(ATLANTA) Former President Jimmy Carter has voted in the 2024 election, the Carter Center confirmed Wednesday.
Carter, the oldest living president, voted by mail on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Carter Center.
Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, told ABC News earlier this week that the former president planned on voting for Vice President Kamala Harris in the “next couple of days.”
“It’s going to be the next couple days; the absentee ballots have gone out,” Jason Carter said.
Carter recently celebrated his 100th birthday. As he neared the milestone, his family said he was trying to live until he could vote for Harris.
Carter entered hospice care in early 2023 amid health challenges. Last year, he made a rare public appearance when he attended a memorial service for his late wife, Rosalynn Carter.
(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.”
(WASHINGTON) — There is roughly a month left to go in the 2024 presidential race, yet Donald Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric to possibly challenge the outcome.
For months, he’s accused Democrats of cheating, threatened to prosecute election workers and falsely claimed noncitizens are being allowed in the country to cast ballots.
Trump’s also now telling his supporters that if he loses in November, it will be the country’s “last election” — the latest dark comment in his increasingly bleak and dystopian campaign rhetoric.
Asked for comment on his remarks, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ABC News: “President Trump has always stated we need free and fair elections, or we won’t have a country.”
Here’s a closer look at what Trump has said to supporters on the trail in an apparent effort to sow doubt on the voting process.
Trump falsely accuses Democrats of cheating
“They cheat. That’s all they want to do is cheat. And when you see this, it’s the only way they’re gonna win,” Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin on Oct. 6. “And we can’t let that happen and we can’t let it happen again. We’re going to have no country.”
Trump’s claims that Democrats cheated in the previous election or are doing so in this race are baseless.
Trump’s allegations of fraud in the 2020 election were debunked by his own administration officials, legal challenges failed in the courts and recounts or audits conducted in narrowly-decided swing states all affirmed President Joe Biden’s victory.
In this same vein, he’s also accused Democrats of staging “coup” when Biden dropped out and Harris succeeded him. Harris received 99% of the delegate votes in the Democratic National Committee’s virtual roll call vote after Biden exited the race.
Top officials in key battleground states have said they are confident in the integrity of this election. Many have testified on Capitol Hill or at conferences on the steps they’ve taken to boost voter confidence and make the process more transparent.
The Pennsylvania Department of State, noting it conducts two audits after every election, told ABC News it was “confident in the integrity of county officials and election administrators across the Commonwealth, despite irresponsible statements that are not based in fact or supported by evidence.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recently reiterated that the state’s elections are “secure.” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said “every valid vote will count, the election will be secure, the results will be accurate. Just like in 2020.”
Trump threatens to prosecute election workers if elected
In a post on his conservative social media site last month, Trump said if he is back in the White House, he will prosecute anyone he deems was involved in “unscrupulous behavior” in the 2024 election.
“It was a Disgrace to our Nation!” he wrote of the 2020 election. “Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”
The prosecutions, he said, would extend to lawyers, donors, political operatives and election officials.
Election officials and experts told ABC News that Trump’s comments were “dangerous” given the heightened threat environment for election administrators and poll workers.
Trump falsely claims illegal immigrants are voting en masse
“Our elections are bad,” Trump said during the ABC News presidential debate on Sept. 10. “And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote. They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is already illegal, and recorded instances of undocumented immigrants casting ballots are incredibly rare, according to officials and studies.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has recorded about two-dozen instances where noncitizens were penalized for voting between 2003 and 2023. Over that period of time, the foundation found just 1,500 proven instances of overall voter fraud despite billions of votes being cast.
The Brennan Center, following the 2016 general election, also found noncitizen voting to be virtually nonexistent. The center reported that election officials who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes across 42 jurisdictions referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution — or 0.0001%.
Trump’s mixed messaging on mail-in ballots
Trump’s messaging on mail-in voting has been incredibly mixed. At times, he’s encouraged his supporters to vote by that method and in any other way possible — and voted himself by mail in 2020. Other times, however, he’s pushed a narrative that mail-in ballots are “corrupt” or not as secure.
“The elections are so screwed up. We have to get back in and we have to change it all,” Trump falsely said during a rally in Pennsylvania this past summer. “We want to go to paper ballots. We want to go to same-day voting. We want to go to citizenship papers. And we want to go to voter ID. It’s very simple. We want to get rid of mail-in voting.”
There are a number of safeguards in place to protect the voting process, including mail-in voting, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The agency has set out to combat misinformation about elections on its website.
Trump’s also targeted the U.S. Postal Service, claiming the agency may not be prepared for the election — which prompted significant pushback from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who flatly said such comments are “wrong.”
More recently, Trump amplified false claims that a significant percentage of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania (considered a key state for both campaigns) were “fraudulent.” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro pushed back that mail ballots hadn’t been sent out yet when Trump made that claim and that the state conducts two audits after each election to ensure results are legitimate.
Trump still won’t accept he lost 2020 election
Trump continues to claim that the 2020 was stolen from him. His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, the top Republican on Capitol Hill, have also recently declined to say Trump lost that election.
“We won, we won, we did win,” Trump falsely told rallygoers in Michigan on Oct. 3. “It was a rigged election.”
President Biden recently stressed he believed the election would be “free and fair” but voiced worry it would not be “peaceful.” The concern, he said, came from Trump and Vance’s recent comments.
“They haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election. So, I am concerned about what they’re going to do,” Biden said on Oct. 4.
At times, Trump and members of his campaign have said he will accept the 2024 results so long as it is a free and fair election.
“If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely,” he said during the CNN presidential debate, declining to outrightly say he would accept the outcome.
That didn’t stop him, however, from challenging the 2020 election results despite no evidence of widespread fraud or wrongdoing.
ABC News’ Soorin Kim, Lalee Ibssa and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department filed suit against Virginia on Friday over a statewide program aimed at removing voters from its election rolls in the lead-up to the 2024 election if DMV records don’t indicate United States citizenship.
The Department said it filed the lawsuit based on a federal law that prohibits purges from rolls within the 90-day period leading up to an election.
“As the National Voter Registration Act mandates, officials across the country should take heed of the law’s crystal clear and unequivocal restrictions on systematic list maintenance efforts that fall within 90 days of an election,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
The system, implemented via executive order by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, has already faced lawsuits from several immigration rights groups.
The DOJ recently filed a similar lawsuit against the state of Alabama over similar voter roll purges.
The Justice Department seeks injunctive relief that “would restore the ability of impacted eligible voters to vote unimpeded on Election Day,” the department said in a statement.
In a statement on the governor’s website, Youngkin called the lawsuit a “politically motivated action,” and vowed to not “stand idly by.”
