Politics

MOREHEAD, Ky. (AP) — Charles Booker’s political stock rose in Democratic circles two years ago as he voiced outrage over the deaths of Black Americans in encounters with police, including in his hometown in Kentucky.

That climb out of obscurity has given the Black former state lawmaker from Louisville a springboard to challenge Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a nationally known former presidential candidate who is seeking a third term in ruby red Kentucky.

Seeking wider appeal beyond core Democratic voters in a conservative state, Booker has now jumped into the fray on abortion access in the Bluegrass State after the demise of Roe v. Wade. The issue is at the forefront of Kentucky’s Nov. 8 election, when voters will decide whether to amend the state’s constitution to declare outright that it doesn’t protect the right to an abortion. Abortion-rights supporters hope to build a majority coalition against the amendment that includes independents and moderates from both major parties.

In campaigning, Booker is showing the same zeal for abortion rights that he did for social and economic justice issues in 2020, when he barely lost his party’s Senate primary — a surprisingly strong showing and launchpad for securing the Democratic nomination this year.

And he’s using the issue to challenge Paul’s deeply rooted national reputation as a champion of keeping government out of people’s lives, even as the senator has vowed to support legislation toward ending legal abortion.

“I know how deeply personal this is,” said Booker, who was raised in a Pentecostal church, while campaigning in Morehead during a statewide bus tour. “And I’m not here to tell somebody that they’re wrong for their personal belief. That’s not my place. What I am saying … is the government should not be in the business of forcing personal beliefs on others.

“I’m running against someone who calls himself a libertarian,” he added. “It is really just ridiculous.”

Paul takes a staunchly anti-abortion stand, stating life begins at conception and that government has a duty to protect the unborn. He says the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June was a “monumental step,” empowering state legislatures to determine abortion policy.

In Kentucky, abortions are on pause — except to save a pregnant woman’s life or to prevent disabling injury. The near-total ban is being challenged in the state’s Supreme Court.

Booker said Republican lawmakers “overplayed their hand” by putting the measure on the ballot and backs President Joe Biden’s push for legislation to write abortion protections into law.

“I’m asking you, send me to Washington,” Booker said at another recent rally. “Let me be the vote to codify your right to privacy, your ability to make decisions over your body.”

Republicans scoff at Booker’s use of abortion as a rallying cry for his underfunded campaign.

“That’s his strategy? Interesting,” said Kentucky Republican Party spokesman Sean Southard. “I haven’t seen him doing anything in the way of campaign spending. Did he finally decide to run a TV ad?”

Paul has generally overlooked his challenger, at least publicly, but he has tried putting Booker on the defensive on the crime issue — a common GOP campaign theme this fall. Booker hasn’t had the money to mount much of a TV ad campaign. It’s one of many obstacles for Booker in trying to break through in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992.

Booker is the first Black major party nominee for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky. He campaigns as a political outsider with a message intended for broad appeal.

“Our obstacle is us believing that we can do it,” Booker said. “Sure it can be hard to imagine that something could be different, that things could change. Well, I am not a typical politician and I’m telling you that we are the change.”

Booker’s touting of racial and economic justice themes in 2020 coincided with protests that erupted in Louisville and elsewhere over the deaths of Breonna Taylor in his hometown and other Black Americans elsewhere in encounters with police.

Booker, who grew up poor in a west Louisville neighborhood, supports universal health care through Medicare for All, anti-poverty programs and criminal justice changes. Under the slogan “from the hood to the holler,” he claims a kinship with poor rural whites facing similar economic struggles.

Republicans have portrayed Booker as a “proud socialist” out of step with Kentucky voters. Paul, an ardent free-market advocate, rails against socialism, saying “nothing in life is really free.”

“Expanding Medicare beyond its current mission of seniors 65 and older threatens to speed up Medicare’s insolvency and would hasten the day Medicare no longer has enough money to provide health care for seniors,” said Jake Cox, a spokesman for Paul’s campaign.

Paul rode a 2010 tea party wave to his first Senate election and ran for president in 2016, seeing his effort to grab the outsider’s mantle eclipsed by Donald Trump.

Booker’s supporters at his rally in Morehead, an eastern Kentucky college town, said he offers an inclusive agenda for a state struggling with pockets of deep-rooted poverty.

“It’s clear that he wants to make a difference and help everyone, and that’s not something we’ve seen in the past,” Connie Kibbey said while waiting for Booker’s arrival at a Morehead bookstore.

Ann Colbert, a retired physician from Morehead, said she likes Booker’s stands so much — especially his support for Medicare for All — that she helped circulate Booker yard signs locally.

“I think it’s really the only way to care for people in an equitable manner,” Colbert said.

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DENVER (AP) — Fresh off his third tour of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jason Lopez awoke in crisis from an alcohol-induced nap during a family gathering in Colorado in 2014. The Army Special Forces soldier, thinking he was once again in battle, grabbed the heavy coffee table in front of him and threw it across the living room.

“(I was) coming out of an intense panic situation, thinking I was in, literally, hand-to-hand combat and not knowing whether I was dreaming or what was reality,” recalled Lopez, now 34 and out of the military.

Recognizing he was experiencing symptoms of PTSD, Lopez dismissed taking strong synthetic drugs he says are often prescribed by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Instead, he turned to what he had dabbled with for much of his life: psychedelic mushrooms.

Lopez is among a group of veterans, natural medicine proponents, mental health advocates and entrepreneurs backing a ballot initiative in Colorado this November that would decriminalize so-called “magic mushrooms” for those 21 and older and create state-regulated “healing centers” where participants can experience the drug under the supervision of a licensed “facilitator.” Military veterans like Lopez have been at the forefront nationally of trying to persuade lawmakers to study psychedelic mushrooms for therapeutic use.

If the initiative passes, Colorado would join Oregon in establishing a regulated system for substances like psilocybin and psilocin, the hallucinogenic chemicals found in some mushrooms. After June 1, 2026, Colorado would allow an advisory board to add other plant-based psychedelic drugs to the program, including dimethyltryptamine, commonly known as DMT, ibogaine and mescaline not derived from peyote, a type of cactus that some conservation groups are trying to protect.

The ballot initiative comes a decade after Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana, which led to a multi-billion-dollar industry with hundreds of dispensaries popping up across the state.

Proponents argue that jailing people for the non-violent offense of using naturally occurring substances costs taxpayers money. They also say the state’s current approach to mental health has failed and that naturally occurring psychedelics, which have been used for hundreds of years, can treat depression, anxiety, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions.

“When I’m on psychedelics, for example, like mushrooms or psilocybin, it opens my eyes to the beauty of the world, the love that I have for the world. … All of that anger, or being upset or frustrated … it dissolves. It melts away,” said Lopez, who also took part in the successful campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Colorado.

But critics of the latest ballot initiative note that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved the psychedelics as medicine. They also argue that allowing “healing centers” to operate, as well as allowing private personal use of the drugs, would jeopardize public safety and send the wrong message to kids and adults alike that the substances are healthy.

“I am going to take medical advice from doctors and scientists over entrepreneurs any day of the week,” said Luke Niforatos, the head of the ballot committee, Protect Colorado’s Kids, which opposes drug legalization and decriminalization efforts. “We should listen to the American Psychiatric Association. We should listen to the FDA. We should listen to our doctors. We should not be listening to people with a profit incentive.”

Niforatos said the same deep-pocketed players who have pushed for legalizing recreational marijuana in various states are behind the latest initiative and are using a “drug legalization playbook” to create a commercial market that could eventually lead to recreational dispensaries for dangerous and federally illegal substances.

Natural Medicine Colorado, the group behind the initiative, has raised about $5.4 million. About three-quarters of that — $4.2 million — has come from New Approach PAC, a national drug policy group that also is financing marijuana measures in some other states.

“They started with medical marijuana and then went to recreational marijuana. Now they’re starting with medical psychedelics. We can only assume that they’ll go to recreational psychedelics from here,” said Niforatos, whose group has raised about $50,000. He warned that the use of the drugs could cause prolonged psychosis, persistent hallucinogenic disorders and lead to impaired driving.

Mason Tvert, who spearheaded the campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in Colorado in 2012, said the push to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms and other natural substances differs from the recreational marijuana campaign because, this time, voters are not being asked to allow dispensaries.

“We’re voting on whether to allow (psilocybin) in very limited environments involving a great deal of control and safety and professionals,” said Tvert, a partner a VS Strategies, a Denver-based drug policy and public affairs consulting firm.

The psychedelics that would be decriminalized if the initiative passes are listed as schedule 1 controlled substances under state and federal law and are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

Even so, the FDA has designated psilocybin a “breakthrough therapy” to treat major depressive disorder. The designation can expedite research, development and review of a drug if it might offer substantial improvements over existing treatments.

A preliminary study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine also found that psilocybin may ease depression in some hard-to-treat patients. The modest effects waned over time, but they helped people who previously had gotten little relief from standard antidepressants.

Colorado’s ballot initiative would allow those 21 and older to use, grow, possess and share the psychedelic substances but not sell them for personal use. It also would allow people who have been convicted of offenses involving the substances to have their criminal records sealed.

Those who want to use mushrooms would not need approval from a doctor. In addition to being able to grow and use their own mushrooms, those who want to try the therapy could do so through the newly formed “healing centers,” which would be allowed to supply clients with mushrooms but not sell them. Instead, clients would pay for the services of the “facilitator” at the center.

In 2020, Oregon became the first state in the nation to legalize the therapeutic, supervised use of psilocybin after 56% of voters approved Ballot Measure 109. But unlike Colorado, the state allows counties to opt out of the program if their constituents vote to do so.

In Colorado, counties and municipalities would be able to regulate “healing centers” but not ban them.

Oregon’s initiative is expected to take effect at the beginning of next year, and if passed, Colorado would start outlining regulations no later than the beginning of 2024.

Washington, D.C., and Denver have already partially decriminalized psychedelic mushrooms by requiring law enforcement officers to treat them as their lowest priority. Outside of certain scientific research contexts, the substances would remain illegal under federal law even if Colorado’s initiative passes.

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DAWSON, Ga. (AP) — Someone like Erika Hardwick has come to the door of millions of Georgia voters.

A paid canvasser for the New Georgia Project Action Fund, Hardwick was working the southwest Georgia town of Dawson on a warm October afternoon. She was trying to motivate people in the town 135 miles (215 kilometers) south of Atlanta to cast ballots on or before Tuesday.

Hardwick is part of an intensifying effort to contact voters in Georgia, where narrow electoral margins have led political parties and other groups to pour in resources, knowing that driving a few more voters to the polls could make a difference.

Although campaigns spend millions on television and social media ads, research has found that face-to-face contact is more effective in pushing marginal voters to the polls. Democrats are also expanding “relational organizing,” paying people to call or text their friends and acquaintances to urge them to vote.

Those efforts may be bearing fruit in Georgia’s big early voting turnout. More than 2 million people had cast early ballots by mail or in person by the end of the day Wednesday, far ahead of the turnout pace of 2018. New Georgia Project’s figures show people it has contacted face-to-face have been three times as likely to vote early so far this year compared with similar people who have had no contact.

Hardwick used to work at a big hotel in Atlanta, but when the COVID-19 pandemic tanked that business, she moved home to southwest Georgia. Now, in addition to taking college classes and selling cosmetics, she gets paid to get out the vote.

Working off a list on her cellphone, Hardwick cruised up and down blocks in the Black section of Dawson, jumping out of her car when she reached addresses on her list. At most houses, no one answered, and Hardwick left a brochure. Others were home, giving Hardwick a chance to ask people about their plan to vote, about the most important issues in their lives and about who they planned to vote for in Georgia’s pivotal races for governor and senator.

The New Georgia Project, founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams, has devoted itself to bringing voters to the polls who represent a rapidly diversifying Georgia — Black, Latino, Asian and younger voters. New Georgia Project and its associated action fund don’t endorse candidates but push progressive policies broadly in line with Democrats. Abrams, challenging incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp this year after narrowly losing to him in 2018, is no longer associated with the group.

Hardwick’s list avoided surefire voters, instead aiming to contact what some might call infrequent voters. The New Georgia Project instead calls them “high opportunity voters.” The group says it has reached 1.9 million people so far.

Patricia Lee, for example, was undecided about her vote and doubted it would do much good.

“They aren’t going to do what they say they’re going to do,” Lee said.

Earnestine Harvey said she would vote for “Abrams all day,” but didn’t know anything about the Senate contest between incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

“Child, I don’t even know who’s running for senator,” Harvey told Hardwick.

Plenty of others — including the Democratic and Republican parties, campaigns and other third-party groups — are swarming the doors of Georgia’s 7 million registered voters.

Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams’ campaign manager, said Monday that the Abrams campaign has cut television advertising in favor of get-out-the-vote operations aimed at targeted voters.

“We’re firing on all cylinders on our GOTV operation. We are outspending and outmaneuvering Kemp on radio, on digital and on field,” Groh-Wargo said. “And so yes, we are reducing our TV spend.”

Republicans have intensified efforts after barely winning in 2018 and then losing the presidential race in 2020 and two U.S. Senate runoffs in 2021. The Republican National Committee has more than 85 staffers working turnout operations in Georgia, spokesperson Garrison Douglas said, more than five times as many as in 2018. Republicans say they have had more than 4.5 million voter contacts, although some voters have been reached more than once.

“We have to work harder than we ever have before,” Kemp said of his campaign’s turnout push Tuesday after a rally with former Vice President Mike Pence. “We lost, I think, the 2020 race because we didn’t have a good ground game in the state. And we have one now, but we’re not finished with that.”

Beyond parties and candidates, there’s a constellation of liberal-leaning groups aimed at Asian, Latino and Black voters, as well as people motivated by issues such as abortion or health care.

Fewer such groups had existed on the Republican side, but former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler has founded Greater Georgia and affiliated groups aimed at motivating conservatives. That includes some typically Republican voters who didn’t vote in the 2021 Senate runoff that Loeffler lost to Warnock after President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Georgia’s elections were rigged and stolen. Greater Georgia has been making special efforts to persuade those 340,000 people that their votes will be counted.

For Democrats and progressive groups, much effort has gone into trying to improve turnout in rural parts of the state with large Black populations. Some of those counties have historically had lower turnout rates, with Democrats doing more poorly than the number of Black residents suggests they should.

Democrats usually win Dawson and surrounding Terrell County, which civil rights workers dubbed “Terrible Terrell” for its resistance to integration in the 1960s. But Democratic vote shares hover below 55% in a 9,100-resident county that’s 60% Black overall.

“Especially in the Black community, I’ve seen a lot of them think their vote doesn’t count, their vote doesn’t matter,” Hardwick said.

But Hardwick was undeterred. She was moving on, trying to talk to a few more voters before the sun went down.

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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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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence stumped in North Carolina on Wednesday in the final days before the midterm elections with U.S. Senate candidate Ted Budd, calling him one of the “strongest conservative voices” in the House, where he’s served for the past six years.

“I’m here to say just one thing and one thing only, and that is that North Carolina and America need Ted Budd in the United States Senate,” Pence said after he and Budd answered questions on the economy and education from state GOP chairman Michael Whatley before a few dozen Republican activists.

Earlier Pence attended a luncheon fundraiser for the Senate candidate, who is in a highly competitive race with Democratic rival Cheri Beasley. The race is one of several that could determine whether Democrats hold onto power in the narrowly divided Senate.

Pence became a leading target of former President Donald Trump’s ire after refusing to help him block certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s win while Pence served as the presiding officer of those formal proceedings on Jan. 6, 2021. The anger spilled over to Trump supporters, who considered him a turncoat.

Budd condemned the violence that prompted Pence and lawmakers to rush to safety that day. Still, he voted against certifying the election hours later. Months later, he called the insurrection a “bad day for America,” but also said it was “just patriots standing up.”

Pence has become increasingly in demand among Republican candidates in the midterms — an effort that is rebuilding his credentials within the GOP as he considers a 2024 presidential campaign. He’s been portrayed as someone who can help other Republican candidates win support beyond Trump’s voting base. Trump endorsed Budd for the Senate last year and has held two rallies this year to help his candidacy. Budd has said Biden is the elected president.

Pence called Budd a “man of integrity — his family, his faith, his commitment to conservative principles is known far beyond the state of North Carolina.”

Pence campaigned Tuesday with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who also refused to help the defeated president overturn the state’s results in 2020. And he recently campaigned for Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters, who embraced Trump and his false narrative about the last presidential election.

During her own campaign event in Raleigh on Wednesday, Beasley said Budd shares the same “extreme” views as Pence when it comes to prohibiting abortion.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, Beasley, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, has made protecting abortion rights a significant part of her platform.

Pence “recently said that he doesn’t want to just make abortion illegal. He wants to make it unthinkable,” Beasley said in a downtown park surrounded by several dozen supporters. “The only thing that’s unthinkable is electing Ted Budd, who wants to take away our rights.”

The question-and-answer session with Budd and Pence didn’t touch on abortion, focusing instead on criticizing the Biden administration for policies they said have contributed to high inflation and gas prices. “Everything they have done has driven this economy into a ditch,” Pence said. He and Budd didn’t address the media after their event at state GOP headquarters.

Members of Congress have campaigned in person with Beasley in recent weeks but not Biden, who has low approval ratings in the state. Former President Barack Obama last week endorsed Beasley, who would be the first Black U.S. senator for North Carolina if elected.

Budd has gotten in-person campaign support over the past week from U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

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Pointing in particular to the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, he said that Trump’s false claims about a stolen election have “fueled the dangerous rise of political violence and voter intimidation over the past two years.”

Six days before major midterm elections, Biden said, “As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America, for governor, for Congress, for attorney general, for secretary of state, who won’t commit to accepting the results of the elections they’re in.”

“That is the path to chaos in America.,” he declared. “t’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And, it is un-American.”

Emphasizing that it is the first federal election since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Trump’s attempts to overturn the will of voters in the 2020 presidential election, Biden called on voters to reject candidates who have denied the results of the vote — which even Trump’s administration declared to be free of any widespread fraud or interference.

Biden asked voters to “think long and hard about the moment we are in.”

“In a typical year, we are not often faced with the question of whether the vote we cast will preserve democracy or put it at risk,” he said. “But we are this year.”

Biden delivered his remarks from Washington’s Union Station, blocks from the U.S. Capitol, the White House said, just six days before polls close on Nov. 8 and as more than 27 million Americans have already cast their ballots.

“It’s from Capitol Hill, because that is where there was an attempt to subvert our democracy,” said White House senior adviser Anita Dunn told Axios, referencing to the Jan. 6 attack.

“The threat of political violence which most Americans find abhorrent, the idea that you would use violence to further your political means, it’s something that unites almost all Americans and that we can all be united against, and obviously, we’ve seen horrible things happen quite recently,” Dunn said.

Previewing Biden’s remarks, she said the Democratic president “will be very clear tonight that he is speaking to people who don’t agree with him on any issues, who don’t agree on his agenda, but who really can unite behind this idea of this fundamental value of democracy.”

“What we are seeing is an alarming number of Republican officials suggest they will not accept the results of this election,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

“This is not a regular moment in time,” she added. “He’s going to call it all out.”

Before Biden’s speech U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said he’s reviewed the attack on Pelosi’s husband and said he believes today’s political climate calls for more resources and better security for members of Congress after a massive increase in threats to lawmakers following Jan. 6. He also made a rare call to stop the rancorous conspiracies that have swirled around the attack.

“Our brave men and women are working around the clock to meet this urgent mission during this divisive time,” he said in a statement. “In the meantime, a significant change that will have an immediate impact will be for people across our country to lower the temperature on political rhetoric before it’s too late.”

“They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country,” Biden said then.

In contrast to the September remarks, which drew criticism from some corners for being paid for by taxpayers, Biden’s Wednesday night speech is being hosted by the Democratic National Committee.

“The president will address the threat of election deniers and those who seek to undermine faith in voting and democracy; and the stakes for our democracy in next week’s election,” the DNC said.

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PHOENIX (AP) — The elected leaders of an Arizona county who had considered following the lead of a rural county by expanding their hand-counts of ballots from next week’s election rejected the effort Wednesday.

The majority on the Pinal County board of supervisors said they saw no reason to doubt the current hand-count audits that verify machine tabulation results or expand them to include more precincts as one supervisor proposed.

That leaves rural Cochise County alone in the state in pursuing a full hand-tally of all their ballots, a move that is being challenged in court as illegal.

During Wednesday’s meeting of the all-Republican Pinal County board, Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh proposed doubling or tripling the number of precincts chosen for the post-election hand-count audit.

He pointed to the repeated and unfounded claims by former President Donald Trump about ballot tabulation machines that have fired up his supporters and also said that Hillary Clinton has made similar statements. The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee criticized that year’s election but conceded to Trump, publicly acknowledged his victory and attended his inauguration.

“But as the concerns have been brought to me, the question is, is the machine reliable?” Cavanaugh said. “Are the count of the ballots that come out of machine reliable?”

He asked the board to approve the expansion, to ensure the hand-count sample is large enough to get what he said would be a statistically reliable number of ballots.

The proposal found little support from the other four Republicans on the board, although they took public comment on the issue for more than an hour. Those comments were overwhelmingly against the proposal, even from a local county GOP party leader.

Kathy Nowak, who sits on the executive committee of the county Republican Party, said she’s been involved in the normal hand-count audits a half-dozen times and the tallies matched the machine count every time.

“It seems to me that we are very solid,” Nowak told the board. “I think (expanding the count) is absolutely ridiculous.”

But two local residents vehemently pushed for the higher hand-count number, including Daniel Wood, who argued that the vote tabulation machines the county uses are not legally certified.

“Over 200 years, we have had a hand-count in this nation of the people, for the people and by the people,” Woods, who said he was a combat veteran, told the board. “All of a sudden we use machines and it’s no longer legal. That’s horse crap.”

County Attorney Kent Volkmer debunked that argument at a recent board meeting, showing the federal certifications for the machines.

Others urged the board to flatly reject the expanded hand-count proposal, calling it a way for those who deny President Joe Biden’s victory to gin up controversy and saying it has nothing to do with election integrity.

“This is all about stirring the pot and sowing distrust in our system, often with wild-eyed conspiracy theories because of their candidate’s loss,” said Noel Reck, a Democrat from Casa Grande. “I urge the board not to validate or placate election-deniers and vote against this costly and unnecessary expanded hand-count.”

Board member Stephen Miller said he was confident in the county’s Recorder and election director and that the typical audits confirm the accuracy of the tabulation machines. He also said it is up to the Legislature to decide if the required hand-tally of ballots from 2% of the precincts on up to five races needed to be expanded.

“I think it’s been accurate enough, and I believe it’s going to be a fair election,” Miller said. “And I think that there’s no reason to go down this path of changing the rules, just before the election.”

The rejection of the expanded hand-count in Pinal County, a once-rural area just south of the Phoenix metro area that has seen an explosion of growth in the past decade, stood in stark contrast to the approach in southeast Arizona’s Cochise County.

There, the two Republicans on that three-member board last week pushed though a plan with backing from the GOP county Recorder to hand-count all early and Election Day ballots.

Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued an informal opinion last week saying hand-counting all the ballots to ensure they matched the machine tally was legal. His view goes against that of the secretary of state’s election director, who said in letters to the board that while Election Day ballots can all be hand-counted, that is illegal for early ballots, which make up more than 80% of Arizona votes.

The elected Republican county attorneys in both jurisdictions have warned their respective boards that there is no legal authority to expand a hand-count of ballots.

An independent group called the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans sued Cochise County and several of its officials on Monday to stop the expanded hand-count. A judge plans to hear arguments in the case on Friday.

A similar effort in Nye County, Nevada, was halted by that state’s Supreme Court last week, but officials there are vowing to restart the count as soon as possible.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — It was his last stop of the day on a West Coast swing, a backyard fundraiser at a TV producer’s home in Los Angeles, and President Joe Biden was telling the crowd how tough the past few years have been.

He ticked off challenges: Technology that’s made it easier to corrupt the truth. Russia and China’s efforts to upset the world order, surging inflation at home. The lingering pandemic. The after-effects of the Capitol riot. Election deniers and their impact on the upcoming nationwide voting.

Still, for all of that, Biden insisted, the nation’s best days lie ahead.

The upbeat heart of the president’s message is the same wherever he goes. In Detroit or Los Angeles. Syracuse, New York, or Hagerstown, Maryland. To throngs in an auditorium or a few dozen in a weathered union hall, the Democratic president declares he’s never felt more hopeful.

“I truly believe we’re just getting started,” he told a crowd in Florida on Tuesday. “I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today.”

Yet this refrain of Biden’s presidency — this promise that things will get better — is butting up against his own dire political projections: A Congress potentially controlled by what he’s labeled “ultra-MAGA” Republicans as he faces midterm elections that will define, and quite possibly stifle, the next two years of his term.

Biden always leans heavily on the positive. But he has to do so when many voters are feeling the pain of higher prices and harbor deep concerns about the fragility of democracy itself.

He is delivering his second speech on threats to the nation’s system of government in as many months Wednesday night, including the prospect of key races across the country being won by candidates he believes would upset voting procedures and confidence.

Presidents “almost have to will themselves into a sense of optimism. If they can’t project hope that we can surmount our difficulties, then they’re sunk and we are, too,” sad Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton who now runs a speechwriting and strategy firm in Washington.

And it’s anything but clear that Biden’s optimistic vision is breaking through. Just 25% of Americans said the country is headed in the right direction in an October AP-NORC survey.

Throughout history, leaders have tried to strike the right balance — leveling with people about the challenges at hand but also giving them cause to hope.

President Barack Obama tried during the 2010 midterm campaign when he was hopeful about the nascent economic recovery but mindful that so many voters were still hurting. His party saw a “shellacking” in the House.

Now, less than a week before Election Day, the nation is in an unprecedented, newly uncertain time, marked by the punishing pandemic economic fears, a mounting wave of hate crimes and political violence. Growing numbers question whether democracy can survive — and whether their leaders can meet the moment.

That’s a difficult line for any president to walk — too much Pollyanna talk can sound simply delusional.

“If you get carried away with it, as a politician or a president, you risk becoming detached from people’s actual experience,” Shesol said.

Biden’s upbeat message is ridiculed by Republicans, whose midterm pitch is tied to a picture of a nation beset by rising crime and inflation. Even a basic metric like last week’s report that the economy grew again after two quarters of contraction was subject to alternate interpretations: Biden said it was evidence the country’s recovery was continuing to “power forward;” Republican Rep. Kevin Brady dismissed it as fleeting “ghost growth.”

“Joe Biden is completely detached from reality,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said last month. “Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, they can’t afford rising gas and grocery prices, and real wages are down.”

Those who know Biden best insist he’s a realist: It’s not that he believes things are great all the time; it’s that he think there’s always room — and a path — to get better.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said Biden knows when to hold out hope and when to walk way. He gave the example of Biden’s billion-dollar infrastructure plan. The deal fell apart in spectacularly public fashion a few times, but Biden wouldn’t relent until it passed with bipartisan support. On other pieces of legislation, he has cut loose when it was clear he couldn’t strike a deal.

“It’s a terribly difficult balance, but I think he strikes it as well as anyone can,” Casey said.

The president’s outlook is shaped in part by personal tragedy: His first wife and young daughter died in a car crash in 1972 that also injured his two sons. Later, son Beau died of cancer at 45. There’s nothing anyone can say to him that’s worse than what he’s already experienced, friends and staff often say.

Add to that his long experience in government and “he’s not hit with surprises,” said Ted Kaufman, Biden’s longtime friend and a former Delaware senator. “He has the kind of force of his own personality, but it’s leavened by the facts on the ground.”

Despite Biden’s efforts to convince the nation of its best self, doubts course through the electorate, particularly about the future of U.S. democracy.

Only about half of Americans have confidence that votes in next week’s midterm elections will be counted accurately, according to AP-NORC polling. Just 9% of adults think democracy is working “extremely” or “very well,” while 52% say it’s not working well.

Support of false election claims runs deep among Republicans running for office. Nearly 1 in 3 of those seeking election to posts that play a role in overseeing, certifying or defending elections have supported overturning the results of the 2020 presidential race, according to an Associated Press review.

White House senior adviser Mike Donilon says Biden has “never underestimated the moment we’re in. But I think he has always believed that the overwhelming percentage of the country still holds what he believes to be the core values that have always defined America.”

The president, Donilon added, knows there’s push-pull between the country at its best and worst.

He added: “Part of moving the country forward to a better place is recognizing the reality you’re facing, making the case of what should be rejected, what the country can rally around, and creating a picture of where the country can be.”

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Associated Press Writer Chris Megerian 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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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers learned long ago to lean into his lack of charisma, and he was at it again in an appearance before the Milwaukee Rotary in the final weeks of the race. “I’m not the flashiest guy in the room,” Evers said, pivoting quickly to portray Republican Tim Michels as the opposite — a “radical” and “dangerous” force who could be a threat to democracy.

“Mr. Michels supports policies that, frankly, I don’t believe the people in Wisconsin support,” Evers, a Democrat, told the group’s members.

Michels’ own closing argument dismisses such concerns as he promises voters progress on economic issues, safer streets and better schools.

“From my very first day in office to my very last day in office … I am always going to be about the Wisconsin economy and the hardworking people in this state,” Michels said at a rally in Waukesha, the heart of the conservative Milwaukee suburbs.

As Evers and Michels near the end of a race polls show as about even, the stakes couldn’t be higher in swing-state Wisconsin, one of the nation’s few remaining presidential battlegrounds. Whoever wins will be in office for the 2024 election, with the power to certify the results of that race — or reshape the state’s election machinery ahead of it.

Evers certified President Joe Biden’s win; Michels, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has said that “maybe” the 2020 election was stolen, giving credence to baseless claims of election fraud. Michels has also been unclear about whether he would accept 2024 results, wants to do away with the state’s bipartisan elections commission and has promised to sign a raft of bills Evers vetoed that would make it more difficult to vote absentee.

Democrats said Michels provided evidence of his intentions this week when he said at a campaign rally, “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.” Michels’ spokesperson Brian Fraley said Michels merely meant Republicans would be rewarded for doing a good job.

Evers, the low-key 70-year-old who spent his career in education before knocking off then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2018, is counting on voters liking his approach and wanting to keep him as a check on the Republican Legislature, which has increasingly swerved to the right. He’s already vetoed more bills than any governor in modern state history.

Evers’ style makes him a difficult candidate to defeat, said Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff under Trump and a former Wisconsin GOP state chairman.

“Milquetoast is tougher to beat,” Priebus said. “Sort of do-nothing people who don’t have personalities are tougher to beat.”

Evers is hoping Biden’s low approval ratings do not weigh him down. Evers is trying to become the first governor in 32 years to win reelection who is the same party as the sitting president.

The 60-year-old Michels, whose last run for office was for U.S. Senate in 2004, has cast himself throughout the race as a political outsider. He touts his time in the U.S. Army and his background helping to run a family construction business, Michels Corp., that employs more than 8,000 people and made him a multimillionaire.

More money has been spent on television ads by Republican and Democratic groups in Wisconsin’s governor’s race than any other in the country, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign spending. Michels has largely self-financed his run, spending about $19 million through late October.

Evers has campaigned on his effort to “fix the damn roads,” improving access to rural broadband Internet services and signing a middle-class tax cut passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. He also reminded voters of near-record low unemployment throughout his term and federal COVID-19 relief money he’s passed along to small businesses and law enforcement.

He wants to send local governments and schools more money, plans that have been thwarted by the Republican-controlled Legislature in the past. Evers proposed sending voters a tax rebate earlier this year, spending down some of the state’s budget surplus, but Republicans blocked it.

Michels has spoken generally about “massive” tax reform, reducing crime, “reforming” education and “election integrity,” but is often short of details on what exactly he wants to do or how he plans to do it. He accuses Evers of failing to improve school performance, being soft on crime and not doing more to quell violent protests that erupted in Kenosha in 2020 after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man. Evers counters that he did all that was asked by local law enforcement.

Michels also faults Evers for not doing more to open the state during the COVID-19 pandemic. Evers says he was saving lives by following the recommendations of public health officials, doctors and scientists.

Michels has said he would sign all the Republican-backed bills that Evers vetoed, which includes measures expanding gun rights and cutting unemployment benefits. Michels wants to expand the taxpayer-funded private school voucher program, a move that former state schools chief Evers says would destroy public education, and says he’s open to breaking the Milwaukee school district into smaller ones.

Michels also said he’s open to lowering the state’s income tax to a nearly flat rate, a move that economists blasted as primarily benefiting the rich.

Michels has been at perhaps his most unclear when it comes to the one issue Evers hopes voters have on their minds when casting their ballots — abortion.

As he was straining to win his primary this summer, Michels repeatedly said the state’s 1849 near-total abortion ban was the “exact mirror” of his position. But he flipped in September, saying he would sign a bill with exceptions for rape and incest.

As political surrogates flood the state in the race’s closing days there have been two notable absences — Biden and Trump. Evers rarely talks about the president and Michels doesn’t mention Trump. Polls show both are unpopular in the state.

Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, and lost it in 2020, both times by a margin of less than a single point. Evers defeated Walker in 2018 by 29,227 votes — just a little more than 1 percentage point. A Marquette University Law School poll of 679 likely voters conducted Oct. 24 through Tuesday and released Wednesday showed the race between Evers and Michels to be a tie, with each candidate at 48%.

“It’s just gotten tighter and tighter and tighter,” pollster Charles Franklin said.

Evers, when encouraging Democrats to vote early, says he always expected it to be a close election.

Michels jokingly told his supporters last week that he expects a “Wisconsin landslide.”

“Before you get too excited … a Wisconsin landslide probably means we’re winning by two or three points,” he said.

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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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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A shortage of poll workers has concerned local election officials in some parts of the country as the midterm elections approach. Not so in Michigan.

Conservative groups and local Republican Party operatives who have pushed false claims about the 2020 presidential election have recruited poll workers here by the thousands. Similar recruitment efforts on the right have bolstered the ranks of poll workers in some other states with nationally watched races.

Seeding the ranks of front-line election workers with people recruited by groups promoting election conspiracies has raised alarms among some that the people at the foundation of the election system could try to undermine it.

“It concerns me when the motivation to serve as a poll worker is fueled through misinformation and people who have been fed lies, in some cases, for years now,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. “Since the spring, clerks have come at us with concerning questions they’re getting and in some cases, hundreds of poll worker applications that seem to be motivated by nefarious intent.”

In Oakland County, the state’s second-most populous, Republicans “discouraged about the outcome of the 2020 election” have been urged to sign up as poll workers through a new Republican National Committee recruitment program.

“If you’re angry, fed up and fearful of a repeat of the horror show of November 2020, then this is one way you can help,” the Oakland County GOP website reads.

In Florida, three men who are part of the Miami-Dade GOP executive committee and also are reported to have ties to the far-right Proud Boys extremist group applied for and qualified to serve as poll workers in Miami. Election officials said they decided not to assign a precinct to one of them after learning he had been charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Former President Donald Trump’s refusal to admit his loss in the 2020 presidential race and his repeated lies about widespread fraud have permeated the Republican Party and persuaded almost six in 10 GOP voters that the election was somehow stolen from him. There is no evidence of widespread fraud, and Trump’s claims have been rejected by dozens of judges and debunked by top officials in his own administration.

The falsehoods have led some GOP officials to push efforts aimed at ensuring what they insist is “election integrity.” Among those efforts are the steps taken across the country to recruit and train people to work at polling places and serve as poll watchers who monitor for problems.

The RNC said it has made a multimillion-dollar investment for this year’s election cycle that includes 17 state “election integrity directors” and 37 in-state “election integrity counsels.” The group says it has recruited over 11,000 poll workers in Michigan. In neighboring Wisconsin, the recruitment effort has brought in an additional 5,000

In Milwaukee, that effort has led to five times as many partisans becoming election workers as in previous years. The head of the Milwaukee Election Commission, Claire Woodall-Vogg, said she is confident the system of checks-and-balances will catch anyone who might try to interfere with voting, noting that a second election inspector must sign off on each task.

“Anyone who might have bad intentions, we would immediately, I think, be able to identify,” she said.

The fraud claims about 2020 are especially deep-seated in Michigan, where the GOP candidates for governor, secretary of state and attorney general have repeated them.

Election inspector manuals created by Michigan for America First, an affiliate of former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn’s group The America Project, encourage supporters to work at polls because “election cheating and fraud is not possible without collusion from poll workers.”

Poll workers, known as election inspectors in Michigan, are hired, trained and paid by local governments to assist in running elections. They are required to disclose party affiliation and are expected to be impartial in their duties as government employees, but do not have to live in the county where they will work the polls.

In Flint, the Michigan GOP and RNC are suing election officials to force them to hire more Republican election inspectors. Michigan law compels clerks to strive for equal party representation, but local officials say worker shortages often make that goal impossible to reach.

Several issues with poll workers in Michigan already have surfaced this year.

Before the state’s August primary, a Republican candidate for governor instructed poll workers to unplug voting equipment as a way to root out potential fraud.

In Macomb County, just north of Detroit, Clerk Anthony Forlini has faced backlash for his decision to hire activist Genevieve Peters to help recruit poll workers. Peters was outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection and is seen on video encouraging the crowd to “storm the gates.”

Forlini said getting election deniers involved in the process helps them “believe in the systems we’ve put in place.”

A township clerk south of Grand Rapids had a similar intention when he invited James Holkeboer to participate in the primary. The clerk, Michael Brew, was quoted in police records as saying that Holkeboer “is a person that doesn’t have a lot of confidence in the election process.”

Holkeboer is now charged with falsifying election records and using a computer to commit a crime. He faces up to five years in prison after inserting a USB drive into an electronic poll book the night of the primary. He told investigators he wanted his own copy to make sure the voter roll matched one that had been obtained through records requests.

“It was extremely alarming and incredibly egregious,” said Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons, a Republican.

The Michigan Democratic Party is not recruiting election inspectors but is instead ensuring it has “eyes and ears on the ground” through poll watchers to ensure there is no voter intimidation or interference from within, said Erica Peresman, the party’s voter protection director.

She said that while the party has recruited for these positions in the past, the effort was boosted due to “what we have been reading about with regard to the Republican Party’s efforts and its allies’ efforts this year.”

Peresman said Democrats are prioritizing polling locations such as Detroit where the party is especially concerned about partisan behavior.

GOP leaders targeted Detroit following the 2020 presidential election, claiming fraud was possible there because just 170 of the 5,486 election officials were Republicans.

Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said Republicans sent her a list of 800 names to be poll workers earlier this year, a significant increase over previous election years. She said she welcomed the extra help and invited them to complete the necessary training — though only 200 did.

“I think they just found for themselves that it wasn’t going to be as easy as we thought it was going to be to disrupt the process,” Winfrey said.

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Associated Press writers Carrie Antlfinger and Claire Savage in Milwaukee, and Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami contributed to this report.

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Joey Cappelletti is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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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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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin appeals court and a circuit judge this week shot down attempts backed by liberals seeking orders that local election clerks must accept absentee ballots that contain partial addresses of witnesses.

The rulings come within days of Tuesday’s election and as more than 503,000 absentee ballots have already either been returned or cast in person.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson are both up for reelection in the battleground state. Numerous lawsuits have been filed leading up to the election focused on which absentee ballots can be counted or rejected.

The status quo for determining whether an absentee ballot has enough of a witness address to count remains as it has been for the past 56 years, Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas said in an order Wednesday. Wisconsin elections have been conducted, and absentee ballots counted, the past 56 years without a legally binding definition of what constitutes a witness address on a ballot, Colas wrote in his order.

“Since then, until the present, clerks have been legally free to interpret the term,” he said. They have done that in good faith, Colas said, drawing on non-binding guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, its predecessors, and advice from attorneys.

Current guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission is that an address must include three elements: a street number, street name and municipality. Rise, Inc., a group that works to get young people to vote, argued that election clerks across Wisconsin are not consistently using that definition.

Rise sought an order that an address requires only enough information to determine the location of the witness. But Colas said it was inappropriate to issue an order that changes the status quo, rather than preserves it.

In another other case, the 1st District Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal of a ruling from Dane County Circuit Judge Nia Trammell rejecting a request from the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin seeking a ruling that an address can only be missing when the entire field is left blank.

The appeals court said it would not hear the case because it did not meet criteria for granting an appeal.

Trammell’s ruling in that case echoed the one from Colas on Wednesday. She said that loosening the witness address requirement “would upend the status quo and not preserve it” and “frustrate the electoral process by causing confusion.”

Very few ballots are returned in Wisconsin with missing or incomplete witness addresses.

The Legislative Audit Bureau last year reviewed nearly 15,000 absentee ballot envelopes from the 2020 election across 29 municipalities and found that 1,022, or about 7%, were missing parts of their witness addresses. Only 15 ballots, or 0.1%, had no witness address.

The issue of what constitutes an acceptable address arose after another judge in September sided with Republicans and ruled that election clerks aren’t allowed to fill in missing information.

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