Mediaboss Marketing

The reforms included giving voters in every state a chance to fix an error like a missing signature on a mail-in ballot and ensuring that counting ballots isnt subject to delays. If election officials can begin processing ballots early, this year has taught us, they have time to get in touch with voters to address mistakes on ballots and also complete the count on or close to Election Day.

These are small steps, technocratic rather than visionary, but ones that can help increase participation and trust. Congress could set national standards and fund states to implement them. Its time for uniform rules, said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, Austin. Weve learned a lot about how ballots should be distributed and validated.

Yet in recent litigation about voting by mail, Republican lawsuits have resurrected a theory that could prevent state courts and election officials from enacting changes that protect voters from disenfranchisement. The idea is that the rules for an election must come exclusively from the legislature. It derives from the Supreme Court case that effectively decided the presidential election in 2000 Bush v. Gore. But it has lain dormant since then, because it was never adopted by a majority on the Supreme Court.

Now that could change. During the summer and fall, in light of the pandemic, the state election board in North Carolina and the State Supreme Court in Pennsylvania extended the deadlines for returning absentee ballots; if they were postmarked by Nov. 3, they could be received through the mail days later and still be counted.

The Constitution gives legislatures the main role of setting rules for elections. (Each state, Article II says, shall appoint its representative to the Electoral College in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.) But as in every other area of law, state officials outside the legislature have traditionally figured out how to apply rules for administering elections, and state courts are sometimes asked to decide a challenge to a particular practice in consideration of their state constitutions, almost all of which explicitly protect voting. (Many broadly provide for free or free and equal or free and open elections.)

And yet, in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court interfered with the usual lines of authority over state elections. The justices stepped in to end a recount of the Florida vote ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. Two of the justices signed onto a concurrence, written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, arguing that the Florida recount had to end, despite the Florida Supreme Courts order, because Article II meant that only the legislature could provide a means to contest the results of the election. But in 2015, a majority of the Supreme Court went in the opposite direction, holding that the meaning of Legislature in Article II encompasses a states general lawmaking power. That ruling allowed Arizona to create a nonpartisan redistricting commission through a ballot initiative, rather than a law passed by the legislature.

And yet in the weeks before this election, Rehnquists narrow interpretation of Article II gained support from four conservative justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas when Republicans challenged the deadline extensions for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and also in Wisconsin. Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not take part in these cases.

So far, these legal developments are a skirmish. At press time, the deadline extensions appeared to have little effect, because the number of mail-in ballots that arrived after Nov. 3 seemed small. But the cases laid the groundwork for future battles over election rules, large and small. This is now at the top of my list, Hasen said. The federal courts are threatening to become the greatest impediment to election reform.

Outside the courts, the usual challenge to improving how elections are run is sustaining our attention. Now we also have to bridge the partisan divide that turned the basic task of counting ballots into a lengthy, unnecessary drama. One lesson of Election Day was that record turnout doesnt just lift Democrats; the enormous wave of voters wound up buoying Republican candidates too, including Trump. But his relentless assaults on the integrity of the election now risk cementing the idea that for Republicans, attacking democracy itself, along with disenfranchising voters who dont support them, is the path forward. Instead of listening to Trump, look at and learn from the workers whose determined efforts made the election, despite everything, a success.

See the original post:
Democracy Worked This Year. But It Is Under Threat. - The New York Times

The question Americans faced in this election was clear. What were they prepared to do to protect their democracy?

Americans saw the hail Trump Nazi salutes shortly after his election in 2016. They have endured the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists that have killed police, massacred Jews in a synagogue, plowed a car into a crowd in Charlottesville, killing a young woman, slaughtered Latinos in El Paso, sent bombs to those whom the president blasted as his enemies, and murdered African Americans in Louisville.

Americans witnessed Trumps nonchalant attitude as domestic terrorists plotted to kidnap and put on trial a governor who dared to stand up to him. They were barraged with his brags and taunts about how he had packed the US supreme court to intervene if he wasnt declared the winner on 3 November. They heard him repeatedly intimate threaten, even that if the votes didnt go his way, there just might not be a peaceful transition of power. They have also seen his absolute inability to denounce the white supremacists whom he summoned to stand back and stand by on election day.

But Americans had to fight more than just Trump. The Republican National Committee, recruited a 50,000-member army of poll watchers who are little more than a goon squad used to intimidate voters in 15 states, particularly in minority precincts.

Then there were the Republican governors and secretaries of state, who tried to weaponize a global pandemic and make it another barrier to the ballot box. By election day, Covid-19 has killed more than 230,000 and infected at least 9 million Americans. But instead of working overtime to protect their citizens health and right to vote, like the Jim Crow politicians of days of yore, they were determined to make people choose between casting their ballot or avoiding death. The CDC noted that with indoor transmission, people farther than six feet apart can become infected by tiny droplets and particles that float in the air for minutes and hours, and that they play a role in the pandemic.

In Mississippi, those basic public health warnings were shredded by a policy that made masks optional at polling stations and also gave poll workers the latitude to ask voters to remove their protective face coverings to verify identity. South Carolina, Alabama and Texas went to court multiple times to ensure that a viable solution to voting during a pandemic absentee ballots would become less and less viable. They fought numerous legal battles to require absentee ballots to be notarized, or have witness signatures, or be used exclusively by those over 65-year-old. Texas was clear. Voters under 65 must have a valid excuse to receive an absentee ballot. Fear of contracting Covid-19, however, was not one.

Trump added to the difficulties by deliberately kneecapping the US Postal Service. He bragged about withholding funds from the agency so that it would be unable to handle the exponential flood of mail-in ballots. He appointed Louis DeJoy as the postmaster general, who then ordered the dismantling of sorting machines, banned most overtime, commanded that trucks leave on time even if the mail was not on board. Then the president and the Republicans, after wreaking havoc, went to court to force states to invalidate ballots that the post office could not, would not deliver by election day.

The disdain for democracy dripping from Trump and the Republicans has done its damage. They had subverted and perverted many of the pillars of democracy the protections of democracy. A US Senate run by flag-lapel wearing saboteurs let bills rot that would have expanded accessibility to the ballot box, blocked foreign interference in our elections, and repaired the Voting Rights Act. That same Republican-led Senate stacked a federal court system whose rulings aided and abetted voter suppression and packed a US supreme court that planted a poison pill in the Pennsylvania decision that it would be more than willing to decide the merits of mail-in ballot deadlines after the election (apparently if the vote totals were close enough to tip it towards Trump in this electoral college-rich swing state).

While the forces arrayed against the United States looked formidable, they were not invincible. Instead, they ran into something that is even more powerful than a president, a senate, or the US supreme court. The American people themselves and their belief in and devotion to democracy.

Of course, the hints were there all along that this regime and its supporters were in trouble. In 2016, there was so much wrong with that election, including Russia, that Trumps victory had a huge, de-legitimizing asterisk beside it, starting with 2.9 million more votes for his opponent. Then there was the 2018 mid-term, which was a referendum on and repudiation of Trump when the House of Representatives flipped and the Democrats picked up more than 40 seats. What became obvious, as the Republican party shrank, as Never Trumpers gained an important toehold, and as he could only speak convincingly to his base supporters, what Trump brought to America simply was not acceptable or accepted. Then, what he did to America the lies, the corruption, the stoking of white supremacist violence, the damage to the nations international reputation, the debasement of its institutions, the stealing of Americans joy and celebrations, the contempt for their lives sealed his and his enablers fate.

Americans used, in the final words of Congressman John Lewis, the most powerful nonviolent change agent at their disposal, the vote, to fight for this nation and this incredible democracy. And fight they did. Americans maneuvered around, under, and over every barrier to get to the ballot box. With the help of an impressive array of legal and grassroots warriors, like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, the League of Women Voters, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, March for Our Lives, FairFight for Action, Black Voters Matter Fund, Voto Latino, the Native American Rights Fund, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the New Georgia Project, the NAACP, Democracy Docket, VoteRiders, and more, Americans fought for this democracy.

They stood in lines up to 11 hours.

They covered themselves in plastic to wait to vote and protect themselves against those who defined freedom as the right to hurl a deadly virus at innocent bystanders.

They volunteered and they donated, in the midst of an economic recession, with millions of people out of work, more than a billion dollars to fund candidates who did not have nor want access to unseemly dark money.

They used their age to motivate them in the war for democracy. A married couple in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, both over 100 years old, sang Swing Low, Sweet Chariot while waiting to ensure that their votes counted. Indeed, Black people 65 and older, clearly with memories of Jim Crow, voted in higher numbers during early voting than they had overall in 2016. And, Americans between 18-29, seeing a planet ravaged by climate change and their very future imperiled, came out in force to ensure that democracy and Earth had a fighting chance.

Americans refused to be stopped by all of the court shenanigans and bureaucratic rabbit punches. While Trump threatened the ability of the Post Office to deliver the ballots on time and the courts put an electoral timebomb on the due dates, the majority of Americans launched a pre-emptive strike and sent their ballots in even sooner, often weeks before the deadline. Others, leery of the disruption that Trump, DeJoy, and the courts had caused, bypassed the Post Office altogether and took their ballots to local boards of elections or put them in drop boxes. Tens of millions of ballots.

Americans were not going to be stopped. Those who did not or could not vote in 2016, cast their first ballot ever in 2020 and accounted for 20% of the record-breaking early voter turnout for this election.

In the end, every maneuver by Trump and his enablers was met with a more powerful and effective counter-maneuver. It had to be. One voter out of the record-breaking millions who braved Covid-19, the assault on mail-in ballots, the threats of violence at the polls, and the reality of what four more years of an anti-American regime would mean, explained simply: This election is for saving the US.

Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy. She is a contributor to the Guardian

See original here:
Millions of Americans have risen up and said: democracy won't die on our watch - The Guardian

I HAVE ESCAPED arrest twice today, said Zitto Kabwe, a Tanzanian opposition leader, on November 2nd. But, he added, I cannot avoid the police for ever. The next day they picked him up, like so many of his colleagues who contested Tanzanias election on October 28th. Some have been beaten. Tundu Lissu, a leading rival to President John Magufuli, was grabbed by police in front of European embassies, where he was seeking refuge having been turned away by the American embassy. Mr Lissu was interrogated, but not chargedperhaps because German diplomats were waiting outside the police station.

Democracy in Tanzania is brokenand is in trouble elsewhere in Africa, too. Guineas election on October 18th resulted in a dubious victory (and a third term) for President Alpha Cond. At least 30 people were killed protesting against the result, says the opposition. Ivory Coast is in crisis after President Alassane Ouattara won a third term on October 31st, amid a boycott by the opposition. Both leaders claimed not to be bound by term limits, illustrating a dismal recent trend (see map).

Tanzania may be the most troubling case. Not long ago it seemed on its way to becoming a relatively prosperous democracy. For more than a decade from 2000 its economy was among Africas best performers. But Mr Magufuli, who took over in 2015, has set things back. He has produced fishy economic numbers that seem to hide real problems, while cracking down on any opposition. In this election he won 84% of the vote, up from 58% in 2015, according to the official tally. His party won enough seats to abolish term limits, if it so chooses. The opposition is claiming fraud. This was not an election, says Mr Lissu. It was just a gang of people who have decided to misuse state machinery to cling to power.

Mr Lissu has called for protests. Mr Kabwe hopes other countries will impose sanctions on Tanzania. Britain, for one, said it was deeply troubled by the result. But countries in the region have been more supine. An observer mission from the East African Community, a regional bloc, said the vote had been conducted in a credible manner. The observer mission from the African Union (AU) has yet to express an opinion. President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, who currently chairs the AU, congratulated Mr Magufuli on his win in a peaceful election.

Ivory Coast seemed to be moving in the right direction, too. Mr Ouattara took over in 2011, after a disputed election and much bloodshed. The economy grew faster than most in Africa. But democracy has suffered. In 2016 Mr Ouattara wangled changes to the constitution which, he claims, reset the clock on his time in office, so that its two-term limit would not apply to him until after a fourth term. In August he reneged on his decision to retire and said he would run again. The constitutional council waved through his candidacy and blocked 40 of 44 other contenders from running, including several big names. Since then there have been protests and ethnic violence. Dozens of Ivorians have been killed.

When the time came to vote, the opposition called for civil disobedience. Protesters smashed up polling stations and prevented voting in some areas. At least five people were killed in clashes. A significant chunk of the population did not vote. The electoral commission says that 21% of polling stations never opened. The AU and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), another regional bloc, nonetheless called the poll satisfactory. Officially Mr Ouattara took 94% of the vote.

The Ivorian opposition is not backing down. Rather, it is setting up a parallel government, led by an 86-year-old, Henri Konan Bdi, who ran against Mr Ouattara in the election. Its aim is to organise a new election. Mr Ouattaras men call this sedition. Tensions are rising. On November 3rd riot police surrounded Mr Bdis house and used tear gas to disperse journalists before carting away some 20 people, including a former minister of health. The houses of other opposition figures were also surrounded. As The Economist went to press Mr Bdi had not been arrested.

With each side taking such extreme positions, dialogue looks remote, says William Assanvo of the Institute for Security Studies in Abidjan, Ivory Coasts commercial capital. He thinks the crisis will worsen, as leaders are arrested and clashes break out between rival factions and ethnic groups. Parts of the armed forces do not view Mr Ouattara as legitimate, he adds. Guillaume Soro, a former prime minister and rebel leader exiled in France, has called on the army to act against Mr Ouattara. Over 3,000 people have fled the country.

International mediation is desperately needed, says Arsne Brice Bado of the Jesuit University in Abidjan. But regional bodies tend to favour incumbents. In 2015 the members of ECOWAS discussed a proposal to restrict presidents in the region to two terms, but it was ultimately dropped. The limp response of ECOWAS to the situations in Guinea and Ivory Coast has made opposition parties even angrier.

Guinea, Tanzania and Ivory Coast are setting a bad example just as an election season in Africa heats up. Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Ghana, Niger and Uganda all go to the polls in the next few months. Their leaders might do well to look instead to the Seychelles, where last month the opposition won a presidential election for the first time since independence in 1976. The loser graciously attended his opponents victory speech.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Setting a bad example"

Read the original here:
Democracy is faltering in Tanzania and Ivory Coast - The Economist

America is a divided nation and the presidential campaign only made the condition worse.

Partisanship has spiked. Armed militias showed up at campaign rallies. Gun sales soared.

In New York, Los Angeles, Washington and other cities, shop owners nailed plywood over their windows. In a Gallup poll last month, a record 64% of people said they were afraid of what will happen if their favored candidate doesnt win.

You just dont want to talk to people anymore, Mary Jo Dalrymple, a 56-year-old retiree in Greensburg, Pa., told me. Youre afraid it will be unpleasant.

This isnt normal not in decades, perhaps not since the Civil War.

Even with nearly a quarter-million deaths, and 100,000 infections a day, our most durable problem isnt the COVID-19 pandemic; a vaccine can solve that. Nor is it the recession; the economy likely will recover once the virus is quelled.

Our biggest challenge is the political polarization that has made the country increasingly ungovernable, no matter who wins.

Polarization has been part of our politics for decades. But under President Trump, it has turned into something worse: delegitimization the practice of condemning your opponents as un-American, undemocratic and unworthy of respect.

Trump entered politics by questioning President Obamas legitimacy, suggesting falsely that he might not be a U.S. citizen. This year, he charged again without evidence that Democratic nominee Joe Biden was mentally and physically infirm and the puppet of radical socialists who hate our country.

On the other side, plenty of Democrats believe Trump is a would-be authoritarian who would gladly destroy the Constitution.

At their first debate, Biden called Trump one of the most racist presidents weve ever had, overlooking the fact that 12 of the first 18 presidents owned slaves.

Many Democrats and Republicans see the other side not merely as political rivals, but as an existential threat. That creates a dilemma: If you think your opponents dont share a basic commitment to constitutional government, why would you work with them?

That problem wont disappear once the election is over. Unless one party captures both houses of Congress and the White House, it will stand in the way of the next president accomplishing anything.

In my view, heres what needs to happen.

Step One is making sure the election is seen as legitimate. Partisans on both sides think their opponents are trying to cheat a sentiment stoked, of course, by Trumps constant declarations that the voting process is rigged and his refusal to promise a peaceful transition of power if he loses.

A president who wins by underhanded means will rightly appear illegitimate. He may claim a mandate, but he wont have one.

The runner-up needs to acknowledge reality and give a concession speech the more graceful, the better. Thats how the losing side acknowledges that the winner is legitimate. If the losing candidate refuses to do it, other leaders in his party should do it for him.

Step Two is working to bring the country together, as earlier presidents did after divisive campaigns.

That means a serious attempt to revive bipartisan deal making in Congress, starting where the two parties share similar goals another economic relief bill to help the country through the pandemic, for example.

It also requires granting your opponents the presumption of legitimacy, no matter how much you dislike their policies.

Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate, has already said he would try to work with Republicans in Congress if hes elected. Progressive Democrats have sniffed that his nostalgia for a long-ago era of comity is naive.

But Biden knows how the modern Senate operates. He was vice president when Obama tried and failed to win GOP support for an economic stimulus bill in 2009 and for an immigration reform package in 2013.

His talk of bipartisanship may have been a campaign gambit; swing voters like the idea of the two parties working together. It may even be aimed at splitting moderate Republicans from Trump loyalists. Even so, its worth a try.

Its now almost forgotten, but Trump was elected in 2016 in part because he promised, as a businessman, to work with both parties.

In his first year in office, he tried to cut deals with Democrats on immigration reform and infrastructure spending. As recently as last week, he was negotiating with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at arms length, to be sure over a possible stimulus bill.

Even if the results are modest, a bipartisan effort would be an encouraging departure from gridlock. A president who gets things done as opposed to merely insulting his critics could see his legitimacy and his popularity grow.

Its been done before: Ronald Reagan did it in the 1980s; Bill Clinton did it in the 1990s; George W. Bush did it in the early 2000s after a disputed election that was decided in the Supreme Court.

If the next president hopes to leave a substantive legacy, he should follow those presidents, work to stem the tide of polarization that has poisoned our politics, and make Americas government work again.

The rest is here:
2020 election put legitimacy of our democracy on the ballot - Los Angeles Times

As Randy Cortez put it, Democracy is at stake.

The 36-year-old voted at Los Angeles famous Dodger stadium on Tuesday just one voter in what will probably be a record turnout in Americas nervy, extraordinary, election.

An incredible 100m votes had already been cast early in a contest that has been upended by the coronavirus pandemic and a divisiveness the like of which nobody can remember.

It was clear that Cortez was among those hoping that Joe Biden would end the Trump presidency. We have a man in the office that creates more division than anyone else and allows bigotry and racism to continue in this country. I have hope that things will change.

Earlier in the day, as Monday turned into Tuesday at midnight in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Donald Trump appeared at his final rally of the 2020 campaign.

Thousands of supporters trudged through muddy fields and waited in endless lines to hear the president speak, on the eve of what could be his defeat or the start of another four years in power.

Trump delivered his speech in a critical swing state where the president is hoping for a repeat of 2016, when he unexpectedly beat Hillary Clinton.

In the darkness, as temperatures dipped to 40F (4C), Trumps supporters were upbeat and optimistic, but many also said they were expecting unrest in the wake of the election.

Theres going to be violence either way, whether Trump or Biden wins, said Angela Young, 43. As a gun owner from a small town in Michigan, she said, she was not worried about her personal safety but added the prospect of election-related violence in the United States was straight-up unacceptable.

But on Tuesday no major problems were reported at the polls, and fears of large-scale voter intimidation or harassment had not materialized by midday. Officials have warned that counting ballots could take days due to an avalanche of mail votes that take more time to process and could result in another round of court battles.

Television news channels edged into election night with caution, knowing that results could be delayed by massive early voting amid the pandemic in several critical swing states. The first results to be called by Associated Press were as surprising as paint drying: just after 7pm Biden was called as the winner of Vermont, a state that has voted solidly Democratic in presidential races since 1988, while Trump took Kentucky, which has swung Republican since 1996.

Similar low-surprise results flowed in at the 7.30pm hour in Virginia, going for Biden, and West Virginia, for Trump.

Election experts began to watch with close attention the results as they flowed in from Florida, a traditionally razor-close state that Trump must win, as he did in 2016, if he is to have a likely path to staying in the White house.

Early results, which came stamped with bold handle with care notices on the news channels, suggested that Biden might be doing well compared with Hillary Clinton four years ago around Tampa in the middle of the state, while Trump was looking stronger in Miami-Dade county to the south where many Cuban Floridians reside.

The relatively good results for Trump in Florida, were they to hold, could indicate that election night 2020 might turn into a long and nail-biting experience with no immediate resolution in sight.

Earlier in the day, millions across the country wore masks as they stood in socially distanced lines, filing into voting booths.

Passions are high, with states including Texas, Arizona and Nevada having already surpassed their total turnout from the 2016 election just through early voting.

Trump rounded off his election day with a visit to his campaign headquarters in Virginia before heading to an election night party in the White House with several hundred invitees, behind a newly installed non-scalable perimeter fence. Biden, meanwhile, started the day at church, where he visited the graves of his first wife and his son Beau, ahead of watching the results roll in from his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

One of the first important slices of intelligence in the early stages of election night was gleaned from exit polls. In early results from CNNs exit polls, weighted across both early and election day voters, top of the list of the electorates concerns was the economy, at 34%.

The coronavirus, which Biden has made the centerpiece of his claim for the highest office, came in a surprising third place (on 18%) after racial inequality (21%). Trumps attempt to rile up voters with his law-and-order pitch amid the Black Lives Matter protests appears not to have gained much traction, also coming in at 18%, though Bidens core issue of healthcare came even lower at 11%.

Perhaps most surprising of all, 48% of those surveyed by CNNs exit poll said they thought Trumps efforts to contain the pandemic were going well, against 51% badly. In point of fact, coronavirus is surging through large swaths of the nation with new cases running at about 100,000 a day.

National opinion polls have consistently shown a clear lead for Biden, the Democratic former vice-president who has framed the election as a battle for the soul of the nation. Trump is in danger of becoming the first incumbent US president to lose re-election since fellow Republican George HW Bush was bested by Bill Clinton in 1992. However, the vagaries of the US electoral college and legal attempts by Republicans to curtail ballots cast in crucial swing states add uncertainty to the outcome of an election that Trump has repeatedly, and baselessly, claimed is rife with voter fraud.

In battleground states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Biden holds the upper hand in polling, mailed-in ballots are not counted until election day, while early counting is allowed in North Carolina and Florida, other key swing states.

But as election night got under way, the mood music remained calm. The leader of a group of 42,000 legal volunteers deployed for the election said that so far, there had not been major, systemic problems or attempts to obstruct voting.

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said: It appears at this stage that we are on a path to a relatively successful election day.

The committee operates the Election Protection hotline, which provides information and assistance to Americans who encounter problems while voting.

The problems we have seen have for the most part been isolated and sporadic, Clarke said.

Anxiety remained high among voters that trouble could yet lie ahead. Theres a mass divide that just seems to keep growing and growing and nobody is going to be happy with their results if their side doesnt win, said Christopher Henson , a voter in Ravenna, Ohio. Theres a lot of civil unrest and its probably going to get worse, regardless of how the election turns out.

Marcos Antonio Valero, who voted for Trump in Miami, said he was voting in person because he did not trust mail-in ballots but wasnt sure of the outcome. Its a secret, a mystery, he said. No one knows how its going to end until we all know.

In a sign of Americas wobbling democratic structures, Trump has demurred when asked to confirm he will hand power over peacefully should he lose. This stance has led to the president being compared to a two-bit dictator by his predecessor, Barack Obama, as he hit the campaign trail in recent days to stump for his former vice-president.

In his last-gasp sweep of the electoral map ahead of the Tuesday poll, Trump has held rallies in Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio, with attendees packed closely together despite the risk of coronavirus infections. Besieged by criticism of his handling of the pandemic and poor polling, Trump used his final rallies to claim that Biden would turn the US into a prison state locking you down, while letting the far-left rioters roam free to loot and burn. In a wide-reaching airing of grievances, Trump also took aim at Lady Gaga, the singer who has campaigned for Biden, and suggested that he would fire Dr Anthony Fauci, the countrys top infectious disease expert.

Fauci provoked the presidents ire after warning that the US faces whole world of hurt over winter amid rampant rates of Covid infections in parts of the country. The US has already suffered more than 230,000 deaths from the pandemic, the worst toll in the world, and Fauci has warned the country may start experiencing 100,000 new cases a day as people gather together indoors in the colder months.

Bidens campaign has centered on Trumps handling of the pandemic, where the president has repeatedly downplayed or dismissed the severity of the virus and declined to fully endorse the wearing of masks, a key method of stemming its spread. Elect me and Im going to hire Dr Fauci. And were going to fire Donald Trump, Biden said in one of his final campaign stops in Cleveland. Biden said it was time for Trump to pack his bags, adding that were done with the tweets, the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility.

Whether this momentous election dislodges Trump will hinge on places like Philadelphia, a heavily Democratic city in a state, Pennsylvania, that will be key in deciding the fate of the candidates. The sheer number of early votes in Philadelphia could mean a full tally may not be completed there until Friday.

A line of voters wrapped around a city block at the Kimmel Center in Center City, Philadelphia, shortly after the polls opened at 7am on Tuesday. With election workers giving out hand sanitizer, the wait in the cold didnt seem to bother at least some people in line, who said they intentionally chose to cast their ballots in person to ensure it was counted.

Its a little invigorating. I know that sounds crazy to stand in a line in the freezing cold, said Lauren Killian, one voter. She added that she was concerned about how long it would take to count all of the ballots in Pennsylvania.

I am worried about how long its going to take to figure out how long the president is. Or even when something is figured out either way, is it going to be invalidated?

Additional reporting Lois Beckett

Go here to read the rest:
'Democracy is at stake': Americans cast their ballots in US election like no other - The Guardian