RandySF
RandySF's JournalMadison poll workers will accept absentee ballots in parks this weekend, raising GOP concerns
Madison's parks have become the latest fronts in Wisconsin's voting wars.
The liberal stronghold is hosting “Democracy in the Park” events on Saturday at more than 200 locations across the city, where poll workers wearing yellow vests will assist voters in numerous ways.
They plan to help people register to vote, help them request absentee ballots, serve as witnesses for those who already have absentee ballots and accept those absentee ballots once they're completed.
To Republicans, that risks looking too much like in-person early voting, which isn’t allowed under state law until Oct. 20.
Republicans and Democrats in Wisconsin have long fought over the state’s voter ID law and early voting, but their battles have intensified this year as voters turn to absentee voting in record numbers because of the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/25/madison-poll-workers-accept-absentee-ballots-parks/3533090001/
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth endorses Donald Trump in USA TODAY opinion piece
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth has jumped into the national political fray by endorsing President Donald Trump's reelection.
"Wisconsin, and all of America, needs a leader who will uphold the law, or we won’t have a country left," Beth wrote Saturday in an opinion piece that appeared on the USA TODAY website.
Beth's endorsement comes a month after civil unrest erupted in the city of Kenosha following the shooting of Jacob Blake by a police officer.
During Trump's Sept. 1 visit to Kenosha, Beth was among those who participated in a roundtable discussion with the president.
"The president arrived with a plan to provide the critical resources needed to keep our community safe," Beth wrote.
Early on in the crisis, Beth said Gov. Tony Evers did not reject any proposal from Kenosha law enforcement and worked with them to mobilize more National Guard troops. Republicans have said Evers did not do enough in the early days of the unrest.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/26/kenosha-county-sheriff-david-beth-endorses-donald-trump-usa-today/3547188001/
Jill Biden is traveling to Wisconsin on Monday for stops in Madison and Waukesha
Jill Biden will travel to Wisconsin Monday to campaign for her husband, former Vice President Joe Biden, with stops in Madison and Waukesha.
Biden will participate in a Get Out the Vote event in Madison, where she'll encourage voter participation and talk about how Wisconsinites can cast their ballots this year. In Waukesha, she'll speak about the Democratic presidential candidate's economic recovery plan and health care costs and coverage.
This will be the second time that Biden has visited Wisconsin this month. She traveled to Kenosha and Wauwatosa with her husband Sept. 3 after the Jacob Blake shooting and ensuing protests and violence. She also virtually met with Green Bay parents as part of her national Back to School tour.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/26/jill-biden-travels-wisconsin-stops-madison-waukesha-monday/3549017001/
Expecting a surge of mail-in votes, Iowa will give counties a head-start on opening absentee ballots
County election officials will have more time to begin opening absentee ballot envelopes ahead of Election Day this year under an emergency election directive approved Friday by Iowa legislators.
The directive comes as Iowa election officials anticipate they will need to count large numbers of absentee ballots in a short window of time as more people vote absentee due to the coronavirus.
The Legislative Council Friday afternoon unanimously approved Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate's request to allow counties to begin the process of opening the outer absentee ballot envelopes on the Saturday before Election Day, rather than the traditional day before. The ballots themselves must remain in their secrecy envelopes and still cannot be counted before Nov. 2, the day before Election Day.
"If a county auditor takes advantage of this time on Saturday, Oct. 31, they would likely be able to begin tabulating earlier on Monday before the election," Secretary of State legal counsel Molly Widen said on Friday's conference call with legislators.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/25/iowa-counties-can-begin-opening-absentee-ballots-early/3515900001/
Judge rules against Navajo Nation voter lawsuit to force Arizona to count late-arriving mail-in ball
A federal judge on Friday denied a request by several voters to require that election officials count mail ballots received from the Navajo Nation after 7 p.m. on Election Day, as long as the ballots are postmarked before that deadline.
The voters argued that slow mail service and long distances between drop-off locations mean their votes may not be counted even if they send in ballots several days before Election Day.
But Judge G. Murray Snow wrote that they did not provide any evidence that ballots from Navajo voters were disproportionately tossed out because of the deadline.
Snow also wrote that the evidence in the case did not show that issues like slow mail service disproportionately impact Navajo voters instead or rural voters more broadly.
The lawsuit "certainly shows that meeting the receipt deadline is more inconvenient for Navajo voters than it is for certain voters" but did not show they face a disparate burden, Snow wrote.
Ultimately, Snow concluded, the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed on any of its claims, and he denied the group an injunction.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/25/judge-rejects-navajo-nation-voter-lawsuit-force-arizona-count-mail-in-ballots-arriving-late/3538694001/
Trump shifts focus to Pennsylvania to shore up reelection
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s campaign has grown increasingly focused on making inroads in Pennsylvania to offset potential vulnerabilities in other battlegrounds.
The president will travel to the state for the second time in a week on Saturday, hoping to attract the same rural and white working-class voters who delivered him a narrow victory here in 2016. The in-person touch, in what may become the most important battleground on the map, complements an aggressive get-out-the-vote operation that has been working for four years to find new voters by knocking on doors in competitive neighborhoods.
Trump narrowly flipped three Great Lakes states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — from blue to red in 2016. He has virtually no path to reelection without keeping at least one of those states in his column. His campaign has long viewed Wisconsin as his best option, but aides who requested anonymity to discuss strategy said their thinking has begun to shift.
There are growing concerns inside the campaign, the aides said, about Trump’s ability to retain Wisconsin. Even winning that upper Midwest battleground wouldn’t provide the needed votes if Trump’s Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, claims Arizona.
But Pennsylvania would be enough.
“With Pennsylvania, I don’t have to make a play, we’ve got Pennsylvania,” boasted Trump at a rally Tuesday night just outside Pittsburgh.
That may be harder than Trump suggests.
Despite fervent Republican efforts, no GOP nominee since George H.W. Bush in 1988 had captured the state until Trump did four years ago, winning by just 44,000 votes out of nearly 5.9 million cast. And as someone born in Scranton, Joe Biden is also heavily focused on the state.
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-pennsylvania-elections-archive-5d4ec6296a36069838ec02b151ebe726
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Announces 'Veep' Reunion to Raise Money for Wisconsin Democratic Party
The cast of “Veep” is reuniting to help get former veep Joe Biden back into the White House.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus took to Twitter today to announce the virtual reunion, which is a fundraiser for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
The reunion will take place on Oct. 4 at 6 p.m. CST and will feature “Veep” cast members including Louis-Dreyfus, Anna Chlumsky, Reid Scott, Sam Richardson, Tim Simons, Tony Hale, Clea Duvall and Matt Walsh, plus some surprise guests. David Mandel, an executive producer on the show, will moderate the event, which will only be livestreamed once.
“All roads to the White House go through the great state of Wisconsin. Trump can’t win re-election if he doesn’t win Wisconsin,” Louis-Dreyfus said in her announcement video. “So, the democratic party of Wisconsin has built an unprecedented voter mobilization operation, and they need resources in these final days to deliver Wisconsin to vice president Joe Biden and Senator Harris.”
https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/julia-louis-dreyfus-veep-reunion-1234784643/
House GOP super PAC seeks to shore up additional Republican seats
House Republicans’ chief super PAC is laying down $18 million in a new wave of ad reservations that ups the pressure on some top Democratic targets but also prepares for an unfavorable political environment by placing buys in deep-red seats.
The new reservations from Congressional Leadership Fund are spread out over roughly 25 districts and bring its total spending for the cycle to nearly $110 million, according to plans shared first with POLITICO. The largest of the reservations will pummel freshman Democrats in Trump-friendly areas — but the group is also making sizable investments in GOP-held districts on the fringes of the House map in Arkansas, Alaska, central Virginia and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows’ old seat in western North Carolina.
Operatives for the group described those buys, which include broadcast, cable, radio and digital, as a backstop to prevent any surprises on Election Day — but they are also a sign that the GOP is playing more defense than it expected to at the start of the cycle.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/25/house-gop-super-pac-seeks-to-shore-up-additional-republican-seats-421565
Waco minister credited his prayer with killing Justice Ginsburg. Now, he retracted it
Sooner or later in this bizarre campaign, somebody was going to say something truly foolish.
Enter minister Robert Henderson of Waco.
Henderson already talked about dreaming that President Donald Trump called him and made him a spiritual Cabinet member — and his running mate.
This time, the Radiant Church leader — a TV guest of televangelist Jim Bakker and once an opening act for Benny Hinn — said that on a visit to Washington, he led other pastors to pray for God to “shut the mouth of the lion” defending current abortion laws on the Supreme Court.
“Well, guess what?” he said last Sunday.
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg has passed away. .... That’s no accident.”
Besides the egotistical fantasy that his prayer somehow affected Ginsburg’s 11-year battle with pancreatic cancer, I think Brother Henderson might have missed the point.
https://www.star-telegram.com/article246002880.html#storylink=cpy
Native American tribes in Texas rally to increase voter turnout
Cecelia Flores knows that voting turnout among her fellow Alabama-Coushatta Tribe members in East Texas has traditionally been low.
The chairperson for the federally recognized tribe said most people in her community don’t see how the federal government impacts what they prioritize most: work and livelihood.
Then, an electronic bingo facility run by the tribe, which employs over 700 locals, was threatened with being forced to close when conflicting federal laws raised questions about whether the game could be offered there. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to protect the facility in July 2019, but the legislation was opposed by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who is up for reelection in November.
“This matter is currently the subject of litigation in federal court,” Cornyn wrote last October. “In light of these legal and policy disagreements between the Texas state government and these tribes, I request any committee hearings concerning this legislation be postponed until these parties have reached a resolution or agreement.”
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/25/texas-native-american-voter-turnout/
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: Detroit Area, MI
Home country: USA
Current location: San Francisco, CA
Member since: Wed Oct 29, 2008, 02:53 PM
Number of posts: 59,237
