Politics

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Barack Obama warned anxious Democrats on Saturday that abortion rights, Social Security and even democracy itself is at risk should Republicans seize congressional majorities next week. “Sulking and moping is not an option,” the former president said in Pennsylvania.

“On Tuesday, let’s make sure our country doesn’t get set back 50 years,” Obama told hundreds of voters on a blustery day in Pittsburgh. “The only way to save democracy is if we, together, fight for it.”

He was the opening speaker in a clash of presidents past and present in the battleground state as each party’s biggest stars worked to energize voters on the final weekend of campaigning before Election Day on Tuesday.

Obama was accompanying Senate nominee John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor who represents his party’s best chance to flip a Republican-held seat. Later Saturday, they were to appear in Philadelphia with President Joe Biden and Josh Shapiro, the nominee for governor.

Democrats are deeply concerned about their narrow majorities in the House and Senate as voters sour on Biden’s leadership amid surging inflation, crime concerns and widespread pessimism about the direction of the country. History suggests that Democrats, as the party in power, will suffer significant losses in the midterms.

Even before arriving in Pennsylvania, Biden was dealing with a fresh political mess after upsetting some in his party for promoting plans to shut down fossil fuel plants in favor of green energy. While he made the comments in California the day before, the fossil fuel industry is a major employer in Pennsylvania.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the president owed coal workers across the country an apology.

“Being cavalier about the loss of coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting,” Manchin said.

Former President Donald Trump will finish the day courting voters in a working-class region in the southwestern corner of the state Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Senate nominee, and Doug Mastriano, who running for governor.

The attention on Pennsylvania underscores the stakes in 2022 and beyond for the tightly contested state. The Oz-Fetterman race could decide the Senate majority — and with it, Biden’s agenda and judicial appointments for the next two years. The governor’s contest will determine the direction of state policy and control of the state’s election infrastructure heading into the 2024 presidential contest.

Polls show a close contest to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Shapiro, the state attorney general, leads in polls over Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel who some Republicans believe is too extreme to win a general election in a state Biden narrowly carried two years ago.

Obama acknowledged that voters are anxious after suffering through “some tough times” in recent years, citing the pandemic, rising crime and surging inflation.

“The Republican like to talk about it, but what’s their answer, what’s their economic policy?” Obama asked. “They want to gut Social Security. They want to gut Medicare. They want to give rich folks and big corporations more tax cuts.”

Obama and Fetterman hugged on stage after the speeches were over.

“Today, Dr. Oz is going to be standing with Donald Trump,” Fetterman quipped.

Obama’s appearance in Pittsburgh marked his first time campaigning in Pennsylvania this year, though he has been the party’s top surrogate in the final sprint to Election Day. Obama campaigned in recent days in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona.

As Biden’s approval numbers sag, the current president has been a far less visible presence in battleground states. He’s spending more time in Democratic-leaning states where he’s more welcome.

Biden opened his day in Democratic-leaning Illinois campaigning with Rep. Lauren Underwood, a two-term suburban Chicago lawmaker who is nn a close race.

In a speech, Biden ticked through several of his administration’s achievements, including the Inflation Reduction Action, passed in August by the Democratic-led Congress. It includes several health care provisions popular among elderly people and the less well-off, including a $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket medical expenses and a $35 monthly cap per prescription of insulin. The new law also requires companies that raise prices faster than overall inflation to pay Medicare a rebate.

“I wish I could say Republicans in Congress helped make it happen,” Biden said of the legislation that passed along party lines.

Yet his comments from the day before about the energy industry may have been getting more attention.

“It’s also now cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar than it is from coal and oil,” Biden said Friday in Southern California. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”

Pennsylvania has largely transitioned away from coal, but fossil fuel companies remain a major employer in the state.

The White House has worried privately for weeks that concerns about Fetterman’s health might undermine his candidacy. Fetterman is still recovering from a stroke he suffered in May. He jumbled words and struggled to complete sentences in his lone debate against Oz last month, although medical experts say he’s recovering well from the health scare.

Obama addressed Fetterman’s stroke directly.

“John’s stroke did not change who he is. It didn’t change what he cares about,” he said.

Despite his lingering health challenges, Fetterman railed against Oz and castigated the former New Jersey resident as an ultrawealthy carpetbagger who will say or do anything to get elected.

“I’ll be the 51st vote to elimaite the filibuster, to raise the minimum wage,” Fetterman said. “Please send Dr. Oz back to New Jersey.”

Oz has worked to craft a moderate image in the general election and focused his attacks on Fetterman’s progressive positions on criminal justice and drug decriminalization. Still, Oz has struggled to connect with some voters, including Republican voters who think he’s too close to Trump, too liberal or inauthentic.

Trump’s late rally in Latrobe is part of a late blitz that will also take him to Florida and Ohio. He’s hoping a strong GOP showing will generate momentum for the 2024 run that he’s expected to launch in the days or weeks after polls close.

Trump has been increasingly explicit about his plans.

At a rally Thursday night in Iowa, traditionally home of the first contest on the presidential nominating calendar, Trump repeatedly referenced his 2024 White House ambitions.

After talking up his first two presidential runs, he told the crowd: “Now, in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again, OK? Very, very, very probably. Very, very, very probably.”

“Get ready, that’s all I’m telling you. Very soon,” he said.

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Madhani reported from Joliet, Illinois, and Peoples from New York. Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

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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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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Democrats in South Carolina get another shot at loosening the firm grasp Republicans have on statewide politics as voting ends Tuesday for the 2022 midterm elections.

But it’s likely to be a tough fight. Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in 16 years, have candidates in just four of the eight races on ballots across South Carolina, and face well-financed and Republican establishment-supported challengers in all of them.

Three of the Republicans are incumbents, with Gov. Henry McMaster at the top of the ticket.

Since the turn of the century, Republicans have taken on Democrats in 39 statewide races in South Carolina and won 36 of them. The closest race since Democratic Education Superintendent Jim Rex had the last win for his party in 2006 was the 2010 governor’s race that Nikki Haley won by 4.5 percentage points.

The Democrats did flip a U.S. House seat in the coastal 1st District in 2018, but it flipped back to Republicans in 2020.

GOVERNOR

McMaster faces Joe Cunningham, who is trying to reverse the fortune of Democrats in South Carolina by running a different kind of campaign.

Cunningham, 40, wants to end the state income tax, legalize marijuana and sports betting and has criticized McMaster for not suspending the state gas tax when fuel prices rose. Days before the election, he promised to offer half the Cabinet jobs in his administration to Republicans because diversity of ideas is important to him.

Cunningham also has hammered the age difference between himself and McMaster, 75.

McMaster, governor since January 2017, is largely running on his record. He touts an income tax passed this year, work to expand interstates and improve highways across the state and a booming economy that survived the COVID-19 shutdown.

Democrats hope the debate debate over abortion may change their fortunes. Cunningham has campaigned on vetoing any further restrictions on abortion passed by the General Assembly, which is dominated by Republicans but falls just short of a two-thirds majority that could override his veto.

The candidates debated just once, with McMaster saying if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its ruling allowing gay marriage across the country, he would support a ban on same sex marriage that remains in the South Carolina constitution.

“Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I think marriage ought to be between a man and a woman,” McMaster said at the Oct. 26 debate, adding he doesn’t care who anyone loves, but “marriage is a special institution.”

Cunningham said that stance shows how out of touch McMaster is after four decades in politics. “It’s 2022, and Gov. McMaster wants to ban same-sex marriage,” he said.

Since July 1, McMaster’s campaign has spent $3.2 million, while Cunningham’s campaign has spent $1.3 million, according to spending reports with the South Carolina ethics commission.

US SENATE

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott is seeking a second, full six-year term against Democratic state Rep. Krystle Matthews.

Scott did not agree to a debate in a mostly low-key campaign. He has spent much of 2022 helping other Republicans around the country.

Scott has promised his second full term will be his last in the U.S. Senate, but has been coy about whether he plans to run for other offices, including president.

Scott has spent nearly $27 million on his campaign since the start of 2021, while Matthews has spent about $90,000 since announcing her run earlier this year, according to federal reports.

Matthews also is running for a third term in the South Carolina House, but Republican-dominated redistricting put more likely GOP voters into her district in Berkeley and Charleston counties.

US HOUSE

Republican U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace hopes to use a little help from her party’s redistricting efforts to keep the 1st District from flipping parties for a third election.

Mace faces Democratic pediatrician Annie Andrews in the district that stretches from Hilton Head Island to Charleston.

The Republican-dominated General Assembly redrew U.S. House maps after the 2020 Census and removed some traditionally Democratic voters from the rapidly growing 1st District.

Joseph Oddo also is running from the Alliance Party.

South Carolina is guaranteed to have one new congressman among its seven U.S. representatives. Republican state Rep. Russell Fry defeated incumbent Tom Rice in the primary after Rice voted to impeach president Donald Trump. Fry faces Army veteran and Democratic challenger Daryl Scott in the 7th District which runs from Myrtle Beach to Charleston.

U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the state’s lone congressional Democrat, is running for a 16th term. He is facing Republican attorney Duke Buckner in the 6th District, a majority-minority district from Charleston to Columbia.

Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, first elected in 2001, faces Democratic business owner Judd Larkins in the 2nd District, which includes Columbia’s western suburbs and Aiken.

In the 5th District, which runs from Rock Hill to Sumter, Republican U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, first elected in 2017, faces Democratic real estate agent Evangeline Hundley and Larry Gaither of the Green Party.

Two Republican incumbents have no opposition on the ballot.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan is seeking a seventh term in the 3rd District, which covers the northwest part of South Carolina.

U.S. Rep. William Timmons is running for a third term in the 4th District, which includes Greenville and Spartanburg. Independent candidate Lee Turner, who has run as a Democrat in other races, has an organized write-in campaign.

STATEWIDE OFFICES

Democrats are contesting two other statewide offices.

The only open seat is state Education Superintendent, where Republican Ellen Weaver faces Democrat Lisa Ellis.

Weaver is enthusiastically supported by the Republican establishment. Her campaign has spent $800,000 so far through the primary and general election with other outside political committees also contributing heavily toward her election.

Weaver backs any school choice proposal the Republican-dominated General Assembly will send her. She is a conservative think tank CEO and chairwoman of the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee.

But Weaver only obtained the master’s degree required for the superintendent job last month after what she said was an intensive program of about six months. Democrats and others haven’t said if they will challenge Weaver’s qualifications if she wins.

Ellis is a high school English teacher with more than two decades of classroom experience. She founded the teacher group SC for Ed on social media, calling for education improvements, higher pay and better treatment for teachers.

Ellis said South Carolina needs someone with actual education experience to replace outgoing Republican Molly Spearman in the state’s top education job. Her campaign has spent just over $200,000 this year.

The other statewide race pitting a Democrat against an incumbent Republican has Secretary of State Mark Hammond seeking a sixth term against challenger Rosemounda Peggy Butler.

Republican Treasure Curtis Loftis is seeking a fourth term against Alliance Party candidate Sarah Work, while Republican Agriculture Commissioner Hugh Weathers is seeking a fifth full term against United Citizen Party candidate Chris Nelums and Green Party candidate David Edmond.

Republican Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom is unopposed for a sixth term and Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson has no opponent as he seeks a fourth term.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — What’s behind some of the notable nomenclature facing voters trying to decipher the who/what/why/when/where of casting their ballots this year?

Here are some key terms to know ahead of the midterm elections:

ADVANCE VOTING

The term “advance voting” is preferred in states where voters have several options to vote before Election Day. It can mean a few different things: mail-in ballots, absentee ballots and early, in-person voting.

ABSENTEE BALLOTS

Voters who can’t go to the polls on Election Day itself often vote absentee, getting a ballot — either by mail or in-person — and casting it ahead of time. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia offer “no-excuse” absentee voting. This means that any voter can request and cast an absentee or mail ballot without providing a reason.

AP VOTECAST

First used in 2018, AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News and The Associated Press. VoteCast is not an exit poll.

CANVASSING THE VOTE

After votes are cast, officials check lists of voters against the number of ballots cast and research any discrepancies, which often are due to clerical errors or mistakes.

CERTIFICATION

Votes also have to go through the certification process at the local and then state levels, either involving a board composed of statewide officials such as the secretary of state and governor, or solely the secretary of state. Hawaii is the only state where certification is overseen by a nonpartisan chief election official appointed by a bipartisan commission. In 45 states, the local boards that handle election certification are either party-controlled or commissions where the members are elected on a partisan basis, according to research by the advocacy group Election Reformers Network.

EARLY RETURNS

As votes are cast and counted across the country, they are tabulated and reported, before races themselves are called. Early returns often do not provide an accurate reflection of the ultimate outcome, especially in states that take days or weeks to count votes cast in advance and provisional ballots.

EXIT POLLS

In the U.S., exit polling is a survey of voters conducted by the National Election Pool — a network of broadcasters — using a methodology based on in-person interviews at polling places.

`LATE EARLIES’

Some advance ballots don’t get turned in or received until Election Day. These “late earlies,” as they’re known in states like Arizona, can often lead to vote counts taking several days to complete in some places, although the state does permit both ballot processing and counting prior to poll close.

MAIL VOTING

Eight of the states that offer no-excuse absentee voting automatically mail a ballot to every eligible voter, without necessitating a request or application. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t in-person polling locations, too, but most people in these places vote by mail.

MAJORITY & PLURALITY

A majority is more than half the votes cast; a plurality is the largest number of votes, but less than a majority. In states like Georgia, where a candidate needs a majority to win, runoff elections may be necessary to determine who ultimately wins a contest.

OVERVOTE AND UNDERVOTE

An overvote is when a voter selects too many candidates in a given race. Conversely, an undervote means that a voter hasn’t made a selection for each office on the ballot, leaving some blank.

POLL MONITORS/POLL WATCHERS/CITIZEN OBSERVERS

The terms poll monitors, poll watchers and citizen observers are interchangeable, and they can be partisan or nonpartisan. Nonpartisan poll watchers are trained to monitor polling places and local elections offices that tally the votes, looking for irregularities or ways to improve the system. Partisan poll watchers are those who favor particular parties, candidates or ballot propositions and monitor voting places and local election offices to ensure fairness to their candidates or causes. Since the 2020 election, a handful of states passed laws limiting the restrictions that local election officials can place on poll watchers, giving them greater access to ballot counting and processing.

POLL WORKERS

Distinct from poll monitors or observers, poll workers are the people — many times volunteers — manning voting locations on Election Day.

PROVISIONAL BALLOTS

Called “challenge” or “affidavit” ballots in some states, provisional ballots are required by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 to ensure that voters’ choices aren’t discounted due to administrative error. Voters are given a provisional ballot when there is some uncertainty about their eligibility, like a name not appearing on voter rolls. In most places, provisional ballots are kept separate from other ballots until after the election, when an election board decides if the voter was indeed eligible, and therefore whether the vote should be counted.

RACE CALL

AP calls winners of elections in the United States based on an analysis of the vote count, polling research and other data. An AP race call is not a projection; AP only makes race calls when it is determined that a trailing candidate has no path to overtake a leading candidate.

RANKED CHOICE VOTING

In this electoral system, voters rank their choice of candidate by ordered preference, with those rankings used to determine a winner in the event no candidate wins a majority of ballots on which they appear as voters’ first preference. If a candidate wins over 50% in the first round, it’s over. If not, round two starts with the candidate who got the fewest votes in the first round being eliminated. If the eliminated candidate was your vote then your next choice gets your vote in this round.

Only a handful of states use ranked-choice voting now, but its use is being debated in other places.

SPOILT BALLOT/BALLOT SPOILING

A ballot is considered spoiled when officials have deemed it invalid, for reasons deliberate or not, and therefore not to be included in vote totals. In some places, like Wisconsin, the rarely used practice of ballot spoiling has been challenged in court, in circumstances when a voter submits an absentee ballot, then voids the original ballot and votes again.

SUPERMAJORITY

A requirement that a proposal or candidate gain a level of support that exceeds the threshold of a standard 50% plus 1 majority.

TOO EARLY TO CALL

Races in which the vote count is active and ongoing and a winner is not yet clear are “too early to call.” That includes races in which the vote count may take several days.

TOO CLOSE TO CALL

Races in which the vote count has reached its primary conclusion – all outstanding ballots save provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots have been counted – without a clear winner are “too close to call.” AP formally declares a race “too close to call” via our election reporting system and in our news report.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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

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ATLANTA (AP) — One candidate in Georgia’s Senate contest warns that “spiritual warfare” has entangled America and offers himself to voters as a “warrior for God.” But it isn’t the ordained Baptist minister who leads the church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.

It’s Republican Herschel Walker, the sports icon who openly questions the religious practices of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who calls himself “a pastor in the Senate” and declares voting the civil equivalent of prayer.

Both men feature faith as part of their public identities in a state where religion has always been a dominant cultural influence. But they do it in distinct ways, jousting in moral terms on matters from abortion, race and criminal justice to each other’s personal lives and behavior.

Their approaches offer a striking contrast between political opponents who were raised in the Black church in the Deep South in the wake of the civil rights movement.

“It’s two completely different visions of the world and what our biggest problems actually are,” said the Rev. Ray Waters, a white evangelical pastor in metro Atlanta who backs Warnock in Tuesday’s election.

How religious voters align could help decide what polls suggest is a narrow race that will help settle which party controls the Senate the next two years. According to Pew Research, about 2 out of 3 adults in Georgia consider themselves “highly religious.”

Warnock, 53, preaches a kind of social justice Christianity that echoes King, the slain civil rights leader who also led Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

The senator embraces the Black church’s roots in chattel slavery and Jim Crow segregation. From the pulpit, he acknowledges institutional racism and calls for collective government action that addresses inequities and other social ills. He often notes his arrests as a citizen protester advocating for health insurance expansion in the same Capitol where he now works as a senator.

“I stand up for health care because it’s a human right,” Warnock said. “Dr. King said that of all the injustices, health care inequality is the most shocking and the most inhumane.”

Walker talks, too, of society’s shortcomings, but the 60-year-old points to the expansion of LGBTQ rights, renewed focus on racism and “weak” politicians, who, he says, “don’t love this country.” He has called for a national ban on abortions but has faced accusations from two former girlfriends who said he pressured them into terminating pregnancies and paid for their procedures. He has said the claims are lies.

It’s a culturally conservative pitch tied to individual morals rather than collective responsibility and effectively holds that the United States is a Christian country. That aligns Walker with the mostly white evangelical movement that has shaped the modern Republican Party.

Those approaches, varied in substance and style, are traced through the two rivals’ biographies.

Warnock, the son of Pentecostal ministers, pursued a similar educational path as King. Both attended Morehouse College, a historically Black campus in Atlanta. Warnock followed that with Union Theological Seminary in New York, a center of progressive Christian theology. Now with more than a decade in one of the nation’s most famous pulpits, he sometimes quotes Scripture at length and peppers his arguments with Latin references.

“I believe a vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire … and that democracy is the political enactment of the spiritual idea that each of us was created, as the scriptures tell us, in the ‘Imago Dei’ — the image of God,” Warnock told a group of Jewish supporters last month.

At the same event, during observances of the Jewish New Year, Warnock noted a passage often used as part of Rosh Hashanah fasting. “Is this the fast that the Lord is looking for,” he said, “that you would loose the chains of injustice and you would set the oppressed free, that you would feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger.” Offering the citation — Isaiah 58:6 — he called it “a favorite of mine.”

Walker also is a Pentecostal pastor’s son and now attends nondenominational Bible churches. A star high school athlete in rural Georgia, his football prowess took him in 1980 to the University of Georgia, a secular public campus that was then overwhelmingly white. Walker never graduated, though he claims otherwise.

He talks often of Jesus, typically as a figure of “redemption” rather than a guide for public policy.

“Let me acknowledge my Lord and savior Jesus Christ, because it’s said if you don’t acknowledge him, he won’t acknowledge you,” Walker said at his lone debate with Warnock. “When I come knocking, I want him to let me in.”

Many Walker events open with prayers, some led by other Black conservative evangelicals. Yet Walker’s scriptural and theological references are scattershot, usually nonspecific allusions as part of broadsides against Warnock and “wokeness.”

On transgender rights, Walker has said: “I can’t believe we’re discussing what is a woman. That’s written in the Bible. … We got to not let them fool us with all those lies.”

At a “Women for Herschel” event in August, Walker suggested Warnock is anti-American, and he alluded to the biblical story of the Hebrew God expelling dissident angels from heaven. “It’s time for us to kick those people who don’t like America, kick ‘em out of office,” he said, concluding to his largely white audience: “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re racist.”

On abortion, he said directly to Warnock on the debate stage: “Instead of aborting those babies, why are you not baptizing those babies?”

It’s a compelling argument for voters such as Wylene Hayes, a 76-year-old retired schoolteacher in Cumming. “You can just tell Herschel is a man of strong faith, and just humble,” she said. “I don’t have anything against Sen. Warnock, but I do question how he can be a pastor and support abortion.”

Warnock counters that he supports abortion access because “even God gives us a choice,” while Walker’s position would grant “to politicians more power than God has.”

Waters said Walker’s collective argument is targeted squarely at white suburban Christians like those he led for decades before moving closer to the Atlanta city center, where he saw more problems to fix and people to help. “It seems to me the central issues in wokeness are … compassionate habits that are a lot of what Jesus said to do,” Waters said.

Warnock largely sidesteps Walker’s attacks. He has recently begun framing Walker as “not fit” for the Senate because of Walker’s “lies” about his business record and allegations of violence against his ex-wife. The closest Warnock comes to questioning Walker’s faith is to say redemption requires that a person “confess … and be honest about the problem.”

“I will let him speak for himself,” Warnock said. “I am engaged in the work I’ve been doing my whole life.”

The Rev. Charles Goodman, an Augusta pastor and friend of Warnock, said it’s not new for outspoken Black pastors, especially those with a more liberal theology, to be tarred as dangerous and anti-American.

“They called Dr. King a ‘communist,’ and now it’s ‘radical’ and ‘socialist,’” Goodman said. “Dr. Warnock loves this country. There will always be tensions between our aspirational views of the country versus our struggle trying to get to that place. He’s a very hopeful minister, and he’s always going to speak truth to power and live in that tension.”

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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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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Frank Scott became Little Rock’s first popularly elected Black mayor four years ago on campaign promises to unite a city long divided along racial lines.

But a deadly year in Arkansas’ capital, criticism of his management and attacks from Republicans are threatening reelection chances for Scott, a rare high-profile Democrat in this solidly red state. His reelection bid is one of the few competitive races on the ballot in Arkansas, where Republicans are heavily favored in statewide and congressional matchups.

“This race is very simple: do you want to go backward to a horrid past, or do you want to continue growing forward?” Scott told supporters before he cast his ballot during early voting.

Scott’s election in 2018 was a landmark for a city long known for the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School, when nine Black students were escorted into the school in front of an angry white mob. The city remains racially divided, with whites making up about half of Little Rock’s population.

Little Rock’s mayoral race is nonpartisan. But Scott is running in a midterm election where violent crime has become a pivotal issue nationwide, with Republicans eager to paint Democratic mayors as unable to protect their cities.

In neighboring Texas, the top elected official in reliably Democratic Harris County — home to Houston — also faces such criticism. Crime dominates advertising by GOP candidates in some of the most competitive Senate and governor’s races across the country.

Scott’s chief rival in the race is Steve Landers, a retired car dealer who regularly cites the city’s spiraling homicide rate in campaign appearances and materials. Little Rock so far this year has reported at least 71 homicides, surpassing the record the city reached in 1993.

“People want a change in our city. Our city is dangerous,” Landers said.

Landers calls himself an independent who’s voted for Democrats and Republicans. Federal Election Commission records show he’s donated to several Republican candidates and the state GOP in recent years, but also to some Democrats. He’s outspent Scott’s campaign, and loaned $400,000 to his bid, according to fundraising reports filed last week.

The other candidates running are Greg Henderson, a local businessman who publishes a food blog, and Glen Schwarz, a longtime marijuana legalization advocate. All three challengers are white.

Scott, a former member of the state highway commission, became Little Rock’s first elected Black mayor in a runoff election. Little Rock previously had two Black mayors, but they were chosen for the job by fellow city board members and not by voters.

Scott had the backing of Democratic and Republican figures four years ago when he led a campaign that sought to bridge the city’s biggest divides: race, income and geography.

The homicide rate and some stumbles at City Hall, however, have since drawn the involvement of Republican-backed groups. They include one campaign that’s been supported by former Gov. Mike Huckabee’s political action committee.

Crime in Little Rock is also factoring into other races in the state.

An ad by Republican gubernatorial hopeful Sarah Sanders — the former White House press secretary and Huckabee’s daughter — mentions the city’s violent crime.

Scott has blasted the former governor’s involvement in the race, with one mailer warning voters, “do not let Mike Huckabee bring Donald Trump policies to Little Rock.”

Political observers say the Republican attacks could backfire.

“This adds a new dimension to it, this has in essence become a partisan race and there are a lot of Democrats in Little Rock,” said Skip Rutherford, a former chairman of the state Democratic Party.

Since the GOP-backed groups’ involvement, Scott’s campaign has rolled out endorsements from high profile Democrats and groups, such as retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes. He’s also been endorsed by some of the Black students who integrated Central High.

Scott has defended his handling of crime, noting that Little Rock’s overall violent crime rate is down compared to the same period last year.

The mayor and police have said this year’s homicide spike, unlike what the city saw in the early 1990s, isn’t driven by gang activity but by domestic violence or crime between acquaintances. In a statement over the weekend, he said the city has put social workers in the field, funded conflict resolution programs for at-risk youth and targeted patrols in high-crime areas of the city.

Scott’s woes are compounded by criticism of his management of City Hall, including an art and music festival he championed that was abruptly canceled days before it was to take place. The city’s manager canceled Little Rock’s contract with an outside firm that was organizing the festival following questions about the financial arrangement with the firm.

The city’s police chief, who Scott hired, retired in May after a rocky three years marked by lawsuits and clashes with officers. Little Rock also faces criticism about a lack of transparency, prompting the local prosecutor to vent frustration last week about the number of Freedom of Information Act complaints he’s received about the city.

In his reelection bid, Scott has touted the city landing economic development deals, including an Amazon delivery station and warehouse.

“Little Rock has an opportunity to be a catalyst for the new South,” Scott told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this year.

Rachel Luckett, who cast a ballot for Scott during early voting, said she is concerned about crime but want to give the mayor another chance.

“I think he’s handled it just as well as any other mayor that’s come through,” Luckett said. “It won’t change overnight.”

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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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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Nashville voters who cast ballots in the wrong congressional and state races will be able to submit a provisional ballot on Election Day, officials announced Friday as part of an agreement sparked by a lawsuit earlier that day.

The decision comes as election officials have scrambled for days to correct Davidson County’s voting system after The Associated Press reported first that nearly 200 Tennesseans had voted in the incorrect congressional races, while 16 cast votes in a wrong state Senate race and six cast votes in a wrong state House race.

Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers split up multiple precincts throughout Davidson County while redrawing Nashville’s congressional maps in hopes of flipping a Democratic seat. As a result, voters now live in splintered precincts and some have been incorrectly grouped in the wrong district. But according to the county, no issues surrounding ballots being cast in the wrong race were raised during the primary, which took place in August.

Jeff Roberts, Nashville’s election administrator, had originally stated that the problem had been fixed Wednesday morning after working throughout the night, combing through the complex county voting system and getting the voting machines up to date.

However, threats of lawsuits continued to mount and by Friday, election officials confirmed that an unknown number of Davidson County voters could still potentially receive the wrong ballot on Election Day, which is Nov. 8. To date, officials have refused to estimate how many voters are at risk of receiving the wrong ballot.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters eventually filed a legal challenge late Friday, as Nashville city council members were meeting behind closed doors to discuss options on how to ensure voters could still cast a correct ballot.

Nashville’s council is not named in the lawsuit, but Davidson County Election Commission is one of the defendants.

Under the tentative agreement, which a judge approved Friday night, voters may be able to enter a provisional ballot on Election Day at the county election office if they submitted an incorrect ballot during the early voting period. Those provisional ballots will only be opened if the election is contested.

Meanwhile, voters who believe they are given the wrong ballot on a voting machine on Election Day will also be given a chance to use a special paper ballot at their assigned polling places.

Voters whose districts were correctly assigned will cast their ballots on voting machines at their regular polling places.

The order dictates that Davidson County must educate poll workers so that they can assist affected voters. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State’s office will investigate to determine how the problem arose in the first place.

“I feel as confident that I can that the fix is ready to go into place and it will address the issue,” said Wallace Dietz, Nashville’s legal director.

Julia Bruck, spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said, “We support the Agreed Order and are grateful that the Court granted relief for the affected voters.”

Roberts did not respond to a request for comment late Friday.

“There is a fix, there is a way for everybody to vote,” Nashville Councilmember Bob Mendes. “That’s my number one priority and we can figure out the blame for this afterwards.”

Meanwhile, a congressional ballot issue also took place in the state’s most populous county, Shelby, which includes Memphis. Local election officials said Friday that 50 ballots were cast at one Memphis polling place for the incorrect congressional race. The 9th Congressional District was listed on the ballot instead of the correct one for those voters, the 8th.

County elections administrator Linda Phillips said the “clerical error” originated at the local level and was immediately corrected on the ballot for future voters. She said no further issues were identified in a review of all other precincts. The mistake was found Oct. 31 after 50 ballots had already been cast.

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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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ANTIOCH, Calif. (AP) — Kim Carlson’s apartment has flooded with human feces multiple times, the plumbing never fixed in the low-income housing complex she calls home in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Antioch.

Her property manager is verbally abusive and calls her 9-year-old grandson, who has autism, a slur word, she said. Her heater was busted for a month this winter and the dishwasher has mold growing under it. But the final straw came in May: a $500 rent increase, bringing the rent on the two-bedroom to $1,854 a month.

Carlson and other tenants hit with similarly high increases converged on Antioch’s City Hall for marathon hearings, pleading for protection. In September, the City Council on a 3-2 vote approved a 3% cap on annual increases.

Carlson, who is disabled and under treatment for lymphoma cancer, starts to weep imagining what her life could be like.

“Just normality, just freedom, just being able to walk outside and breathe and not have to walk outside and wonder what is going to happen next,” said Carlson, 54, who lives with her daughter and two grandsons at the Delta Pines apartment complex. “You know, for the kids to feel safe. My babies don’t feel safe.”

Despite a landmark renter protection law approved by California legislators in 2019, tenants across the country’s most populous state are taking to ballot boxes and city councils to demand even more safeguards. They want to crack down on tenant harassment, shoddy living conditions and unresponsive landlords that are usually faceless corporations.

Elected officials, for their part, appear more willing than in years past to regulate what is a private contract between landlord and tenant. In addition to Antioch, city councils in Bell Gardens, Pomona, Oxnard and Oakland all lowered maximum rent increases this year as inflation hit a 40-year high. Other city councils put the issue on the Nov. 8 ballot.

Leah Simon-Weisberg, legal director for the advocacy group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, says local officials can no longer pretend supply and demand works when so many families are facing homelessness. In June, 1.3 million California households reported being behind on rent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The situation in working-class Antioch — where more than half the population is Black or Latino — illustrates how tenuous even a win for tenants can be.

The two council members who voted in favor of rent stabilization are up for re-election Tuesday, with one of them, Tamisha Torres-Walker, facing a former council member she narrowly beat two years ago. The local newspaper endorsed Joy Motts and called Torres-Walker, who was homeless as a young adult, polarizing.

Mayor Lamar Thorpe, who provided the third vote, faces sexual harassment allegations by two women, which he denies. They are part of a progressive Black majority.

If either member loses her seat, the rent ordinance could be repealed.

The two council members who voted no are both in the real estate industry, and not up for re-election.

A once largely white suburb, Antioch has become more politically liberal as Black, Latino and low-income residents forced out of San Francisco and Oakland moved in. Advocates tried for years to mobilize tenants, but it took the shockingly high rent-hike notices and the expiration of a statewide eviction moratorium in June to get movement.

Outraged tenants jammed into council chambers describing refrigerators pieced from spare parts and washing machines that reeked of rotten eggs. They spoke of skipping meals, working multiple jobs and living in constant terror of becoming homeless, sleeping in their car and washing their children with bottled water.

“We saw a lot of fear, a lot of desperation,” said Rhea Laughlin, an organizer with First 5 Contra Costa, a county initiative that focuses on early childhood. But, she said, she also saw people summon the courage “to go before council, to rally, to march, to speak to the press and be exposed in a way that I think tenants were too afraid to do before, but now really felt they had little to lose.”

Teresa Farias, 36, said she was terrified to speak in public but she was even more afraid that she, her husband and their three children, ages 3 to 14, would have to leave their home. When the family received a $361 rent increase notice in May, she called the East County Regional Group, a parent advocacy organization supported by First 5. They told her to start knocking on doors and talk to her neighbors.

“I really don’t know where my strength came from, to be able to speak in public, to be able to speak in front of the City Council … to ask them to help us with this issue,” she said in Spanish outside her home at the Casa Blanca apartments.

California’s tenant protection law limits rent increases to a maximum 10% a year. But many types of housing are exempt, including low-income complexes funded by government tax credits and increasingly owned by corporations, limited liability companies or limited partnerships.

The tenants who flooded City Council meetings drew largely from four affordable-housing complexes, including sister properties Delta Pines and Casa Blanca, where an estimated 150 households received large rent increases in May. The properties are linked to Shaoul Levy, founder of real estate investment firm Levy Affiliated in Santa Monica.

The rent increases never took effect, rescinded by the landlord as the City Council moved toward approving rent stabilization. Levy did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Council member Michael Barbanica, who owns a real estate and property management company, called the rent hikes outrageous, but said the city could have worked with the district attorney’s office to prosecute price-gouging corporate landlords.

Instead, the rent cap penalizes all local landlords, some of whom are now planning to sell, he said.

“They’re not the ones doing 30-40-50% increases,” Barbanica said, “yet they were caught in the crossfire.”

But, Carlson said, the city needs to pass even more tenant protections. The apartment complex is infested with roaches and her neighbors are too scared to speak up, she said.

Her apartment has flooded at least seven times in the eight years she’s lived there, she said, flipping through cellphone photos of her toilet and bathtub filled with dark yellow-brown water. In October 2020, she slipped from water pouring down from the upstairs apartment and dislocated her hip.

She has never been compensated, including all the gifts lost when the apartment flooded with water on Christmas Eve 2017. Two months later, in February 2018, feces and urine bubbled from the tub and toilets.

“We got two five-gallon buckets and a bag of plastic bags brought to us and we had to (urinate and defecate) in those buckets for five days because the toilets were blown off the floor,” Carlson said.

The toilets still gurgle, indicating blockage. That’s when she shuts off the water and waits for plumbers to clear the backup.

Tenant organizer Devin Williams grew up in Antioch after his parents moved out of San Francisco in 2003, part of a migration of Black residents leaving city centers for cheaper homes in safer suburbs. The 32-year-old is devastated that the same opportunity is not available to tenants like Carlson now.

“People have a responsibility to make sure people have habitable living conditions,” he said. “And their lives are just being exploited because people want to make money.”

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RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada’s secretary of state declined Friday to lift a ban on a rural county’s controversial early hand-count of mail-in ballots, saying a modified procedure the county clerk proposed still raises “concerns relating to the integrity of the election.”

Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske ordered Nye County last week to halt its hand-counting of ballots until after polls close on Nov. 8. Her order came after the Nevada Supreme Court issued an opinion siding with the American Civil Liberties Union’s objections to the reading of individual votes out loud.

In a letter to the county Friday, Cegavske invited county officials to update or better explain their proposal for a silent hand-count with more details.

But the move makes it increasingly difficult for Nye County to revise, submit, get approval and carry out plans for the hand-count of mail-in ballots before polls close on Election Day.

Meanwhile, the ACLU and the sprawling, heavily GOP county halfway between Reno and Las Vegas continued to argue over the circumstances that led to an election official, who was openly carrying a gun, removing an ACLU observer from the hand-count that lasted two days before Cegavske suspended it last Thursday night.

Lawyers for Nye County said in a new letter to Cegavske Friday that the chairman of the Nye County GOP Central Committee who was legally armed was acting as a hand-count volunteer trained by county Interim Clerk Mark Kampf when she confronted the ACLU observer she believed was tallying the vote count in violation of the recount rules.

The ACLU quickly responded and the dispute could last past Election Day. But the rejection of the county’s late-hatched proposal to resume the hand-count in silence puts the early count of mail-in ballots almost out of reach by the time polls close.

Kampf proposed three talliers and a control team with two independent verifiers who mostly worked separately, so there would be no reader who called out each ballot or verifier, who looked over the reader’s shoulder.

Cegavske listed a number of concerns in explaining why she would need more details before she allowed the count to resume.

She noted the silent hand-count will require the “complete focused attention” on each ballot by talliers that will prevent them from noticing when other talliers make wrongful marks or mistakes.

“Additionally, there are no provisions in your plan describing the required use of medical-style gloves to further mitigate the risk of cheating or accidental marking, nor a prescribed and standardized device for tallying to ensure any new mark could be quickly identified,” she said.

Nye County is one of the first jurisdictions nationwide to act on election conspiracies related to mistrust in voting machines, though other counties across Nevada have considered using hand-counts in the future.

Earlier Friday, lawyers for the county rejected the ACLU’s recent accusations of a “coordinated partisan election administration effort” in a letter to Cegavske’s office asking for an investigation into the hand-count. Hours later the ACLU responded, doubling down on its concerns.

The ACLU’s complaint about the removal of its observer by Nye County GOP Central Committee Vice Chair Laura Larsen raised concerns about Kampf’s delegation of authority to partisan officials to remove observers from hand-count rooms, particularly during a hand-count process dealing with ballot tabulation.

Along with noting Nevada is an open-carry state, Nye County’s lawyers said the county understood Larsen, a trained volunteer, had never threatened to use the firearm. The county also argued that taking notes jeopardized releasing early voting results and said there was no partisan conspiracy as part of its hand-count plan.

Larsen’s position as the vice chair of Nye County’s GOP central committee “does not limit or invalidate her ability to participate as a poll worker/volunteer,” the response added.

But the ACLU said in a letter to the secretary of state’s office that the county’s response “further emphasizes that Larsen is, in fact, not serving in a neutral capacity” and remains active in partisan leadership.

In an interview with The Associated Press after the first day of hand-counting, Larsen said her role was “making sure things are going the way Mark (Kampf) has set everything up. So, just looking out for the election integrity.” She did not respond to an email requesting comment on Friday.

Of Nye County’s 97 hand-count volunteers, 70 were registered Republicans, 16 were Democrats, 10 were Non-Partisan or had no political party and one was from the Independent American Party, according to data The AP received through a public records request. The county later declined to give the party breakdown for each of the individual hand-count rooms, which had five people each: a reader, a verifier and three talliers.

The county also declined to provide the party breakdown for an updated number of volunteers, which was at 102 on the first day of hand-counting. Former President Donald Trump won about 69% of Nye County in the 2020 election, though he lost Nevada by about 2.4%.

Nye County has just over 33,000 registered voters and planned on using a hand-count as the secondary tabulation method to Dominion tabulators. Kampf has floated the possibility of moving away from tabulators in the 2024 cycle for a sole hand-count.

Two hand-count groups that The AP observed on day one took about three hours each to count a batch of 50 ballots.

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A judge has issued a preliminary injunction halting parts of a new Missouri law that puts limits on what can be done to help register voters and reach out to absentee voters.

Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem sided with the League of Women Voters of Missouri and the state chapter of the NAACP in blocking parts of a law adopted by Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature and signed into law by GOP Gov. Mike Parson.

The court order was dated Oct. 24 and publicized Friday.

Missouri voters on Tuesday will decide a U.S. Senate race that features Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine, eight congressional races, and a proposal to legalize recreational marijuana, among many other races and ballot measures.

The voter law was enacted after some Republicans raised concerns about election integrity following former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election. Opponents say the law seeks to reduce the number of Democrats who can vote.

The new law bans paid solicitation of voter registration applications. It requires registration with the state by anyone seeking to sign up more than 10 voters. It requires volunteer solicitors to be Missouri voters. And, it prohibits solicitations aimed at convincing a voter to obtain an absentee ballot application.

Beetem said those provisions unconstitutionally limit free speech.

“The chilling effect of the Challenged Provisions threatens to cause increased voter confusion and decreased voter participation,” Beetem wrote. “The public interest weighs in favor of granting injunctive relief.”

Missouri NAACP President Nimrod Chapel called the voter bill “the latest in a long line of Jim Crow legislation” aimed at disenfranchising people.

A statement from Republican Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s office noted that the injunction “only temporarily prohibits the enforcement of certain provisions” of the law, House Bill 1878.

“We look forward to vigorously defending these aspects of HB1878 at trial,” the statement read.

Last month, Beetem dismissed another lawsuit challenging a new requirement that voters show a government-issued photo ID at the polls. That lawsuit was filed on behalf of two women, but Beetem wrote that neither “alleged a specific, concrete, non-speculative injury or legally protectable interest in challenging the photo ID requirement.”

That ruling was appealed, but voters will be required to show a photo ID on Tuesday.

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This story has been updated to correct that the preliminary injunction was dated Oct. 24 and publicized Friday.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A mailer to voters across Kansas suggests removing state Supreme Court justices in Tuesday’s election would protect access to abortion, when abortion rights advocates want to keep them on the bench.

The mailer’s return address says it is from VMCF Inc., of Lenexa, a Kansas City suburb. For a brief time in October, that was the legal name of a charitable foundation run by a prominent Republican direct mail firm’s owner, state records show.

One side says “Kansans pushed back” against the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in late June to overturn Roe v. Wade. Voters in August decisively rejected a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution. The mailer includes the logo of the pro-amendment side with a red “X” through it.

The mailer’s opposite side urges no votes Tuesday on retaining state Supreme Court justices. Six of the seven justices are on the ballot for yes-or-no votes on whether they stay on the bench another six years.

“LET THEM HEAR YOU AGAIN!” the mailer says under a bigger “NO!”

Abortion rights groups want to retain the justices, and Kansans for Life, the state’s most influential anti-abortion group, wants to oust five of the six. The court in 2019 ruled that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the Kansas Constitution, spurring GOP legislators to push the proposed anti-abortion amendment.

“It’s clearly designed to misinform,” said state Rep. Stephanie Clayton, a Kansas City-area Democrat, whose daughter was sent a mailer.

An online state records search for VMCF brought up documents for the nonprofit Van Meteren Charitable Foundation Inc. and showed that it switched from the longer name to the shorter one on Oct. 24 and back on Oct. 31.

Its 2021 annual report listed the same address as the return address on the mailer. Its only officer was Kristian Van Meteren, who owns the The Singularis Group direct mail firm, also in the Kansas City area. He did not immediately return telephone messages Friday seeking comment.

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The summary and 2nd paragraph of this story have been corrected to show that the company named on the mailer is VMCF, not KMCF.

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Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

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