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By Dorany Pineda| Los Angeles Times

The political battle for universal health care within the White House was long, epic and personal.

"Each time I met a parent struggling to come up with the money to get treatment for a sick child, I thought back to the night Michelle and I had to take three-month-old Sasha to the emergency room for what turned out to be viral meningitis," former President Barack Obama recalled in an excerpt from "A Promised Land," the first volume of his memoirs of his time in the White House. The excerpt was published recently in the New Yorker.

"I remembered the terror and the helplessness we felt as the nurses whisked her away for a spinal tap, and the realization that we might never have caught the infection in time had the girls not had a regular pediatrician we felt comfortable calling in the middle of the night," he continued. "Most of all, I thought about my mom, who had died in 1995, of uterine cancer."

The chapter which offers an inside look into the passage of Obamacare at the end of the former president's first year in office comes at a crucial moment for his signature piece of legislation, as its future could be threatened by the confirmationof Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

"In the middle of a pandemic, this administration is trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court," Obama said on Twitter recently while presenting the excerpt. "Here's how Joe and I fought to expand healthcare, protect millions of Americans with preexisting conditions, and actually get it done."

The journey toward passage was messy and prone to second-guessing, particularly from Obama's closest allies: David Axelrod, his adviser, and Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff, who warned him of the political hazards: "[This] can blow up in our faces."

Emanuel warned Obama that the process of getting the bill passed would lead to unpleasant compromises and a potentially huge backlash. "Making sausage isn't pretty, Mr. President," he told his boss. "And you're asking for a really big piece of sausage."

In another passage, Obama writes about the rise of the Tea Party movement, which became harder for him to ignore, especially when it resurrected an old rumor from Obama's campaign days: that he was Muslim and born in Kenya, which would have barred him from serving as president. This lie would eventually be used by Donald Trump to consolidate the base that would help make him Obama's successor.

"At the White House, we made a point of not commenting on any of this and not just because [Axelrod] had reams of data telling us that white voters, including many who supported me, reacted poorly to lectures about race," Obama writes. "As a matter of principle, I didn't believe a President should ever publicly whine about criticism from voters it's what you signed up for in taking the job and I was quick to remind both reporters and friends that my white predecessors had all endured their share of vicious personal attacks and obstructionism."

Obama also writes about how his administration tackled the H1N1 flu outbreak just as they were dealing with two wars, a financial crisis and a push for healthcare reform.

"My instructions to the public-health team were simple: decisions would be made based on the best available science, and we were going to explain to the public each step of our response including detailing what we did and didn't know," he writes.

"A Promised Land" will be published Nov. 17, two weeks after the presidential election. The memoir will offer personal accounts of multiple landmark moments that occurred during the first term of Obama's presidency. The first of two planned volumes, it will end with the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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What Barack Obama's memoir reveals about his long battle for health care reform - Utica Observer Dispatch

BEDFORD, Texas Deep in the suburbs northeast of Fort Worth, Democrats trying to win the Texas House for the first time in years have been getting help from a surprising source.

Republicans.

For 16 years, until he left office in 2013, Todd A. Smith was a Republican representing these suburbs in the Texas House of Representatives. His district covered a fast-growing hub of middle-class and affluent communities next door to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

When it came time to decide whom he would support for his old seat, Mr. Smith said he had no hesitation he threw his endorsement to the Democrat in the race, Jeff Whitfield.

This is no longer my Republican Party, Mr. Smith said last week while sitting outside his house, which has a Republicans For Biden 2020 sign on the front lawn.

This is the Trump party, he said. If you give me a reasonable Republican and a crazy Democrat, then I will still vote for the Republican. But if you give me a lunatic Republican and a reasonable Democrat, then Im going to vote for the Democrat, and that applies in the presidential race, and it applies in the Whitfield race.

After a generation under unified Republican control, Texas is a battleground at every level of government this year. President Trump and Senator John Cornyn are fighting for their political lives, and five Republican-held congressional seats are in danger of flipping.

But some of the most consequential political battles in Texas are taking place across two dozen contested races for the Texas State House, which Republicans have controlled since 2003. To win a majority, Democrats must flip nine of the chambers 150 seats the same number of Republican-held districts Beto ORourke carried during his 2018 Senate race, when he was the first Texas Democrat to make a competitive run for Senate or governor in a generation.

Mr. ORourke has organized nightly online phone banks that are making about three million phone calls a week to voters during the campaigns final stretch. His organization helped register about 200,000 Texas Democratic voters in an attempt to finish a political transformation of Texas that began with his Senate race.

I actually won more state House districts than Ted Cruz, Mr. ORourke said in an interview last week. Its just that the candidates in nine of those, the Democratic candidates, didnt end up winning.

Control of the Texas House comes with huge implications beyond the states borders. A Democratic state House majority in Texas would give the party one lever of power in the 2021 redistricting process, when the state is expected to receive as many as three new seats in Congress. It would also give them a voice in drawing Texas state legislative lines for the next decade.

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Officials from both parties said the difference between the current unified Republican control of the Texas state government and Democrats controlling the state House could be as many as five congressional seats when new maps are drawn.

Flipping the Texas House this year can be the key that unlocks a Democratic future in Texas, said John Bisognano, the executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. With fair maps, Democrats will be able to compete all over the state and build a deep bench of candidates who can run and win statewide.

Nowhere in the country has there been a surge of voting to match the one in Texas. Through two weeks of in-person early voting, more than 6.9 million Texans have voted a figure that accounts for more than three-quarters of the entire 2016 turnout.

The turnout is highest in the states biggest metropolitan areas, which are the core state House battlegrounds and are six of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the country. There are five competitive state House seats in Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, five more in other Dallas suburbs, and eight in greater Houston.

Ive always been political my whole life, said Gina Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin whose father is the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Now, suddenly, everybody is so political. The last election has had the result of engaging everyday people in our political process.

Texas Republicans have sought to tie Democrats running for the state House, who are campaigning on issues like health care and increasing school funding, to the most liberal proposals in their party. Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday launched a digital advertisement attacking Mr. ORourkes past statements on police funding, gun control, tax policy and the Green New Deal.

This week, the governor and other Republicans jumped on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.s pledge during the presidential debate on Thursday to transition away from the oil industry, a bedrock of the Texas economy, saying that such a move would cost the state hundreds of thousands of jobs and shrink revenues that pay for schools.

He is an albatross around the neck of down-ballot candidates in Texas, said Jared Woodfill, a Houston conservative activist and lawyer who is a former chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. Biden just lost Texas.

Democrats said they were not worried, calling the outcry over Mr. Bidens remarks an attempt to distract voters from more pressing issues, including the continued spread of the coronavirus in Texas.

Oct. 24, 2020, 10:30 p.m. ET

Suburban voters do not appear to be buying Republican arguments during the Trump era that Democrats will turn their communities socialist. Polling in 10 targeted Texas state House districts shows Mr. Biden gaining an average of 8.6 percentage points, while Democratic state House candidates have gained 6.5 points since March in surveys conducted by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which has invested more than $1 million in Texas over the last two years.

The suburban voters of 2020, said Steve Munisteri, a former Republican Party of Texas chairman who worked in Mr. Trumps White House, have far more in common with urbanites than they do with the more conservative voters who used to populate the outer edges of Texas metropolitan areas.

Because of urban growth, many of what are considered traditional suburbs in Texas metropolitan areas really are just extensions of the urban areas, Mr. Munisteri said.

Collin County, a suburban area 20 miles north of Dallas, has two competitive state House districts that Mr. ORourke carried in 2018. In six years, the county has added 200,000 people. It now has a population of more than 1 million people and has gone from a Democratic wasteland to one teeming with liberal volunteers.

In 2014, when John Shanks moved to Collin County, there were about 20 dedicated Democratic Party volunteers. Now Mr. Shanks, the executive director of the countys Democratic Party, has several hundred so many that he has trouble finding work for them all.

Weve had about four years of people getting used to the idea that their vote really can matter, Mr. Shanks said. Weve grown into realizing that you can make a difference. And as they realize that and wake up, things become more competitive.

Bedford sits in a part of the Dallas-Fort Worth region that has been deeply conservative for decades. Republicans have held the regions state House seat since 1985, and the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party was one of the most influential Tea Party groups during the Obama era.

The outgoing state representative, Jonathan Stickland, is a bearded Cruz-style firebrand who supported gun rights and wore his .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol at the Texas Capitol. In 2015, The Texas Tribune called him the chambers antagonist-in-chief.

Mr. Stickland apologized in 2016 after an online posting he made in 2008, before he ran for elected office, was unearthed by a political opponent. In the posting on a fantasy football site, he responded to a mans request for sex advice by writing: Rape is non existent in marriage, take what you want my friend!

Yet after years of sending conservatives to Austin, the district has changed. In just two years, the Republican advantage shrunk from 9,100 votes for Mr. Trump in 2016 to 1,167 when Senator Ted Cruz defeated Mr. ORourke in 2018.

When youre hearing people whove spent a lifetime voting Republican and they say, The party has left me, I dont know that weve ever heard that before, Mr. Whitfield, the Democratic state House candidate, said as he stood in a parking lot outside the Bedford Public Library, an early-voting site.

Steps away in the same parking lot, Mr. Whitfields Republican opponent, Jeff Cason, disputed any notion of a widespread Republican defection.

Im a man of faith, and I just believe the doors are opening for us, and if the Lord wants us in Austin, well be there, Mr. Cason said. Im not getting any sense of Republicans leaving our camp.

Julie McCarty, who was the president of the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party and is now the chief executive of the group it transformed into, the True Texas Project, attributed the Democratic gains in the region to Republicans not being conservative enough.

Republicans want to be left alone. We want smaller government. When we cant get that, we move where we can, she said. Therein lies the answer to what causes Tarrant to turn purple.

For Mr. Smith, the former Republican legislator, 2020 has been a year to split his ballot. In addition to the Biden sign and his support for Mr. Whitfield, he has a yard sign for Jane Nelson, a Republican state senator running for re-election. And he voted for Senator John Cornyn, the Trump ally locked in a tough re-election fight with M.J. Hegar, a Democrat and former Air Force helicopter pilot. Years ago, Mr. Smith threw Mr. Cornyn a fund-raiser at his house.

I have mixed feelings about it, he said of his vote for Mr. Cornyn. But I trust what I believe to be his honest convictions.

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Democrats Hope 2020 Is the Year They Flip the Texas House - The New York Times

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I need to apologize. I was wrong.

I drank the kool-aidthe President was dishing out so freely back in March about the coronavirus " being a little like the regular flu... how it's going to disappear, like a miracle...how everything was under control, no need to be concerned at all, because he was not." I believed him and even continued with my family's mid-March spring break trip to California -- and it was ground zero for the corona virus!

Then, unabashedly, I wrote about "surviving" our vacation to Disneyland even as cases in the U.S. increased despite the reality being that Disneyland was shutting down the week-end we flew home. To all the families and friends who have lost loved ones to the virus, I am truly sorry about that.

If I had only known on February 7 howPresident Trump had told writer Bob Woodward that he was "playing it down because you just breathe the air and thats how it's passed and so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flus," I would never have been so flippant or disrespectful of your loss.

I know, I know. There was a learning curve, but why is it I still feel like Alice, the little girl who falls through a rabbit hole, lands in Wonderland, and discovers a fantastical place where nothing is quite what it seems and everything seems to work backwards? Being forced to unravel the mysteries and understand this disease and all the problems it is causing should not be my job!

So much of what is going on in our world today leaves me as confused and mystified as Alice when she found herself at the Madhatters Tea Party. Now, since Lewis Carroll's great literary classic became a hit Disney movie, one might think Alice in Wonderland is just a playful children's story, but it is so much more.

In the 1860's, this book was a biting commentary on England's Victorian Age, a period in history when social norms and cultural rules were totally out of whack-- much like they are in our country today.

The Madhatter's Tea Party is probably one of the most remembered moments in the book; a perfect illustration of the madness. If you can, imagine the spinning tea cup ride at Disneyworld colliding with "high tea" at The Russian Tea Room in NYC, The Fairmont Empress in Victoria, The Claridge in London or The Shangri-La in Paris, and that would give you a really good idea of what happens to the rules of society when civil behavior and social politeness fall by the wayside.

Sadly, it seems we are witnessing more and more of such bad behavior on a regular basis as our leaders and society, in general, discard, abuse or use to their own advantage the social norms we have always accepted as part of a civilized society. At the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, nothing was what it seemed or as it should be, and that is what led the very smug Cheshire cat to proclaim himself and all the curious creatures at the tea party "to be mad."

Surprised when he included her in the mix, Alice challenged him and asked how he knew she was mad,too. The Cheshire cat simply replied she must be, because she is here! Well, slap my face! As parents, don't we tell our kids to be careful who they hang out with or where they go because you are known by the company you keep? Did we look the other way whenever they ignored our rules and kept going down the rabbit hole time and again?

Certainly not, but that seems to be what is happening today. America is our Wonderland, and, right now, it seems to me and, especially to some of my travel friends from around the world like tour operators, hotel managers, and guides, that everything about our country is bizarro.

It's Alice's story! Up is down and down is up.Like me, they are angry the doors to travel have been shut down simply because we have been so careless about the virus.They even make comments about us not being good global citizens.

Actually, it was at the suggestion of Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law, that I was inspired to read the allegoricalAlice in Wonderland for the first time. In Bob Woodward's Rage, Kushner was quoted as saying the best way to understand our President is to study the Cheshire Cat. Other than the "we are all mad" quote, the cat's most significant piece of advice in Alice's quest for truth was simply: "If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there."

Whereas, I am not really sure if that analogy was intended as a compliment from one of the President's favorite cheerleaders, but it does help me understand our President's consistently changing -- and sometimes chaotic -- management style.No one can deny we have certainly followed him down a rabbit hole and run around Wonderland looking foranswers to the strange and unconventional things happening around us.

There is no doubt our leaders have had a thankless and difficult task, but attending the funeral of a dear friend who died of COVID-19 last week was my wake up call. I am tired of covid. It is time to get real, folks; we must get together. Our country needs us to do so, and, quite selfishly, so many small businesses like mine need you to do so, too. We must figure out a way to stop this virus, the division and the heartbreak it has left us struggling with.

The sooner we get on the same page, the sooner we will be able to enjoy the wonder in our world again! I am so ready to go.Aren't you, too?

Dianne Newcomer is a travel agent at Monroe Travel Service. Due to the pandemic,our staff is working remotely, so, for help with your vacation plans, please call 318 323 3465 or contact us at info@monroetravel.com.

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COVID-19 must be defeated to get back to normalcy - Shreveport Times

Representatives of a tax-recall petition committee responded Friday to allegations in Jefferson County circuit court that organizers altered voter information to help the petition gain certification by the Jefferson county clerks office. Judge Brian Edwards decision will determine whether votes cast on tax-levy question will be counted.

Organizers of the tax-recall petition do not deny they altered names, addresses and birthdates entered on an online petition to recall a 9.5% property tax increase. Organizer and Louisville Tea Party president Theresa Camoriano says she was just trying to clean up data signers had entered through a website, fixing typos and making sure all necessary info was there.

People had a hard time, Camoriano told attorneys during her deposition.

Camoriano said she used a Republican Party database to fill out missing information, or sometimes change information. She said she got the database log-in from Rep. Jason Nemes (R-Louisville), who has been endorsed by the Jefferson County Teachers Association (JCTA).

Petitioner and Louisville Tea Party member Michael Schneider, who helped develop the website, said the group of tax-opponents anticipated challenges with an online platform.

We realized that a good portion of our Tea Party group is elderly, Schneider told the court Friday. So, we tried very carefully to make it as user friendly as possible so that older folks wouldnt have trouble entering their information.

But they did have trouble, Schneider said, especially since there were a number of quirks with the website. At first, Schneider said, the field for birthdate required voters to use the European format, with the day of the month first. Then they changed it to a drop-down menu, which Schneider said created more problems.

Asked if he was uncomfortable with Camoriano changing the data voters entered, Schneider said no.

Im comfortable with that. I think the main thing was to just identify that the person was a voter and intended to sign the petition, he said.

Camoriano said she did not always reach out individually when she altered voters entries.

Jim Sprigler, a web developer hired by JCTA, found 1,110 instances in which it appeared committee members had altered the original data voters entered into the website. Attorneys for the teachers union have said its possible that voters were signed up by others, who knew their name and address, or even name and block. JCTA says they have contacted 12 people whose names were on the petition without their knowledge.

Schneider maintained he was not comfortable with Camorianos decision to add voters signatures to the website who had submitted her written requests to do so. Camoriano said she only did this a handful of times.

Camoriano also admitted to adding an alternate address and birth date for at least one person who signed the handwritten version of the petition.

Finally, according to her deposition and emails provided to the court, Camoriano encouraged hundreds of voters to sign the petition a second time in order to make sure they entered all necessary information.

We have discovered a problem with your entry on the petition that will prevent it from being counted. We are sending this notice to ask you to re-submit your entry on the petition at https://nojcpstaxhike1.com/sign-the-petition/ to be sure that your signature counts, she wrote in a mass email.

Rest assured, we will delete duplicate signatures before we submit the petition to the Jefferson County Clerk, the email reads.

Camoriano told attorneys she tried very hard to get rid of duplicates, throwing out thousands of signatures. But Sprigler found at least 928 duplicates in the signatures that were accepted by the county clerk. That does not include duplicates that were found by the county clerk.

An attorney for the petitioners, Dana Howard, has called into question whether some of the alterations Sprigler identified were truly alterations made by the committee. She found one entry where the change in some unusual characters used in a name could have been caused by importing the data from one program into another.

Petitioners and the teachers union offered competing calculations as to how many signatures are valid, should the court decide to throw out those with errors and alterations. Petitioners needed 35,517 signatures certified by the county clerks office to put the tax question on the ballot. They submitted around 40,000, and the clerk certified 38,507, putting them above the threshold needed.

However, the clerks office accepted 2,376 signatures in which deputy clerks found errors, including wrong birthdays or addresses. It is not clear why the clerks office accepted some of these errors, and not others. The clerks office had about 20 different deputy clerks going through different pages of the signatures, and were supposed to be following certain uniform guidelines, according to depositions with Jefferson County Clerk Government Affairs Executive Frank Friday.

Attorneys for the teachers union argue those 2,376 should be thrown out, along with the other errors and altered signatures identified in Spriglers analysis. That would leave petitioners with 33,196 not enough signatures for a ballot measure. Attorneys offered the following visual:

Attorneys for the JCTA offered this visual showing the signatures they believe should be thrown out.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the petitioners have their own math. Howard said the starting point should be the total signatures the clerk certified, including those with errors. They argue that even if duplicates and unregistered voters identified by Sprigler were thrown out, petitioners would still have 36,356 signatures, which exceeds the threshold. Howards math however, left in records with erroneous birthdates, addresses and some duplicates identified by Sprigler. She presented the following chart:

An attorney for the petitioners says there are still enough signatures if some of the signatures with errors or alterations are thrown out.

WFPL News also did an analysis, using data provided by attorneys for JCTA. We subtracted all of the errors, duplicates and altered records found by Sprigler from the total number of signatures certified by the county clerks office. We left in the 2,376 errors the clerk found and certified anyway. Heres what we got:

38,507 total signatures certified by the clerk

-192 unregistered signers

-928 duplicates

-1,312 birth date errors

-1,110 altered electronic entries

-75 altered handwritten entries

_________________________________

34,008

Thats 1,509 signatures below the threshold needed to put the referendum on the ballot.

The judge says hell issue a ruling by the end of next week. His decision will determine whether votes cast on the tax levy question will be counted.

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Tax-Recall Petitioners Respond To Allegations They Altered Voter Information - 89.3 WFPL News Louisville

In the 2016 presidential election, more than 5% of voters nationwide voted for a third-party or write-in candidate a 20-year high while 4.5% of Connecticut voters did so.

But polling data suggests, and political scientists agree, that the share will be lower this election. In late August, NBC News reported that among 215 voters interviewed who said they backed Gary Johnson or Jill Stein in 2016, 47%said they'revoting for Joe Biden and 20% for Donald Trump.

Based on surveys of 359 likely voters conducted Oct. 16-18, Morning Consult found that 53% of those who didn't vote for Trump or Hillary Clinton in 2016 said they're backing Biden this year while 21% are supporting Trump.

Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins isn't even on the ballot in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, two states where Stein received more votes in 2016 than the margin of victory Trump held over Clinton. Hawkins and Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen haven't raised nearly as much money as their 2016 counterparts.

In southeastern Connecticut, some Green Party supporters are voting for Biden for president but Green Party candidate Cassandra Martineau in the 2nd Congressional District, while some libertarians are moving in the opposite direction of the aforementioned surveys, shifting from a Trump or Clinton vote in 2016 to a vote for Jorgensen this year.

Green Party supporters want more climate action, less reliance on defense spending

Joshua Steele Kelly, former Waterford Town Meeting member and co-chair of the Waterford Green Party, is leaning toward voting for Martineau, citing her support for the Green New Deal and single-payer health care, and Biden.

He voted for Stein for presidentin 2016, considering "there was really no way Donald Trump was going to win Connecticut." But given his concern this year that Trump and the Republican Party are going to challenge mail-in ballots, he feels an obligation not only to vote for the candidate more likely to win, but also to add to the numbers of people voting in-person for Biden.

Kelly sees the plight of third-party candidates as a vicious cycle: People often don't want to vote for a candidate that doesn't have momentum, but voting for a candidate is how that person builds momentum.

Daryl Finizio, an attorney and former mayor of New London, has signs in his yard for Martineau and Biden. While he said Courtney is "one of the absolute nicest people I've met in politics" and works hard with constituent services, Finizio feels the congressman falls far short on "radically transforming our fossil fuel economy."

Finizio would also like to see the de-escalation of military spending, a larger response to income inequality, and student loan forgiveness.

To the "traditional liberals who scream at third-party voters," he pointed to the long-term effectiveness of Tea Party members primarying Republicans across the country.

While they may have lost in the general election, "they were OK with that because what they were telling the Republican Party is, 'We are not going to walk with you unless you walk our way,' and eventually the party walked their way," Finizio said. "Now, I happen to think it was the wrong direction and a dangerous direction, but the effectiveness of that cannot be ignored."

Ronna Stuller, chairwoman of the New London Green Party, said she's talked to a lot of people who are voting for Biden but are interested in Martineau's run.

She is voting for Green Party candidates at all levels possible: Erycka Ortiz for state representative in the 39th House District, Martineau for U.S. representative andHawkins for president.

"In the middle of a pandemic, we really need a single-payer health care system, not just improved (Affordable Care Act), and we really need to start thinking about creating a jobs program based on renewable energy," Stuller said. She also wants the local economy to diversify away from reliance on the defense industry.

Stuller noted a minor party must get at least 1% of the vote to get ballot access in the next election, or the party must petition for a line, so she typically votes Green to keep the line open.

Libertarian voters 'simply cannot do the lesser of two evils'

As someone who thinks "that personal choice should be at the forefront of any decision," whether about abortion or gun rights, Travis Robinson of Stonington voted for Johnson in 2016 and is voting for Jorgensen this year.

Jorgensen has no hopes of winning, but based on conversations he's had, Robinson is "almost certain" the party will break 5% this year. That would allow Libertarian candidates to receive public funding in the future, which Robinson, 26, called "a good springboard."

Pew Research found that 4% of adults surveyed Sept. 30 through Oct. 5 said if the election were held today, they would vote for Jorgensen. Buta much lower share ofJorgensen voters than Trump or Biden voters said they're extremely motivated to vote.

When people say he's wasting his vote, Robinson said he responds, "The only vote wasted is the one not cast."

Mystic resident Bethany Guthrie said she voted for Trump in 2016, "because I felt like he was the lesser of the two evils that time, and we all see how that turned out." She pointed to actions against LGBTQ people and said this year, she "cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who sees them as lesser human beings."

"It's been hard for me to live with that vote, because I knew he was terrible, and this time, I simply cannot do the lesser of two evils again," she said.

Guthrie, 47, said she would want Jorgensen to stop the war on drugs and to bring troops home from overseas, and that Second Amendment rights are a big deal to her.

She called herself "the most liberal Republican you've ever met" while fellow Jorgensen voter Jacob Covey, of Gales Ferry, said he leans "more toward the Democratic point of view," but both said they would still vote for Jorgensen even if they lived in a swing state.

"I'm tired of the lesser of two evils argument, I'm tired of kind of feeling like I've been taken advantage of," said Covey, 28. In 2016, he was interested in Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson but voted for Clinton in hopes of keeping Trump out of office.

Covey said he agrees strongly with Biden's social platform but doesn't align with him financially, while he likes what Trump has done for the economy but dislikes his response to the coronavirus pandemic. He said "both candidates are proponents for a larger government," which he doesn't like.

Asked about people who think he's wasting his vote, Covey called that mentality "a version of voter suppression."

Putnam resident Lance Leduc, 36, said he's voting for the Libertarian Party in as many races as he can and not voting in other races, meaning he is only voting for Jorgensen for president and Dan Reale in the 2nd Congressional District.

"Every four years, it feels like 51% of the country gets to tell the other 49% how to live," Leduc said. He added, "It's big government versus us, and they have us fighting over which rights we get to have and which we don't, based on who wins the race."

e.moser@theday.com

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Whether for president or Congress, some local voters going a third way - theday.com