot is delivered.”

The judge said in his ruling that state provisions don’t require that.

“The SEB thus has no authority to require such presentment as a condition of accepting and counting an otherwise properly delivered ballot,” Cox wrote.

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(Williamsport, Pennsylvania) — In his most direct answer yet of this election cycle, GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance said he does not believe former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

Vance’s response occurred when a reporter asked, “What message do you think it sends to Independent voters when you do not directly answer the question, ‘Did Donald Trump lose in 2020?'”

“On the election of 2020, I’ve answered this question directly a million times. No, I think there are serious problems in 2020 so did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use,” Vance said.

“But look, I really couldn’t care less if you agree or disagree with me on this issue.”

In a recently resurfaced clip from Spectrum News 1 in 2022, Vance said, “Yeah, I do,” when asked if he believed the 2020 election was stolen.

President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election by more than 7 million votes.

Vance’s response comes after weeks of being asked by reporters if the former president lost the 2020 election.

This past Sunday in his interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Vance continued to dodge directly answering if Trump lost the 2020 election.

“Martha, you’ve you asked this question. I’ve been asked this question 10 times in the past couple of weeks. Of course, Donald Trump and I believe there were problems in 2020,” Vance said.

Pressed again by Raddatz, Vance replied, “I’ve said repeatedly I think the 2020 election had problems. You want to say rigged? You want to say he won? Use whatever vocabulary term you want.”

Taking questions from reporters at a campaign event in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, ABC News asked the Ohio Senator if he was concerned about election misinformation could impact this election cycle, Vance said he was concerned.

“I talk to people every now and then who will come up to me and say, ‘Well, you know, there are too many problems out there. We don’t trust the people who are going to count our ballots, and you know, so I’m not going to get out there and vote.’ That’s the exact opposite attitude you should be taking,” Vance said.

Trying to ease those who might have doubts about the election, Vance said that those who will be working the polls on election day are the same people in their community.

“Here’s something else that I think people don’t realize is, if you’re a local voter in a place like Williamsport, the people who are counting your ballots are often your neighbors. And again, it’s the local elections, and especially in our small and rural areas, it’s your neighbors who are counting these votes, it’s your neighbors who are counting these ballots.”

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