Tag: 2020 election

Will Russia influence the American vote?

The idea that someone recently tried to influence Americans to vote for a particular candidate by sending them threatening emails may sound outlandish – as might federal officials’ allegation that the Iranian government is behind those messages. 

But U.S. voters should prepare for even more strange and unexpected examples of information warfare that manipulate, distort or destroy election-related information between now and Election Day – and perhaps beyond that, depending on whether there are questions about who may have won the presidency.

Since 2016, Americans have learned that foreign interests attempt to affect the outcomes of presidential elections, including with social media postings and television ads. Continue reading.

Trump confronts his 50 percent problem

The president’s inability to capture a majority of support sheds light on his extraordinary efforts to suppress the vote.

Donald Trump won the presidency with 46 percent of the popular vote. His approval rating, according to Gallup, has never hit 50 percent. He remains under 50 percent in national polling averages. 

The president’s inability to capture a majority of support sheds light on his extraordinary attempts to limit the number of votes cast across the battleground state map — a massive campaign-within-a-campaign to maximize Trump’s chances of winning a contest in which he’s all but certain to earn less than 50 percent of the vote.

In Philadelphia, his campaign is videotaping voters as they return ballots. In Nevada, it’s suing to force elections officials in Nevada’s Democratic-heavy Clark County to more rigorously examine ballot signatures for discrepancies that could disqualify them. The Trump campaign has sued to prevent the expanded use of ballot drop boxes in Ohio, sought to shoot down an attempt to expand absentee ballot access in New Hampshire and tried to intervene against a lawsuit brought by members of the Navajo Nation in Arizona which sought to allow ballots received from reservations after Election Day because of mail delays. And that’s just a few of its efforts. Continue reading.

Federal judges order Minnesota’s post-Election Day ballots to be held

Minn. votes received after 8 p.m. Election Day to be set aside for possible challenge. 

A federal court sided Thursday with a GOP challenge to Minnesota’s extended deadline for receiving absentee ballots after Election Day, imperiling a state rule that would count mail-in ballots received up to a week after Tuesday’s election.

In a 2-1 decision, a panel of Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges ordered that all mail-in ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day be set aside, setting the stage for a potential legal battle after the election. But the order stopped short of a final determination on the validity of the post-Election Day ballots.

The ruling came in a case brought by Minnesota GOP presidential electors challenging a state rule allowing election officials to count ballots received until Nov. 10, as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3. It is one of several Republican challenges to extended deadlines that were adopted in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina in response to concerns about the pandemic and potential mail delays. Continue reading.

These Are The 25 Businesses Quietly Paying Trump $115 Million Each Year

If you really want to know who holds financial leverage over the president, focus on the big organizations inside Trump’s commercial buildings.

onald Trump has a lot of customers. There are people who purchase his food in Trump Tower, spending $20 on a burger. There are those who stay in his hotel rooms, paying $475 for a bed. There are others who join Trump-owned clubs, perhaps doling out as much as $200,000. But the president’s most important customers—by far—are the companies renting space in his buildings. 

There aren’t all that many of them, but they pay big money. In fact, just 25 tenants pay an estimated $115 million in rent every year. Those payments alone account for roughly 20% of all revenue flowing into the president’s business empire. And since leasing space tends to be a high-margin business, that $115 million might translate into $65 million of operating profit, or roughly 40% of the estimated total Trump Organization earnings in a typical year. 

Two of the most lucrative deals, involving Gucci and Nike, are close to Trump’s old home. Gucci leases space inside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, and Nike had a location around the corner on 57th Street. The president also brings in significant sums at 40 Wall Street, a skyscraper in Lower Manhattan, where Walgreens Boots Alliance pays a reported $3.4 million a year in rent. Continue reading.

92 Percent of Trump’s China Tariff Proceeds Has Gone to Bail Out Angry Farmers

“China” is “paying billions and billions of dollars” on U.S. tariffs, President Trump said in his debate with Joe Biden on October 22. “And you know who got the money? Our farmers. Our great farmers.”

He is half right.

Since 2018, the president has repeatedly insisted that China pays the tariffs he has imposed on Chinese imports. This claim is false—the tariffs are paid entirely by U.S. importers. His advisers, such as Peter Navarro, knowing the claim is false, have tried to defend him, and the tariffs, by arguing that China pays the tariffs indirectly, through currency depreciation and lowering export prices. These arguments are also false, as well as illogical—since the advisers also claim that such Chinese behavior benefits China and hurts the United States. Continue reading.

For a growing number of evangelical Christians, Trump is no longer the lesser of two evils

It has long been taken for granted that the majority of evangelical Christians in the United States will vote for Donald Trump.

That may well be the case. But there are recent signs that fewer evangelicals will support Trump this time around than in 2016. 

In an August 2020 poll for Fox News, Trump registered a 38-point advantage over Joe Biden among among white evangelical voters. That is impressive, but it pales in comparison with his 61-point advantage over Hillary Clinton among evangelicals in the 2016 election. 

Meanwhile, a Pew survey on Oct. 13 found that white evangelical support for Trump had slipped since August, from 83% to 78%. Continue reading.

New voters surge to the polls

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More than 16 million voters who did not cast a ballot in 2016 have already voted this year, a sign that record-high enthusiasm in November’s elections will lead to an unprecedented turnout across the country.

There are indications that the surge is being fueled by younger voters who have been targets of turnout operations funded by Democratic groups, and by minorities who are motivated to vote like never before, data experts keeping tabs on the early numbers say.

Already this year, more than 4 million people between the ages of 18 and 29 have cast a ballot after sitting out 2016. They represent about two-thirds of all voters in that age bracket who have voted already. In states where voters can register by party, registered Democrats among those youngest voters outnumber registered Republicans by a nearly three to one margin. Continue reading.

Democrats see signs of hidden Biden voters flipping from GOP

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Call them the secret Biden voters. 

Political observers say there is a group of voters that has emerged in this cycle: Republicans who have never supported a Democratic candidate — not for the city council, Congress or president — who suddenly find themselves set to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. 

And they don’t want anyone to know it.  Continue reading.

Pot party candidate said GOP recruited him to ‘pull votes’ from Minnesota Democrat

Voice mail left by deceased 2nd District challenger says GOP recruited him to siphon votes. 

Four months before Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Adam Weeks died in September, sending the pivotal Second Congressional District race into a legal tailspin, he told a close friend that he had been recruited by Republicans to draw votes away from Democrats.

In a May 20 voicemail message provided to the Star Tribune, Weeks told a longtime friend that Republicans in the Second District approached him two weeks before the filing deadline to run for Congress in the hopes he’d “pull votes away” from incumbent DFL Rep. Angie Craig and give an advantage to the “other guy,” Tyler Kistner, the Republican-endorsed candidate.

The recording, underscoring the intense battle in one of the state’s most competitive elections, has come to light just as the Southern Minnesota Regional Medical Examiner’s Office listed Weeks’ death as a result of substance abuse, caused by ethanol and fentanyl toxicity. The death was ruled as accidental. Continue reading.

DFL Party Responds to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals’ Absentee Ballot Ruling

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Yesterday, just five days before election day, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that absentee ballots in Minnesota must be returned by Election Day. This ruling, which came at the behest of Republicans, overturned an agreement that has been in place since August. As a part of that August agreement, state and national Republicans stipulated that absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within seven days would be accepted.

DFL Party Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement on today’s ruling from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals:

Continue reading “DFL Party Responds to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals’ Absentee Ballot Ruling”