Politics

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Russian researcher who contributed explosive details to the “Steele dossier” that alleged ties between former President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia was acquitted on Tuesday on charges he lied to the FBI about the sources of his intelligence.

A federal jury’s acquittal of Igor Danchenko represents yet another blow to Special Counsel John Durham, who was appointed in 2019 by Trump-era Attorney General William Barr to probe the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had colluded with Russia.

“While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service,” Durham said in a statement.

The decision marks the second defeat for Durham and his team of prosecutors. Earlier this year, a jury in Washington, D.C., acquitted Michael Sussmann, an attorney for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, of charges he lied to the FBI when he passed along a later discredited tip about possible communications between Trump’s business and a Russian bank.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone and Tim Ahmann)

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(Fixes spelling of McMullin’s name in paragraph 11)

By David Morgan and Gram Slattery

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -If U.S. Senate candidate Evan McMullin succeeds in unseating Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, he could occupy a uniquely powerful role as an independent ready to work with either party in the narrowly divided chamber.

While maverick Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have used their positions in the 50-50 chamber to block parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda, an independent McMullin could wield even more influence if Republicans pick up one — and only one — other seat in the Nov. 8 midterm election.

That would create a Senate with 50 Republicans and 49 Democrats, a scenario in which McMullin could align with either Democrats or Republicans and play an outsized role in determining which party has the majority and which legislative agenda gets to the Senate floor.

In a Monday night debate with Lee, McMullin made it clear that he recognizes the influence an independent could wield in a narrowly divided Senate if he succeeds in defeating Lee, who is favored to hold his seat.

“If we prevail in this race, it will make Utah the most influential state in the union, because nothing will get through the Senate without Utah’s support,” said McMullin.

A former CIA operations officer, McMullin was a Republican until 2016, when Donald Trump won the party’s nomination to run for president. McMullin launched a long-shot, and ultimately unsuccessful, independent campaign for the White House.

But this year, Utah Democrats opted not to nominate a challenger to Lee, a two-term hard-line conservative, ceding the field to McMullin’s challenge.

Lee dismissed his rival on Monday night as “an opportunistic gadfly supported by the Democratic Party.”

“You’ve refused to talk about which party you’d join,” Lee told McMullin. “Instead, you’re asking the people to put faith – blind trust – in you … your judgment. That is not how we lead to a good policy outcome.”

Some observers doubted that McMullin could bring himself to line up with Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“McMullin used to be a conservative Republican, so it is hard to see him voting for Schumer,” said Republican strategist Charlie Black. “Maybe he just would not vote.”

The Senate already has two independents, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders and Maine’s Angus King, but both caucus with Democrats.

The chamber last saw a pure independent two decades ago, when former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura appointed Independence Party member Dean Barkley to finish the late Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone’s term. Barkley joked that he could “caucus by myself in a bathroom” and left office two months later.

Strategists say a more practical model for McMullin would be the late Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, a Republican who became an independent and flipped Senate control to the Democrats in 2001.

If McMullin where to go that route and align himself with one party, he could negotiate an agreement to secure his priorities a place in the legislative agenda and ensure himself a seat on Senate committees.

But he would also be free to vote against that party’s legislation and could retain enduring power by flipping Senate control or threatening to do so.

“If Evan McMullin wanted to switch parties one day, all they would do is announce that,” said Joshua Huder, senior fellow with the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University.

But even if a Senator McMullin felt inclined to throw party control into turmoil, party strategists said the chamber’s filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation could stand in his way.

“The reality is much different,” said Jim Manley, a one-time aide to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “He would be negotiating a legislative package and that wish list is going to be controversial. There’d be objections on both sides, probably led by the party that lost out.”

The powerbroker scenario for McMullin has gained traction after a Deseret News-Hinckley Institute of Politics poll last week showed Lee leading him by 41% to 37%, with 12% of voters undecided, putting the race within the survey’s 3.5% margin of error.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Gram Slattery; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Moments after she flipped a longtime Republican congressional seat in 2018, Iowa Democrat Cindy Axne declared that “Washington doesn’t have our back and we deserve a heck of a lot better.”

Now seeking a third term in one of the most competitive House races, Axne is sounding a similar tone, telling voters she’s delivered for Iowans “while Washington politicians bicker.”

But Axne and other Democrats from the class of 2018 are campaigning in a much different political environment this year. The anxiety over Donald Trump’s presidency that their party harnessed to flip more than 40 seats and regain the House majority has eased. In its place is frustration about the economy under President Joe Biden.

And many districts that were once competitive have been redrawn by Republican-dominated state legislatures to become more friendly to the GOP.

“It was a very different world,” pollster John Zogby said of 2018. “Inflation’s now where we haven’t seen in 40 years and it affects everybody. And this is the party in power. With campaigns, you don’t get to say, ‘But it could have been’ or ’But look at what the other guy did.’”

Many swing-district Democrats elected four years ago were buoyed by college-educated, suburban voters, women and young people shunning Trump. That means many defeats for second-term House Democrats could be read as opposition to Trump no longer motivating voters in the same way — even though the former president could seek the White House again in 2024.

Trump continues to shape politics in a far more present sense, too. He’s dominated the national Republican Party despite spreading lies about 2020’s free and fair presidential election and now facing a House subpoena for helping incite the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol last year.

Tom Perez, who headed the Democratic National Committee from 2017 until 2021, noted that midterm cycles are historically tough for the president’s party and that — plus grim U.S. economic news — would normally raise the question “are Democrats going to get shellacked?”

Instead, Perez thinks many of the toughest congressional races remain close because of the strength of Democrats elected four years ago.

“All these folks from the Class of ’18, what they have in common is they’re really incredibly competent, accomplished and they’ve earned the trust of voters in their districts across the ideological spectrum,” said Perez, co-chair of the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century. “That, to me, is why we have a chance here, not withstanding the headwinds of the moment, is that incredible combination of candidate quality contrasted with the extreme views of the people who are running against them.”

In all, 66 new Democrats won House races in 2018, flipping 41 Republican seats. Their party gave back many of those gains in 2020, with Republicans taking 14 new seats. Those GOP victories included defeating a dozen Democrats elected to the House for the first time the previous cycle.

The Democratic House losses were overshadowed by Biden beating Trump. But this time, the ranks of the 2018 Democratic House class further dwindling may draw more attention — especially if it helps the GOP gain the net five seats it needs to reclaim the chamber’s majority.

In addition to Axne, Democrats who may be vulnerable include Reps. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Elaine Luria of Virginia. Another Virginia Democrat, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, as well as Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Angie Craig of Minnesota and Sharice Davids of Kansas all also may face tough reelections.

“The question is, is it going to have similarities to ’18 or not in the sense of democracy being on the ballot and a reaction to Trump,” former California Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda, who was elected in 2018 but narrowly lost his reelection bid, said of next month’s election. “Based on polling and the primaries, it doesn’t seem like the voting public is holding Republicans responsible for the Big Lie.”

Perez is more sanguine: “The midterm election is supposed to be a referendum on the president, but Donald Trump continues to inject himself” into the nation’s politics.

House turnover is common among both parties. By early 2018, almost half of the 87 House Republicans newly elected when their party took control of the chamber during the 2010 tea party surge were gone. More lost that November.

Still, the 2018 class was notable as the largest influx of first-year House Democrats in four-plus decades, and the chamber’s youngest and most diverse ever.

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said 2018 was also the largest class of new women elected to the House since 1992, with 35 Democrats and one Republican. But 2020 also saw 28 new women elected to Congress, and some were Republicans who defeated Democrats who’d won for the first time the last cycle.

“We had a couple of very strong years in a row, one for Democrats and one for Republicans,” Walsh said of women in the House. She said that means that even if the 2018 House Democratic class gets smaller this year, ”I would not look at one election cycle and say the face of Congress is going back to old, white men.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have 32 Hispanic nominees and 23 Black nominees running for the House this cycle — both party records. They say their chances of winning the chamber’s majority are built more on high inflation and crime rates rising in some places than Trump or last year’s insurrection.

“We have a choice between commonsense and crazy,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. “And Americans will vote for Republicans up and down the ballot as a result.”

The Democrats’ 2018 House class won’t dissolve completely. Some incumbents are seeking reelection in safely blue districts, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Lucy McBath of Georgia and Colin Allred of Texas, who was the class’ co-president.

Democratic Michigan Rep. Haley Stevens, the other co-president, beat fellow 2018 Democratic House class member Andy Levin when the two incumbents squared off in this year’s Democratic primary based on their state’s new map.

One Democratic 2018 House class member ousted in 2020, former New York Rep. Max Rose, is now running to get back to Congress. Another member, New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, has since become a Republican.

Former Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman was a Republican elected in 2018 but lost his 2020 GOP primary. Riggleman is now appearing in a TV ad praising Spanberger.

“She’s trying to change Congress and make it work,” Riggleman says in the ad. “She puts country first.”

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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The first debate between U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan and Don Bolduc on Tuesday pitted the Democratic incumbent’s record against her Republican rival’s campaign trail rhetoric.

Bolduc accused Hassan of failing constituents by supporting the Biden administration’s economic and energy policies, while she used his own words against him to argue he has undermined democracy and endangered women.

“Senator Hassan has supported Joe Biden 100% of the time with every failed policy that has resulted in your choice between heating and eating, has diminished your ability to provide three meals a day, has closed small businesses, has hurt people across this Granite State and across America,” Bolduc said. “She would rather talk about what you’re not thinking about.”

By that he meant abortion, which Hassan has made a centerpiece of her campaign. While Bolduc now says he opposes a national abortion ban, she referred to his past statement that he would never oppose anti-abortion legislation (“I’m not going to vote contrary to pro-life”). And she took issue with his recent comments about who should have the authority to set abortion policy.

“It belongs to the state. It belongs to these gentlemen right here, who are state legislators representing you,” the retired Army general said at a town hall meeting earlier this month in Auburn.

“I do not agree with him that gentlemen, as he put it, in the New Hampshire Legislature should assume my rights or make decisions for me or any other woman,” said Hassan, a former governor seeking her second term in Washington. “I think government has no role here. Because I think every time government tries to regulate this, they end up making decisions that hurt women.”

In defending his comments, Bolduc accused Hassan of twisting his words and taking them out of context as he believes she has done on Social Security and other topics. But he also muddled things further, saying “All there were was men in the room, these gentlemen. There were no women.” In fact, while there were no female lawmakers at the event, there were several women.

George Epstein, who moderated the debate for the Mount Washington Economic Council, also pressed Bolduc on his shifting statements about the 2020 presidential election.

Bolduc claimed during his primary campaign that the White House race was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Then, after Bolduc won the Sept. 13 vote, he said it wasn’t. More recently, he has said he doesn’t have enough information for a conclusion.

“Do you believe that position weakens our country by creating problems with the electorate feeling confident in our elections?” Epstein asked.

Bolduc answered by saying the state needs to tighten rules about same-day voter registration and absentee voting to prevent fraud, and by accusing Hassan of wanting to do away with New Hampshire’s tradition of holding the first-in-the-nation presidential primaries.

But Hassan, who denied that claim, returned to his earlier statements about 2020 to argue he has undermined democracy.

“Let’s be very clear here: Don Bolduc is an election denier,” she said. “His refusal to accept election results means he doesn’t listen to you. This allows him to support an agenda that will raise your costs and eviscerate your rights, because at the end of the day, he doesn’t think he needs to listen, or isn’t accountable to you.”

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Five years ago, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak and Joe Lombardo stood together in the national spotlight, kicking off a fund that raised millions of dollars for victims of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history on the Las Vegas Strip.

Sisolak, a Democrat, at the time was chairman of the powerful Clark County Commission, the elected body with jurisdiction over Las Vegas. He praised Lombardo, the nonpartisan elected Clark County sheriff and head of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the largest police agency in Nevada.

There are no fond words now, with Sisolak seeking a second term as governor and Lombardo, with backing from former President Donald Trump, leading a Republican bid to unseat him in a key partisan race drawing national attention.

“They want the same elected position — friends become antagonists as a result,” observed Fred Lokken, a political science professor at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno.

With days ticking down to Election Day on Nov. 8, polls generally show the race close between Sisolak and Lombardo. Sharp and shrill ads funded by the parties, political action committees and campaigns blame each candidate for a range of ills.

Sisolak backers point to crime in Las Vegas during Lombardo’s term as sheriff and cite Lombardo’s staffing decisions in a department with about 6,000 employees.

Lombardo acknowledges that crime has risen in the last two years, but says he has made the most of what he could with funding and mandates from a Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Lombardo backers point to an investigation by ProPublica, published in May, examining the hiring of a Chicago-based coronavirus testing company, Northshore Clinical Labs, that missed 96% of positive cases from the University of Nevada campus in Reno.

In a debate with Lombardo earlier this month, Sisolak denied impropriety, defended the state’s fast-track licensing of Northshore to expand testing capacity and noted the company was licensed by the federal government and other states.

Some issues in Nevada echo those in the other 35 states with governor’s races on this year’s ballot: abortion; the performance of President Joe Biden; support or opposition to Trump; and the economy, including inflation and housing costs.

Nevada unemployment led the nation and peaked at more than 28% in June 2020, after Sisolak closed non-essential businesses including casinos during the pandemic. It has rebounded to 4.4% in August. The state has some of the highest gasoline prices in the nation, according to AAA.

Lokken termed it “a merry mess of issues,” many of them complex and hard for voters to follow.

Both candidates say they want to improve education in a state consistently ranked at or near the bottom in funding and performance with high student-to-teacher ratios. Both say teachers should be paid more.

The powerful teachers’ union in Clark County, which backed Sisolak in 2018, announced this month that it won’t make any endorsement this election. Bids to break up the sprawling Clark County School District, with more than 300,000 students, have stalled.

Lombardo has said he favors school choice, which would help parents send their children to private schools at state expense. Sisolak has said he does not want to divert funding from public to private schools.

The candidates have also clashed over enacting a state-managed public health insurance option passed by the Legislature and signed by Sisolak. Lombardo, at a primary campaign event, used an expletive to deride it as bad policy.

“The economy is going to be the big driver,” Lokken predicted, but other issues such as abortion and the response to COVID, will contribute. “Neither party owns the economic issue and both of them contribute to the fracturing of the economy.”

Almost one in three of Nevada’s 1.8 million active registered voters are Democrats, about 593,000, with most of them living in Las Vegas and the Reno area. Almost 543,000 voters are registered as Republicans and nonpartisans total almost 531,000.

Both Sisolak and Lombardo claimed victory after the Oct. 2 debate, their only face-to-face meeting, during which Lombardo hesitated when asked whether Trump was “a great president.”

“I wouldn’t say great,” Lombardo responded. “I think he was a sound president.”

Later that day, Lombardo’s campaign issued a statement calling Trump “a great president and his accomplishments … some of the most impactful in American history.”

The next weekend, appearing with Trump at a Republican campaign rally at an airport in northern Nevada, Lombardo doubled down, calling Trump “the greatest president” and playing to the GOP base with a claim that Sisolak, if re-elected, will “go after your guns.”

Sisolak promised during his 2018 campaign — in the months after the Las Vegas shooting killed at least 58 people and injured hundreds — to ban assault rifles, silencers and “bump stock” adapters that allow for rapid fire.

As governor, he signed gun safety measures passed by the Democratic-led Legislature in 2019, including a “red flag” law letting people ask judges to order the temporary surrender of a firearm from a person deemed a threat to themselves or others. A federal ban on bump stocks remains in effect after the U.S. Supreme Court this month declined to take up a challenge.

On abortion, Lombardo has walked a tightrope, saying he would govern through a “pro-life lens” while acknowledging that Nevada voters in 1990 approved a referendum allowing for the procedure up to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

“That is an issue that doesn’t need to be in politics,” he said during a September campaign appearance.

Sisolak is a staunch supporter of abortion rights and has said that if he is re-elected he’ll ask the Legislature to codify an order he signed that protects in-state providers and patients visiting from out-of-state.

“I support, unequivocally, a woman’s right to choose,” he said during the debate. “Her health care decisions are between her and her doctor.”

Democrats nationally have focused on the abortion issue since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in June overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for nearly 50 years guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion.

Through the end of June, campaign finance reports showed Sisolak raised about twice as much money in the race as Lombardo. Both had more than $1 million remaining to spend.

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Associated Press writer Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada contributed to this report.

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By Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden, under renewed pressure over high inflation with mid-term elections approaching, will say on Tuesday he plans to send a bill to Congress to guarantee abortion rights if Democrats control the legislature next year.

Biden’s Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate too, in the November elections.

He is trying to rally the party and its supporters around abortion rights, which were sharply curtailed by the Supreme Court’s decision nearly four months ago to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling.

“He will say that if the American people elect more Democratic Senators in November and keep the House Democratic, the first bill he will send to the next Congress will be to codify Roe — and he will sign it around the 50th anniversary of the Roe decision,” a Democratic official said.

Democrats currently have a slim majority in the House and control the 50-50 Senate through Vice President Kamala Harris’ ability to cast tie-breaking votes.

Biden is slated to give remarks at the historic Howard Theatre in Washington on Tuesday.

While abortion has played a critical role in Democrats’ midterm messaging, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that Americans are more worried about inflation.

Nationwide, just 8% of Americans cited the end of national abortion rights as the issue that will most influence how they vote in November, compared with 27% who cited inflation in a poll conducted Sept. 27-Oct. 3.

Some 20% of Democratic women cite the end of national abortion rights as their top issue for the midterms, compared with 22% who cite inflation. Outside that group, abortion is a lower priority.

Some 9% of Democratic men cited abortion as their top issue, compared with 19% who cite inflation.

Biden and top White House officials this month announced new guidelines and grants to protect abortion and contraception rights. He has said he would not “sit by and let Republicans throughout the country enact extreme policies.”

Abortion bans have gone into effect in more than a dozen states since the Supreme Court’s ruling on June 24.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and David Gregorio)

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By Gabriella Borter

(Reuters) – An abortion rights vote in Kentucky on Nov. 8 will determine if the conservative state becomes Kansas 2.0.

Kentucky voters are being asked to amend the state’s constitution to say residents do not have a right to abortions, three months after voters in Kansas soundly rejected a similar ballot question.

The upcoming vote is a test of public support for Kentucky’s strict abortion laws, which took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal abortion protections in June. A defeat of the proposed amendment could pave the way for the state’s highest court to invalidate a ban on all abortions except in rare medical emergencies.

Five states have put abortion-related measures on their November midterm election ballots, allowing voters to direct the future of abortion access in their states. Kentucky is the only one of those states to have voters weigh in on abortion rights while enforcing a near-total ban.

The campaign against the ballot measure in Kentucky, a deeply conservative state with a Republican supermajority in its statehouse, has drawn millions of dollars and some of the same personnel who helped defeat the Kansas effort.

A coalition of state and national abortion rights groups called Protect Kentucky Access aims to win support from conservatives who disagree with the overturn of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and the state’s abortion ban.

“There’s a decent chance that we’ll see some relatively conservative Republican voters, even people that you’d call generally anti-abortion…looking like they’re relatively pro-choice in this vote because of the current circumstances,” said Steve Voss, a political scientist at the University of Kentucky.

There is no public opinion polling on the ballot question. Yes for Life, a coalition of state religious groups campaigning in support of the amendment, also is seeking to galvanize conservative, anti-abortion voters to avoid a repeat of the Kansas outcome.

“We’re working very hard night and day to make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Addia Wuchner, the group’s campaign director.

KANSAS ABORTION BALLOT CONNECTIONS

The coalition opposing the Kentucky measure has raised $2.7 million this year, according to an Oct. 12 financial report, surpassing the $510,000 raised this year by Yes for Life in support of the amendment.

Leticia Martinez, a consultant who has advised both opposition campaigns, said while the Kansas win informed the Kentucky efforts, the current strategy was tailored to Kentucky voters specifically.

There are roughly equal numbers of registered Republicans and Democrats in Kentucky. In Kansas, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 350,000.

One message that swayed moderates in Kansas – that rejecting the amendment would prevent government interference with personal medical decisions – also seems to resonate with Kentucky voters, Martinez said.

“That is a message that really crosses party lines,” she said.

The campaign is emphasizing the impact abortion bans can have on women with pregnancy complications, noting their lives could be at stake if doctors fear repercussions for providing abortion care. The campaign’s first television advertisement featured a woman discussing how she had to terminate a wanted pregnancy to save her own life.

“It’s an impossible decision,” the woman says in the ad, which is airing in Kentucky metropolitan areas. “I can’t imagine a politician making it for me.”

Denise Finley, a 64-year-old retired teacher in Lexington, said she would vote “no” on the amendment.

She lost a baby to a fatal medical condition, she said. Though she had not known about the condition before giving birth, she felt any decision related to her child should not involve the government.

“This is personal,” said Finley, a registered Republican who has often voted for Democrats. “Unless you’re in that situation, you don’t know how you really will feel.”

Kentucky’s Supreme Court has allowed two restrictive abortion laws to take effect: a ban on abortions after six weeks and a near-total ban triggered by the overturn of Roe.

A hearing on challenges to those bans is set for Nov. 15, the week after the election. The fate of abortion services in the state hangs in the balance.

The Kentucky anti-abortion coalition is hosting rallies in rural areas and leaning on church communities, said Wuchner, the Yes For Life campaign director who also serves as executive director of Kentucky Right to Life.

Despite being outspent in Kentucky and having far less than the nearly $5 million raised by Kansas’ anti-abortion campaign, Wuchner said her team is counting on turnout from “family-values, pro-life voters” to achieve victory.

“This amendment will shore up the constitution and allow the lawmakers to make the laws,” she said.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Josie Kao)

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NEW YORK (AP) — The startup union that clinched a historic labor victory at Amazon earlier this year is slated to face the company yet again, aiming to rack up more wins that could force the reluctant retail behemoth to the negotiating table.

This time, the Amazon Labor Union and the nation’s second-largest private employer are facing off in the town of Schodack, near Albany, New York. Workers at the warehouse there, which employs roughly 800 people according to Amazon, will finish voting in a union election on Monday. The votes will be tallied Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board.

“There are also a lot of odds against us, but I think there’s definitely a huge possibility we might win,” said Sarah Chaudhry, an 18-year old who’s been organizing workers since joining the company two months ago. “I can’t jinx it.”

The face-off near the state’s capitol — one of the most unionized metro areas in the country, according to Unionstats.com — marks the third time the ALU is taking on Amazon following its initial win at a Staten Island facility in April. That victory — the first ever for an Amazon facility in the U.S. — came as a surprise even to those sympathetic to the union’s calls for a $30 hourly wage and better working conditions for warehouse workers.

But soon enough, challenges began to appear. A loss at a second, nearby warehouse in May took some wind out of the union’s sail. Fractures were exposed when some prominent organizers left the group.

Elsewhere, the union lost time and resources attempting to cement its lone win. Amazon has accused the ALU and the NLRB’s field office in Brooklyn of tainting the vote. In a quest for a redo election, the company filed more than two dozen objections with the agency, triggering a lengthy process that could take years to resolve.

Last month, a federal labor official who presided over the hearings ruled against the company, which has noted it intends to appeal. During an interview last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also signaled the retail giant could drag the case to federal court.

“Amazon is ready to fight this to the death,” said John Logan, the director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University. “And the problem for the Amazon Labor Union is if you only have one warehouse … you’re never going to have enough leverage to force the company to bargain.”

The election in Albany offers the ALU a chance to show its win isn’t a one-off, experts say. Heather Goodall, the main worker organizer in the facility, launched the campaign at the warehouse in May, three months after joining the company and a month after the Staten Island win. Her passion for unionizing, she said, came from the death of her son, who committed suicide six years ago while working for a large company.

“So when I heard that there were working conditions that were suspicious in my own community — and I have a 17- and 15-year-old that attends the school district in the area where Amazon conducts its business — I wanted to see firsthand what was going on,” Goodall said.

Amazon launched its own campaign to push back the organizing effort. As it did with other warehouses, the company held mandatory meetings at the Schodack facility in an attempt to persuade workers to reject the union. It also put up flyers and signs across the warehouse urging workers to “vote no.”

“Don’t sign an ALU card,” the company said on one sign posted on a screen at the facility. “The ALU is untested and unproven.”

“We’ve always said that we want our employees to have their voices heard, and we hope and expect this process allows for that,” Paul Flaningan, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement.

Last week, Amazon workers at a separate facility in California’s Moreno Valley filed for their own union election, seeking to join the ALU. Nannette Plascencia, who has worked at the warehouse for seven years, said she and her colleagues have been attempting to organize the facility for more than two years, but the company’s famously high turnover rate had made it challenging to build up enough support.

Another election spearheaded by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, remains too close to call with 416 challenged ballots still waiting for adjudication. The vote, held this spring, was the union’s second attempt to organize there, following a prior loss that it contested.

Unlike Starbucks stores that have voted to unionize by the hundreds in the past year, organizing Amazon warehouses is a much more arduous task. The facilities typically employ hundreds — or thousands — of employees. And it can take months to build up enough showing of support for an election.

Amazon warehouse workers at a facility in Garner, North Carolina, a suburb of Raleigh, have been organizing for months and plan to file for an election by the end of summer next year, said Tim Platt, an Amazon worker who’s been soliciting support for the campaign under a group called Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE. Organizers are taking their time to file for an election so they can be confident of the outcome by the time workers start voting.

The workers there chose not to align with the ALU, though organizers still coordinate with each other routinely. Platt said workers might join another union in the future. They’ve met with the Teamsters, which launched a division last month focused on organizing Amazon workers. But for now, Platt said they’re only focused on organizing.

Mendoza, ALU’s director of communications, said the union is trying to support other workers forming their own organizing committees across the country. However, their main task will be filing their own election petitions and building up more support at the facility that voted to unionize in case it needs to call for an action, such as a strike.

The union has been able to hire two full-time staff to help out with trainings and meetings. A $250,000 donation from the American Federation of Teachers has also allowed them to get office space in Staten Island. They’re building support, but it takes time, Mendoza said.

“You can lose some elections or win other ones,” he said. “We’re not concerned about an individual result the way Amazon is. They can’t really afford to lose one.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — From his home in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Graeme Dean says there’s plenty that’s disheartening about the state of the country and politics these days. At the center of one of this year’s most competitive U.S. Senate races, he’s on the receiving end of a constant barrage of vitriolic advertising that makes it easy to focus on what’s going wrong.

But the 40-year-old English teacher has no intention of disengaging from the democratic process. In fact, he believes that the first national election since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is “more significant” than in years past.

“This could very well sway the country in one direction or another,” the Democratic-leaning independent said.

Dean is hardly alone in feeling the weight of this election. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center of Public Affairs Research finds 71% of registered voters think the very future of the U.S. is at stake when they vote this year. That’s true of voters who prefer Republicans win majorities in Congress, and those who want to see Democrats remain in control, though likely for different reasons.

While about two-thirds of voters say they are pessimistic about politics, overwhelming majorities across party lines — about 8 in 10 — say casting their ballot this year is extremely or very important.

The findings demonstrate how this year’s midterms are playing out in a unique environment, with voters both exhausted by the political process and determined to participate in shaping it. That could result in high turnout for a midterm election.

In the politically divided state of Michigan, for instance, over 150,000 voters have already cast absentee ballots. A total of 1.6 million people have requested absentee ballots so far, surpassing the 1.16 million who chose the option in the 2018 midterm election.

In follow-up interviews, poll respondents reported distinct concerns about the country’s direction despite agreement that things are not working.

Rick Moore, a 67-year-old writer and musician in Las Vegas, said he’s dissatisfied with President Joe Biden, and “not just because I’m a Republican.” Moore called him “more of a puppet” than any other president in his lifetime.

“It’s important to me that Republicans are in control of as much as possible because we’re not going to get rid of the Democratic president anytime soon,” Moore said.

In general, Moore said, he doesn’t like the way Democratic politicians run their states, including Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, adding that Democrats are “using the word democracy to make all of us do what they want.”

“I would just like to see my voice more represented,” he said.

Since the last midterm elections, voters have grown more negative about the country and people’s rights: 70% say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., up from 58% in October 2018.

Republicans have become enormously dissatisfied with a Democrat in the White House. While Democrats have become less negative since Donald Trump left office, they remain largely sour on the way things are going.

Fifty-eight percent of voters also say they are dissatisfied with the state of individual rights and freedoms in the U.S., up from 42% in 2018. About two-thirds of Republicans are now dissatisfied, after about half said they were satisfied when Trump was in office. Among Democrats, views have stayed largely the same, with about half dissatisfied.

Shawn Hartlage, 41, doesn’t think her views as a Christian are well represented, lamenting that she’d love to vote “for someone that really stood for what you believe,” but that it’s very important to her to vote anyway.

The Republican stay-at-home mother of two in Washington Township, Ohio, said the direction of the country is “devastating,” noting both inflation and a decline in moral values.

“I’m scared for my children’s future,” Hartlage said. “You always want to leave things better for them than what you had, but it’s definitely not moving in that direction.”

Teanne Townsend of Redford, Michigan, agrees that things are moving backward. But the 28-year-old called out abortion, health care and police brutality as especially concerning areas in which rights are being threatened.

“We have minimum progression in the right direction for a lot of areas, especially for people of minority (groups). Their rights are not the same as those of other races and cultures,” the Democrat, who is African American, said.

A children’s health and mental health specialist, Townsend said she’s voting for her constitutional right to an abortion this year. If passed, the state’s ballot initiative would guarantee abortion rights in the Michigan Constitution.

“I feel like it’s just a lot that’s at stake,” Townsend said, adding that she’s both “optimistic and nervous” about the outcome but that it’s “the right thing” for people to be able to vote on it.

The poll showed majorities of voters overall say the outcome of the midterms will have a significant impact on abortion policy, with Democratic voters more likely than Republican voters to say so. Most voters across party lines say the outcome will have a lot of impact on the economy.

More voters say they trust the Republican Party to handle the economy (39% vs. 29%), as well as crime (38% vs. 23%). Republicans also have a slight advantage on immigration (38% vs. 33%). The Democratic Party is seen as better able to handle abortion policy (45% vs. 22%), health care (42% vs. 25%) and voting laws (39% vs. 29%).

Despite the uncertainty in the outcome, Dean in Pennsylvania has faith in the American system to work for the will of the people.

“I think it’s important that our representatives represent what the majority of people want,” Dean said. “That’s what we claim we do in this country and it feels like it is what should happen. And I am hopeful.”

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The poll of 961 registered voters was conducted Oct. 6-10 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

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

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By Matt Zdun

(Reuters) – Misinformation online and false claims of election fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies have sharply eroded public trust in the integrity of U.S. elections. How Americans vote — and the equipment they use — varies widely, and some methods are more vulnerable to efforts to shake that trust.

Heading into the 2022 midterms, election experts say the move in most states to hybrid voting systems – paper ballots tallied by electronic machines – could give voters greater confidence.

ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES

The United States invested hugely in paperless electronic voting machines after the contested presidential election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush in 2000 shook election officials’ confidence in paper ballots.

By 2006, the share of registered voters using paperless machines had surged, though hand-marked paper ballots that are later scanned by electronic tabulators remained the most popular. For the next decade, about a third of all votes were cast on direct recording electronic machines.

These electronic voting machines store the votes in their memory. The lack of a physical record to back up the electronic vote means election officials must trust that the machines do not malfunction and change or lose a vote, that poll workers do not inadvertently alter votes, or that the machines are not hacked, said Douglas Jones, a retired University of Iowa computer science professor who spent decades studying the use of computers in elections.

In 2016 about 22% of registered voters were living in jurisdictions that used electronic voting machines without paper trails, according to data from Verified Voting, a U.S. nonprofit that promotes the use of secure technology in election administration.

By 2020 fewer than 9% of registered voters nationwide were living in jurisdictions that used electronic voting machines without paper trails for all voters — the smallest number since data was first available in 2006. This shift reflected election officials’ growing concerns about foreign interference in elections and the need to have some way to audit tallies.

For the November midterms, that number is expected to dwindle to about 5%, according to data from Verified Voting.

Counties in six states still use paperless voting machines. Most lie in solidly Republican or Democratic congressional districts, which decreases the likelihood of a contested election.

However, there are six congressional districts that are considered at least somewhat competitive and are using electronic voting machines without paper records: the second, third, fifth and seventh districts in New Jersey; Indiana’s first district; and Texas’s 15th district.

PAPER BALLOTS

The United States, like many countries, mostly uses paper ballots to vote. Nearly 70% of registered voters live in jurisdictions that primarily use hand-marked paper ballots, according to data from Verified Voting.

About 23% of registered voters live in jurisdictions that primarily use machines called ballot-marking devices. These allow voters to make their selections electronically and also produce a paper record that can be scanned by another device.

The extent to which voters use digital technology to cast their ballots has shifted over time. Paperless electronic voting, touted for its ability to tally votes quickly and accurately, largely decreased in popularity in the United States and European countries from the mid-2000s onward.

Countries have turned to paper as the most secure way to audit their elections and detect potential vote tampering. To be sure, machines are still integral to the election process even when votes are cast on paper ballots. Optical scan tabulators count the results.

Election experts say paper ballots help to secure elections because they allow voters to verify how they voted and officials to cross-check results in post-election audits.

Georgia illustrates the importance of having a paper voting trail. The state had used paperless voting machines for several years. But just before the 2020 presidential election, it replaced its equipment with ballot marking devices, the machines in which voters make their selections electronically and can then review them on a printed paper ballot, which is then scanned and tabulated by a different machine.

Trump challenged the results and falsely claims that there were widespread irregularities and fraud in states that he lost to his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Because there were paper ballots, however, election officials in Georgia were able to hand-count the votes and confirm Biden had indeed won the state.

VOTE-TABULATING SYSTEMS

The push toward paper does not mean that machines are disappearing from voting places. Almost all still use machines to tabulate the paper ballots. Trump and his allies falsely claim that tabulators in some 2020 races were manipulated to flip votes from Trump to Biden.

They are pushing for the machines to be ditched entirely and for the ballots to be counted by hand, which election officials say is a logistical non-starter. The claims have been thoroughly investigated and debunked.

Still, claims of election fraud have sown widespread mistrust in elections, with an ABC/Ipsos poll in January finding only about 20% of the American public is very confident in the election system.

(Reporting By Matt Zdun; editing by Ross Colvin, Scott Malone)

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