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World

Peru’s president calls for ‘national truce’ as protests continue

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Peru’s President Dina Boluarte called Tuesday for a “national truce” to end weeks of unrest that has left at least 46 people dead as protesters press for her resignation and fresh elections.

Many Peruvians remain angry at the December 7 ouster of then president Pedro Castillo, who was arrested after attempting to dissolve congress and rule by decree, and replaced by Boluarte.

Protests broke out almost immediately, largely fueled by anger in poor rural regions in the south where inhabitants — mainly Indigenous — felt that Castillo, who has Indigenous roots himself, represented their interests rather than those of the Lima elite.

Demonstrators have kept up weeks of protests and road blocks and are also demanding the dissolution of Congress and the rewriting of the constitution.

“I call on my dear country to a national truce to allow for the establishment of dialogue, to fix the agenda for each region and develop our towns. I will not tire from calling for dialogue, peace and unity,” Boluarte said in a press conference with foreign media.

A visibly emotional Boluarte apologized several times for those killed in the protests but ruled out resigning.

“I will go once we have called a general election… I have no intention of remaining in power.”

Boluarte said she was sure Congress would agree in February to advance elections, currently scheduled for April 2024.

Asked about her possible resignation, Boluarte scoffed at the idea that it would “solve the crisis and the violence.”

‘Castillo no victim’

The president is due to have a video meeting with the Organization of American States (OAS) on Wednesday to discuss the situation in Peru.

Her government has come under fire from rights groups over alleged repression of protests and the disproportionate use of force by security forces.

Boluarte has called a state of emergency in Peru, allowing the army to assist police in maintaining order.

“I will appear before the OAS to tell the truth. The Peruvian government and especially Dina Boluarte have nothing to hide,” she said.

Boluarte claims some of the protesters were killed by ammunition that is not used by the police.

The president said that the deaths “hurt me, as a woman, a mother and a daughter.”

She also hit out at her predecessor Castillo, saying he sparked unrest by trying to broaden his powers in a bid to avoid an impeachment vote and stave off corruption investigations.

“It suited him to stage a coup d’etat so he could play the victim and mobilize all this paramilitary apparatus so as not to answer before the public prosecutor for the acts of corruption that he is accused of,” said Boluarte.

“There is no victim here, Mr Castillo. There is a bleeding country because of your irresponsibility.”

Boluarte is from the same left-wing party as Castillo and was his running mate during his successful 2021 election campaign. She served as his vice-president before replacing him.

(AFP)

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World

Presidential Vote Counting to Get Revamp After Donald Trump Tried to Reverse 2020 Loss

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WASHINGTON—For the first time in more than a century, Congress is poised to pass legislation that would revamp the process of certifying presidential electors, a direct response to efforts by former President

Donald Trump

and his supporters to overturn the 2020 election results. 

The Electoral Count Reform Act has been attached to a $1.65 trillion yearlong spending package currently moving through Congress that is expected to become law this week. The ECRA is the result of nearly a year of bipartisan Senate negotiations to update an 1887 law that came into focus during the certification of the presidential results on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Current law requires Congress to convene for a joint session on Jan. 6 after a presidential election to count and ratify the 538 electoral votes certified by the 50 states and District of Columbia. The vice president, serving as president of the Senate, has the duty to count the votes in a joint session of Congress. 

In 2021, Mr. Trump pressured then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject some electors unilaterally. Mr. Pence refused, saying such a move was beyond his power. After Mr. Trump urged his supporters to march on the Capitol in a speech on the Ellipse, a pro-Trump mob overran the Capitol, temporarily interrupting the proceedings. After Congress reconvened, 139 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans voted against certifying the election results. 

The new legislation would make it clear that the vice president’s role is merely to count the votes publicly and that he or she has no power to alter the results. It also would significantly raise the threshold to sustain an objection to a state’s electors to one-fifth of both chambers, up from one House member and one senator now. 

The proposal would also provide for an expedited federal court challenge if a state attempts to delay or tamper with election results. The bill holds that the court decision is final and requires Congress to accept that decision.

The current Electoral Count Act “is a time bomb under democracy, and we learned on Jan. 6 that its ambiguities and confusing terms are very dangerous,” said Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Sen.

Susan Collins

(R., Maine) credited the work of a group of 15 senators who span the ideological spectrum in negotiating the bill. “The events of Jan. 6 clearly brought home the flaws in the law,” she said.

The Biden administration called the changes “a vital piece of legislation.”

Sen.

Josh Hawley

(R., Mo.) said he opposed changes to the current law. Mr. Hawley was the first senator to say he would object to the results of the 2020 presidential election, a move that forced lawmakers to debate and vote to affirm the states’ tallies on Jan. 6, 2021. As Mr. Hawley entered the Capitol ahead of the joint session that day, he was photographed fist-pumping to cheers from the pro-Trump crowd gathered outside.

“I think it’s fine, this is the democratic process,” Mr. Hawley said about the current rules. “I don’t think the objection caused the riot.” 

Other lawmakers have used the process outlined in the Electoral Count Act to object to election results in recent years. Some Democrats objected, unsuccessfully, to certification of both of former President

George W. Bush

‘s wins as well as Mr. Trump’s.

In both cases the Democratic nominee for president had already conceded and wasn’t supportive of the objections. Mr. Trump has continued to call for overturning the results and to claim falsely that he won the 2020 election.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack made four criminal referrals for Mr. Trump to the Justice Department on Monday after investigating the lead-up and attack itself. Mr. Trump has denied wrongdoing related to the riot. The Justice Department is currently conducting a parallel investigation of the events.

“I don’t care whether they change The Electoral Count Act or not, probably better to leave it the way it is so that it can be adjusted in case of Fraud,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump has said the planned changes show that the vice president did indeed have the power to block electors under current law. Backers say they are trying to eliminate any loopholes that could be exploited by future candidates, including Mr. Trump.

Among the Electoral Count Reform Act provisions included in this week’s spending package is a requirement that each state’s governor, unless specified in the state’s laws or constitution, submit the slate of electors. That would keep states from submitting false electors as some sought to do in 2020. 

It also would prevent state legislatures from overriding the popular vote in their states by declaring a “failed election,” except in narrowly defined “extraordinary and catastrophic” events.

Edward Foley, the director of Election Law at Ohio State University said the bill’s most significant provision is making sure the courts are the final backstop in case of false electors.

“We can look to courts as being the branch of government that is most immune from this kind of political denialism,” he said.

The version included in the spending bill is the Senate version, which had 38 co-sponsors, including both Majority Leader

Chuck Schumer

(D., N.Y.) and Minority Leader

Mitch McConnell

(R., Ky.).

In September, the House passed its own version of the legislation, 229-203. Nine Republicans joined Democrats in voting to pass the House bill. None of them are returning to Congress next year.

Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com and Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Warnock or Walker? Georgia runoff to settle last Senate seat

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ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia voters on Tuesday are set to decide the final Senate contest in the country, choosing between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican football legend Herschel Walker after a four-week runoff blitz that has drawn a flood of outside spending to an increasingly personal fight.

This year’s runoff has lower stakes than the two in 2021, when victories by Warnock and fellow Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff gave Democrats control of the Senate. The outcome of Tuesday’s contest will determine whether Democrats have an outright 51-49 Senate majority or control a 50-50 chamber based on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.

The runoff brings to a close a bitter fight between Warnock, the state’s first Black senator and the senior minister of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, and Walker, a former University of Georgia football star and political novice who has waged his bid in the mold of former President Donald Trump.

A victory for Warnock would solidify Georgia’s status as a battleground heading into the 2024 presidential election. A win for Walker, however, could be an indication that the Democratic gains in the state might be somewhat limited, especially given that Georgia Republicans swept every other statewide contest last month.

In that election, Warnock led Walker by about 37,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast but fell shy of a majority, triggering the second round of voting. About 1.9 million votes already have been cast by mail and during early voting, an advantage for Democrats whose voters more commonly cast ballots this way. Republicans typically fare better on voting done on Election Day, with the margins determining the winner.

Last month, Walker, 60, ran more than 200,000 votes behind Republican Gov. Brian Kemp after a campaign dogged by intense scrutiny of his past, meandering campaign speeches and a bevy of damaging allegations, including claims that he paid for two former girlfriends’ abortions — accusations that Walker has denied.

Warnock, whose victory in 2021 was in a special election to serve out the remainder of GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term, sounded a confident note Monday during a packed day of campaigning. He predicted that he had convinced enough voters, including independents and moderate Republicans who supported Kemp, that he deserves a full term.

“They’ve seen that I will work with anybody that helps me to do good work for the people of Georgia,” said the 53-year-old senator. “I think they’re going to get this right. They know this race is about competence and character.”

Walker campaigned Monday with his wife, Julie, greeting supporters and offering thanks rather than his usual campaign speech and full-throated attacks on Warnock.

“I love y’all, and we’re gonna win this election,” he said at a winery in Ellijay, comparing it to championships he won as an athlete. “I love winning championships.

Warnock’s campaign has spent about $170 million on the campaign, far outpacing Walker’s nearly $60 million, according to their latest federal disclosures. But Democratic and Republican party committees, along with other political action committees, have spent even more.

The senator has paired his push for bipartisanship with an emphasis on his personal values, buoyed by his status as senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. And, beginning with the closing stretch before the Nov. 8 general election, Warnock added withering takedowns of Walker, using the football star’s rocky past to argue that the political newcomer was “not ready” and “not fit” for high office.

Walker, who used his athletics fame to coast to the GOP nomination, has sought to portray Warnock as a yes-man for President Joe Biden. Walker has sometimes made the attack in especially personal terms, complete with accusing Warnock of having his “back bent” and “being on his knees, begging” at the White House — a searing charge for a Black challenger to level against a Black senator about his relationship with a white president.

A multimillionaire businessman, Walker has inflated his philanthropic activities and business achievements, including claiming that his company employed hundreds of people and grossed tens of millions of dollars in sales annually, even though later records indicate he had eight employees and averaged about $1.5 million a year. He has suggested that he’s worked as a law enforcement officer and said he graduated college, though he has done neither.

Walker was also forced to acknowledge during the campaign that he had fathered three children out of wedlock whom he had never before spoken about publicly — in direct conflict with Walker’s yearslong criticism of absentee fathers and his calls for Black men, in particular, to play an active role in their kids’ lives.

His ex-wife has detailed violent acts, saying Walker once held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. Walker has never denied those specifics and wrote of his violent tendencies in a 2008 memoir that attributed the behavior to mental illness.

Warnock has countered with his individual Senate accomplishments, touting a provision he sponsored to cap insulin costs for Medicare patients while reminding voters that Republicans blocked his larger idea to cap those costs for all insulin-dependent patients. He hailed deals on infrastructure and maternal health care forged with Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, mentioning those GOP colleagues more than he did Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or other Democrats in Washington.

After the general election, Biden, who has struggled with low approval ratings, promised to help Warnock in any way he could, even if it meant staying away from Georgia. Bypassing the president, Warnock decided instead to campaign with former President Barack Obama in the days before the runoff election.

For his part, Walker was endorsed by Trump but avoided campaigning with him until the campaign’s final day: The pair conducted a conference call Monday with supporters, according to a Republican National Committee spokesperson.

Walker’s candidacy is the GOP’s last chance to flip a Senate seat this year. Dr. Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona, Adam Laxalt of Nevada and Don Bolduc of New Hampshire, all Trump loyalists, already lost competitive Senate races that Republicans once considered part of their path to a majority.

Walker has differentiated himself from Trump in a notable way. Trump has spent two years falsely claiming that his loss in Georgia and nationally was fraudulent, despite the fact that numerous federal and local officials, a long list of courts, top former campaign staffers and even his own attorney general have all said there is no evidence of the fraud he alleges.

At his lone debate against Warnock in October, Walker was asked whether he’d accept the results even if he lost. He replied with one word: “Yes.”

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Dems move to make South Carolina, not Iowa, 1st voting state

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats voted Friday to remove Iowa as the leadoff state on the presidential nominating calendar and replace it with South Carolina starting in 2024, a dramatic shakeup championed by President Joe Biden to better reflect the party’s deeply diverse electorate.

The Democratic National Committee’s rule-making arm made the move to strip Iowa from the position it has held for five decades after technical meltdowns sparked chaos and marred results of the state’s 2020 caucus. The change also comes after a long push by some of the party’s top leaders to start choosing a president in states that are less white, especially given the importance of Black voters as Democrats’ most loyal electoral base.

Discussion on prioritizing diversity drew such impassioned reaction at the committee gathering in Washington that DNC chair Jaime Harrison wiped away tears as committee member Donna Brazile suggested that Democrats had spent years failing to fight for Black voters: “Do you know what it’s like to live on a dirt road? Do you know what it’s like to try to find running water that is clean?”

“Do you know what it’s like to wait and see if the storm is going to pass you by and your roof is still intact?” Brazile asked. “That’s what this is about.”

The committee approved moving South Carolina’s primary to Feb. 3 and having Nevada and New Hampshire vote three days later. Georgia would go the following week and Michigan two weeks after that.

The move marks a dramatic shift from the current calendar, which has had Iowa holding the first-in-the-nation caucuses since 1972, followed by New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary since 1920. Nevada and South Carolina have gone next since the 2008 presidential election, when Democrats last did a major overhaul of their primary calendar.

The changes will still have to be approved by the full DNC in a vote likely early next year, but it will almost certainly follow the rule-making committee’s lead.

The revamped schedule could largely be moot for 2024 if Biden opts to seek a second term, but may remake Democratic presidential cycles after that. The president has said for months that he intends to run again, and White House aides have begun making staffing discussions for his likely reelection campaign, even though no final decision has been made.

The DNC also plans to revisit the primary calendar again before 2028 — meaning more changes could be coming before then.

Biden wrote in a letter to rules committee members on Thursday that the party should scrap “restrictive” caucuses altogether because their rules on in-person participation can sometimes exclude working-class and other voters. He told also told party leaders privately that he’d like to see South Carolina go first to better ensure that voters of color aren’t marginalized as Democrats choose a presidential nominee.

Four of the five states now poised to start the party’s primary are presidential battlegrounds, meaning the eventual Democratic winner would be able to lay groundwork in important general election locales. That’s especially true for Michigan and Georgia, which both voted for Donald Trump in 2016 before flipping to Biden in 2020. The exception is South Carolina, which hasn’t gone Democratic in a presidential race since 1976.

The first five voting states would be positioned to cast ballots before Super Tuesday, the day when much of the rest of the country holds primaries. That gives the early states outsize influence since White House hopefuls struggling to raise money or gain political traction often drop out before visiting much of the rest of the country.

Scott Brennan, a rules committee member from Iowa, said “small, rural states” like his “must have a voice in the presidential nominating process.”

“Democrats cannot forget about entire groups of voters in the heart of the Midwest without doing significant damage to the party in newer generations,” Brennan said.

The Republican National Committee has already decided to keep Iowa’s caucus as the first contest in its 2024 presidential primary, ensuring that GOP White House hopefuls — which include Trump — have continued to frequently campaign there.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s lone congressional Democrat and one of Biden’s top supporters in Congress, said the president called him Thursday to inform him of his push to move his state up.

“I didn’t ask to be first,” Clyburn said. “It was his idea to be first.”

Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden in 2020 boosted the candidate’s flagging presidential campaign just ahead of South Carolina’s primary, which he won big. That helped Biden shake off early losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and eventually take the White House.

“He knows what South Carolina did for him, and he’s demonstrated that time and time again, by giving respect to South Carolina,” Clyburn said.

Still, the vote by the rules committee has faced serious pushback, with some states vowing to ignore the changes altogether. That’s despite the panel approving language saying states could lose all of their delegates to the party’s national convention if they attempt to violate new rules.

Iowa and New Hampshire have said laws in their states mandate them going before others, and they intend to abide by those, not DNC decrees. Only committee members from Iowa and New Hampshire objected to the proposal that passed Friday, with everyone else supporting it.

Nevada, with its heavily Hispanic population, initially balked at sharing the second-place slot with New Hampshire, a state 2,500 miles away. Nevada committee member Artie Blanco’s voice cracked as she argued against the change.

“If we want to build a strong relationship with Latinos,” Blanco said, “then Nevada must stand alone on a date and not have to share that date.”

After more discussion, Blanco said later that she would support the new calendar. It was “not ideal” for her state to go the same day as another, she said, but “we accept what the will of the president is.”

Harrison said the new slate of five early voting states will need to show they are working toward moving their primaries to those dates by early next year or risk losing their place. Some state legislatures set primary dates; others have their secretaries of state or the directors of their state parties do it.

The DNC chair choked up after the vote as he talked about South Carolina once having been the site of the first attack of the Civil War and now being in line to lead off his party’s primary.

“This proposal reflects the best of our party as a whole, and it will continue to make our party and our country stronger,” Harrison said.

___

Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard contributed from Columbia, S.C.

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AP sources: Biden tells Dems he wants SC as 1st voting state

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday that Democrats should give up “restrictive” caucuses and prioritize diversity at the start of their presidential primary calendar — dealing a major blow to Iowa’s decadeslong status as the state that leads off the process.

In a letter to the rule-making arm of the Democratic National Committee, Biden did not mention specific states he’d like to see go first. But he has told Democrats he wants South Carolina moved to the first position, according to three people familiar with his recommendation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The president’s direction comes as the DNC rules committee gathers in Washington on Friday to vote on shaking up the presidential primary calendar starting in 2024. Members now expect to approve new rules putting South Carolina first, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on the same day a week later.

Georgia and Michigan would move into the top five as new early states, and each would hold primaries in subsequent weeks, committee members say. The two battlegrounds were critical to Biden’s 2020 victory over then-President Donald Trump, who had won both states in his 2016 White House campaign.

Much of the rest of the country would vote as part of Super Tuesday soon afterward.

Such changes are set to come after years of calls from many top Democrats for the voting calendar to better reflect the party’s deeply diverse base than mostly white Iowa, which holds the country’s first caucus, and New Hampshire, which holds the first primary. The new calendar would still have to be approved by the full DNC in a vote likely to come early next year, but the DNC will almost certainly heed the rule-making panel’s recommendations.

The proposed order of the early states was first reported by The Washington Post.

“For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” Biden wrote in a letter on personal stationery that did not carry the White House seal. “We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”

He said caucuses were “restrictive and anti-worker” because they require voters “to spend significant amounts of time” on one night gathering to choose candidates in person, “disadvantaging hourly workers and anyone who does not have the flexibility to go to a set location at a set time.”

The changes could be implemented as soon as 2024 but would be rendered largely meaningless until 2028 if Biden opts to seek a second term. The president has said for months that he intends to run again, and White House aides and Biden allies have begun staffing and structural discussions for his likely 2024 bid while refraining from overt steps while the president weighs a final decision.

Such a shakeup would nonetheless be seismic given that Iowa’s caucus has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976. Still, it would come two years after a series of technical glitches so marred party results that they prevented The Associated Press from declaring a 2020 Iowa Democratic caucus winner.

On the current Democratic calendar, Iowa has been followed by New Hampshire, which has held the nation’s first primary since 1920. Nevada and South Carolina have gone next since the 2008 presidential election, when Democrats last did a major primary calendar overhaul.

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, has already decided to keep Iowa’s caucus as the first contest in its 2024 presidential calendar, ensuring that GOP White House hopefuls — which include Trump — will continue campaigning there frequently.

South Carolina holds special relevance to Biden. His victory in the state’s first-in-the-South primary in 2020 kickstarted his presidential campaign after poor finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire on his way to winning the Democratic nomination.

Dick Harpootlian, a longtime Biden ally, fundraiser and former South Carolina Democratic Party chair, said Thursday that he and Biden discussed South Carolina’s possible advancement the night of Biden’s 2020 primary victory there. Harpootlian said he’d impressed upon Biden that the state was a better place than Iowa to hold an even earlier presidential voting contest — to which Harpootlian said Biden was receptive.

“I think he agreed that this was a much more dynamic process,” Harpootlian said. “Iowa was just a nightmare.”

The DNC rules committee has been discussing reordering the early calendar for months, touching off a fierce battle among many states to go first. In a joint statement Thursday night, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes and U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell said, “We have always said that any road to the White House goes through the heartland and President Biden understands that.”

But Biden’s wishes sparked anger in New Hampshire, where state law calls for holding the nation’s first primary and where officials had for months threatened to simply move up their election regardless of what new rules the DNC approves. Other states have previously tried to violate party rules and jump closer to the front, only to be threatened with having their delegates not count toward their chosen candidate clinching the party’s nomination.

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen issued a statement blasting “the White House’s short-sighted decision,” while fellow New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan said, “I strongly oppose the President’s deeply misguided proposal.

“But make no mistake,” Hassan said in a statement. “New Hampshire’s law is clear and our primary will continue to be first in the nation.”

___

Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C. Associated Press writer Steve Peoples in New York contributed to this report.

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World

Bolsonaro contests Brazil election, demands votes be anulled

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BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — More than three weeks after losing a reelection bid, President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday blamed a software bug and demanded the electoral authority annul votes cast on most of Brazil’s nation’s electronic voting machines, though independent experts say the bug doesn’t affect the reliability of results.

Such an action would leave Bolsonaro with 51% of the remaining valid votes — and a reelection victory, Marcelo de Bessa, the lawyer who filed the 33-page request on behalf of the president and his Liberal Party, told reporters.

The electoral authority has already declared victory for Bolsonaro’s nemesis, leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and even many of the president’s allies have accepted the results. Protesters in cities across the country have steadfastly refused to do the same, particularly with Bolsonaro declining to concede.

Liberal Party leader Valdemar Costa and an auditor hired by the party told reporters in Brasilia that their evaluation found all machines dating from before 2020 — nearly 280,000 of them, or about 59% of the total used in the Oct. 30 runoff — lacked individual identification numbers in internal logs.

Neither explained how that might have affected election results, but said they were asking the electoral authority to invalidate all votes cast on those machines.

The complaint characterized the bug as “irreparable non-compliance due to malfunction” that called into question the authenticity of the results.

Immediately afterward, the head of the electoral authority issued a ruling that implicitly raised the possibility that Bolsonaro’s own party could suffer from such a challenge.

Alexandre de Moraes said the court would not consider the complaint unless the party offers an amended report within 24 hours that would include results from the first electoral round on Oct. 2, in which the Liberal Party won more seats in both congressional houses than any other.

The bug hadn’t been known previously, yet experts said it also doesn’t affect results. Each voting machine can still be easily identified through other means, like its city and voting district, according to Wilson Ruggiero, a professor of computer engineering and digital systems at the Polytechnic School of the University of Sao Paulo.

Diego Aranha, an associate professor of systems security at Aarhus University in Denmark, who has participated in official security tests of Brazil’s electoral system, agreed.

“It does not undermine the reliability or credibility in any way,” Ruggiero told The Associated Press by phone. “The key point that guarantees correctness is the digital signature associated with each voting machine.”

While the machines don’t have individual identification numbers in their internal logs, those numbers do appear on printed receipts that show the sum of all votes cast for each candidate, said Aranha, adding the bug was only detected due to the efforts by the electoral authority to provide greater transparency.

Bolsonaro’s less than two-point loss to da Silva on Oct. 30 was the narrowest margin since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy. While the president hasn’t explicitly cried foul, he has refused to concede defeat or congratulate his opponent — leaving room for supporters to draw their own conclusions.

Many have been protesting relentlessly, making claims of election fraud and demanding that the armed forces intervene.

Dozens of Bolsonaro supporters gathered outside the news conference on Tuesday, decked out in the green and yellow of Brazil’s flag and chanting patriotic songs. Some verbally attacked and pushed journalists trying to enter the venue.

Bolsonaro spent more than a year claiming Brazil’s electronic voting system is prone to fraud, without ever presenting evidence.

Brazil began using an electronic voting system in 1996 and election security experts consider such systems less secure than hand-marked paper ballots, because they leave no auditable paper trail. But Brazil’s system has been closely scrutinized by domestic and international experts who have never found evidence of it being exploited to commit fraud.

The Senate’s president, Rodrigo Pacheco, said Tuesday afternoon that the election results are “unquestionable.”

Bolsonaro has been almost completely secluded in the official residence since his Oct. 30 defeat, inviting widespread speculation as to whether he is dejected or plotting to cling to power.

In an interview with newspaper O Globo, Vice President Hamilton Mourão chalked up Bolsonaro’s absence to erysipelas, a skin infection on his legs that he said prevents the president from wearing pants.

But his his son Eduardo Bolsonaro, a federal lawmaker, has been more direct.

“We always distrusted these machines. … We want a massive audit,” the younger Bolsonaro said last week at a conference in Mexico City. “There is very strong evidence to order an investigation of Brazil’s election.”

For its audit, the Liberal Party hired the Legal Vote Institute, a group that has been critical of the current system, saying it defies the law by failing to provide a digital record of every individual vote.

In a separate report presented earlier this month, the Brazilian military said there were flaws in the country’s electoral systems and proposed improvements, but didn’t substantiate claims of fraud from some of Bolsonaro’s supporters.

Analysts have suggested that the armed forces, which have been a key component of Bolsonaro’s administration, may have maintained a semblance of uncertainty over the issue to avoid displeasing the president. In a subsequent statement, the Defense Ministry stressed that while it had not found any evidence of fraud in the vote counting, it could not exclude that possibility.

___

Biller reported from Rio de Janeiro. Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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GOP Gains College-Educated and Minority Voters in Slim House Pickup

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In making modest gains in House seats this year, Republicans drew more support from minority and college-educated voters than in other recent elections, chipping away at important pillars of the Democratic coalition in ways that could better position the party for the next election.

Republicans narrowed the Democratic advantage among Latino voters, Black voters and white women with college degrees—important components of the Democratic voter pool—according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of midterm participants. GOP House candidates won a majority of white women in the nation’s suburbs, a swing group that helped power the Democratic Party to its House majority in 2018 and backed President Biden in 2020.

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“The numbers indicate that our party has been more successful than we previously knew in getting voters of color moving to the GOP,’’ said Neil Newhouse, a veteran pollster who led polling for several GOP presidential nominees. “Ever since I got involved in politics more than 40 years ago, that’s been a long-term goal of the party.”

The voter shifts helped Republicans win a majority of House votes nationally, preliminary results show, but weren’t strong enough to bring the party substantial gains in House seats. Republicans have so far lost a net of one seat in the Senate, with the final tally to be decided in Georgia’s runoff election next month. Still, the gain among these groups “tells me that Republicans are potentially well-positioned to win a national election, if we can replicate this,’’ Mr. Newhouse said.

House members-elect following a group photo on the Capitol steps a week after the midterm vote.



Photo:

Leah Millis/Reuters

Ruy Teixeira, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said the shift among Latino voters was particularly noteworthy and extends a move toward the GOP that was a feature of the last two presidential elections. “They lost quite a bit among Latinos, and the swing was significant,” he said.

Many caveats apply in drawing lessons from a midterm election. Far fewer voters participate than in a presidential contest. The voter shifts detected by AP VoteCast varied widely by state and by whether an election had the potential to restrict legalized abortion. Voters’ choices this year might have been driven more by their views of former President

Donald Trump

and of candidates who copied his style of politics, than by their views of the two parties. Mr. Trump is now a declared candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.

The AP VoteCast survey, which included more than 94,000 midterm voters nationwide, found a number of significant shifts in voter preferences:

—Latino voters favored Democratic House candidates by 17 percentage points—giving 56% support to Democrats and 39% to Republicans—a far slimmer lead than the 28-point edge that helped President Biden win in 2020 or the 34-point Democratic advantage in the last midterm elections, in 2018.

—Black voters gave 14% of their support to GOP House candidates, compared with 8% in the elections of two and four years ago.

—White women with college degrees, who had backed Democrats by 19 points in the last midterms and by 21 points in the 2020 presidential election, tipped toward Democrats by a far narrower 6 points this year.

—Republicans won an outright majority of white women in the suburbs, carrying the group by 6 percentage points. Suburban white women had backed Mr. Biden by 5 points, and Democratic House candidates in 2018 by 7 points. Female voters overall, who account for over half the electorate, favored Democrats by a single percentage point, down from 12 points and 15 points in the last two elections, respectively.

Some Democrats cautioned that little could be read into results from a midterm election with special conditions. The fate of legalized abortion was a pressing issue in some states, which helped Democratic candidates, and was less salient in others.

“I’m skeptical, because it wasn’t a national presidential election, and because you have such differences state by state,’’ said Elaine Kamarck, a veteran of the Clinton administration White House who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Analysts said that more data were needed to better understand what the variations among voter groups from state to state meant to the election outcomes. Some early clues suggest that the Latino voter shift boosted the GOP vote share in some House races, even if the shift didn’t produce a victory.

In some Latino-rich House districts in California, Democratic candidates won their elections with far smaller vote margins than the party produced two years earlier. Rep.

Norma Torres

of Southern California, for example, won by 12 points in preliminary results in a district that Mr. Biden carried by 28 points.

Republicans cut into Democratic margins in two heavily Latino House districts in South Texas. Democratic Rep.

Vicente Gonzalez

won re-election by 8 points in a district that Mr. Biden had carried by 15 points, while Republican Monica De La Cruz won in a newly created district by 9 points, which Mr. Trump had carried by 3 points.

In a third South Texas House district, Democratic Rep.

Henry Cuellar

won re-election by a larger margin than Mr. Biden won in 2020.

Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic-aligned firm that focuses on Latino voters, said the Hispanic vote varied significantly by state.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D., Texas) celebrating a victory that had a slimmer margin than President Biden’s in 2020.



Photo:

Denise Cathey/Associated Press

“Florida was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats across the board. But it is especially true among Latino voters,’’ he said. Republicans won a majority of the Hispanic vote for the first time since 2006, Mr. Odio said. Republicans carried heavily Latino Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest, “something that was unthinkable in the Obama era,’’ he said.

Republicans boosted their share of voters who don’t have a four-year college degree. They also dominated among white voters in rural areas and small towns, winning a commanding 70% of those voters—producing an advantage of about 40 points—compared with leads of about 30 points two years and four years ago.

The AP VoteCast survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and Fox News.

Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com and Anthony DeBarros at Anthony.Debarros@wsj.com

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House GOP pushes Hunter Biden probe despite thin majority

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Even with their threadbare House majority, Republicans doubled down this week on using their new power next year to investigate the Biden administration and, in particular, the president’s son.

But the midterm results have emboldened a White House that has long prepared for this moment. Republicans secured much smaller margins than anticipated, and aides to President Joe Biden and other Democrats believe voters punished the GOP for its reliance on conspiracy theories and Donald Trump-fueled lies over the 2020 election.

They see it as validation for the administration’s playbook for the midterms and going forward to focus on legislative achievements and continue them, in contrast to Trump-aligned candidates whose complaints about the president’s son played to their most loyal supporters and were too far in the weeds for the average American. The Democrats retained control of the Senate and the GOP’s margin in the House is expected to the slimmest majority in two decades.

“If you look back, we picked up seats in New York, New Jersey, California,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist and public affairs executive. “These were not voters coming to the polls because they wanted Hunter Biden investigated — far from it. They were coming to the polls because they were upset about inflation. They’re upset about gas prices. They’re upset about what’s going on with the war in Ukraine.”

But House Republicans used their first news conference after clinching the majority to discuss presidential son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department, renewing long-held grievances about what they claim is a politicized law enforcement agency and a bombshell corruption case overlooked by Democrats and the media.

“From their first press conference, these congressional Republicans made clear that they’re going to do one thing in this new Congress, which is investigations, and they’re doing this for political payback for Biden’s efforts on an agenda that helps working people,” said Kyle Herrig, the founder of the Congressional Integrity Project, a newly relaunched, multimillion-dollar effort by Democratic strategists to counter the onslaught of House GOP probes.

Inside the White House, the counsel’s office added staff months ago and beefed up its communication efforts, and staff has been deep into researching and preparing for the attacks. They’ve worked to try to identify their own vulnerabilities and plan effective responses.

Rep. James Comer, incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said there are “troubling questions” of the utmost importance about Hunter Biden’s business dealings and one of the president’s brothers, James Biden, that require deeper investigation.

“Rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government is the primary mission of the Oversight Committee,” said Comer, R-Ky. “As such, this investigation is a top priority.”

Republican legislators promised a trove of new information this past week, but what they have presented so far has been a condensed rehash of a few years’ worth of complaints about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, going back to conspiracy theories raised by Trump.

Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. Senate Republicans have said that the appointment may have posed a conflict of interest, but they did not present evidence that the hiring influenced U.S. policies, and they did not implicate Joe Biden in any wrongdoing.

Republican lawmakers and their staff for the past year have been analyzing messages and financial transactions found on a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. They long have discussed issuing congressional subpoenas to foreign entities that did business with him, and they recently brought on James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor, to assist with the investigation as general counsel for the Oversight Committee.

The difference now is that Republicans will have subpoena power to follow through, however small their majority may be.

“The Republicans are going to go ahead,” said Tom Davis, a Republican lawyer who specializes in congressional investigations and legislative strategy. “I think their members are enthusiastic about going after this stuff. Look, the 40-year trend is parties under-investigate their own and over-investigate the other party. It didn’t start here.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed the GOP focus on investigations as “on-brand” thinking.

“They said they were going to fight inflation, they said they were going to make that a priority, then they get the majority and their top priority is actually not focusing on the American family, but focusing on the president’s family,” she said.

Even some newly elected Republicans are pushing back against the idea.

“The top priority is to deal with inflation and the cost of living. … What I don’t want to see is what we saw in the Trump administration, where Democrats went after the president and the administration incessantly,” Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York said on CNN.

Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business work are already under federal investigation, with a grand jury in Delaware hearing testimony in recent months.

While he never held a position on the presidential campaign or in the White House, his membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have long raised questions about whether he traded on his father’s public service, including reported references in his emails to the “big guy.”

Joe Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business, and nothing the Republicans have put forth suggests otherwise. And there are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president.

Trump and his supporters, meanwhile, have advanced a widely discredited theory that Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to protect his son and Burisma from investigation. Biden did indeed press for the prosecutor’s firing, but that was a reflection of the official position of not only the Obama administration but many Western countries and because the prosecutor was perceived as soft on corruption.

House Republicans also have signaled upcoming investigations into immigration, government spending and parents’ rights. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray have been put on notice as potential witnesses.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, incoming Judiciary chairman, has long complained of what he says is a politicized Justice Department and the ongoing probes into Trump.

On Friday, Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

Trump, in a speech Friday night at his Mar-a-Lago estate, slammed the development as “the latest in a long series of witch hunts.”

Of Joe and Hunter Biden, he asked, “Where’s their special prosecutor?”

Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political strategist, said it’s one thing if the investigations into Hunter Biden stick to corruption questions, but if it veers into the kind of mean-spirited messaging that has been floating around in far-right circles, “I don’t know that the public will have much patience for that.”

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Trump 2024 rivals court his donors at big Las Vegas meeting

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Republican Party’s nascent 2024 class, emboldened as ever, openly cast Donald Trump as “a loser” over and over on Friday as they courted donors and activists fretting about the GOP’s future under the former president’s leadership.

Trump’s vocal critics included current and former Republican governors, members of his own Cabinet and major donors who gathered along the Las Vegas strip for what organizers described as the unofficial beginning of the next presidential primary season. It was a remarkable display of defiance for a party defined almost wholly by its allegiance to Trump for the past six years.

“Maybe there’s a little blood in the water and the sharks are circling,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican presidential prospect himself and frequent Trump critic said in an interview. “I don’t think we’ve ever gotten to this point before.”

The gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting, which began Friday, comes just days after Trump became the first candidate to formally launch a 2024 campaign. His allies hoped his early announcement might ward off serious primary challenges, but several potential candidates said that’s not likely after Trump loyalists lost midterm contests last week in battleground states from Arizona to Pennsylvania. His political standing within the GOP, already weakening, plummeted further.

Ahead of his Friday night address, Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State under Trump, mocked one of his former boss’ slogans: “We were told we’d get tired of winning. But I’m tired of losing.”

“Personality, celebrity just aren’t going to get it done,” he said later from the ballroom stage.

Trump is scheduled to address the weekend gathering by video conference on Saturday. The vast majority of the high-profile Republican officials considering a 2024 White House bid appeared in person the two-day conference, which included a series of private donor meetings and public speeches.

The program featured DeSantis, a leading Trump rival, and Pence, whom Trump blames for not overturning the 2020 election. Other speakers included Hogan, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Florida Sen. Rick Scott.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, another potential 2024 contender, canceled his appearance after a Sunday shooting at the University of Virginia that left three dead.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who could become the House speaker when Republicans take over in January, is also scheduled.

There seemed to be little sympathy for Trump’s latest legal challenges.

Hours before Friday’s opening dinner, Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

Sununu, the New Hampshire governor who easily won reelection last week, said there was no sign that his party would rally to Trump’s defense this time.

“Those are his issues to sort out,” Sununu said. “Everyone’s gonna sit back and watch the show. And that’s not just his supporters — that’s his money, that’s donors, that’s fundraisers,” said the Republican governor, who easily won reelection last week. “We’re just moving on.”

With a loyal base of support among rank-and-file voters and a sprawling fundraising operation featuring small-dollar contributions, Trump does not need major donors or party leaders to reach for the GOP nomination a third time. But unwillingness by big-money Republicans to commit to him — at least, for now — could make his path back to the White House more difficult.

There was little sign of enthusiasm for Trump’s 2024 presidential aspirations in the hallways and conference rooms of the weekend gathering. At Friday night’s dinner, organizers offered attendees yarmulkes bearing Trump’s name, but there were few takers.

That’s even as Jewish Republicans continued to heap praise on Trump’s commitment to Israel while in the White House.

“There’s no question that what President Trump accomplished over his four years in terms of strengthening the the U.S.-Israel relationship was unparalleled. He was the most pro-Israel president ever,” said Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s executive director.

But that may not be enough to win over the coalition’s leading donors this time.

“For a lot of people who are attending this conference, this is about the future,” Brooks said. “And for some of them, President Trump may be their answer. For others, they’re interested in what others have to say.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie leaned into Trump’s political failures during a private dinner with the group’s leading donors on Thursday. In a subsequent interview, he did not back down.

“In my view, he’s now a loser. He’s an electoral loser,” said Christie, another 2024 prospect. “You look at a general electorate, I don’t think there’s a Democrat he can beat because he’s now toxic to suburban voters on a personal level, and he’s earned it.”

The annual event is playing out at the Las Vegas Strip’s Venetian Hotel in a nod to the Republican Jewish Coalition’s longtime benefactor, Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate who died last year. His wife Miriam Adelson remains a fundraising force within the GOP, though her level of giving in the recent midterm election, which exceeded $20 million, was somewhat scaled back.

The 76-year-old Israeli-born Miriam Adelson “is staying neutral” in the GOP’s 2024 presidential primary, according to the family’s longtime political gatekeeper Andy Abboud.

She is not alone.

Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress and heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, backed Trump’s previous campaigns but has no plans to support him in 2024, according to a Lauder spokesman.

Longtime Trump backer Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group investment firm, told Axios this week that he would back someone from a “new generation” of Republicans. Kenneth C. Griffin, the hedge-fund billionaire, is already openly backing DeSantis.

On Friday, aerospace CEO Phillip Friedman described himself as a “big Trump supporter,” but said he’s open to listening to others moving forward.

“There’s a couple other people who have his policies but don’t have the baggage,” Friedman said of Trump.

In his keynote address, Pence focused largely on the Trump administration’s accomplishments, but included a few indirect jabs at the former president.

“To win the future,” Pence said, “we as Republicans and elected leaders must do more than criticize and complain.”

He was more direct i n an interview this week.

“I think we will have better choices in 2024,” Pence told The Associated Press. “And I’m very confident that Republican primary voters will choose wisely.”

___

AP writer Michelle Price in New York contributed.

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Donald Trump’s Fate in Justice Department Probes Headed for Special Counsel

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WASHINGTON—Attorney General

Merrick Garland

appointed a former federal and international war-crimes prosecutor as special counsel on Friday to oversee Justice Department investigations into former President

Donald Trump.

Jack Smith, who once led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption and since 2018 was the chief prosecutor at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo, will be the third special counsel in five years to examine issues involving Mr. Trump.

He will lead both the probe into the handling of classified documents at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and oversee key aspects of the sprawling Justice Department investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss.

“The Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters,” Mr. Garland said in a brief memo naming Mr. Smith to the post. The memo said Mr. Smith’s remit doesn’t include cases against those who were physically present at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

The appointment comes three days after Mr. Trump announced another bid for the presidency and would mark the naming of the third independent prosecutor in five years to examine issues involving Mr. Trump.

Jack Smith previously led the Justice Department unit that investigates public corruption.



Photo:

U.S. Department of Justice

The move reflects the sensitivity of Mr. Garland overseeing any investigation into Mr. Trump now that he is a declared presidential candidate. President Biden, who has said he intends to run for re-election in 2024, nominated Mr. Garland to head the Justice Department in part for the former judge’s promise to insulate the agency from political influence.

Some legal experts have anticipated such an appointment. Regulations governing special counsels provide for the attorney general to name an outsider if he determines that the investigation or prosecution presents a conflict of interest for the department and recusals of certain officials wouldn’t be enough to overcome the concerns.

Some former Justice Department officials and prosecutors have said such an appointment wouldn’t do much to allay criticism of the FBI and Justice Department by Mr. Trump and his supporters. There are few people with the necessary prosecutorial experience and nonpartisan reputation who would be willing to take on the post, those people say.

A special-counsel appointment won’t entirely eliminate the appearance of a conflict, as Mr. Garland and other senior Justice Department officials are still likely to be involved in some decision-making related to the probe, according to people familiar with past special counsels.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol voted in mid-October to issue a subpoena for relevant documents and testimony under oath from former President Donald Trump. Photo: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com and Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com

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