Politics

The vast majority of candidates running to become their states’ chief election officers oppose hand counting ballots, a laborious and error-prone process that has gained favor among some Republicans embracing conspiracy theories about voting machines.

An Associated Press survey of major party secretary of state candidates in the 24 states found broad skepticism about hand counting among election professionals of all ideological stripes. Of 23 Republicans who responded to the survey, 13 clearly said they opposed implementing a statewide hand count of ballots instead of a machine count.

GOP candidates in Arizona and New Mexico have previously endorsed the idea of a hand count. But others cautioned it was a dangerous road to follow.

“Hand counting ballots is a process that requires time, manpower, and is prone to inaccuracies,” Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican who is seeking re-election this year, wrote in response to the AP survey.

The desire to hand count ballots stems from conspiracy theories spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the electronic machines that tabulated the results of the 2020 presidential election were rigged. Now some Republicans inspired by his election lies seek to expand or require hand counting of all ballots.

Counting by hand takes longer, requires large groups of people to examine ballots, and has been found by multiple studies to be less reliable than using voting machines.

“The reason the U.S. moved to counting machines is due to both human error and fraud with hand counts, so we looked for a better way to count the vote,” said Kim Crockett, the Republican nominee for secretary of state in Minnesota, in an email. “The error rate for hand counts is higher than the error rate for ballot counters in most cases.”

Crockett, who has called the 2020 election “rigged” and echoed some of Trump’s other election falsehoods, also stressed that she thinks her state’s voting machines still need further inspection.

The process came under scrutiny last week when rural Nye County in Nevada embarked on an unprecedented full hand count of this year’s midterm votes, starting with mailed ballots and those cast early in-person. The process was painstakingly slow until it was halted by the state’s supreme court over concerns that early vote tallies could be leaked publicly.

While the AP survey found most candidates strongly favor machine tabulators, two GOP secretary of state candidates in politically pivotal states — Arizona and New Mexico — want to shift to the unreliable method of counting ballots. A third in yet another swing state, Nevada, has backed Nye County’s effort and voiced support for making that sort of procedure standard statewide.

In Arizona, Republican State Rep. Mark Finchem, who is running for secretary of state, joined his party’s nominee for governor, Kari Lake, in filing a lawsuit seeking to outlaw the use of any machine to record or tabulate votes. The case was dismissed by a judge who levied sanctions against the Republicans.

In New Mexico, GOP secretary of state nominee Audrey Trujillo has said she wants widespread hand counting of votes.

“Hand count my ballot. We already have paper ballots,” she said in an interview on the video platform Rumble. “If we had that, I guarantee you tons more people would go out and vote.”

Neither Finchem nor Trujillo responded to the AP’s survey.

Nevada’s Republican secretary of state candidate has offered conflicting responses. A campaign spokesman for Republican nominee Jim Marchant told the AP that Marchant would be fine with a machine count as long as there also are paper ballots, which are universally used in Nevada. But the prior month, Marchant told the AP in a separate interview, “My goal is to go to a hand count paper ballot system.”

Nevada’s current secretary of state, Republican Barbara Cegavske, told interim Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf to halt the hand count of early arriving mailed ballots and early in-person votes until after polls close Nov. 8 following a ruling late last week from the state’s high court. The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had sought to halt the hand count over concerns that observers could hear the results as they were announced, risking a potential public leak of early returns.

The nascent hand-count had been riddled with problems on its first day, with repeated delays and errors among the volunteer staff of 12 teams of five split into two different shifts. They got through 900 of 1,950 ballots on the first day, with one volunteer lamenting the slow pace: “I can’t believe it’s two hours to get through 25.”

An AP reporter observed two teams of five taking as long as three hours to count 50 ballots. When teams realized they had mismatched tallies for certain candidates, they would stop and recount the ballots for those candidates again. That effort followed a hand count in another rural Nevada county, Esmeralda, where election workers in June spent more than seven hours hand-tallying the 317 primary ballots.

Kampf said the teams improved during the second day.

Eleven candidates, mostly Republicans, did not respond to the AP’s survey, including one of the most prominent election conspiracy theorists running for the position — Republican Kristina Karamo in Michigan, a community college instructor who has spreading the lie that voting machines in 2020 were rigged.

“Election deniers are using the language of election integrity to dismantle the actual infrastructure of election integrity,” said David Becker, the co-author of “The Big Truth,” a book about the risks of Trump’s voting lies, and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “If you want inaccurate results that take a really long time and cost a lot, then hand counting is your solution.”

Voting machines are routinely checked before and after voting to make sure they count accurately. The post-election test usually involves pulling a sample of random ballots and counting them by hand to see if the automated tally differs.

But repeated 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.

Jennifer Morrell, a former local election official in Colorado and Utah, noted that hand counts are enormously labor-intensive. The election consulting firm where she works estimated that in a typical-sized jurisdiction of 270,000 voters, it would take 1,300 people to count the ballots within seven days.

That’s because the typical ballot has dozens of races on it, which machines tabulate automatically but humans would have to count line by line, page by page.

“Voting equipment is uniform and efficient in a way that humans will never be,” Morrell said.

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Associated Press statehouse reporters from around the U.S. 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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WASHINGTON (AP) — Reports of people watching ballot boxes in Arizona, sometimes armed or wearing ballistic vests, raise serious concerns about voter intimidation, the Justice Department said Monday as it stepped into a lawsuit over the monitoring.

The statement from the Justice Department comes days after a federal judge refused to bar a group from monitoring the outdoor drop boxes in the suburbs of Phoenix.

Threats, intimidation and coercion are illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act, even if they doesn’t succeed, the government’s attorneys wrote. While lawful poll watching can support transparency, “ballot security forces” present a significant risk of voter intimidation, the court documents state.

“While the First Amendment protects expressive conduct and peaceable assembly generally, it affords no protection for threats of harm directed at voters,” U.S. government attorneys wrote.

Liburdi is a Trump appointee and a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization. The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans is appealing the order in the swing state with several closely contested races this year.

The two cases were merged and the Justice Department filed a statement of interest Monday. Attorneys for Clean Elections USA did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The law doesn’t specifically list which activities are prohibited near polling places, but video recording and photographing voters has been recognized as a concerns for decades and was named in a 1994 Justice Department letter on potential violations of the Voting Rights Act, federal attorneys wrote.

As of last week, Arizona’s secretary of state said her office has referred six cases of potential voter intimidation to the state attorney general and the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as a threatening email sent to the state elections director. Arizona law states electioneers and monitors must remain 75 feet (23 meters) from a voting location.

Groups around the United States have embraced a film that has been discredited called “2000 Mules” that claimed people were paid to travel among drop boxes and stuff them with fraudulent ballots during the 2020 presidential vote.

There’s no evidence for the notion that a network of Democrat-associated ballot “mules” has conspired to collect and deliver ballots to drop boxes, either in the 2020 presidential vote or in the upcoming midterm elections.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Democrats have created a super PAC in New York to boost incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul, a sign of the party’s growing fears that a late-stage surge by her Republican opponent Lee Zeldin could result in an upset in the blue state.

The committee created Friday by the Democratic Governors Association comes as both parties have deployed more resources and political stars in New York as ballots have started being cast in a surprisingly competitive race.

The notion that the governor’s office would be winnable for Republicans in New York, where there are twice as many Democrats as Republicans and a GOP governor has not been elected in 20 years, is the latest warning for Democrats that they could face deep losses in this year’s midterm elections.

Zeldin, a congressman and ally of former President Donald Trump, has tightened the race in recent weeks after focusing for months on rising violent crime in New York. He has been campaigning around the state, holding a large rally in GOP-friendly Long Island over the weekend with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a Monday rally in a New York City exurb with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

“This is about all of you taking control your government again,” Zeldin told the crowd at his rally Monday.

Hochul, in turn, has brought on former President Barack Obama to appear in a new radio ad on her behalf and is planning a Thursday rally with Hillary Clinton in New York City. That’s on top of a series of rallies she held around the state over the weekend, including a Sunday rally with New York City Mayor Eric Adams in Queens.

“Tell them you want someone who cares, and is not going to put more guns on the street, someone who is going to respect women’s rights, and lift our people up, and does not support the overturning of Joe Biden’s election,” Hochul said at the Sunday event.

Hochul has held a heavy fundraising advantage over Zeldin for much of the race, but Zeldin has been buffeted by spending from outside groups that have received donations from the Republican Governors Association and about $9 million from Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder.

“Republican Super PACs have spent a record amount of nearly $12 million to insert a election denying, abortion banning, MAGA Republican who would make New York less safe by rolling back laws to take illegal guns off the street,” David Turner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, said in a statement. “The DGA is taking nothing for granted, and won’t sit idly by.”

Turner did not detail how much the committee plans to spend.

The most recent campaign finance reports covering three weeks in October show that Zeldin outraised Hochul by bringing in $3.6 million to her $3.4 million, according to The New York Times.

Siena College polling since July, including as recently as mid-October, has shown Hochul with a significant lead over Zeldin. But other recent polls have suggested Hochul has only a modest advantage.

Hochul, who took over as governor in August 2021 after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned amid sexual harassment allegations, is trying to win the office outright this year, which would make her the first woman to be elected New York governor.

But Hochul has had a lower profile than her predecessor and has been working to introduce herself to New Yorkers over the past year.

She initially focused her campaign heavily on her support for abortion rights and highlighting Zeldin’s alliance with Trump and his vote as a member of the U.S. House against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. In recent weeks, she has been speaking more about public safety and stepped up her efforts to portray Zeldin as “extreme.”

Zeldin, meanwhile, has focused on rising crime rates and a string of high-profile violent incidents, including some killings on the New York City subways. He blames Hochul and Democrats in Albany for not being tough enough on criminals.

Rates of violent crime and killings have broadly increased around the U.S. since the coronavirus pandemic, in some places climbing from historic lows.

Rates of murder, rape, robbery and assault have all increased across New York since the pandemic, and all of those crimes except robbery have increased from 2012 to 2021, according to New York state data.

New York Police Department data shows that in New York City, murder rates are lower than they were two years ago, but rates of rape, robbery, assault and burglary are all up. Crimes on the transit system are also up, but the crimes represent a small fraction of the passengers on the subway system and come as ridership has also increased.

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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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WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump is going to the Supreme Court, again, this time to try to stop his tax returns from being handed to a congressional committee.

In an emergency appeal filed Monday, Trump wants the court to order at least a temporary hold on the Treasury Department turning over his returns to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee.

Trump said the handover could happen as soon as Thursday, without the court’s intervention.

Lower courts ruled that the committee has broad authority to obtain tax returns and rejected Trump’s claims that it was overstepping.

Trump had most recently sought the justices’ intervention in a legal dispute stemming from the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August. The court rejected that appeal.

If Trump can persuade the nation’s highest court to intervene in this case, he could potentially delay a final decision until the start of the next Congress in January. If Republicans recapture control of the House in the fall election, they could drop the records request.

The House Ways and Means panel and its chairman, Democrat Richard Neal of Massachusetts, first requested Trump’s tax returns in 2019 as part of an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s audit program and tax law compliance by the former president. A federal law says the Internal Revenue Service “shall furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to a handful of top lawmakers.

The Justice Department, under the Trump administration, had defended a decision by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to withhold the tax returns from Congress. Mnuchin argued that he could withhold the documents because he concluded they were being sought by Democrats for partisan reasons. A lawsuit ensued.

After President Joe Biden took office, the committee renewed the request, seeking Trump’s tax returns and additional information from 2015-2020. The White House took the position that the request was a valid one and that the Treasury Department had no choice but to comply. Trump then attempted to halt the handover in court.

Then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. obtained copies of Trump’s personal and business tax records as part of a criminal investigation. That case, too, went to the Supreme Court, which rejected Trump’s argument that he had broad immunity as president.

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PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin man accused of posting his marked election ballot on social media has been charged with a felony that carries possible incarceration if he’s convicted in what a prosecutor calls a “test case.”

Paul Buzzell, 52, of Mequon, appeared in Ozaukee County Circuit Court Monday where a judge found probable cause to proceed with the case and set a $500 signature bond.

According to a criminal complaint, Buzzell, a Mequon-Thiensville School Board member, posted a photo of his completed April ballot on his Facebook page. It resulted in a voter fraud charge that includes a maximum 3 ½ years behind bars and up to $10,000 in fines upon conviction.

Ozaukee County District Attorney Adam Gerol, a Republican, says he is trying to use the criminal complaint to resolve an issue.

“You could say it’s a test case,” Gerol said. “The best thing that could come of this would be an appellate decision as to whether it violates the First Amendment or not.”

There have been contradicting court rulings in other states following the 2016 election, including in New Hampshire where a federal judge held that a state law barring an individual’s right to publish their ballot violated the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of that ruling.

Wisconsin law says it’s illegal for anyone to show a marked ballot to anyone else or to place a mark on a ballot that identifies it as that person’s ballot. The state Senate in 2020 passed a bill to legalize the taking of so-called ballot selfies, but it died in the Assembly. County election clerks opposed changing the law, saying the ban is intended to protect ballot secrecy. Neighboring Michigan changed its law in 2019 to legalize ballot selfies.

Candidates for office in Wisconsin and others have sporadically posted photos of their completed ballots over the years, in apparent violation of the law, but charges were not brought.

Gerol said that while the felony doesn’t necessarily fit the behavior, a prosecutor can’t choose the penalties to apply. That’s up to legislators.

“There’s greater flexibility to resolve cases after they’re charged when the parties might agree to a different statute to plead to for the sake of resolution,” Gerol told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Mequon police contacted the Republican businessman about the post based on citizen complaints.

“Buzzell stated that his understanding was that it was not illegal to post a photo of a ballot with his name on it,” the complaint stated.

A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Dec. 15.

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MILWAUKEE (AP) — Milwaukee’s top election official surveyed about 20 poll workers gathered in a classroom in a city building stuffed with election supplies, then spoke frankly about the tense environment they may face next week when the city expects more people watching their work than ever before.

“So who is worried about observer disruptions?” Claire Woodall-Vogg, head of the Milwaukee Election Commission, asked the group. “Who has read things or heard things on the news, and you’re a little nervous? I am. I’ll raise my hand,” she said, smiling.

A few of the workers raised their hands, too. They’re not alone in their concern: Election officials across the country are bracing for confrontational poll watchers fueled by lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election spread by former President Donald Trump and others, even after Trump’s loss was upheld by repeated reviews, audits and recounts, and courts rejected legal challenges.

That tension is higher in the handful of battleground states like Wisconsin, where Trump and others were quick to cry fraud after late-arriving results from Democratic-dominated Milwaukee helped Joe Biden narrowly carry the state in 2020. Recounts demanded by Trump confirmed Biden’s victory.

Woodall-Vogg has already felt the pressure. In an interview, she described being harassed and threatened after that election via email, phone calls and letters to her home — threats serious enough that she has an assigned FBI agent to forward them to.

Still, Woodall-Vogg said she’d rather she be a target than her workers — some of whom have stepped down from managerial roles because of the pressure.

“We’re not paying them millions of bucks to endure that stress by any means,” Woodall-Vogg said.

Election officials nationally are concerned about a flood of conspiracy theorists signing up to work as poll watchers, with some groups that have trafficked in lies about the 2020 election recruiting and training watchers, particularly in swing states like Wisconsin.

Wisconsin requires poll workers to be trained only every two years, but this year Milwaukee is offering much more frequent training than in elections past, including informational videos and one-hour sessions focused on specific topics, like voter registration. The content remains unchanged.

In the mid-October session observed by The Associated Press, Woodall-Vogg was presenting to an experienced group of poll managers — known as chief inspectors — who will be responsible for directing workers at individual polling places. The managers get a flat payment of $325 for Election Day duties that begin before 7 a.m. and can stretch into the wee hours of the next morning. Non-managers get $220.

When the training turned to how to handle potential problems, Woodall-Vogg was careful to note that observers play “a vital role in our democracy.” But she also said she didn’t want her workers to feel threatened by them.

She demonstrated how to tape off sections where observers can stand — between 3 and 8 feet from voter check-in and registration areas.

“Take your tape and make a line and say, ‘This is the observer area,’ or make a box and say, ‘Please don’t leave this area,’” she said.

Violators first get a warning; if they do it again, they’re ordered to leave. If someone refuses, police are called.

Woodall-Vogg also walked the workers through how to handle challenges to voter eligibility based on a voter’s race or the language they speak. Such challenges are unacceptable, Woodall-Vogg said, and should get a warning as frivolous. An observer who makes a second such challenge would be ordered to leave.

Some poll workers who spoke to AP said they expect to see conflict, but they’re ready for it.

“I have a calling to serve,” said 70-year-old Andrea Nembhard, who has worked elections for more than a decade. She added: “I’m not afraid.”

Melody Villanueva, 46, said the same.

“I’m a problem solver, so I will de-escalate if necessary, and I will have to call the proper authority if necessary,” she said. “I am not one to fear much.”

Some workers acknowledged their nerves.

Averil Fletcher recounted calling the police during the August primary when a voter — convinced he had been deliberately locked out of the polling place — threw chairs and threatened workers. She had to wait 35 minutes for officers who had been busy elsewhere handling a pair of shootings.

Woodall-Vogg assured the managers that Fletcher’s experience “will never happen again.”

“If there is an election disturbance, if someone’s refusing to leave the polling place and you’ve issued them an order to leave, we have a direct line and there will be officers that will respond to support you,” Woodall-Vogg told the chief inspectors.

Federal law enforcement will also be on standby. Four assistant U.S. attorneys are assigned to oversee Election Day in Wisconsin and deal with threats of violence to election staff and complaints of voting rights concerns, and the FBI has stationed agents throughout the country to address allegations of election fraud and other election abuses, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Thanks to increased interest, the city hit full election staffing levels with two weeks to spare, which Woodall-Vogg said has never happened before.

”Usually it’s more panicking, filling in gaps,” Woodall-Vogg said.

That included five times as many partisan nominees to be election workers than in previous elections, but Woodall-Vogg said she’s not worried about bad actors because the system is designed to prevent issues. Election inspectors always have multiple eyes over their shoulder as they work: a second inspector is required to sign off for each task, and chief inspectors are monitoring all workers.

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

___ Harm Venhuizen contributed from Madison. Venhuizen and Savage are corps members 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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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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ATKINSON, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire’s Republican governor described Don Bolduc as a “conspiracy theory extremist” just two months ago. But now, a week before Election Day, Gov. Chris Sununu is vowing to support him. And the leader of the GOP’s campaign to retake the U.S. Senate stood at Bolduc’s side over the weekend and called him “a true patriot.”

“I’m here for one reason, and that’s to make sure Don Bolduc is the next U.S. senator,” Rick Scott, a Florida senator and chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told dozens of voters on Sunday gathered inside an Atkinson, New Hampshire, community center.

“Here’s a guy who’s a true patriot,” Scott said as he introduced Bolduc, a retired Army general. “He served his country. He believes. He cares.”

The New Hampshire dynamic reflects the emboldened GOP’s increasing confidence in candidates who party leaders believed were essentially unelectable — or at least seriously flawed — just weeks or months ago. But heading into the final full week of the 2022 midterms, Republican leaders are betting that anti-Democratic political headwinds will supersede what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell himself called “candidate quality” issues in his own party.

Republican Senate contenders from Arizona to Georgia and North Carolina to New Hampshire are grappling with revelations about their personal lives, extreme positions and weak fundraising. Yet they may be in position to win on Nov. 8. Leaders in both parties believe Republicans are poised to take the House majority, with control of the Senate in sight as well.

At the same time, Republicans are waging competitive battles for governorships in swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin.

As Republican optimism grows, Democrats have been forced into a defensive position with voters looking to punish the party that controls Washington for surging inflation, crime concerns and general pessimism about the direction of the country. Saddled by weak approval ratings, the leader of the Democratic Party, President Joe Biden, has avoided many of the nation’s most competitive battlegrounds for fear he would do his party more harm than good.

Biden is set to spend the night before Election Day at a rally in deep-blue Maryland. He’ll travel this week to New Mexico and California, two Democratic strongholds where Republicans are threatening to make gains.

Former President Barack Obama rallied voters in Michigan and Wisconsin over the weekend.

“I understand why people are anxious,” Obama said in Detroit. “Moping is not an option.”

It was first lady Jill Biden, not her husband, who campaigned with New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan on Saturday. The first lady called New Hampshire’s Senate contest “an enormous race” and encouraged volunteers to “dig a little deeper” and “work a little harder” in the coming days.

In an interview moments before taking the stage with the first lady, Hassan refused to say whether she wanted Biden to run for a second term when asked.

“How about we just get through 2022?” Hassan said. “That’s obviously his decision to make.”

The GOP’s embrace of risky Senate contenders has been playing out for months in states like Georgia, where $60 million will have been spent on television advertising to benefit Republican Herschel Walker by Election Day. That backing comes even as Walker confronts reports of violence and mental health issues from his past and more recent allegations that he paid at least two women to have abortions. Walker has denied the abortion allegations.

The Republican Party is also rallying behind Arizona Senate contender Blake Masters, a so-called election denier viewed as deeply flawed by GOP leaders earlier in the year. Washington Republicans aggressively recruited outgoing Gov. Doug Ducey to run for the Senate, but Ducey declined.

Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist, is now the GOP’s only hope to defeat incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired astronaut. Ignoring Masters’ embrace of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, former Vice President Mike Pence campaigned for the Arizona Republican recently and called him “one of the brightest stars in the Republican Party.”

In North Carolina, local Republicans have raised concerns about the strength of Trump-backed Republican Senate candidate Ted Budd. The congressman who has struggled to energize Republican voters in his campaign against Democrat Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice on the state Supreme Court. Local GOP officials openly criticized Budd for skipping a recent debate against Beasley, although over the last week Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas campaigned with him.

It’s been much the same in Ohio, where local officials have spoken out against Trump’s preferred Senate candidate, J.D. Vance, a venture capitalist who has promoted the former president’s election lies and underwhelmed as a fundraiser.

Steven Law, a chief McConnell ally who runs the McConnell-aligned super PAC known as the Senate Leadership Fund, says that apparent flaws in candidates — including those who have railed against McConnell himself — are far less important than the party’s ultimate goal this fall: winning.

“At the end of the day, our focus is on winning the majority. And I feel like a lot of those concerns have faded into the background as we work toward that goal,” Law said in an interview.

Still, the Senate Leadership Fund shifted roughly $6 million it had planned to invest in the New Hampshire Senate race to Pennsylvania in recent days, suggesting it was essentially giving up on Bolduc. But just days later, the NRSC invested another $1 million — and Scott, its chairman, campaigned with Bolduc, sending the unmistakable message that the GOP stands behind the controversial New Hampshire Republican.

Over the weekend, a conservative group aligned with the conservative Heritage Fund invested another $1 million into Bolduc’s candidacy.

Meanwhile, Bolduc continues to rail against Washington leadership in both parties as he wages an aggressive retail campaign across New Hampshire. In a brief interview before a Windham town hall on Saturday, Bolduc said he would work to replace McConnell and other Republican leaders if elected.

“The leadership on both sides have drug us into the mess that we see ourselves in. I’m the only candidate that says that,” Bolduc said. “It’s a Republican problem. It’s a Democrat problem.”

Inside the town hall, one Bolduc supporter mistakenly believed that Bolduc backed abortion rights. She sought to clarify his position as he shook her hand before taking the stage.

“I have a question,” said the voter, who declined to give her name. “Are you pro-choice?”

“I am pro-life,” Bolduc responded.

He added that he would not support a federal ban on abortion and instead prefers to let the issue be decided at the state level. That’s despite telling Republicans in Dover, New Hampshire, earlier in the year: “I’m not going to vote contrary to pro-life. I respect life from the beginning to the end.”

Sununu, the New Hampshire governor who Washington Republicans tried and failed to recruit for the Senate contest, addressed his change of heart on Bolduc during a Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” In August, Sununu had dismissed Bolduc as “not a serious candidate” and a “conspiracy theory extremist.”

“Don and I didn’t see eye to eye during the primary,” Sununu said. “But again, I’m going to support the Republican ticket because the issues that folks are voting on are inflation, gas prices, heating oil, which is skyrocketing here in New Hampshire and causing a major concern.”

Sununu was not asked about Bolduc’s repeated allegations of voter fraud in New Hampshire.

Bolduc has softened his tone since winning the GOP primary, but during a debate last week, he falsely claimed voters had been bused into the state to vote illegally. And when asked about the integrity of the 2020 election at a town hall earlier in the month, he said, “I can’t say whether it was stolen or not.”

Meanwhile, Hassan, a former Democratic governor with a massive fundraising advantage, acknowledged that Bolduc is waging a competitive campaign.

“Don Bolduc has been working really hard to conceal his extremism from the people of New Hampshire,” she said. “He is the most extreme U.S. Senate nominee we have seen in modern New Hampshire history.”

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who leads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, predicted Democrats would retain their narrow Senate majority because of the sharp contrast in the quality of candidates.

“The Republicans have put up a cast of characters who are extreme and not ready for — not just prime-time, but any time,” Peters said. “There’s not a red wave. And we will win. But these are going to be close races.”

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Associated Press writers Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Bill Barrow in Atlanta 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 check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the midterm.

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — In liberal Rhode Island, Republican Allan Fung stands a chance of flipping a U.S. House seat and possibly helping his party gain control of the chamber.

There is just one Republican in New England’s congressional delegation, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Fung saw an opportunity to break the Democratic Party’s three-decade hold on the seat for Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District when longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin announced his retirement this year.

Despite Fung’s momentum, some political observers say it’s still hard to fathom a Republican pulling off such a big win in Rhode Island. But many others say it’s a tossup, or think Fung could have a slight edge over Democrat Seth Magaziner. Moderate candidate William Gilbert is also on the ballot.

“All the ingredients are there for the right kind of Republican to win that district and Allan Fung is the right kind of Republican,” said Wendy Schiller, a Brown University professor and director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Fung said, “I want to be part of bringing back that brand of moderate Republican leadership that is missing in Congress in all of New England right now.”

Magaziner, the state’s treasurer, says voting for Fung will empower House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and far-right Republicans to adopt extremist policies because Fung won’t stand up to them. McCarthy has visited Rhode Island to raise money for Fung.

“I will fight against the extremists that are trying to overturn our democracy, cut Social Security and Medicare,” Fung said during a recent debate. “He wants to put them in charge of Congress. I will not let that happen.”

Nationally, Democrats up for election face headwinds because voters are blaming President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for inflation. Fung is laser-focused on inflation — in ads, debates, conversations with voters and interviews, he talks about the cost of groceries and home heating oil. He says it’s Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fault and he wants to rein in federal spending.

Fung is known throughout Rhode Island because he served as mayor of the state’s second-largest city, Cranston, from 2009 to 2021, and ran for governor twice. He lost both times to Democrat Gina Raimondo, now U.S. commerce secretary.

He projects the image of a New England moderate Republican by comparing himself to another popular Republican in a liberal neighboring state, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker.

Fung also talks about how he would work with Democrats, pointing to common priorities like investing in infrastructure and creating U.S. manufacturing jobs. Fung said he supports Biden’s hard-fought $1 trillion infrastructure law, as well as the CHIPS and Science Act to revitalize domestic manufacturing.

Magaziner is well known too, having won election statewide twice. He was elected treasurer in 2014 and reelected in 2018. He has the state’s Democratic establishment behind him and support from national Democratic leaders. U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh spoke at a rally and First Lady Jill Biden campaigned for him.

Emily Lynch, an assistant teaching professor at the University of Rhode Island, said there isn’t anything Magaziner has or hasn’t done that is negatively affecting him — “it’s that pressure, the negative views of the economy affecting the party in power.” It’s going to be a really close race, she said.

Magaziner has worked to keep abortion front and center in the campaign. He said that unlike Fung, he’ll fight any attempts to roll back women’s rights.

“I trust women to make the choice of whether or when to have children,” Magaziner said in their debate. “He thinks that it should be up to politicians and judges.”

Fung said he would not support a national ban on abortion and he backs legislation proposed by a bipartisan group of senators seeking to codify the right to an abortion and protect contraception access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“I do not support a national abortion ban. Never said it, never will vote for it, nor would I criminalize it,” Fung said.

“I would protect a woman’s ability to make that deeply personal decision within a timeframe and reserve late-term abortions for life of the mother, rape or incest,” he added. “So I would support that bill that has been proposed on the Senate side.”

The Congressional Leadership Fund said it has put $2.8 million into the district to support Fung and oppose Magaziner because Fung’s strength as a candidate combined with a Democrat’s retirement “have given us a real shot to win a seat Democrats thought they could take for granted.”

Democrats are heavily invested in the race too, spending about $2.4 million through the House Majority PAC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the DCCC said Wednesday.

Among Rhode Island’s registered voters, 44% are Democratic, 41% are unaffiliated and 15% are Republican, according to state data.

Parts of the 2nd Congressional District are more conservative than one would expect. In the western part of the state, the towns of Foster, Glocester and Burrillville are “about as red as they get for the Northeast,” said Adam Myers, an associate professor at Providence College.

Republican-heavy neighborhoods were moved into the district from U.S. Rep. David Cicilline’s district during redistricting a decade ago. Critics at the time said the changes seemed crafted to help Cicilline’s reelection efforts. Biden still won the district by about 14 points in 2020.

The state’s Democratic establishment has shown to be more effective than Republicans in the past at mobilizing voters on Election Day. Magaziner has that going for him, Myers said.

“It’s hard for me to see a Republican candidate winning in a 14-point district these days,” Myers said. “But I wouldn’t put a lot of money on that.”

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Lebanon Has No President, No Gov’t, as Parties SquabbleOver Candidates

Meanwhile, winter approaches amid an energy crisis that mayworsen

Lebanese President Michel Aoun concludes his six-yearpresidential term on Monday, leaving no successor to replacehim. This follows his announcement on Sunday that he hadaccepted the resignation of the current caretaker government ledby Prime Minister Najib Mikati, who failed to form agovernment after the elections in May of this year.

In Lebanon, the president is traditionally chosen by gaining atleast a two-thirds majority of the parliament’s 128 members.According to an agreement called the National Pact, settled justbefore the country’s independence from the French in 1943, thepresident must always be a Maronite Christian, the primeminister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament a ShiiteMuslim.

Marwan Abdallah, the international secretary of the KataebParty, one of the country’s Christian political parties, told TheMedia Line that, although the president must be a MaroniteChristian, there are different Christian parties, which havedifferent candidates, and the parliament has not agreed on one ofthem yet.

The problem, he says, is not that Sunnis and Shiites must votefor a Maronite Christian. “This has been the case for the past 80years – there are political alliances between different parties,” hesaid.

The question is: Which Maronite is going to be the president?And, most relevant for gaining the support of parliamentarians: What political affiliation will the new president have?

“Would he be more likely to support Hizbullah and the Iranians,or will the president be leaning toward the Gulf countries andthe West? Would he be willing to put all the big problems on thetable or just postpone the problems for the next six years?” asked Abdallah.

Mohamad Radwan Al Omar, president of the LebaneseAssembly for Inclusive Development and representative adviserof Lebanon on MediateGuru’s Global Advisory Board,explained that the Lebanese parliament is divided into twocamps: one led by Hizbullah and backed by Iran and Russia, andthe other one closer to the West and to the Sunni regionalpowers, to which the Sunni parties belong.

Al Omar told The Media Line that attempts earlier this month toselect a new president failed because the camp led by Hizbullah,gripped by an internal dispute, failed to agree on a candidate.

On the other hand, he added, the Western coalition, togetherwith the independent parliamentarians, backed Michel Moawadtwice without success. “It is now up to this alliance to fix theirinternal disagreements in order to elect a new president,” heconcluded.

Jamal Wakim, a professor of history and international relations at the Lebanese University in Beirut, told The Media Line that the parliament has not chosen a president because there are too many contenders. “Though no one is able to be backed by a majority, no one wants to step down,” he said. That is why he believes it will take at least a year for the parliament to choose a new president.

Abdallah points out that this situation leaves Lebanon with acaretaker government that cannot legally convene and makedecisions, and with no president either. “If you don’t have thegovernment and you don’t have a president, how would yougovern the country?” he asked.

However, Wakim says this is not a rare situation for theLebanese. “We are used to having vacuums in power, andpeople care more about their [daily] living.”

This vacuum finds Lebanon amid economic, financial, andpolitical crises, Abdallah notes, adding that, with the wintercoming and the current energy crisis, the situation will mostlikely worsen.

“You have only one or two hours of [energy] supply per day, which is nothing. With all these problems, I’m not sure how we will survive,” he said. “We used to hope for 24 hours of electricity per day; now I’m hoping for eight hours. We used to hope to live a life and have good businesses; now we hope to get our own money out of the bank,” he said.

The stresses of day-to-day living take people’s minds offpolitics. “The standards are going down, and I think that nownobody cares if there’s a president or not, if there’s a government or not, as long as they can have their daily life dealtwith, especially with bread and gas and the basic stuff that isnow very hard to find,” Abdallah said.

Al Omar believes that the caretaker government will try as muchas possible to fill the current political vacuum, but he notes thatit is not authorized to take the major, important decisions thatthe Lebanese people desperately need now to overcome thecurrent crisis.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s Republican attorney general has issued an opinion saying county officials can hand-count all ballots in at least five races from the Nov. 8 election, a move that gives a green light to GOP officials in at least two counties who have been clamoring for hand counts.

The efforts to hand-count ballots are driven by unfounded concerns among some Republicans that problems with vote-counting machines or voter fraud led to former President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat.

The new attorney general opinion led the two Republicans on the three-member Cochise County board of supervisors to boost their plan to hand-count some races in both early and Election Day ballots. They had pledged to pare back the effort on Wednesday.

Under state law, the local leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties would have to provide hundreds of volunteers to do the counts.

At a fiery meeting Friday, Democratic Supervisor Ann English said she’ll do everything she can to stop the county Democratic Party chair from providing those workers.

“It would be my fondest hope, that if I have any authority, any way that I can convince the chair of the Democratic party in Cochise County not to provide people for this fiasco that will be my intent,” English said. “Because I think that every day that we’re discussing this, then people are wondering ‘what’s wrong with our elections.’ ”

That comment came after GOP Supervisor Peggy Judd said she wanted to move ahead, and Republican Supervisor Tom Crosby pushed back strongly on English’s opposition and effort to halt the full count.

“I’m OK talking about how this will be done, but all you want to do is make it not get done,” Crosby said. “So, I’m not interested in that discussion — I’m interested in the discussion of how it will get done.”

The Cochise County Democratic Party referred inquiries about whether they would send volunteers for the expanded hand count to the state party on Saturday. Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman Morgan Dick said party officials are consulting with their attorneys on the issue.

The county party did post on its Facebook page Saturday, saying they were “beyond disappointed in yesterday’s circus of a meeting.”

“Judd, Crosby and (county Recorder David) Stevens are hell bent on appeasing MAGA election deniers instead of doing what’s right for our county,” the post continued.

The hand count would take place along with the machine count, and the machine count will be used for the legal results.

The informal opinion issued Friday by Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office came as the board has been battling with Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. She warned officials there not to expand the required small hand count to all races because it was illegal. Hobbs is the state’s top election official and is running for governor.

Hobbs did give them the OK to hand-count all Election Day ballots in four races, but she said it would be illegal to do so for early votes, which make up more than 80% of ballots in the state. Normal hand-count audits required under law to ensure accuracy of ballot counting machines cover only a small percentage of ballots.

The opinion from Brnovich’s deputy solicitor general said the county may hand-count all the ballots in as many as five races.

Hobbs’ office said they disagreed and that the law does not allow it for early ballots.

“With early voting well under way and less than two weeks from election day, these antics are doing nothing more than creating chaos and confusion around the election and tabulation of ballots, which is wildly irresponsible,” a statement from Hobbs’ office said.

Supervisors in Pinal County, a much larger and growing suburban area just south of metro Phoenix’s Maricopa County, also have been considering a hand count. Both boards have meetings planned for next week to discuss the issue.

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

“It would be illegal at this point to do a full hand count,” Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer told his board on Wednesday.

Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre has told the board he also believes a full hand count is illegal and said the board and county Recorder David Stevens would need to find outside attorneys if they went ahead. He repeated that Friday, after Supervisor Judd said Brnovich had given the go-ahead.

He also noted that the effort runs afoul of a legal doctrine set up by the U.S. Supreme Court that says election rules and procedures can’t be changed close to an election.

An effort to hand count ballots in rural Nevada’s Nye County has been beset with issues, including slow counts and a legal challenge that forced the effort to halt on Thursday night. Officials in the GOP-led county pledged to restart their effort as soon as they can.

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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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