Early Voting: What has been Missed in the Pelosi Era? The Case of Mark Finchem, an Arizona Senator and a Voter’s Advocate

On the same day as the Pelosi attack, federal agencies released an internal bulletin warning of a heightened threat from domestic violent extremists.

While worrisome indicators, such as growing support for political violence, a rise in threats against elected officials and election workers, and the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, have clearly indicated the path of the country’s political environment over the past couple of years, many see the current election cycle

While the internal bulletin warned federal agencies of a heightened threat period, it identified “lone offenders” as the most likely to commit violence, rather than organized extremist groups. It outlined a number of grievances that may motivate those actors, including debunked claims of widespread election fraud and polarizing social topics such as abortion and LGBTQ rights.

“If we look back to 2020, we saw very little violence around Election Day itself,” she said. The government, non-government groups and others have spent more preparation to ensure that this year’s event is as smooth as possible.

Some places have had a hard time with early voting. In Arizona, armed civilians in tactical gear showed up at ballot drop boxes, ostensibly to monitor voters. The activities, which prompted claims of voter intimidation, have been encouraged by Republicans across the country since 2020.

One of them is Mark Finchem, the GOP nominee for Arizona secretary of state who has spread baseless claims of election fraud and who has encouraged his followers to monitor vote operations in their communities.

“You have the responsibility of maintaining your election!” Finchem said at a rally last year, which began with those in attendance pledging allegiance to a flag that was at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. “You need to be at the polls. You cannot leave it in someone else’s hands.

More than 30,000 people have been trained by the Republican National Committee in order to poll watchers for this year’s elections.

Weld County’s Republican clerk told Colorado Public Radio that all of the poll watchers she approved for the June primary had ties to election denial groups.

That can present a complicated situation. On the other hand, having conspiracy- minded volunteers involved in the process can be a great chance to educate them about how elections actually work.

But Spencer Overton, a voting expert at George Washington University, says it can also be a powder keg if those people are set in their beliefs that there is widespread fraud and they need to uncover it.

“It’s not about volunteer work, it’s about political activism and vindicating an election from 2 years ago,” he said. “That can lead to conflict.”

Researchers say the days following the election may pose a greater risk of violence than Election Day itself, particularly in locations where vote counting drags on.

Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-DefamationLeague’s Center on Extremism, asked if people would lose their faith in the system if they did not have their preferred candidate win. “They have seen that denial is a way forward, that you’re able to create a community of conspiracy around that. I think there is more violence to come.

They have seen that denial is a way forward, that you’re able to create a community of conspiracy around that. Violence is not that far away, I think.

Identifying Threats of Political Insights During the Midterms: John Eastman’s Case against the 2020 Capitol Attack

Some of the right’s best-known voices say they’re prepared for litigation if certain races don’t favor Republican candidates.

The January 6 investigation into the attack on the Capitol, which was instigated by the leaking of tape of John Eastman, has been centered on his involvement in trying to overturn the 2020 election.

“You are allowed to make a written record of anything you see not going on correctly,” Eastman said, according to audio obtained by the watchdog group Documented. “That’s called creating evidence.”

According to Hiller of the Bridging Divides Initiative, the field of locations with threats of violence are likely to narrow quickly. Her team is specifically keeping an eye on races in the swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, where false claims of past election fraud have been embraced not just by many voters, but by some political leaders as well.

“They’re [states] where there are senior leaders, specifically in the Republican Party, that are already calling into question the results of the election or have a history of advocating for violence or condoning violence around it,” she said.

Hiller believes that the institutions that have preserved the democratic process in the past will have the resources needed to deal with these threats.

The story of 2020 for me is that many fail-safes worked. The court systems worked well. A lot of the recounts that happened were incredibly effective. And folks were able to surge resources to those locations,” she said. “So we’re in for another election that’s going to test those resources and that resolve.”

The next big election is the 2024 presidential election, and many are watching to see what this cycle will portend. Whether or not former President Donald Trump runs again, experts say the efforts around undermining democracy during the midterms could drastically affect what many perceive to be the even-higher-stakes race for the White House, calling it a “dry run” for 2024.

He believes that this should be a dry run for people who want to protect democracy. “If we want to protect our democracy, our leaders have to make sure that they do everything they can to do that.”

Additionally, the midterms will test whether local organizing of far-right groups around challenging voter rolls and vote counting, and increased presence as election workers, will bear fruit. If it does that will force those efforts to ramp up into the presidential election cycle.

She said groups have been working hard for a long time. Even if there are small incidents in a polling place that someone tries to create issues for, the vast majority of polling locations are prepared for that. A lot of thought has been given to how to support people with de-escalation skills.

Segal said it’s critical that local and national institutions and leaders demonstrate in the coming weeks how they will navigate a supercharged political event.

Joe Biden’s 2020 Campaign: The Story of America’s Fate, Its Impact on the Economy, and the Victims of Trump’s Crimes

Americans needed to hear Joe Biden’s defense of democracy. But it was not the one voters most want now from their president – that relief is at hand from the soaring cost of living.

His speech reflected on his view of the mission handed to him by history. The election is only five days away and with it comes scores of pro- Trump candidates spouting his stolen election nonsense. And it came days after the latest shocking example of political violence – the attack on the 82-year-old husband of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Since Biden launched his 2020 campaign as a quest to save America’s soul from what he sees as the aspiring autocracy of Trump, it was also a statement of a mission unaccomplished.

Biden told voters the fate of the nation, the soul of America, and the power that they had has always been with them.

In the heartlands of Pennsylvania, the suburbs of Arizona, and cities all over the world, the gut check issue is more of a concept of self-government. It is the basic part of feeding a family. America’s founding truths are more important than the cost of a cart full of groceries in this election.

As Scottsdale, Arizona, retiree Patricia Strong told CNN’s Tami Luhby: “The price of everything was better during Trump,” adding, “We were looking forward to retirement because everything was good.”

A gusher of news on job losses just before polls opened, including in the tech industry, worsened jitters about a slowdown that could destroy one of the bright spots of the Biden economy – historically low unemployment. Americans will have a hard time weathering the Fed hikes in interest rates because they’re already struggling with higher prices for food and gas and it could cause the economy to go into a recession.

The current election could cause political damage that is beyond mending if Biden is correct in saying that inflation and economic damage will fall.

It is difficult to make a case for Democrats in a gloomy political environment. Most of the Republicans who believe in Trump do not listen to Biden or his call for national unity. His approval ratings don’t help. In a survey published on Wednesday, 51 percent of Americans said inflation and the economy was most motivating their vote in the mid-terms. Abortion – the issue Democrats hoped would save them next Tuesday after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer – was the only other concern in double figures, polling at 15% of likely voters. And voting rights and election integrity – the focus of the president’s speech on Wednesday night – polled at only 9%.

He hoped that you would make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote, and how you vote. Will that person accept the outcome of the election? Several GOP nominees have not guaranteed they would accept voters’ will at the end of the campaign.

Biden’s First Address at the White House: Why America has a Problem, and why the GOP is so noxious in 2020

Biden has been talking about high prices. His pitch is that the billions of dollars of spending in his domestic agenda will lower the cost of health care, lift up working families and create millions of jobs. Things that could happen in the future can not ease the pain being felt at the moment.

Inflation has been a force that breeds desperation in an electorate and can lead to the creation of extremists. That is why politicians fear it so much and why they are curious that the Biden White House initially insisted that it was a transitory problem caused by Covid-19.

In his first inaugural address in front of a Violence-scarred Capitol, the president called for national unity. He explained that American democracy was primarily under attack because “the defeated former president of the United States refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election.”

“He has abused his power and put the loyalty to himself before loyalty to the Constitution. Biden said he was careful not to insult every GOP voter, as he did when referring to “semi-fascism” earlier this year.

The president argued that Trump had a threat larger than in the previous election. The president said that there were candidates for every level of office in the country, who wouldn’t accept the results of the elections.

Biden also hinted at a lack of understanding of Trump’s MAGA supporters, who have embraced his anti-democratic, populist, nationalist appeal to mainly White voters, which grew out of a backlash to the first Black presidency of Barack Obama. The 44th president has been making his own defense of democracy and repudiation of Trump on the campaign trail.

“You can’t love your country only when you win,” Biden said. The essence of democracy is dependent on the loser of an election accepting the opinion of the people. The reason Trump’s behavior was so noxious in 2020 is because he refused to acknowledge defeat and ruin one election. It tore at the fundamental principle of the political system that made America great two-and-a-half centuries before Trump’s political career and caused damage that will long outlast the shockwaves of one administration.

Yet now extreme MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections, but elections being held now and into the future. The extreme MAGA element of the Republican Party, which is a minority of that party, as I said earlier, but it’s its driving force. It’s trying to succeed where they failed in 2020, to suppress the right of voters and subvert the electoral system itself. Denying your right to vote and deciding whether your vote counts are some of the things it means.

They are starting way before the election is over. They’re starting now. They’ve emboldened violence and intimidation of voters and election officials. It is estimated that there are at least 301 election deniers on the ballot this year. We have to keep in mind that this is having an impact on our country. It’s destructive, it is damaging and it is corrosive.

This isn’t about me but about all of us. It’s about what makes America America. It’s about the durability of our democracy. Democracy is more than a form of government. They are, a way of being and a way of seeing the world that define who we are. Democracy is simply that fundamental.

We have to dig deep and recognize that democracy is not something we can take for granted anymore. With democracy on the ballot, we have to remember these first principles. The rule of the people is what democracy means, not the rule of monarchs.

Autocracy is the opposite of democracy. It means the rule of one, one person, one interest, one ideology, one party. Billions of people have had their lives shaped by the fight between the many and the greed and power of the few, between the peoples right for self-seeking and the self-determination.

What Does Joe Biden Really Want to Do? The Hardest Day in Biden’s Midterm Campaign & the Cost of Living Crisis

Nobody really wants to live like that; nobody likes to think we could. Understanding the daily scale of these problems isn’t easy.

In endless tension with more abstract questions about the big picture is the practical reality that in a democratic republic, real people, with real lives, set up the voting equipment in a middle school gym somewhere, check you in, hand you a ballot, hand you a sticker, make sure the tabulator is empty before the count begins — the full battery of mundane procedures that start in your neighborhood and filter up through the county and the state and, in a presidential year, all the way up through the country.

A dispirited nation worn down by crises and economic anxieties votes Tuesday in an election that is more likely to cement its divides than promote unity.

Elections are often a chance for people to freely choose their leaders, which in turn leads to a new path for the country.

Republicans predict they will win the House of Representatives on Tuesday – a victory that, if it materializes, would give them the power to throttle President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda and clamp an investigative vise on his White House. The Senate is very close, with a few races in states like Arizona,Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania, which will determine who wins the majority.

Above all, the midterm campaign turned on the cost of living crisis, with polls showing the economy by far the most important issue for voters, who are still waiting for the restoration of normality after a once-in-a-century pandemic that Biden had promised in 2020.

The reality of a weakened presidency, viciousness in politics, and threats to free and fair elections have been inescapable in recent days.

Tuesday looks set to be a tough day for Biden. The president did not spend the final hours of the campaign battling to get vulnerable Democrats over the line in a critical swing state. His low approval ratings won’t affect Democrats running for office and he was in the liberal bastion of Maryland. While he did stump for Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman over the weekend, the venue of his final event encapsulated his drained political juice as he contemplates a 2024 reelection campaign.

Biden thinks it is going to be difficult. “I think we’ll win the Senate and I think the House is tougher,” he said, admitting life would become “more difficult” for him if the GOP takes control of Congress.

Trump also vowed to make “a very big announcement” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on November 15, which appears to be the worst kept secret in politics – that he will seek another term in the White House. The fact that a twice-impeached president, who left office in disgrace after legitimizing violence as a form of political expression, has a good chance of winning underscores the turbulence of our time.

“In our democracy, there is one party that is doubting the outcome of the election, feeding that flame, and mocking any violence that happens. Pelosi said that that has to stop.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is the likely next speaker if Republicans net the five seats they need for the House majority, blamed Democrats for heated political rhetoric as he laid out an aggressive agenda, targeting border security and relentless investigations in an exclusive interview with CNN. He did not rule out impeaching Biden, a step radical members of his conference are already demanding.

“We will never use impeachment for political purposes,” McCarthy told CNN’s Melanie Zanona. “That doesn’t mean if something rises to the occasion, it would not be used at any other time.”

And Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who says he’s in line to be chairman of the permanent subcommittee on investigations if he wins reelection and Republicans take the Senate, said he’d use the power granted him, in what is likely to be a very narrowly decided election, to further crank up the partisan heat in Washington.

What do we really think about democracy and the 20th century? When did humanity feel the end of the world? The tale of apocalypse and panic

There is a magic about democratic elections when differences are exposed in debates. But there’s mostly, until now, been an expectation that both sides would then abide by the verdict of the people.

Those arguments can register as hysterical or dismissive or out of touch, but they can also be considered in the most openhearted, late-night kind of way. Maybe we really are on the verge of something even worse, as in large stretches of the 20th century, and this is how people felt in previous eras that you read about. Is the world as we knew it was going to end? Would you even know, until it was too late, until it was actually over?

In 2022, you could find the swings in discourse between apocalypse and dismissal, panic and caution, in politics, in the media, on Twitter and Instagram, over text, in person, within and between ideological factions, about war in Europe, about the state of American democracy, about illiberalism and the prospective retreat from globalism, about violence, about Covid, about artificial intelligence, about inflation and energy prices and crypto collapse contagion. There are many versions of the debate, each with their own take on it, but all get it wrong. This can even be a debate you have with yourself.