Tag Archives: Voting rights

US

Biden delivers sermon drawing on legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King: ‘This is a time of choosing’

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CNN
 — 

Joe Biden delivered remarks Sunday from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, becoming the first sitting president to deliver a Sunday sermon from the historic church where civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. served as pastor until his assassination in 1968.

“You’ve been around for 136 years – I know I look like it, but I haven’t,” Biden joked, calling King one of “my only political heroes” since entering public service.

In remarks from the pulpit, the president referred to the current moment in American history “the time of choosing.”

“Are we a people who choose democracy over autocracy? You couldn’t ask that question 15 years ago, right? You would’ve thought democracy was settled – not for African Americans, but democracy as an institutional structure was settled. But it’s not, it’s not,” he said.

“We have to choose a community over chaos. Are we the people … going to choose love over hate? These are the vital questions of our time, and the reason why I’m here as your president, I believe. Dr. King’s life and legacy show us the way, and we should pay attention,” Biden said.

He offered praise for King and his legacy, noting that the civil rights pioneer “was born in a nation where segregation was a tragic fact of life.”

Biden’s visit came amid a steady drip of revelations tied to his handling of classified documents after his time as vice president. The White House has faced increasing criticism for its lack of transparency with the public over the finding of classified material at Biden’s home and his former private office. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to take over the investigation into the classified documents found at the two locations connected to Biden.

Biden was invited to speak Sunday by the current pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, on what would have been King’s 94th birthday. Warnock was recently elected to a full six-year term following an election in which he distanced himself from Biden on the campaign trail in Georgia, where polling showed a majority of voters disapproved of the president’s job performance.

At the church, Biden spoke about King’s legacy and a number of issues, including civil and voting rights.

“He had every reason to believe, as others in his generation did, that history had already been written, that the division be America’s destiny – but he rejected that outcome,” Biden said. “So often, when people hear about Dr. King, people think his ministry and the movement were most about the epic struggle for civil rights and voting rights. But we do well to remember that his mission was something even deeper – it was spiritual. It was moral.”

The speech also came as the president is set to make a decision about his political future with his advisers readying plans for a possible reelection bid. Biden narrowly flipped Georgia in 2020, buoyed by support from Black voters, and the state could prove critical in next year’s presidential campaign.

Ahead of Biden’s trip to Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms, the White House senior adviser for public engagement, and former mayor of Atlanta, called the visit “an inflection point,” as the president’s voting rights agenda remains stalled in Congress.

“If you’ve come through the East Wing, you’ve seen the pictures of Dr. King meeting with Lyndon Johnson, meeting with other civil rights leaders, hashing out voting rights in the White House – and so the fact that we are still here talking about this in 2023, I think really speaks to the fact that we need action, we need that action from Congress,” Bottoms said.

“The President has done and will continue to do all that he can do in his executive powers, but there’s only so much that he can do. We need Congress to act,” she added.

A Democratic-controlled House passed a voting rights bill in 2021, but attempts by Senate Democrats to change filibuster rules to pass the legislation were unsuccessful amid opposition from moderate Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Sinema has since become an independent, while continuing to caucus with Democrats, and Republicans won control of the House following the November midterm elections, further dashing hopes of finding compromise on voting rights.

Bottoms defended the administration’s handling of the voting rights issue, telling reporters Friday that the Biden White House has “done all that we can do from the executive branch,” but if there were additional steps that would further the issue, “we welcome these suggestions.”

While in Atlanta, Biden was expected to meet with members of the King family and civil rights organizations, the White House said.

King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 at age 39.

On Monday, when the nation honors King on his eponymous holiday, Biden will deliver the keynote address during the National Action Network’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Breakfast in Washington, DC, on the invitation of Rev. Al Sharpton.

This story has been updated.

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Business

Jack Ma to relinquish control of Ant group

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CNN
 — 

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma will no longer control Ant Group after the fintech giant’s shareholders agreed to reshape its shareholding structure, according to a statement released by the company on Saturday.

After the adjustment, Ma’s voting rights will fall to 6.2%, according to the statement and CNN calculations.

Before the restructure, Ma held 50.52% of voting rights at Ant via Hangzhou Yunbo and two other entities, according to its IPO prospectus filed with stock exchanges in 2020.

Ant added in the statement that the voting rights adjustment, a move to make the company’s shareholder structure “more transparent and diversified,” will not result in any change to the economic interests of any shareholders.

Ant said its 10 major shareholders, including Ma, had agreed to no longer act in concert when exercising their voting rights, and would only vote independently, and thus no shareholder would have “sole or joint control over Ant Group.”

The voting rights overhaul came after Chinese regulators pulled the plug on Ant’s $37 billion IPO in November 2020, and ordered the company to restructure its business.

As part of the company’s restructuring, Ant’s consumer finance unit applied for an expansion of its registered capital from $1.2 billion to $2.7 billion. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission recently approved the application, according to a government notice issued late last week.

After the fund-raising drive, Ant will control half of its key consumer finance unit, while an entity controlled by the Hangzhou city government will own a 10% stake. Hangzhou is where Alibaba and Ant have been headquartered since their inceptions.

Ant Group is a fintech affiliate of Alibaba, both of which were founded by Ma.

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US

Early voting begins in some Georgia counties as Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker sprint to December 6 runoff

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CNN
 — 

A week-long early voting period begins Saturday in some Georgia counties as Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker enter a week-and-a-half, post-Thanksgiving sprint to their December 6 runoff election.

Unlike the 2021 runoffs, control of the Senate is not on the line, with Democrats having won 50 seats already and Vice President Kamala Harris giving the party a tie-breaking vote.

However, the stakes remain high: A Warnock victory would give Democrats the majority outright, rather than requiring the power-sharing agreement that is now in place. Democrats would have the majority on committees, allowing them to advance President Joe Biden’s nominees more easily.

Georgia’s Supreme Court delivered Warnock a victory Wednesday, allowing counties to offer early voting on Saturday. Democrats said they expected as many as 22 counties to do so – some in heavily populated areas around Atlanta, including DeKalb and Fulton, as well as Chatham County, home of Savannah.

That ruling followed a legal battle triggered by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s interpretation of the state’s 2021 voting law. He said the new law restricted weekend voting immediately after holidays.

That 2021 law cut in half the timeline for runoff elections, to four weeks, and limited the early voting window to a minimum of five days rather than the minimum of 16 days that had been in place when Democrats won two Senate runoffs in the state in January 2021.

As many as 22 of the state’s 159 counties let voters cast their ballots Saturday.

At a polling site in Atlanta, Boston College student Emma Demilio said she probably wouldn’t have been able to vote in person if the early voting sites hadn’t opened.

“This is kind of the only time that I’m in Georgia and able to vote. I leave tomorrow, so I was really happy I was able to get it in,” she said, adding that she may have tried to scramble for an absentee ballot.

Warnock continues to outraise Walker as they enter the final stretch.

Warnock raised nearly $52.2 million from October 20 through November 16, a period covering the end of the general election and roughly the first week of the runoff. Walker collected $20.9 million in that time, according to his campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission. Warnock ended the period with more than $29.7 million remaining in the bank, more than three times the $9.8 million left in the coffers of his rival.

Warnock is set to bring in a top Democratic surrogate: Former President Barack Obama is slated to travel to Atlanta on Thursday for a rally ahead of the final day of early voting.

So far, Obama is the only president past or present slated to visit Georgia ahead of the runoff.

Neither President Joe Biden, to whom Walker’s campaign has tried to latch Warnock, nor former President Donald Trump, who was in office when Republicans lost two Senate runoffs two years ago, have scheduled trips to the state. On Saturday, Warnock appeared with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) at a rally in Sandy Springs, just outside of Atlanta.

Trump allies, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have been out in force for Walker, the former president himself has not campaigned with the candidate he recruited.

Other Republicans, meanwhile, are rallying around Walker, with the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, pumping more than $10 million into the race since the general election.

In addition to the new influx of outside spending, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who cruised to re-election earlier this month, made his first appearance with Walker on the trail after stiff-arming the former football great throughout the fall.

Kemp defeated a primary challenger backed by Trump in May and then outpaced Walker by more than 200,000 votes in the general election – a sign both of his crossover appeal to moderate Democrats and Walker’s difficulties consolidating Republicans.

Still, Democrats said they doubted Kemp could rescue Walker in a runoff election in which Walker is the only Republican on the ballot.

“There’s tons of folks that voted for Raphael Warnock and Brian Kemp,” said Jason Carter, the 2014 Democratic nominee for governor and grandson of former President Jimmy Carter.

He called Warnock a “unique figure,” noting that he “got more votes than Herschel Walker and he got more votes than any other Democrat.”

“People appreciate him. And they think of him as Raphael Warnock first, and as his political party and all that other stuff second,” Carter said.

A new potential flashpoint in the runoff election emerged Wednesday. The Georgia Supreme Court, in a separate legal battle, also reinstated the state’s six-week abortion ban.

It was a policy victory for the Republicans who had enacted that ban and defended it in court, but one that could come at a political cost, reviving the backlash over the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade that energized Democrats and swung moderate voters in their favor on the party’s way to a surprisingly strong showing in this year’s midterm elections.

In the midterms, according to CNN exit polls, 28% of Georgia voters said abortion was the most important issue to their vote – second only to inflation at 37%.

Of those who identified abortion as the most important issue, 77% backed Warnock, compared to 21% who voted for Walker – a reversal of inflation, an issue that favored Walker by a 45 percentage point margin.

Fifty-three percent of Georgia voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and among those voters, 75% backed Warnock. Of the 43% who said it should be illegal in all or most cases, 87% backed Walker.

Already, both parties have pumped more than $40 million into television advertising in the runoff. Democratic groups have spent nearly $25 million, while GOP groups have spent nearly $16 million, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.

In an effort to unite Republican factions, a Walker super PAC is sending out mailers touting Kemp’s support and trying to tie Warnock to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. “You stopped Stacey. Now reject Warnock,” they read.

“Who do you want to fight for you in the United States Senate? Do you want a guy that represents our values like Herschel Walker, or do you want a guy who’s stood with Joe Biden 96% of the time?,” said Kemp, borrowing a familiar attack from Walker, at a rally last weekend in Cobb County.

Kemp also echoes that line of attack in a new television ad launched by SLF. The governor and McConnell’s group have are also linking up for get out the vote efforts. SLF is boosting Kemp’s state operation, which has been pivoted to help Walker, with a $2 million cash injection.

Warnock’s campaign, too, is trying to win over Republicans who effectively chose Kemp over Trump.

A new ad from the Warnock campaign features a woman who says she voted for Kemp this year and describes herself as a lifelong Republican, but goes on to say she won’t support Walker in the runoff because of his “lack of character.”

Warnock has also campaigned on what should be some of Walker’s safest territory: his hometown. At an event in Wrightsville, where Walker played his high school football, Warnock asked voters to separate the sports hero from the political candidate.

“I saw what your favorite son did on the football field. I don’t mind giving credit where credit is due. That brother could razzle dazzle you on that football field. He created a lot of excitement and did a lot for the great University of Georgia. And he deserves credit for that,” Warnock said. “But tonight, we’re on a different field.”

At the same time, the Republican has faced some backlash over an ad of his own – alongside University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who has appeared with Walker before and competed with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who became a focus of debate surrounding trans women’s participation in sports and has frequently been attacked in conservative media.

“For more than a decade, I worked so hard. Four a.m. practices to be the best. But my senior year, I was forced to compete against a biological male,” Gaines says in the ad.

The spot was released in the days after a gunman allegedly targeted the LGBTQ community at a gay club in Colorado. One of the five people killed was a trans man.

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Shapiro to take office with mandate from Pennsylvania voters

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor-elect of Pennsylvania, will take office with a decisive mandate from voters, who overwhelmingly rejected a Republican drive to pare back abortion rights and voting laws in the premier battleground state.

Shapiro, the state’s two-term attorney general, scored a massive 14 percentage point win over Republican rival Doug Mastriano in last week’s midterm election, smashed state campaign finance records and became the first candidate since 1966 to succeed a governor of the same party in Pennsylvania.

Democrats in the state also flipped a U.S. Senate seat — just the second time since the Civil War that the state elected two Democrats to the chamber — while winning a majority of the state’s congressional seats and possibly even control of the state House of Representatives for the first time in 12 years.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said the election results showed voters’ eagerness to protect abortion rights and the sanctity of elections from subversion by far-right Republicans who promoted former President Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud in his 2020 loss.

“In a lot of ways, it was a triumph over extremism as much as anything, and we probably underestimated that in the election,” Casey said.

Set to be sworn in Jan. 17, Shapiro will take the reins in a state riven by bitter partisanship over voting laws and the management of the COVID-19 pandemic by his predecessor, outgoing Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. That helped drive a record number of vetoes by one governor going back to the 1970s.

Shapiro will likely face battles with Republicans who control the state Senate over the grist of statehouse business, such as budgeting.

And, with the 2024 presidential election looming, big questions remain unresolved over the state’s voting laws after three years of partisan gridlock, ongoing court battles over mail-in voting and Trump’s lies of fraud in the 2020 election that still buffet the state.

Still, Shapiro stressed that crossover support from Republican voters aided his victory against Mastriano, a far-right state senator who spread conspiracy theories, supported a complete ban on abortion and did more than any other gubernatorial candidate in the nation to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

Pledging to manage the state’s affairs with bipartisanship in mind, Shapiro said he has a “mandate” to bring people together and vowed to work with Republicans in the state Capitol.

“I think it’s clear, you know, I’m not going to get everything done that I want, and they’re not going to get everything done they want,” Shapiro said in an interview Friday on WILK-FM in Scranton. “But there’s a lot we can do together and that is what is going to be my focus.”

One conservative advocate, Leo Knepper, political director of the Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, said he worries that Republican lawmakers will shrug off conservative principles because of the size of Shapiro’s victory.

“I think that some of these Republicans are going to have their eye to the fact that he won by a fairly significant margin and what did that margin look like in their districts,” Knepper said.

About 6 in 10 independents backed Shapiro in the election, compared with about 3 in 10 who supported Mastriano, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,100 voters in the state.

Shapiro maintains that he will veto any legislation that he views as undermining abortion rights or voting rights. But, in a nod to the potential for Democrats to control the state House of Representatives, he told KYW-AM radio in Philadelphia that it appears that he “won’t have to wield that veto pen much.”

The Associated Press has not called two state House races that will determine which party controls the majority. County election boards are expected to certify results later this week.

Shapiro entered the race as a dominant figure in the state Democratic Party, a powerhouse fundraiser and polished speaker elected twice statewide — someone who even Republicans say is a talented politician.

He unified the Democratic Party, its leaders and its allies behind his candidacy, cleared the primary of challengers and ran to the middle on key issues, including on energy in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state.

He broke with Wolf’s top climate-change priority, a quest bitterly opposed by Republicans to make Pennsylvania the first major fossil fuel state to impose carbon-pricing.

He proposed a big corporate income tax cut and opened the door to Republican plans to allow broader state funding of private and parochial schools. And he rejected Wolf’s COVID-19 policies, saying he would not order mask mandates or business shutdowns in a pandemic — even though his office had defended them in court.

In post-election interviews, he stressed that he will focus on his core priorities of improving schools, safety and the economy.

Shapiro also must assemble a Cabinet and name a replacement to finish the last two years of his term as Pennsylvania’s top law enforcement officer.

Shapiro will take office with the state in a stable financial position, thanks to strong tax collections and billions in federal pandemic aid.

Still, the state Supreme Court is considering a legal challenge to how the state funds public schools, a lawsuit that could impose major changes on how the state distributes billions of dollars in school funding.

He will be in the middle of the fight over climate change, facing pressure from environmental advocates to crack down on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, while labor unions — their members work on power plants, pipelines and refineries — say he promised not to block major new gas infrastructure projects.

Shapiro also will have to navigate a partisan fight over updating Pennsylvania’s voting laws, which has dominated the state Capitol the past two years.

Many Republicans on the campaign trail — including Mastriano and nearly every other candidate in the GOP gubernatorial primary — called for the repeal of no-excuse mail-in voting in Pennsylvania.

For his part, Shapiro said he will pursue changes to voting laws — Election Day voter registration and automatic voter registration — that have seen no traction in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

With Pennsylvania certain to be a battleground in the 2024 presidential election, the focus on election laws isn’t fading.

On Sunday, Mastriano conceded, issuing a statement that acknowledged his defeat and asked his supporters to give Shapiro the opportunity to lead.

But, he also said work must be done on elections to make them “transparent, secure and more quickly decided.”

“Pennsylvanians deserve to have faith in our elections,” Mastriano said.

___

Associated Press reporter Nuha Dolby in New York contributed to this report. Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: twitter.com/timelywriter.

___

Learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections. And follow the AP’s election coverage of the 2022 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.



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US

Attorney General Merrick Garland vows Justice Department ‘will not permit voters to be intimidated’ ahead of midterms

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Washington
CNN
 — 

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday vowed that the US Justice Department “will not permit voters to be intimidated” during November’s midterm elections.

“The Justice Department has an obligation to guarantee a free and fair vote by everyone who’s qualified to vote and will not permit voters to be intimidated,” Garland said during a press briefing.

More than 7 million ballots have already been cast across 39 states as of Monday, according to data from election officials, Edison Research and Catalist. But with two weeks until November 8, law enforcement agencies and officials are turning their attention toward Election Day and the potential for violence amid threats to election workers and reports of voter intimidation.

In one instance in Arizona, which has been referred to the Department of Justice and Arizona Attorney General’s Office, an unidentified voter reported that they were approached and followed by a group of individuals when trying to drop off their ballot at an early voting drop box. The group made accusations against the voter and their wife, as well as took photographs of them and their license plate and followed them out of the parking lot, according to the report.

In another instance, two armed individuals – dressed in tactical gear – were spotted at a ballot drop box in Mesa, Arizona, on Friday night, according to Maricopa County officials. The pair left the scene when the County Sheriff’s Office arrived.

“We are deeply concerned about the safety of individuals who are exercising their constitutional right to vote and who are lawfully taking their early ballot to a drop box,” Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer said in a joint statement on Saturday.

Dozens of Republicans trying to be elected in 2022 as governor, state secretary of state or US senator have joined former President Donald Trump in baselessly rejecting or questioning the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, with some having attempted to overturn the 2020 results. Such unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud inspired a slew of restrictive new voting laws and has led to growing safety concerns around elections.

Last year, the Justice Department launched a task force to address the rise in threats against election officials, and safety preparations are already well underway for Election Day across the country.

In Colorado, for example, a state law – the Vote Without Fear Act – prohibits carrying firearms at polling places or within 100 feet of a ballot drop box. And in Tallahassee, Florida, officials have added Kevlar and bullet-resistant acrylic shields to the Leon County elections office, said Mark Earley, who runs elections in the county.

Samantha Vinograd, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for counterterrorism, threat prevention, and law enforcement, on Monday said the agency is “certainly very focused on what we consider to be an incredibly heightened threat environment” ahead of November’s elections. She cited conspiracy theories swirling online and the history of extremist groups in the United States as reason for concern.

“We know that there’s a historical basis for violence associated with elections,” said Vinograd, a former CNN contributor, while speaking at the 2022 Homeland Security Enterprise Forum. “At the same time, anybody with a Twitter account or a Facebook account, or who watches the news is aware that myriad conspiracy theories continue to proliferate with various narratives associated with false claims about the election.”

Amid the threat, she said that DHS – and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in particular – is working to protect election security infrastructure.

The FBI and sheriffs representing some of America’s biggest counties, meanwhile, have discussed the possibility of misinformation fueling violence at polling stations during the midterm elections, a representative of a sheriff’s association told CNN.

The briefing last week covered how law enforcement can balance supporting the security needs of election officials without risking intimidating voters by being “out in force” near polling stations, said Megan Noland, executive director of Major County Sheriffs of America, which represents the 113 largest sheriff’s offices in the country. The recent surveillance by private citizens of ballot drop boxes was also discussed, Noland said.

Neal Kelley, a former election official who also presented at the briefing, told CNN that the potential for confrontations at ballot drop boxes “is something that we need to watch.” The FBI declined to comment on the briefing.

The FBI, Kelley said, gave an overview of the threat environment facing election officials.

“The whole idea was to give [sheriffs] an idea on how they can collaborate with their election officials because there’s not a lot of that happening nationwide,” Kelley, the former chief election official of Orange County, California, said of his presentation. Big counties have some of that collaboration between cops and election officials, but smaller ones often don’t, he said.

One idea discussed at the briefing was giving patrol officers a list of election criminal codes that they could keep in their pockets when responding to any incidents on Election Day, Kelley told CNN.

“If you’re calling 9-1-1 on Election Day as an election official, it’s too late,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional information Monday.

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US

Four takeaways from Georgia governor’s debate

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CNN
 — 

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams sparred over health care, crime and punishment, and voting rights in a Monday debate as they made their closing arguments to voters in a reprise of their fiercely contested 2018 race for the same job.

The stakes for this night were arguably higher for Abrams, who has trailed in most recent polling of the race. Kemp, one of the few prominent Republicans to resist former President Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election in 2020, has positioned himself as a more traditional, pro-business conservative – a tack that his gentle resistance to Trump reinforced with swing voters. Abrams has argued that Kemp shouldn’t get any special credit for doing his job and not breaking the law.

Kemp and Abrams were joined by Libertarian nominee Shane Hazel, who took shots at both his opponents and plainly stated his desire to send the election to a run-off. (If no one receives a clear majority on Election Day, the top two finishers advance to a one-on-one contest.) But it was the two major party candidates, who ran tight campaigns four years ago with Kemp emerging the narrow victor, who dominated the debate stage. Their disagreements were pointed, as they were in 2018, their attacks and rebuttals well-rehearsed and, to a large degree, predictable.

Here are the four main takeaways from the Georgia governor’s debate:

Like Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker did in his debate with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock last week, Kemp took every opportunity – and when they weren’t there, tried anyway – to connect Abrams to Biden, who, despite winning the state in 2020, is a deeply unpopular figure there now.

“I would remind you that Stacey Abrams campaigned to be Joe Biden’s running mate,” Kemp said, referring to the chatter around Abrams potentially being chosen as his running mate two years ago.

During an exchange with the moderators about abortion, Kemp pivoted to the economy – and again, invoked Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

“Georgians should know that my desire is to continue to help them fight through 40-year high inflation and high gas prices and other things that our Georgia families are facing right now, quite honestly, because of bad policies in Washington, DC, from President Biden and the Democrats that have complete control,” he said.

Abrams, unlike so many other Democrats running this year, has not sought to distance herself from the President and recently said publicly that she would welcome him in Georgia. First lady Jill Biden visited last week for an Abrams fundraiser, where she criticized Kemp over his position on abortion as well as his refusal to expand Medicaid and voting rights.

Early on in the night, Kemp was questioned about remarks he made – taped without his knowledge – at a tailgate with University of Georgia College Republicans in which he expressed some openness to a push to ban contraceptive drugs like “Plan B.”

Asked if he would pursue such legislation if reelected, Kemp said, “No, I would not” and that “it’s not my desire to” push further abortion restrictions, before pivoting to an attack on Biden, national Democrats and more talk about his economic record.

Pressed on the remarks, Kemp suggested he was just humoring a group of people he didn’t know.

On the tape, Kemp, though he didn’t seem enthusiastic, said, “You could take up pretty much everything, but you’ve got to be in legislative session to do that.”

When asked if it was something he could do, Kemp said, “It just depends on where the legislators are,” and that he’d “have to check and see because there are a lot of legalities.”

Georgia in 2019 passed and Kemp signed a so-called “heartbeat” bill, which bans abortions at around six weeks, and went into effect soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade. Before the ruling, abortion was legal in the state until 20 weeks into pregnancy.

Abrams has promised to work to “reverse” the law, though she would face significant headwinds in the GOP-controlled state legislature, and called the state law “cruel.”

One of the first questions posed to Abrams centered on her speech effectively – but not with the precise language – conceding the 2018 election to Kemp.

In those remarks, Abrams made a symbolic point in arguing that she was not conceding the contest, because Kemp, as the state’s top elections official, and his allies had unfairly worked to suppress the vote. Instead, Abrams said then, she would only “acknowledge” him as the winner.

Some Republicans have tried to make hay over the speech, in a measure of whataboutism usually attached to Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 results. Abrams, apart from a court challenge, never tried to overturn the outcome of her race.

Still, she was asked on Monday night whether she would accept the results of the coming election – and said yes – before again accusing Kemp of, through the state’s new restrictive voting law, SB 202, seeking to make it more difficult for people to cast ballots.

“Brian Kemp was the secretary of state,” Abrams said, recalling her opponent’s old job. “He has assiduously denied access to the right to vote.”

Kemp countered by pointing to high turnout numbers over the past few elections and, as he’s said before, insisted the law made it “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

When the candidates were given the chance to question one another, Kemp asked Abrams to name all the sheriffs who had endorsed her campaign.

The answer, of course, was that most law enforcement groups in the state are behind the Republican – a point he returned to throughout the debate.

“Mr. Kemp, what you are trying to do is continue the lie that you’ve told so many times I think you believe it’s true. I support law enforcement and did so for 11 years (in state government),” Abrams said. “I worked closely with the sheriff’s association.”

Abrams also accused Kemp of cynically trying to weaponize criminal justice and public safety issues by pitting her against police. The reality, she said, was less cut-and-dry.

“Like most Georgians, I lead a complicated life where we need access to help but we also need to know we are safe from racial violence,” she said, before turning to Kemp. “While you might not have had that experience, too many people I know, have.”

Kemp, though, kept the message simple. “I support safety and justice,” he said, often pointing to his anti-gang initiatives – especially when he was pressed on the effect of his loosening gun laws on crime.

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US

Mark Finchem: Arizona GOP secretary of state nominee stands by election conspiracy theories in debate

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CNN
 — 

Arizona Republican secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem doubled down on the conspiracy theories that he has espoused about the 2020 presidential election in a debate against Democrat Adrian Fontes Thursday night, asserting that the votes in several key Arizona counties should have been “set aside” even though there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 contest.

“There are certain counties that should have been set aside as irredeemably compromised – Maricopa County was one of them. Yuma County was one of them,” the Republican state lawmaker said, echoing claims he made in a February resolution that called for decertifying the 2020 election results in three Arizona counties – even though legal experts say there is no legal mechanism to do so. “We have so many votes outside of the law that it begs the question, what do we do with an election where we have votes that are in the stream, which should not be counted?”

Finchem, a Republican state representative in Arizona, was endorsed by Donald Trump in September of 2021 after becoming one of the most vocal supporters of the former President’s lies about the 2020 presidential election. Trump is supporting a broad array of election deniers vying for office in November as he continues his unrelenting campaign to undermine and subvert the 2020 results.

Finchem is one of at least 11 Republican nominees running for state elections chief who have questioned, rejected or tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as CNN’s Daniel Dale chronicled last month – a trend that has alarmed election experts and increasingly drawn the notice of the public.

His assertions Thursday evening – which he made when a moderator asked him whether he would have certified the 2020 presidential results – drew a sharp rebuke from Fontes, the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, who said Finchem had just outlined why it would be so dangerous for him to be charged with managing and overseeing Arizona’s election systems.

“Our democracy really rests on the decisions (of) thousands of people – Republicans and Democrats alike – who did the work of elections. When we have conspiracy theories and lies like the ones Mr. Finchem has just shared, based in no real evidence, what we end up doing is eroding the faith that we have in each other as citizens,” said Fontes, who previously served as the recorder of Maricopa County. “The kind of divisiveness, not based in fact, not based on any evidence, that we’ve seen trumpeted by Mr. Finchem is dangerous for America.”

Fontes was elected recorder of Maricopa County in 2016 but was defeated in his reelection bid in 2020 after facing criticism for some of the changes he made to the county’s voting systems. Finchem repeatedly criticized his performance in the recorder’s office Thursday night.

In a Quinnipiac University poll released last month, 67% of Americans said they believed the nation’s democracy is “in danger of collapse,” a 9-point increase from January.

As Trump considers another run for the White House, Finchem’s close alliance with the former President has drawn close scrutiny because he would be charged with managing and certifying the election results of the 2024 presidential election in a pivotal swing state that President Joe Biden won by less than 11,000 votes.

The office he is seeking is also critically important in another respect because in Arizona, the secretary of state is second in line to the governorship.

Finchem co-sponsored legislation with fellow Republican lawmakers in Arizona that would allow lawmakers to reject election results and require election workers to hand-count ballots instead of using electronic equipment to tabulate results. He has also asserted without evidence that early voting leads to election fraud and has questioned whether it is constitutional.

During the 30-minute debate, which was sponsored by the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission and aired on Arizona’s PBS channel, Fontes, a former Marine, repeatedly tried to get Finchem to answer for some of the ideas that he has proposed as a legislator like curtailing the ability to vote by mail.

Finchem resisted, arguing that the secretary of state does not set policy: “The secretary of state doesn’t eliminate people’s ability to vote. That’s up to the legislature,” he said.

When a moderator interjected and pressed Finchem to answer whether he wanted to eliminate mail-in voting, Finchem replied: “What I want doesn’t matter.”

He later allowed that he doesn’t “care for mail-in-voting. That’s why I go to the polls.” The Republican lawmaker said he supports “absentee vote” programs, but not programs where ballots are sent to voters who have not requested them.

When one of the moderators asked Finchem whether the August primary election was fair, Finchem responded that he had “no idea.” When the moderator followed up by asking Finchem what had changed between the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 Arizona primary, Finchem replied: “The candidates.”

When asked what role the federal government has in Arizona’s elections, Finchem said he believes the federal government “needs to butt out,” adding that it should be the legislature “who names the time, place and manner of an election, not the federal government.”

Fontes tried to draw out Finchem on some of his controversial associations – including that he is a self-proclaimed member of the far-right extremist group known as the Oath Keepers – but the Republican lawmaker did not engage.

CNN’s KFile team has uncovered a series of posts from Finchem where he shared anti-government conspiracy theories, including a Pinterest account with a “Treason Watch List” (which included photos of Democratic politicians) and pins of photos of Barack Obama beside imagery of a man in Nazi attire making a Nazi salute.

Fontes also pressed Finchem to explain what he was doing in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021.

Finchem attended the January 6 rally that preceded the storming of the US Capitol – though he has said he did not participate in the riot. Around that time, the Arizona Republic reported that he posted a photo online of rioters on the steps of the Capitol and said the events were “what happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud.”

Fontes accused him of engaging in “a violent insurrection” that attempted to “overturn the very constitution that holds this nation together.”

Finchem rejected that characterization. “Mr. Fontes has just engaged in total fiction, the creation of something that did not exist,” he said. “I was interviewed by the (Department of Justice) and the (January 6) commission as a witness. … For him to assert I was part of a criminal uprising is absurd and frankly, it is a lie.”

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Kansas recount confirms results in favor of abortion rights

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OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A decisive statewide vote in favor of abortion rights in traditionally conservative Kansas was confirmed with a partial hand recount, with fewer than 100 votes changing after the last county reported results Sunday.

Nine of the state’s 105 counties recounted their votes at the request of Melissa Leavitt, who has pushed for tighter election laws. A longtime anti-abortion activist, Mark Gietzen, is covering most of the costs. Gietzen acknowledged in an interview that it was unlikely to change the outcome.

A no vote in the referendum signaled a desire to keep existing abortion protections and a yes vote was for allowing the Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban abortion. After the recounts, “no” votes lost 87 votes and “yes” gained 6 votes.

Eight of the counties reported their results by the state’s Saturday deadline, but Sedgwick County delayed releasing its final count until Sunday because spokeswoman Nicole Gibbs said some of the ballots weren’t separated into the correct precincts during the initial recount and had to be resorted Saturday. She said the number of votes cast overall didn’t change.

A larger than expected turnout of voters on Aug. 2 rejected a ballot measure that would have removed protections for abortion rights from the Kansas Constitution and given to the Legislature the right to further restrict or ban abortion. It failed by 18 percentage points, or 165,000 votes statewide.

The vote drew broad attention because it was the first state referendum on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

Gietzen, of Wichita, and Leavitt, of Colby, in far northwestern Kansas, have both suggested there might have been problems without pointing to many examples.

Recounts increasingly are tools to encourage supporters of a candidate or cause to believe an election was stolen rather than lost. A wave of candidates who have echoed former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was rigged have called for recounts after losing their own Republican primaries.

Kansas law requires a recount if those who ask for it prove they can cover the counties’ costs. The counties pay only if the outcome changes.

Leavitt and Gietzen provided credit cards to pay for the nearly $120,000 cost, according to the secretary of state’s office. Leavitt has an online fundraising page. Gietzen also said he is getting donations from a network built over three decades in the anti-abortion movement.

Gietzen said Sunday he doesn’t accept the results of the Sedgwick County recount because of the discrepancy about the way the ballots were sorted and because some of the recount happened Saturday without outside observers present to watch.

“We still don’t know what happened in Sedgwick County. I won’t pay for Sedgwick County,” he said.

He said he’s also concerned about the results statewide because of a report out of Cherokee county in southeast Kansas about the results of one county election being transposed between two candidates when the results were transferred on a thumb drive from one voting machine to a tabulating machine.

Gietzen said he plans to file a lawsuit Monday seeking a full statewide recall.

Gietzen said he won’t publicly report the names of private donors helping him finance the recount, even though a state ethics official says it’s required. Gietzen, who leads a small GOP group, the Kansas Republican Assembly, argues that he’s not campaigning for the anti-abortion measure but is instead promoting election integrity.

Votes were recounted in Douglas County, home to the University of Kansas’ main campus; Johnson County, in suburban Kansas City; Sedgwick County, home to Wichita, Shawnee County, home to Topeka; and Crawford, Harvey, Jefferson, Lyon and Thomas counties. Abortion opponents lost all of those counties except Thomas.

In Jefferson County, the margin remained the same, with the pro- and anti-amendment totals declining by four votes each. Linda Buttron, the county clerk, blamed the change on things like ovals not being darkened and “the challenges of hand counting ballots.”

In Lyon County, the anti-amendment group lost a vote. County Clerk and Election Officer Tammy Vopat said she wasn’t sure the reason. But she noted: “You have to factor in human error.”

Johnson County, the most populous in Kansas, faced the biggest recounting challenge because it had the most ballots. It pulled in workers from different departments to help. The sorting process took so long that the actual counting didn’t begin until Thursday afternoon.

“This is almost like doing an Ironman triathlon and having to add on another marathon at the end,” said Fred Sherman, the county’s Election Commissioner. “So it is quite a gargantuan process.”

___

Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas. Josh Funk contributed to this report from Omaha, Nebraska.

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Judge says he’ll block Gov. Ron DeSantis’ redistricting plan

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A state judge has ruled that a congressional map approved by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and drawn by his staff is unconstitutional because it breaks up a district where Black voters can choose their representatives

11 May 2022, 20:11

3 min read

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A congressional map approved by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and drawn by his staff is unconstitutional because it breaks up a district where Black voters can choose their representatives, a state judge said Wednesday.

Leon County Circuit Judge Layne Smith said he would issue a formal order Thursday or Friday to keep the maps from taking effect in November’s election. He made it clear he would rule in favor of voting rights groups challenging the maps.

Smith said the order will likely replace the DeSantis map with one of two that the Legislature included in a bill and sent to DeSantis in March. The governor vetoed the bill and later called the Legislature back into special session. The Republican-dominated House and Senate chose not to draw a new map, and instead passed the DeSantis map.

The challenge focuses on a north Florida district now held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson. The district runs from Jacksonville west more than 200 miles (322 kilometers) to Gadsden County and nearly half of its population is Black.

“The judge recognizes that this map is unlawful and diminishes African Americans’ ability to elect representatives of their choice,” Lawson said in a statement emailed to news outlets. “DeSantis is wrong for enacting this Republican-leaning map that is in clear violation of the U.S. and state constitutions.”

DeSantis’ proposal prompted a protest by Black House members as the chamber was preparing to vote on the maps.

Smith said he will issue his order as soon as he can so the state can immediately appeal it. It may be the conservative state Supreme Court that ultimately resolves the dispute.

DeSantis’ office confirmed it will appeal.

“As Judge Smith implied, these complex constitutional matters of law were always going to be decided at the appellate level,” DeSantis spokeswoman Taryn Fenske said in an email. “We will undoubtedly be appealing his ruling and are confident the constitutional map enacted by the Florida legislature and signed into law passes legal muster.”

Smith said that while the DeSantis map is more compact, the issue of allowing Black voters to choose their representatives is more important.

“The district that has since been enacted and signed into law by the governor does disperse 367,000 African American votes between four different districts,” Smith said in a video call with both sides. “The African American population is nowhere near a plurality or a majority.”

Equal Ground, one of several voting rights groups that challenged the maps, praised Smith’s decision.

“No Floridian – including Governor DeSantis – is above the law,” Equal Ground founder Jasmine Burney-Clark said in a statement emailed to news outlets. “This is one step forward in the fight to protect Black voters, and we will keep doing everything in our power to ensure our voices are heard.”

The governor’s office drew up a map it described as neutral on race and party affiliation, and which it said abided by both the state and federal constitutions.

Smith said his ruling will be based on the state constitution, not the U.S. Constitution.

Qualifying for federal office will run from June 13-17.

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This story has been edited to correct a word in the judge’s quote to “nowhere,” not “no way.”

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Schumer: Senate to vote on filibuster change on voting bill

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Days before the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the Senate will vote soon on easing filibuster rules in an effort to advance stalled voting legislation that Democrats say is needed to protect America’s democracy.

In a letter Monday to colleagues, Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Senate “must evolve” and will “debate and consider” the rule changes by Jan. 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as the Democrats seek to overcome Republican opposition to their elections law package.

“Let me be clear: January 6th was a symptom of a broader illness — an effort to delegitimize our election process,” Schumer wrote, “and the Senate must advance systemic democracy reforms to repair our republic or else the events of that day will not be an aberration — they will be the new norm.”

The election and voting rights package has been stalled in the evenly split 50-50 Senate, blocked by a Republican-led filibuster with Democrats unable to mount the 60 votes needed to advance it toward passage.

So far Democrats have been unable to agree among themselves over potential changes to the Senate rules to reduce the 60-vote hurdle, despite months of private negotiations.

Two holdout Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have tried to warn their party off changes to the Senate rules, arguing that if and when Republicans take majority control of the chamber they can then use the lower voting threshold to advance bills Democrats strongly oppose.

President Joe Biden has waded only cautiously into the debate — a former longtime senator who largely stands by existing rules but is also under enormous political pressure to break the logjam on the voting legislation.

Voting rights advocates warn that Republican-led states are passing restrictive legislation and trying to install election officials loyal to the former President, Donald Trump, in ways that could subvert future elections.

Trump urged his followers last Jan. 6 to “fight like hell” for his presidency, and a mob stormed the Capitol trying to stop Congress from certifying the state election tallies for Biden. It was the worst domestic attack on a seat of government in U.S. history.

How the Senate filibuster rules would be changed remains under discussion.

It seems certain that a full-scale end of the filibuster is out of reach for Democrats. Changing the rules would need all 50 votes, and Manchin and Sinema have made it clear they are unwilling to go that far.

Senators are wary of a sweeping overhaul after seeing the fallout that came from Democrats ending the filibuster for some judicial and executive branch nominees. Once Republicans took power, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the GOP leader, did away with the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations — ushering three Trump-picked conservative justices to the high court.

But despite their reluctance on major filibuster changes, Manchin and Sinema both support the election legislation. In fact, Manchin helped craft the latest package in an unsuccessful effort to win Republican support. Now the two Democrats’ colleagues are working on ways to change the filibuster so at least this legislation could pass.

Private talks with senators have been underway for weeks and continued during the holiday break.

Ideas include forcing senators to hold the floor, old-fashioned style, rather than simply raise their filibuster objections — a scene that would have echoes of the 1950s and 1960s when Southern segregationists filibustered civil rights legislation.

Other ideas are also being considered, and some Democrats have noted that Sinema has mentioned she is open to hearing the arguments as part of a full debate.

Republicans are so worried Democrats will end the filibuster that McConnell has taken other actions to try to keep Manchin and Sinema close so they don’t join the rest of their party in making any drastic changes.

One Republican, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, argued on Monday that ending the filibuster would turn the Senate into a “Lord of the Flies”-style institution where majority rules, no matter what.

“It is absurd and dangerous to the institution itself,” said Lee in a statement. He said Schumer and his “disastrous plan” must be stopped.

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