Politics

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Chis Pappas accused his Republican challenger of treating politics as a performance without offering solutions to problems, while Karoline Leavitt accused the Democratic incumbent of being a partisan problem creator during their third and last debate on Thursday.

The two candidates for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District seat offered contrasting views on a range of issues, including rising costs and the economy, as well as abortion, during the WMUR-TV debate.

Pappas, who is seeking a third term, said he was proud to have worked on getting a record amount of money to New Hampshire families from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. He said he is working on ways to modernize shipping and trucking regulations to “unkink supply chains,” to move more goods to market, strengthen the workforce and deal with the state’s housing shortage, which is contributing to inflation.

“Well, Congressman, everything you said sounds wonderful, but the truth is none of it has passed and none of it has worked,” Leavitt said. “Granite Staters are suffering.”

She accused Pappas of supporting trillions of dollars in spending she says contributed to inflation and attacking energy production in New Hampshire, which he said was “not true.”

“I support an all-of-the-above energy strategy and have supported legislation to pay down the deficit” that also provides tax credits for homes and businesses for energy efficiency programs, Pappas said.

Leavitt said if elected to Congress she would work to pass a balanced budget and slash spending for useless items over voting to raise the debt ceiling, which would allow the Treasury Department to honor financial commitments already made by Congress and the president.

Citing economists, Pappas called that a “totally reckless position, because not only would it jeopardize our own economic health here in the United States, it could lead to a global depression.”

“We need bipartisan conversations about how to lower the debt and deficit,” he said, adding “we shouldn’t be holding our economy, with the full faith and credit of the United States, hostage.”

Leavitt responded, “Our economy is hostage right now. The people of this district are hostage right now because of the economic policies that you supported.”

On the subject of abortion, Leavitt, who is pro-life, said she supports state legislatures making decisions on abortion regulations and would oppose a federal abortion ban.

Pappas, who supports the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would protect the right to access abortion care nationwide after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, said women in New Hampshire deserve a pro-choice vote in Congress.

“I want women and families in consultation with their doctors to decide this for themselves,” Pappas said.

“No, that’s not true,” Leavitt responded. “You want politicians in Washington, D.C., to make those decisions. … I support those closest to the people, closest to the voters,” in Concord, she said.

Pappas called her answer “really chilling,” adding, “I think government should get out of the way because they have no business deciding this issue for women and families.”

Both candidates were asked if they believe former President Donald Trump when he said the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Leavitt, who worked in the White House press office under Trump, had said during pre-primary debates she believed the 2020 election was stolen from the former president. On Thursday, she said that she believes there were irregularities in the 2020 election.

She spoke of Pappas’ support for a bill that would have created national automatic voter registration, allowed all voters to cast ballots by mail and weakened voter ID laws, among other measures.

“Donald Trump is wrong,” Pappas said. “The election was not stolen from him. Everyone knows that. And Karoline Leavitt continues to double-down on the big lie.”

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BOSTON (AP) — Ruby Brown beamed with excitement in a community college gymnasium as she waited for Vice President Kamala Harris to take the stage at a political rally for the Democratic ticket in Massachusetts

“As soon as her name was announced, I said I had to find a way to go,” said Brown, 58.

The midterms are just days away, with control of Congress and statehouses across the country up for grabs, but Brown and her friends were really hoping for a hint of what might happen a few years down the line.

“That’s why we’re here,” said Lisa Palmer-Glover, 56. “To see what’s next on the plate.”

The comments are just a glimpse of the expectations and special scrutiny that Harris faces as the first person of color and first woman to be vice president — and someone who campaigned for the top job before agreeing to be Joe Biden’s running mate.

The vice presidency is never an easy position, requiring ambitious politicians to contort themselves into the role of sidekick. And it’s been particularly difficult for Harris. She’s a groundbreaking leader, a former U.S. senator and California attorney general. But she struggled with a portfolio of vexing challenges and internal staff turmoil soon after taking office.

Allies say she’s found a degree of stability since then, and they describe the midterm elections as an opportunity to project her own voice on issues such as reproductive freedom, which became a centerpiece of her message after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion this year.

Now, with Democrats facing the possibility of a sweeping defeat at the ballot box next week, the party is bracing for another round of introspection about its future — and by extension, Harris’ own.

It’s not a conversation the vice president’s inner circle wants to have as Biden lays the groundwork for a second term even as he approaches his 80th birthday.

“They intend to run, and they intend to run together,” said Laphonza Butler, who was as an adviser to Harris’ presidential campaign and now leads Emily’s List, a political organization that supports women who favor abortion rights. “So until there’s another question, that’s the answer.”

Still, midterm campaigning for other Democrats is a chance for Harris, who recently turned 58, to nurture constituencies that supported her in the past and could again. Her travel has focused on young people, voters of color and women, including at historically black colleges and roundtable meetings on abortion.

In Boston on Wednesday, she rallied for a slate of all-female candidates, from governor down to auditor. And she told the crowd to “call your cousins who live in other states” to encourage them to vote for Democrats.

“Elections matter,” Harris said. “We got a lot done. And we still have more to do. And the stakes are high.”

Although Harris has a reputation for tying herself in linguistic knots, allies say she’s at her best when campaigning for others and — to borrow the rhetoric of the former district attorney’s failed presidential bid — prosecuting the case against Republicans.

With poll numbers that remain underwater, she’s steered clear of some of the tightest Senate campaigns in places like Arizona and Ohio. But her abortion advocacy has expanded her travels, taking her to Nevada and Wisconsin, where the president hasn’t campaigned.

She’s also chatted with social media influencers and called into radio shows in battleground states. She’s hosted more than a dozen fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee and visited Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, among other states.

Chris Lehane, a former Democratic strategist who worked for Vice President Al Gore, says the midterms are an opportunity to make a “political brand deposit.”

“You’re able to help folks who are running up and down the ticket. And they remember that,” he said.

Turnout among young voters tends to drop off in the midterms, with no presidential race to boost interest. So some of Harris’ work has focused on reaching them through social media personalities who have hundreds of thousands of followers.

“When you weigh in with your vote, you can get what you’re advocating for,” Harris told Hannah Bronfman, a health and wellness influencer. “But if you don’t vote, your voice won’t be heard.”

She also spoke with Keir Gaines, a therapist who creates online content about family relationships and mental health, to warn that “your auntie, your sister, your cousin, your daughter” are going to have less rights because of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.

Harris can steer herself into rhetorical dead ends, causing her allies to cringe and her critics to try to turn them into viral videos. In September, she referred to the U.S. alliance with the “Republic of North Korea” after touring the Demilitarized Zone.

Nathan Barankin, who served as Harris’ chief of staff when she was a U.S. senator from California, said her gaffes are the result of being “someone who has been overly scripted, or someone who is very worried about deviating from a script that she didn’t create.”

“I would put her head to head with any of the best retail politicians, at least behind closed doors,” Barankin said. “What you see when she’s got 40 cameras pointed at her is usually not what she’s capable of.”

An October AP-NORC poll showed only about half of Democrats want Biden to seek a second term. But it’s not clear that voters are clamoring for Harris instead. When she ran for president, her campaign stalled before voting began, and now her favorable ratings lag behind Biden’s. That’s largely because she’s more unknown.

Only 37% of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Harris, according to the same survey. Another 49% view her unfavorably, while an additional 13% say they don’t know enough to say. Biden earns similar unfavorable ratings, but 45% say they have a favorable opinion of the president.

Young Americans in particular – those under 30 – are especially likely to say they don’t know enough to have an opinion of Harris.

A Saturday Night Live skit from last weekend envisioned a horror movie about Democrats’ chances in 2024 if Biden doesn’t run again. When a panicked voter suggests Harris as his successor, another one slaps him across the face. “Wake up!” she shouts.

Challenging Harris for the nomination, however, would be no easy task.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Democratic kingmaker in his home state of South Carolina, said over the summer that he would back Harris if Biden didn’t run. It was a noteworthy comment from a politician who helped secure Biden’s nomination by demonstrating his strength among black voters.

“Tell me who beats her in South Carolina?” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster.

Although being vice president can be a thankless task, no other job allows someone to take a dress rehearsal to be commander in chief. Her first foreign trip, to Guatemala and Mexico, was overshadowed by an awkward interview about migrant issues, when she tried to laugh off a question about visiting the U.S. southern border.

But she’s also made key appearances on the administration’s behalf, such as attending the Munich Security Conference shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She’s preparing for her third trip to Asia, with stops in Thailand and the Philippines, as the U.S. looks for ways to counter China in the region.

“She’s making me look good,” Biden said in Philadelphia last week. “And God love her. She’s more like my buddy and my sister, but I trust her with my life. I trust her completely.”

Lehane used a baseball metaphor to describe Harris’ evolution in the role.

“You don’t get to the Major Leagues if you can’t hit a Major League fastball,” Lehane said. “Rookies need to adjust to curveballs and sliders and the pitches that separate the majors from the minors.”

Over the past year, Lehane said, Harris has shown she can do just that.

Cedric Richmond, who worked in the White House before becoming a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, used an unprintable word to describe the narrative that Harris initially flailed in the job.

“I think she had a good first year,” he said. “I think she was overly scrutinized by the press, and she was a first in so many ways.”

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Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) — In the closing days of her campaign, Rep. Elaine Luria stood on a wooden porch in a far-flung part of her newly drawn district, microphone in hand and a 7-year-old Black girl at her side, to make her final case for what is at stake in the midterm elections.

The Virginia Democrat, quoting the late Rep. Elijah Cummings, pointed toward the girl and said: “Our children are a window into the future that we will never see.” That future, Luria argued, will look much bleaker if her Republican challenger wins one of the most contested House races in the country.

In her first two congressional races, Luria, a former Navy commander, would more likely have been seen in settings with a military backdrop or theme. But this time she is in Suffolk, a new part of her district and one that has a Black population of 40% whose votes could well determine if she gets a third term.

“If Luria is going to have a chance at winning, she absolutely needs to win over Black voters,” said Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo, research director at the Wason Center at Christopher Newport University. “Even in our polling, we see that Black voters are more likely to say they’re undecided than white voters, and that suggests that there’s some vulnerability there for Luria and a need to reach out.”

Luria has gained a higher profile over the past year because of her seat on the House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. But there is scant evidence it has helped her politically, and it may have even cut into her support.

Still, she also frames this race as a referendum on democracy itself. It is a country-over-party appeal that will be tested in a district that has among the nation’s highest concentrations of families with military connections.

“This is about a lot more than just Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District. It’s certainly about a lot more than getting Elaine Luria reelected,” she said to a predominantly Black crowd of constituents on Sunday. “It is truly about the future of our country and the direction we go. It’s about our democracy.”

Recent polling from the Wason Center showed that Luria and her opponent, Jen Kiggans, a state senator, are tied at 45% among likely voters, with 8% undecided. Kiggans declined to be interviewed for this story.

“Suffolk is really the key to winning this race and holding this seat,” Luria said in her closing remarks. “And this seat is the key to holding the majority in the House of Representatives.”

The 2nd Congressional District ranks No. 217 on the nonpartisan Cook Political Report’s partisan voting index, making it the median between the most Republican and most-Democratic House seats in the nation — effectively the country’s swingiest swing district.

The district, which first elected Luria in 2018, was redrawn recently to be more Republican. Donald Trump, a Republican, carried it in his successful 2016 presidential campaign, but in 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 to carry Virginia Beach, part of the district.

Luria’s moderate bearing and record would seem suited to the district, but Kiggans has emphasized economic issues and tried to tether Luria to Biden, and both are appealing to a broad cross section of voters for the first time.

“The year after redistricting is always interesting, slash challenging, because you do in some instances have to reintroduce yourself to new voters, to a new constituency,” said Susan Swecker, chair of the Virginia Democratic Party.

And that’s what Luria has been doing for the past year with the 40% of voters who are new in the sprawling district, including voters in Suffolk who face issues that are different from those in other parts. The 2nd District, in southeastern Virginia, continues to include Virginia Beach and curves from the Eastern Shore into Suffolk, Isle of Wight and other localities.

Luria’s campaign has fine-tuned its pitch to focus on access to abortion, military and veterans issues and what she calls the ongoing threat to American democracy. She has cited her service on the Jan. 6 committee as “the most important thing” she’s ever done professionally — more than the two decades she served in the Navy, including as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer who commanded 400 crewmembers in the Persian Gulf.

“People said to me, ‘Elaine, you’re the only Democrat in a Republican district on this committee, what’s that going to mean? When you go back home, this might not be popular,’” Luria told volunteers at an event Oct. 29. “And I said it doesn’t matter. This is the right thing to do.”

“And if that means I don’t get reelected,” she added, “that’s OK. Because I’m on the right side of history.”

Luria has invoked her service oath as a major reason she chose to be on the committee, which is a message that has connected with some in a district where the population overwhelmingly includes active-duty military, veterans and residents who work at the local shipyards.

But, according to the Wason Center polling, voters said economic concerns were driving their choices in the election, with nearly 40% considering it the most important issue, followed by abortion at 17% and threats to democracy at 14%.

Luria’s opponent, Kiggans, also a Navy veteran, has said the election won’t be decided by the Jan. 6 committee.

“I have never had a single voter, or person (whose) door I’ve knocked on, or civic league I’ve visited or event I’ve attended, I’ve never had a single person come up to me and say that this is the main issue they’re focused on,” Kiggans told The Associated Press in July. “On a daily basis, I hear over and over and over again about gas prices and grocery prices and grocery shortages and how much everything is costing them.”

But for a number of Black voters in the district, the issue of the economy is not the most important thing on the ballot.

“We understand that the economy is going to ebb and flow. But when we start dealing with overturning women’s rights, it takes us back to the issue of our civil rights,” said Ebony Wright, a Navy veteran and Black resident of Suffolk. “And so when we start scaling back, it’s scary. And then it makes us wonder what is next.” She said she will vote for Luria.

Her neighbor Selena Thornton, who is also a Black veteran, said the reality and history of the Suffolk area, miles away from where the Nat Turner slave rebellion took place in 1831 and near sundown areas, constantly remind her that she is not as far removed from her ancestors as some may believe. And she said that is why Luria is also her choice.

“If you want to know the Black vote, that it’s right there: There’s always going to be a fear of us moving backward instead of forward,” Wright said.

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Associated Press writer Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

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

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Why do election experts oppose hand-counting ballots?

It takes longer than counting with machines, it’s less reliable, and it’s a logistical nightmare for U.S. elections.

A growing number of Republican lawmakers have pushed for switching to hand-counts, an argument rooted in false conspiracy theories that voting systems were manipulated to steal the 2020 election.

Though there is no evidence of widespread fraud or tampering of machines in 2020, some jurisdictions have voted to scrap machines and pursue hand-counts instead this year.

Numerous studies — in voting and other fields such as banking and retail — have shown that people make far more errors counting than do machines, especially when reaching larger and larger numbers. They’re also vastly slower.

“Machine counting is generally twice as accurate as hand-counting and a much simpler and faster process,” said Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University who has conducted research on hand-counts.

In one study in New Hampshire, he found poll workers who counted ballots by hand were off by 8%. The error rate for machine counting runs about 0.5%, Ansolabehere said.

Just how long can hand-counting delay results? Depending on jurisdiction and staffing, it could be days, weeks or even months.

In Cobb County, Georgia, after the 2020 election, a hand tally ordered by the state for just presidential votes on about 397,00 ballots took hundreds of people five days. A county election official estimated it would have taken 100 days to count every race on each ballot using the same procedures.

Proponents of hand-counting often point to countries like France, which use it more or less successfully, but that’s because they have simpler elections with just one race at a time, Ansolabehere said.

In the U.S., ballots are far more complicated, sometimes containing dozens of local, state and federal races at a time.

Hand-counting of all ballots does happen in parts of the U.S. — in some small towns in the Northeast, for example — and it’s possible in small jurisdictions, said Gowri Ramachandran, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. The Brennan Center objected to plans for an unprecedented hand-count of mail-in ballots in Nye County, Nevada, calling it a “violation of law and common practice.” The hand-count was suspended after a Nevada Supreme Court ruling in late October.

Hand tallies are also frequently used in post-election reviews, but that usually involves only a sample of ballots and is done without the time pressure of trying to report results quickly.

A recent Associated Press survey of major party secretary of state candidates in 24 states found that the vast majority opposed hand-counting ballots. Despite growing popularity of the error-prone process among some Republicans, 13 of 23 secretary of state candidates who responded said they opposed implementing a statewide hand-count of ballots instead of a machine count.

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The AP is answering your questions about elections in this series. Submit them at: FactCheck@AP.org.

What happens if a ballot is damaged or improperly marked?

How do states ensure dead people’s ballots aren’t counted?

Can noncitizens vote in U.S. elections?

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OCEANSIDE, Calif. (AP) — In an urgent plea as his party faces the potential loss of House and Senate control, President Joe Biden asked voters Thursday to go to the polls to support Democratic candidates, warning that a Republican Congress would reshape America by cutting back on health care and threatening abortion rights and retirement security.

Speaking in San Diego County, California, at an evening rally in support of endangered Democratic Rep. Mike Levin, the president said the outcome of the election would “determine the direction of the country for at least a decade or more.”

“This is a choice … between two fundamentally different versions of America,” Biden said.

Biden’s appearance marked his second trip to California in less than three weeks in hopes of bolstering Democratic House members imperiled by fallout from $7-a-gallon gas, worrisome crime rates and spiking prices on everything from onions to ground beef.

The president’s return to heavily Democratic California in the run-up to Election Day speaks to the looming threat for his party in a turbulent midterm election year when Republicans appear poised to take control of the House, a grim prospect for Biden heading into the second half of his term.

His stopover centered on safeguarding Levin’s district, which has a slight Democratic tilt and cuts through San Diego and Orange counties and was carried by Biden by double digits in the 2020 presidential election.

He said Levin “delivers. He lowers costs for families, caring for our veterans protecting the environment.”

Biden was in a neighboring coastal district last month on behalf of another endangered Southern California Democrat, Rep. Katie Porter, a star of the party’s progressive wing. The Levin and Porter contests are among about a dozen congressional races in California considered competitive — a handful are seen a toss-ups and are viewed by both parties as critical to control of the House.

“If Democrats are scratching and clawing to hang on to districts Biden carried by double digits, they have likely already lost the House,” said David Wasserman, an analyst with the Cook Political Report.

Levin defended his seat with a 6-point win in 2020, and the district remained largely intact after the once-a-decade adjustment of boundary lines after the census. This year, his race is considered a toss-up as Levin and other Democrats face historical midterm headwinds that typically punish the party in the White House, while soaring prices at the supermarket and gas pump have conspired to make once-safe incumbents vulnerable.

Democrats are being forced to play defense, even in a famously liberal state that then-President Donald Trump lost by over 5 million votes in 2020. Biden’s sagging approval rating is creating a drag on Democratic candidates generally, although voter surveys indicate he’s stronger in California than the nation as a whole.

“Even in areas where President Biden won by a strong margin, we’re seeing an unfortunate shift,” Porter wrote in a fundraising pitch Tuesday. “Republicans are polling well across the country and we’re seeing especially concerning trends in blue states like California.”

Levin told the crowd, “I need your help,” and called on supporters to make phone calls and knock on doors of wavering voters.

Democracy, Levin warned, is “on the ballot.”

Levin’s Republican opponent, businessman Brian Maryott, said Biden’s visit amounted to “a failed president coming to our district to stand alongside a failed congressman.”

“Voters won’t forget $7 gas prices, the explosion in crime, inflation hitting 40-year highs, the crisis at our border,” Maryott said in a statement.

Biden’s visit does carry some risk — a protest was planned nearby. And it’s an open question how much good Biden can do to motivate voters in the late days of a midterm election, when turnout falls off sharply from presidential election years.

California is dominated by Democrats who hold every statewide office and commanding margins in the Legislature and congressional delegation. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide, and a GOP candidate hasn’t won a statewide race since 2006.

But this year is confounding political norms.

There is no competitive race at the top of the ticket to drive Democratic voter turnout — Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, both Democrats, face only token opposition. And with Democrats firmly in control of California government, the party can’t escape blame for grievances that range from an unchecked homeless crisis, $80 fill-ups at the gas station and some of the nation’s highest taxes.

In Levin’s district, voters were sharply divided about the contest, mirroring the nation’s deep partisan chasm.

Steve Barrett, a 68-year-old retired aerospace sales engineer from Dana Point, said he considers himself a moderate Republican and will be voting for Maryott.

He said he doesn’t always vote solely Republican but feels Levin is a “big spender and taxer” and that the Democrats overall are spending too much, which inevitably will lead to tax increases.

Donna Drysdale, a 73-year-old retired court reporter and photographer from San Juan Capistrano, described herself as a middle-of-the-road Democrat and said she was solidly behind Levin.

Drysdale said she feels many Republicans aren’t being reasonable and the country needs intelligent candidates with problem-solving skills to address climate change, threats to democracy and other critical issues.

“I’m scared to death that if the Republicans take over, things are going to continue to go downhill in this country, as far as the division between the two parties,” she said.

A recent voter survey shows pessimism about the economy and the direction of the country, a potential benefit for Republicans in the election’s closing days, though it shows Californians are less pessimistic about the direction of the state.

The October survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 71% of likely voters say the U.S. is on the wrong track, and 54% of likely voters think the state is headed in the wrong direction. When asked about the nation’s economy, 76% of likely voters said it was either “poor” or “not so good.”

The dicey situation for Democrats also could help Republican incumbents in Democratic-leaning districts, including GOP Reps. Mike Garcia north of Los Angeles, Michelle Steel in a district anchored in Orange County and David Valadao in the Central Valley, one of just two House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump and managed to make it to the general election.

Porter, a prolific fundraiser often mentioned as a likely future Senate candidate, has spent $24 million on her race, a stunning sum. While her district is about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, it has a conservative streak that benefits her GOP challenger, former legislator Scott Baugh, making the race especially tight.

Democrats now hold a 220-212 edge over Republicans in the U.S. House, with three vacancies. To have a majority requires 218 seats.

Ferreting out wavering voters and getting them to the polls “wins elections, and if we don’t turn out enough voters, we risk losing this seat,” Miguel Lopez, a campaign staffer for Rep. Julia Brownley, another endangered Democrat in a district northwest of Los Angeles, wrote in an email.

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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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A special civil jury in Northern California found a former longtime sheriff guilty on all six counts of corruption and willful misconduct in a case involving the issuing of concealed-carry weapons permits in exchange for campaign donations.

Laurie Smith resigned from her post as sheriff of the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Office on Monday when the jury was already deliberating. Her attorney filed a motion to dismiss the case but the judge denied it.

Smith had been sheriff of Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, since 1998 when she became the first woman elected sheriff in California.

After the verdict was read, Smith wiped away tears, the Mercury News reported. Neither Smith nor her attorney Allen Ruby offered any comment outside the courtroom in San Jose. San Francisco assistant district attorney Gabriel Markoff, who prosecuted the case, also declined to comment, the newspaper reported.

A guilty verdict on just one count would have led to Smith’s removal from office but since she stepped down it is unclear what legal impact the guilty verdict could have. Smith will return to court on Nov. 16, when San Mateo County superior court judge is likely to issue the formal removal order for Smith, the newspaper reported.

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen praised Thursday’s verdict.

“We’re gratified that the jury considered the evidence from our comprehensive and detailed investigation and found all the allegations against the sheriff to be true,” he told the newspaper. “I want to emphasize this is a very sad day when a law-enforcement leader has been found to have committed terrible misconduct.”

Rosen said it’s still possible that Smith could face criminal charges.

The civil case against Smith started last year when the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a vote of no-confidence in Smith and requested outside investigations by the attorney general as well as the county civil grand jury.

In December, the civil grand jury filed a Superior Court complaint that accused Smith of six counts of “willful and corrupt misconduct.” The jury found her guilty on all counts.

The first count accused her of “implementing policy or practice” of granting licenses to carry concealed firearms on the basis of whether an applicant was a campaign donor, a member of a sheriff’s advisory board nonprofit organization, a prominent individual in the community or was associated with prominent individuals, corporations or “otherwise had a personal connection” to the sheriff.

The grand jury alleged that Smith failed to make individual good-cause determinations of the basis for concealed-carry permit applications by people who were not VIPs, keeping them pending indefinitely.

At the time of the Board of Supervisors’ no-confidence vote, they expressed concern about a pattern of conduct in the jails.

In another count, the grand jury alleged Smith committed “willful misconduct” by failing to provide information to the county Office of Correction and Law Enforcement. That office was seeking information involving an internal affairs probe of a 2018 incident in which a mentally ill man inflicted serious injuries on himself while inside a jail transport van, leading to a $10 million settlement with his family.

In 2015, a county inmate was beaten to death by three jail guards, and another inmate died after guards shot him with a riot gun at close range. Both inmates had a mental illness.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hit the campaign trail in New York City on Thursday night for Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat facing an unexpectedly competitive election.

That Democrats are playing defense and scrambling to shore up an incumbent even in a blue state like New York is a drastic marker of the party’s growing fears that next week’s midterm elections may deliver a wave of Republican victories around the country.

New York has more than twice as many registered Democrats than Republicans and has not voted for a Republican governor since George Pataki won a third term in 2002. But Democrats are facing national headwinds in this year’s midterm elections as the party in power, which typically bears the brunt of voter frustrations.

This year, those frustrations include stubborn inflation and a shaky economy, but in New York, Republican U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin has channeled fears over rising crime to open up a potential path to victory.

To boost voter turnout and generate enthusiasm, Thursday’s event at the all-female Barnard College was billed as a “Women’s Rally” and focused heavily on the history Hochul could make next week if she wins, becoming the first woman to be elected New York governor. Hochul became the first woman to serve as the state’s governor in August 2021, when she took over after Andrew Cuomo resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.

Zeldin, who has represented Long Island in Congress since 2015, is an ally of former President Donald Trump and objected to the 2020 election results after Trump made false claims of election fraud. That alliance, along with his opposition to abortion, was expected to leave Zeldin facing a very unlikely path to the governor’s mansion. But amid a string of high-profile violent incidents, Zeldin’s focus on crime appeared to be resonating in the final weeks.

Hochul — bookended by speeches from Harris, the first woman to be elected to the country’s second-highest office, and Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be a major party’s presidential nominee and New York’s first female senator — invoked the launch of the women’s suffrage movement in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848.

“To all of you but particularly to the women of New York, this is our moment,” Hochul said Thursday.

“As the governor said, you witnessed a lot of history on the stage this afternoon,” Harris said. She added, “We may be the first, but we are committed to not being the last.”

Hochul, Harris and Clinton all cast the governor as a defender of abortion rights, reviving a message that was initially expected to fire up Democratic voters this year and solidify candidates like Hochul after the U.S. Supreme Court decision this summer ended the national right to an abortion.

“Of course they want to turn back the clock on abortion. They spent 50 years trying to make that happen,” Clinton said of Republicans. “They are determined to exercise control over who are, how we feel and believe and act in ways that I thought we had long left behind.”

Hochul poked at Zeldin’s comments this summer when he said, the day after the court ruling, that “the law in New York was exactly the same as it was the day before. Nothing changed, and I’m not going to change it.”

“You know why nothing changed in the state of New York? Because I’m the governor,” Hochul said to cheers Thursday.

She is expected to hold rallies this weekend in Brooklyn with former President Bill Clinton, who lives with his wife in New York, and in Manhattan with Bravo talk-show host Andy Cohen.

Republicans, seizing on Zeldin’s momentum, have sent their own political stars, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Glenn Youngkin, to the state in recent days to energize GOP voters sensing a rare opportunity to lead the state. Zeldin was holding a rally of his own Thursday near Albany with U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican.

Zeldin has repeatedly held news conferences in liberal New York City to decry violent crimes, including incidents on the subways, and to blame Hochul and Democrats. He’s downplayed his ties to Trump, appearing with the former president at a closed-door campaign fundraiser but not at any public rallies, as candidates elsewhere have done.

At a news conference Wednesday, Zeldin said he understands Democrats are shocked that he has made the race competitive, especially by repeatedly showing up in their stronghold, but he said Hochul missed an opportunity to be tough on crime as soon as she took over.

“She made decisions that have alienated a lot of New Yorkers, and even if they’re Democrats, they’re supporting us,” he said. “And as a consequence we are going to do well in New York City compared to Republican candidates in the past.”

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BOSTON (AP) — Top U.S. election security officials say protecting the nation’s voting systems has become increasingly challenging.

That’s due mostly to the embrace by millions of Americans of unfounded conspiracy theories and false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential race.

With the midterm elections just days away , the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, and other officials say they have no evidence that election infrastructure has been altered by hostile actors to prevent voting or vote counting, compromise ballots or affect voter registration accuracy.

But they’re not lowering their guard. Disinformation is rampant. Foreign rivals are capable of potent cyber mischief. And the insider threat is considered greater than ever. On top of the physical threats and intimidation of elections officials — which is authorities’ overriding concern — security experts are particularly worried about tampering by those who work in local election offices or at polling stations.

“The current election threat environment is more complex than it has ever been,” Easterly told reporters in mid-October.

Global rivals also are expected to deepen longstanding disinformation efforts. The tense geopolitical moment means Russia, Iran and China may have fewer qualms about trying to disrupt the conduct of elections in key battlegrounds with cyber operations.

The spectrum of potential threats is wide: foreign ransomware gangs friendly with the Kremlin, conspiracy-obsessed local election officials, hostile voters bent on sabotage or political provocateurs trying to suppress the vote with dirty tricks or misinformation.

Here are some of the potential threats agencies are assessing through Election Day:

THREATS FROM WITHIN

Insider threats are a growing concern and could undermine serious strides made to secure voting systems — including migrating to hand-marked paper ballots and introducing reliable audits — since they were declared critical national infrastructure in January 2017.

Rogue election officials could provide access to voting systems to unauthorized individuals, as happened in Colorado and Georgia. Poll workers or even voters could try to access voter registration databases or equipment, or plant malware to taint election management systems.

Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert with the nonprofit OSET Institute, calls the repeated efforts to cast doubt on the integrity of voting equipment an element of a more broad “manufactured chaos” — intentional subversion of the nation’s elections to sow doubt.

Perez is among specialists who think attempts to discredit voting technology are one manifestation of efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to undermine trust in election results so Republican-controlled state legislatures — rather than voters — can decide the outcome of future races.

To counter the threats from insiders, federal authorities have conducted trainings and encouraged election officials to focus on limiting access to critical equipment, adding video surveillance and key cards on doors. They also encourage strict chain-of-custody rules for everything from ballots to voting scanners and tabulators.

Threats to public officials and election disruption attempts haver occurred with increasing frequency and intensity, federal and local law enforcement officials say. They are especially concerned about physical violence by protesters in highly contested districts during the post-election vote-counting process.

THREATS FROM ABROAD

U.S. officials have issued two main election-security advisories in the run-up to the Nov . 8 elections. They say malicious cyberactivity is unlikely to seriously disrupt or prevent voting and that hostile foreign states are apt to try to influence outcomes with “information operations.”

Foreign meddlers could launch cyberattacks or exaggerate the effects of relatively ineffectual attacks. They could spread misinformation about voting or voter fraud, try to incite violence or, if violence is already happening, fan the flames.

Hostile foreign bids to undermine U.S. democracy have risen since the Russian operation that hacked and then leaked Democratic emails to aid Trump in the 2016 presidential race. None have had anywhere near the impact, though.

Rivals constantly probe U.S. networks for vulnerabilities. Moscow may seek payback for Washington’s arming of Ukraine against its invasion. Iran resents U.S. support for anti-regime demonstrations triggered by the death in police custody of a young woman who defied head-scarf orthodoxy. As for China, relations are tense as Washington tries to throttle high-tech supplies to Beijing over its perceived hostility and growing authoritarianism.

There’s also the possibility that foreign actors might have breached election systems long ago and are waiting to pounce.

ATTACKS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARIES

On Election Day, hostile foreign powers or sympathetic hackers could mount what are known as denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which render websites unreachable by flooding them with junk data. Targeting state and local government websites, such attacks could prevent voters from looking up registration information or polling locations, or knock offline sites that report election results after voting ends.

One group on the radar of the U.S. cybersecurity agency is Killnet, pro-Russia hackers who made a ruckus in October by organizing DDoS attacks on U.S. airport and state government websites.

Such attacks are mostly a nuisance and don’t destroy data or even breach sites. But they can frustrate voters and election poll workers, and become powerful grist for disinformation offensives. For example, Russian state media and fake news mills could amplify exaggerated claims of disruption, as occurred with the Killnet effort against the airport and government sites.

Another potential threat are Russian-speaking ransomware gangs that operate with little Kremlin interference. They have largely spared U.S. election infrastructure, which by now tends to be a lot better protected than many of the hospitals, schools and businesses they routinely plague.

Hack-and-leak operations also are possible. Sensitive data could be stolen from election or campaign websites, partially falsified and released online.

Cybersecurity firm Trellix reported a spike in phishing emails targeting county election workers in Pennsylvania and Arizona, both battleground states, over the summer seeking to harvest passwords and potentially interfere with the administration of absentee ballots.

“In many cases, the threat actors attempting to breach our election systems are the same ones who are conducting influence operations that seek to sow discord,” Easterly, the CISA director, said in mid-October.

That could include the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, a key player in the 2016 Russia destabilization campaign that favored Trump and sought to widen social divisions in the U.S. The group sought to manipulate public opinion by gaming social media platforms, including by purchasing online ads.

In a pre-election report, the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said it was “almost certain” that networks associated with the group “are engaging in covert malign influence on a subset of the U.S. population.”

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Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. And check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections.

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TONKA BAY, Minn. (AP) — As Andrew Myers knocked on doors in a neighborhood with stunning views across Lake Minnetonka, the Republican state House hopeful got an earful from residents worried about crime in their far west Minneapolis suburb: a woman’s body had washed up on shore a few doors down earlier in the week, and authorities hadn’t said if it was foul play. Another family recently had their car stolen — something else that never happens in Tonka Bay.

“Public safety for sure. Taxes,” resident Scott Musjerd said, as he promised Myers his support in a district that has swung between Republicans and Democrats in recent elections.

Control of state government hangs in the balance in Minnesota — one of only three states, in addition to Alaska and Virginia, where legislative control is divided. It’s also one of the few Midwest states where Democrats have had the upper hand in recent years. Buoyed by such issues as crime, and a midterm election that typically favors the party out of the White House, the GOP has hopes of capturing both chambers of the Legislature and knocking off Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

A red wave here could mean rapid change in major policy areas such as abortion, taxes and the environment after years of shared party control — and could raise Minnesota’s importance as the western edge of northern presidential battleground states that include Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“It’s one of those elections where it’s going to be very close, and a small margin of victory in the election could produce enormous policy changes depending on the outcome,” University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs said. “The parties have dramatically different agendas, and there’s surprisingly little overlap.”

Republican rule in Minnesota would likely mean permanent tax cuts and less spending on education and health and human services. Lawmakers who’ve built their careers on opposition to abortion are bound to test how far they can go in seeking new restrictions despite a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that the state constitution protects abortion rights.

Requiring citizens to show photo ID at the polls – which voters rejected in 2012 – and other moves to make voting harder could be back on the agenda. GOP lawmakers likely would seek to remove obstacles to copper and nickel mining that environmentalists say threatens pristine watersheds in northern Minnesota. They may propose restrictions on bathrooms and athletics for transgender students. Vouchers to subsidize private school tuition could be on the agenda. And penalties for crime could ratchet up.

The split control in the Legislature — Democrats controlling the House and Republicans the Senate — has been a recipe for gridlock on major policy, including this year, when the parties adjourned the legislative session without agreeing on how to use most of a $9.25 billion budget surplus. The only time Minnesota saw single-party control in the past 30 years is when Democrats held full power in 2013-14.

Republicans need to hold their narrow Senate majority and pick up four seats to take the House. Millions of dollars have been pouring into the roughly two dozen seats considered competitive, with GOP candidates focusing on crime and inflation. Democrats, meanwhile, see protecting abortion rights as the key to victory in the crucial suburbs.

David Schultz, a political scientist at Hamline University, said a GOP takeover would include many new conservative members eager to see state government take a sharp turn to the right.

“I think it’s going to be impossible to contain the pressure,” Schultz said.

The two parties have typically vied in the Minneapolis and St. Paul suburbs. But House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt said the GOP might find its majority by flipping six seats in northern Minnesota, mostly on the Iron Range, which has slipped away from Democrats in recent years mostly due to fights over mining. Approval of one copper-nickel mine has long been stalled in the legal and regulatory process, while the Obama and Biden administrations have tried to kill another project altogether. Blue-collar workers on the Range blame liberal environmentalists in the cities.

“Once we win those seats, they won’t flip back,” Daudt said.

Andrea Zupancich, mayor of the Iron Range mining town of Babbitt, is a prime example of the region’s rightward drift.

Zupancich was one of six Democratic mayors on the Range who endorsed Donald Trump in 2020, saying their party had moved too far left. Now she’s a Republican candidate for the Senate — hoping to replace a retiring independent who was a longtime Democrat until he left the party in 2020 for the same reason.

House Speaker Melissa Hortman said Democrats will keep their majority on the strength of redistricting that put more seats in the party’s urban and suburban strongholds. She’s also counting on anger over the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.

“The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that women would lose their right to the reproductive health care they need, including abortion care, if Republicans take control,” Hortman said. “The rest of us are not fooled.”

In Tonka Bay, Myers is making his second attempt to break through in one of Minnesota’s most affluent districts, which mixes luxury homes on the shores of Lake Minnetonka with middle-class homes set back from the big lake. The Democrat who beat him by just 313 votes in 2020 is now running for state Senate, and it remains a competitive district.

As he went through a lakeside neighborhood last week, Myers — who chairs the city’s parks and docks commission and has served on other local government bodies — played up that experience.

Joe Galler told Myers that his property taxes had gone up 41% in the last year, and that not only could Myers count on his vote, but the votes of at least two close neighbors. But when Myers came across five people pulling a boat out of the water for the season, he heard skepticism that the state can do much against big national problems like inflation, and he heard dismay with current trends in politics.

“The extremist stuff, it has to stop,” Bill Scheurer said. On that point, Myers concurred: “100% agree with you,” he said.

In the northern suburb of Blaine, Democrat Matt Norris has been door-knocking for over a year to unseat GOP Rep. Donald Raleigh in a district that became friendly for Democrats after redistricting. Norris was out last week for a repeat visit to an upper middle-class, diverse neighborhood where nearly all the houses had video doorbells and few voters answered.

Norris won commitments from most who did. One resident, Howard Bureau, was a tougher sell.

Bureau peppered him with questions on education and public safety that suggested he was conservative, though he never said so. But like several voters, his big question was about what Norris would do to fix a congested and often dangerous stretch of a main highway through Blaine. That gave Norris a chance to talk about bills he already helped pass as a private citizen. His work with youth development nonprofits often overlaps into the public policy sphere.

“I don’t know if we’re going to win him, but we at least left him thinking,” Norris said.

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Election misinformation is thriving on Rumble, a video sharing platform popular with some conservatives and far-right groups, according to research published Thursday.

Nearly half of the videos suggested by the site in response to searches for common election-related terms came from untrustworthy sources, according to the analysis from NewsGuard, a firm that monitors online misinformation.

The percentage was far better at Rumble’s much larger rival YouTube, where about 1 in 5 videos came from untrustworthy sources. The search terms included the names of candidates as well as politically sensitive words and phrases such as gun rights, voter fraud and abortion.

The findings illustrate how alternative platforms like Rumble have become hot spots for election-related misinformation as they have increased in popularity. The site is popular with conservatives and some far-right groups critical of content moderation efforts by larger platforms such as YouTube.

Misleading or deceptive claims about voting and elections have proliferated in heading into next week’s elections and have been blamed for increasing distrust and polarization.

Some of the videos reviewed by NewsGuard’s researchers in October included online shows featuring allies of former President Donald Trump such as Steve Bannon and conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones. Many videos contained debunked claims about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the QAnon conspiracy theory, as well as misinformation about voting and the elections.

“Rumble frequently pushes videos from untrustworthy sources that traffic in election misinformation,” NewsGuard’s report found.

The researchers used a number of factors, including the use of deceptive headlines or a history of publishing false content, to determine which sites were untrustworthy.

Messages left with Rumble were not immediately returned Wednesday and Thursday. According to a mission statement on the platform’s website, Rumble aims “to restore the internet to its roots by making it free and open once again.”

Rumble said in September it now has 78 million active monthly users around the world, with 63 million in the United States and Canada. The site boasts a long list of podcasts helmed by prominent conservatives such as Don Bongino and Bannon, whose videos have millions of subscribers on Rumble.

The Florida-based platform’s growth has come from users interested in news and politics, as well as younger users in the 18-24 age group, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said in September.

Bannon’s show was among the top results when researchers ran a search on the term “voter fraud.” A longtime Trump ally, Bannon was kicked off YouTube last year for repeatedly violating its rules; he was banned from Twitter after calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, to be beheaded.

A spokesman for Bannon told the AP on Thursday that Bannon’s comment was metaphorical and that he didn’t intend it to be taken literally.

Together, the the misinformation-laden videos turned up by researchers at NewsGuard had been viewed nearly 9 million times so far.

YouTube has been criticized for not doing enough to tackle misinformation on its platform. But the NewsGuard report shows the platform’s efforts are making a difference. Researchers said that in addition to suggesting fewer videos containing misinformation, YouTube did not recommend any videos supporting QAnon.

Nevertheless, a report released this fall by New York University faulted Meta, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube for amplifying Trump’s false statements about the 2020 election. The study cited inconsistent rules regarding misinformation as well as poor enforcement.

In a statement emailed to the AP, YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said the platform, which is owned by Google, has invested in efforts to identify misinformation and limit its spread. The most visited channels and videos about the election all rely on trustworthy, authoritative sources, she added.

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