Politics

OCEANSIDE, Calif. (AP) — In an urgent plea as his party faces the potential loss of House and Senate control, President Joe Biden asked voters Thursday to go to the polls to support Democratic candidates, warning that a Republican Congress would reshape America by cutting back on health care and threatening abortion rights and retirement security.

Speaking in San Diego County, California, at an evening rally in support of endangered Democratic Rep. Mike Levin, the president said the outcome of the election would “determine the direction of the country for at least a decade or more.”

“This is a choice … between two fundamentally different versions of America,” Biden said.

Biden’s appearance marked his second trip to California in less than three weeks in hopes of bolstering Democratic House members imperiled by fallout from $7-a-gallon gas, worrisome crime rates and spiking prices on everything from onions to ground beef.

The president’s return to heavily Democratic California in the run-up to Election Day speaks to the looming threat for his party in a turbulent midterm election year when Republicans appear poised to take control of the House, a grim prospect for Biden heading into the second half of his term.

His stopover centered on safeguarding Levin’s district, which has a slight Democratic tilt and cuts through San Diego and Orange counties and was carried by Biden by double digits in the 2020 presidential election.

He said Levin “delivers. He lowers costs for families, caring for our veterans protecting the environment.”

Biden was in a neighboring coastal district last month on behalf of another endangered Southern California Democrat, Rep. Katie Porter, a star of the party’s progressive wing. The Levin and Porter contests are among about a dozen congressional races in California considered competitive — a handful are seen a toss-ups and are viewed by both parties as critical to control of the House.

“If Democrats are scratching and clawing to hang on to districts Biden carried by double digits, they have likely already lost the House,” said David Wasserman, an analyst with the Cook Political Report.

Levin defended his seat with a 6-point win in 2020, and the district remained largely intact after the once-a-decade adjustment of boundary lines after the census. This year, his race is considered a toss-up as Levin and other Democrats face historical midterm headwinds that typically punish the party in the White House, while soaring prices at the supermarket and gas pump have conspired to make once-safe incumbents vulnerable.

Democrats are being forced to play defense, even in a famously liberal state that then-President Donald Trump lost by over 5 million votes in 2020. Biden’s sagging approval rating is creating a drag on Democratic candidates generally, although voter surveys indicate he’s stronger in California than the nation as a whole.

“Even in areas where President Biden won by a strong margin, we’re seeing an unfortunate shift,” Porter wrote in a fundraising pitch Tuesday. “Republicans are polling well across the country and we’re seeing especially concerning trends in blue states like California.”

Levin told the crowd, “I need your help,” and called on supporters to make phone calls and knock on doors of wavering voters.

Democracy, Levin warned, is “on the ballot.”

Levin’s Republican opponent, businessman Brian Maryott, said Biden’s visit amounted to “a failed president coming to our district to stand alongside a failed congressman.”

“Voters won’t forget $7 gas prices, the explosion in crime, inflation hitting 40-year highs, the crisis at our border,” Maryott said in a statement.

Biden’s visit does carry some risk — a protest was planned nearby. And it’s an open question how much good Biden can do to motivate voters in the late days of a midterm election, when turnout falls off sharply from presidential election years.

California is dominated by Democrats who hold every statewide office and commanding margins in the Legislature and congressional delegation. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide, and a GOP candidate hasn’t won a statewide race since 2006.

But this year is confounding political norms.

There is no competitive race at the top of the ticket to drive Democratic voter turnout — Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, both Democrats, face only token opposition. And with Democrats firmly in control of California government, the party can’t escape blame for grievances that range from an unchecked homeless crisis, $80 fill-ups at the gas station and some of the nation’s highest taxes.

In Levin’s district, voters were sharply divided about the contest, mirroring the nation’s deep partisan chasm.

Steve Barrett, a 68-year-old retired aerospace sales engineer from Dana Point, said he considers himself a moderate Republican and will be voting for Maryott.

He said he doesn’t always vote solely Republican but feels Levin is a “big spender and taxer” and that the Democrats overall are spending too much, which inevitably will lead to tax increases.

Donna Drysdale, a 73-year-old retired court reporter and photographer from San Juan Capistrano, described herself as a middle-of-the-road Democrat and said she was solidly behind Levin.

Drysdale said she feels many Republicans aren’t being reasonable and the country needs intelligent candidates with problem-solving skills to address climate change, threats to democracy and other critical issues.

“I’m scared to death that if the Republicans take over, things are going to continue to go downhill in this country, as far as the division between the two parties,” she said.

A recent voter survey shows pessimism about the economy and the direction of the country, a potential benefit for Republicans in the election’s closing days, though it shows Californians are less pessimistic about the direction of the state.

The October survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 71% of likely voters say the U.S. is on the wrong track, and 54% of likely voters think the state is headed in the wrong direction. When asked about the nation’s economy, 76% of likely voters said it was either “poor” or “not so good.”

The dicey situation for Democrats also could help Republican incumbents in Democratic-leaning districts, including GOP Reps. Mike Garcia north of Los Angeles, Michelle Steel in a district anchored in Orange County and David Valadao in the Central Valley, one of just two House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump and managed to make it to the general election.

Porter, a prolific fundraiser often mentioned as a likely future Senate candidate, has spent $24 million on her race, a stunning sum. While her district is about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, it has a conservative streak that benefits her GOP challenger, former legislator Scott Baugh, making the race especially tight.

Democrats now hold a 220-212 edge over Republicans in the U.S. House, with three vacancies. To have a majority requires 218 seats.

Ferreting out wavering voters and getting them to the polls “wins elections, and if we don’t turn out enough voters, we risk losing this seat,” Miguel Lopez, a campaign staffer for Rep. Julia Brownley, another endangered Democrat in a district northwest of Los Angeles, wrote in an email.

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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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A special civil jury in Northern California found a former longtime sheriff guilty on all six counts of corruption and willful misconduct in a case involving the issuing of concealed-carry weapons permits in exchange for campaign donations.

Laurie Smith resigned from her post as sheriff of the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Office on Monday when the jury was already deliberating. Her attorney filed a motion to dismiss the case but the judge denied it.

Smith had been sheriff of Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, since 1998 when she became the first woman elected sheriff in California.

After the verdict was read, Smith wiped away tears, the Mercury News reported. Neither Smith nor her attorney Allen Ruby offered any comment outside the courtroom in San Jose. San Francisco assistant district attorney Gabriel Markoff, who prosecuted the case, also declined to comment, the newspaper reported.

A guilty verdict on just one count would have led to Smith’s removal from office but since she stepped down it is unclear what legal impact the guilty verdict could have. Smith will return to court on Nov. 16, when San Mateo County superior court judge is likely to issue the formal removal order for Smith, the newspaper reported.

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen praised Thursday’s verdict.

“We’re gratified that the jury considered the evidence from our comprehensive and detailed investigation and found all the allegations against the sheriff to be true,” he told the newspaper. “I want to emphasize this is a very sad day when a law-enforcement leader has been found to have committed terrible misconduct.”

Rosen said it’s still possible that Smith could face criminal charges.

The civil case against Smith started last year when the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a vote of no-confidence in Smith and requested outside investigations by the attorney general as well as the county civil grand jury.

In December, the civil grand jury filed a Superior Court complaint that accused Smith of six counts of “willful and corrupt misconduct.” The jury found her guilty on all counts.

The first count accused her of “implementing policy or practice” of granting licenses to carry concealed firearms on the basis of whether an applicant was a campaign donor, a member of a sheriff’s advisory board nonprofit organization, a prominent individual in the community or was associated with prominent individuals, corporations or “otherwise had a personal connection” to the sheriff.

The grand jury alleged that Smith failed to make individual good-cause determinations of the basis for concealed-carry permit applications by people who were not VIPs, keeping them pending indefinitely.

At the time of the Board of Supervisors’ no-confidence vote, they expressed concern about a pattern of conduct in the jails.

In another count, the grand jury alleged Smith committed “willful misconduct” by failing to provide information to the county Office of Correction and Law Enforcement. That office was seeking information involving an internal affairs probe of a 2018 incident in which a mentally ill man inflicted serious injuries on himself while inside a jail transport van, leading to a $10 million settlement with his family.

In 2015, a county inmate was beaten to death by three jail guards, and another inmate died after guards shot him with a riot gun at close range. Both inmates had a mental illness.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hit the campaign trail in New York City on Thursday night for Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat facing an unexpectedly competitive election.

That Democrats are playing defense and scrambling to shore up an incumbent even in a blue state like New York is a drastic marker of the party’s growing fears that next week’s midterm elections may deliver a wave of Republican victories around the country.

New York has more than twice as many registered Democrats than Republicans and has not voted for a Republican governor since George Pataki won a third term in 2002. But Democrats are facing national headwinds in this year’s midterm elections as the party in power, which typically bears the brunt of voter frustrations.

This year, those frustrations include stubborn inflation and a shaky economy, but in New York, Republican U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin has channeled fears over rising crime to open up a potential path to victory.

To boost voter turnout and generate enthusiasm, Thursday’s event at the all-female Barnard College was billed as a “Women’s Rally” and focused heavily on the history Hochul could make next week if she wins, becoming the first woman to be elected New York governor. Hochul became the first woman to serve as the state’s governor in August 2021, when she took over after Andrew Cuomo resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.

Zeldin, who has represented Long Island in Congress since 2015, is an ally of former President Donald Trump and objected to the 2020 election results after Trump made false claims of election fraud. That alliance, along with his opposition to abortion, was expected to leave Zeldin facing a very unlikely path to the governor’s mansion. But amid a string of high-profile violent incidents, Zeldin’s focus on crime appeared to be resonating in the final weeks.

Hochul — bookended by speeches from Harris, the first woman to be elected to the country’s second-highest office, and Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be a major party’s presidential nominee and New York’s first female senator — invoked the launch of the women’s suffrage movement in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848.

“To all of you but particularly to the women of New York, this is our moment,” Hochul said Thursday.

“As the governor said, you witnessed a lot of history on the stage this afternoon,” Harris said. She added, “We may be the first, but we are committed to not being the last.”

Hochul, Harris and Clinton all cast the governor as a defender of abortion rights, reviving a message that was initially expected to fire up Democratic voters this year and solidify candidates like Hochul after the U.S. Supreme Court decision this summer ended the national right to an abortion.

“Of course they want to turn back the clock on abortion. They spent 50 years trying to make that happen,” Clinton said of Republicans. “They are determined to exercise control over who are, how we feel and believe and act in ways that I thought we had long left behind.”

Hochul poked at Zeldin’s comments this summer when he said, the day after the court ruling, that “the law in New York was exactly the same as it was the day before. Nothing changed, and I’m not going to change it.”

“You know why nothing changed in the state of New York? Because I’m the governor,” Hochul said to cheers Thursday.

She is expected to hold rallies this weekend in Brooklyn with former President Bill Clinton, who lives with his wife in New York, and in Manhattan with Bravo talk-show host Andy Cohen.

Republicans, seizing on Zeldin’s momentum, have sent their own political stars, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Virginia Gov. Glenn Glenn Youngkin, to the state in recent days to energize GOP voters sensing a rare opportunity to lead the state. Zeldin was holding a rally of his own Thursday near Albany with U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican.

Zeldin has repeatedly held news conferences in liberal New York City to decry violent crimes, including incidents on the subways, and to blame Hochul and Democrats. He’s downplayed his ties to Trump, appearing with the former president at a closed-door campaign fundraiser but not at any public rallies, as candidates elsewhere have done.

At a news conference Wednesday, Zeldin said he understands Democrats are shocked that he has made the race competitive, especially by repeatedly showing up in their stronghold, but he said Hochul missed an opportunity to be tough on crime as soon as she took over.

“She made decisions that have alienated a lot of New Yorkers, and even if they’re Democrats, they’re supporting us,” he said. “And as a consequence we are going to do well in New York City compared to Republican candidates in the past.”

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BOSTON (AP) — Top U.S. election security officials say protecting the nation’s voting systems has become increasingly challenging.

That’s due mostly to the embrace by millions of Americans of unfounded conspiracy theories and false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential race.

With the midterm elections just days away , the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Jen Easterly, and other officials say they have no evidence that election infrastructure has been altered by hostile actors to prevent voting or vote counting, compromise ballots or affect voter registration accuracy.

But they’re not lowering their guard. Disinformation is rampant. Foreign rivals are capable of potent cyber mischief. And the insider threat is considered greater than ever. On top of the physical threats and intimidation of elections officials — which is authorities’ overriding concern — security experts are particularly worried about tampering by those who work in local election offices or at polling stations.

“The current election threat environment is more complex than it has ever been,” Easterly told reporters in mid-October.

Global rivals also are expected to deepen longstanding disinformation efforts. The tense geopolitical moment means Russia, Iran and China may have fewer qualms about trying to disrupt the conduct of elections in key battlegrounds with cyber operations.

The spectrum of potential threats is wide: foreign ransomware gangs friendly with the Kremlin, conspiracy-obsessed local election officials, hostile voters bent on sabotage or political provocateurs trying to suppress the vote with dirty tricks or misinformation.

Here are some of the potential threats agencies are assessing through Election Day:

THREATS FROM WITHIN

Insider threats are a growing concern and could undermine serious strides made to secure voting systems — including migrating to hand-marked paper ballots and introducing reliable audits — since they were declared critical national infrastructure in January 2017.

Rogue election officials could provide access to voting systems to unauthorized individuals, as happened in Colorado and Georgia. Poll workers or even voters could try to access voter registration databases or equipment, or plant malware to taint election management systems.

Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert with the nonprofit OSET Institute, calls the repeated efforts to cast doubt on the integrity of voting equipment an element of a more broad “manufactured chaos” — intentional subversion of the nation’s elections to sow doubt.

Perez is among specialists who think attempts to discredit voting technology are one manifestation of efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to undermine trust in election results so Republican-controlled state legislatures — rather than voters — can decide the outcome of future races.

To counter the threats from insiders, federal authorities have conducted trainings and encouraged election officials to focus on limiting access to critical equipment, adding video surveillance and key cards on doors. They also encourage strict chain-of-custody rules for everything from ballots to voting scanners and tabulators.

Threats to public officials and election disruption attempts haver occurred with increasing frequency and intensity, federal and local law enforcement officials say. They are especially concerned about physical violence by protesters in highly contested districts during the post-election vote-counting process.

THREATS FROM ABROAD

U.S. officials have issued two main election-security advisories in the run-up to the Nov . 8 elections. They say malicious cyberactivity is unlikely to seriously disrupt or prevent voting and that hostile foreign states are apt to try to influence outcomes with “information operations.”

Foreign meddlers could launch cyberattacks or exaggerate the effects of relatively ineffectual attacks. They could spread misinformation about voting or voter fraud, try to incite violence or, if violence is already happening, fan the flames.

Hostile foreign bids to undermine U.S. democracy have risen since the Russian operation that hacked and then leaked Democratic emails to aid Trump in the 2016 presidential race. None have had anywhere near the impact, though.

Rivals constantly probe U.S. networks for vulnerabilities. Moscow may seek payback for Washington’s arming of Ukraine against its invasion. Iran resents U.S. support for anti-regime demonstrations triggered by the death in police custody of a young woman who defied head-scarf orthodoxy. As for China, relations are tense as Washington tries to throttle high-tech supplies to Beijing over its perceived hostility and growing authoritarianism.

There’s also the possibility that foreign actors might have breached election systems long ago and are waiting to pounce.

ATTACKS FROM FOREIGN ADVERSARIES

On Election Day, hostile foreign powers or sympathetic hackers could mount what are known as denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which render websites unreachable by flooding them with junk data. Targeting state and local government websites, such attacks could prevent voters from looking up registration information or polling locations, or knock offline sites that report election results after voting ends.

One group on the radar of the U.S. cybersecurity agency is Killnet, pro-Russia hackers who made a ruckus in October by organizing DDoS attacks on U.S. airport and state government websites.

Such attacks are mostly a nuisance and don’t destroy data or even breach sites. But they can frustrate voters and election poll workers, and become powerful grist for disinformation offensives. For example, Russian state media and fake news mills could amplify exaggerated claims of disruption, as occurred with the Killnet effort against the airport and government sites.

Another potential threat are Russian-speaking ransomware gangs that operate with little Kremlin interference. They have largely spared U.S. election infrastructure, which by now tends to be a lot better protected than many of the hospitals, schools and businesses they routinely plague.

Hack-and-leak operations also are possible. Sensitive data could be stolen from election or campaign websites, partially falsified and released online.

Cybersecurity firm Trellix reported a spike in phishing emails targeting county election workers in Pennsylvania and Arizona, both battleground states, over the summer seeking to harvest passwords and potentially interfere with the administration of absentee ballots.

“In many cases, the threat actors attempting to breach our election systems are the same ones who are conducting influence operations that seek to sow discord,” Easterly, the CISA director, said in mid-October.

That could include the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, a key player in the 2016 Russia destabilization campaign that favored Trump and sought to widen social divisions in the U.S. The group sought to manipulate public opinion by gaming social media platforms, including by purchasing online ads.

In a pre-election report, the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future said it was “almost certain” that networks associated with the group “are engaging in covert malign influence on a subset of the U.S. population.”

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Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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

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TONKA BAY, Minn. (AP) — As Andrew Myers knocked on doors in a neighborhood with stunning views across Lake Minnetonka, the Republican state House hopeful got an earful from residents worried about crime in their far west Minneapolis suburb: a woman’s body had washed up on shore a few doors down earlier in the week, and authorities hadn’t said if it was foul play. Another family recently had their car stolen — something else that never happens in Tonka Bay.

“Public safety for sure. Taxes,” resident Scott Musjerd said, as he promised Myers his support in a district that has swung between Republicans and Democrats in recent elections.

Control of state government hangs in the balance in Minnesota — one of only three states, in addition to Alaska and Virginia, where legislative control is divided. It’s also one of the few Midwest states where Democrats have had the upper hand in recent years. Buoyed by such issues as crime, and a midterm election that typically favors the party out of the White House, the GOP has hopes of capturing both chambers of the Legislature and knocking off Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

A red wave here could mean rapid change in major policy areas such as abortion, taxes and the environment after years of shared party control — and could raise Minnesota’s importance as the western edge of northern presidential battleground states that include Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“It’s one of those elections where it’s going to be very close, and a small margin of victory in the election could produce enormous policy changes depending on the outcome,” University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs said. “The parties have dramatically different agendas, and there’s surprisingly little overlap.”

Republican rule in Minnesota would likely mean permanent tax cuts and less spending on education and health and human services. Lawmakers who’ve built their careers on opposition to abortion are bound to test how far they can go in seeking new restrictions despite a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that the state constitution protects abortion rights.

Requiring citizens to show photo ID at the polls – which voters rejected in 2012 – and other moves to make voting harder could be back on the agenda. GOP lawmakers likely would seek to remove obstacles to copper and nickel mining that environmentalists say threatens pristine watersheds in northern Minnesota. They may propose restrictions on bathrooms and athletics for transgender students. Vouchers to subsidize private school tuition could be on the agenda. And penalties for crime could ratchet up.

The split control in the Legislature — Democrats controlling the House and Republicans the Senate — has been a recipe for gridlock on major policy, including this year, when the parties adjourned the legislative session without agreeing on how to use most of a $9.25 billion budget surplus. The only time Minnesota saw single-party control in the past 30 years is when Democrats held full power in 2013-14.

Republicans need to hold their narrow Senate majority and pick up four seats to take the House. Millions of dollars have been pouring into the roughly two dozen seats considered competitive, with GOP candidates focusing on crime and inflation. Democrats, meanwhile, see protecting abortion rights as the key to victory in the crucial suburbs.

David Schultz, a political scientist at Hamline University, said a GOP takeover would include many new conservative members eager to see state government take a sharp turn to the right.

“I think it’s going to be impossible to contain the pressure,” Schultz said.

The two parties have typically vied in the Minneapolis and St. Paul suburbs. But House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt said the GOP might find its majority by flipping six seats in northern Minnesota, mostly on the Iron Range, which has slipped away from Democrats in recent years mostly due to fights over mining. Approval of one copper-nickel mine has long been stalled in the legal and regulatory process, while the Obama and Biden administrations have tried to kill another project altogether. Blue-collar workers on the Range blame liberal environmentalists in the cities.

“Once we win those seats, they won’t flip back,” Daudt said.

Andrea Zupancich, mayor of the Iron Range mining town of Babbitt, is a prime example of the region’s rightward drift.

Zupancich was one of six Democratic mayors on the Range who endorsed Donald Trump in 2020, saying their party had moved too far left. Now she’s a Republican candidate for the Senate — hoping to replace a retiring independent who was a longtime Democrat until he left the party in 2020 for the same reason.

House Speaker Melissa Hortman said Democrats will keep their majority on the strength of redistricting that put more seats in the party’s urban and suburban strongholds. She’s also counting on anger over the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.

“The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that women would lose their right to the reproductive health care they need, including abortion care, if Republicans take control,” Hortman said. “The rest of us are not fooled.”

In Tonka Bay, Myers is making his second attempt to break through in one of Minnesota’s most affluent districts, which mixes luxury homes on the shores of Lake Minnetonka with middle-class homes set back from the big lake. The Democrat who beat him by just 313 votes in 2020 is now running for state Senate, and it remains a competitive district.

As he went through a lakeside neighborhood last week, Myers — who chairs the city’s parks and docks commission and has served on other local government bodies — played up that experience.

Joe Galler told Myers that his property taxes had gone up 41% in the last year, and that not only could Myers count on his vote, but the votes of at least two close neighbors. But when Myers came across five people pulling a boat out of the water for the season, he heard skepticism that the state can do much against big national problems like inflation, and he heard dismay with current trends in politics.

“The extremist stuff, it has to stop,” Bill Scheurer said. On that point, Myers concurred: “100% agree with you,” he said.

In the northern suburb of Blaine, Democrat Matt Norris has been door-knocking for over a year to unseat GOP Rep. Donald Raleigh in a district that became friendly for Democrats after redistricting. Norris was out last week for a repeat visit to an upper middle-class, diverse neighborhood where nearly all the houses had video doorbells and few voters answered.

Norris won commitments from most who did. One resident, Howard Bureau, was a tougher sell.

Bureau peppered him with questions on education and public safety that suggested he was conservative, though he never said so. But like several voters, his big question was about what Norris would do to fix a congested and often dangerous stretch of a main highway through Blaine. That gave Norris a chance to talk about bills he already helped pass as a private citizen. His work with youth development nonprofits often overlaps into the public policy sphere.

“I don’t know if we’re going to win him, but we at least left him thinking,” Norris said.

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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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Election misinformation is thriving on Rumble, a video sharing platform popular with some conservatives and far-right groups, according to research published Thursday.

Nearly half of the videos suggested by the site in response to searches for common election-related terms came from untrustworthy sources, according to the analysis from NewsGuard, a firm that monitors online misinformation.

The percentage was far better at Rumble’s much larger rival YouTube, where about 1 in 5 videos came from untrustworthy sources. The search terms included the names of candidates as well as politically sensitive words and phrases such as gun rights, voter fraud and abortion.

The findings illustrate how alternative platforms like Rumble have become hot spots for election-related misinformation as they have increased in popularity. The site is popular with conservatives and some far-right groups critical of content moderation efforts by larger platforms such as YouTube.

Misleading or deceptive claims about voting and elections have proliferated in heading into next week’s elections and have been blamed for increasing distrust and polarization.

Some of the videos reviewed by NewsGuard’s researchers in October included online shows featuring allies of former President Donald Trump such as Steve Bannon and conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones. Many videos contained debunked claims about the 2020 election, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the QAnon conspiracy theory, as well as misinformation about voting and the elections.

“Rumble frequently pushes videos from untrustworthy sources that traffic in election misinformation,” NewsGuard’s report found.

The researchers used a number of factors, including the use of deceptive headlines or a history of publishing false content, to determine which sites were untrustworthy.

Messages left with Rumble were not immediately returned Wednesday and Thursday. According to a mission statement on the platform’s website, Rumble aims “to restore the internet to its roots by making it free and open once again.”

Rumble said in September it now has 78 million active monthly users around the world, with 63 million in the United States and Canada. The site boasts a long list of podcasts helmed by prominent conservatives such as Don Bongino and Bannon, whose videos have millions of subscribers on Rumble.

The Florida-based platform’s growth has come from users interested in news and politics, as well as younger users in the 18-24 age group, Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski said in September.

Bannon’s show was among the top results when researchers ran a search on the term “voter fraud.” A longtime Trump ally, Bannon was kicked off YouTube last year for repeatedly violating its rules; he was banned from Twitter after calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist, to be beheaded.

A spokesman for Bannon told the AP on Thursday that Bannon’s comment was metaphorical and that he didn’t intend it to be taken literally.

Together, the the misinformation-laden videos turned up by researchers at NewsGuard had been viewed nearly 9 million times so far.

YouTube has been criticized for not doing enough to tackle misinformation on its platform. But the NewsGuard report shows the platform’s efforts are making a difference. Researchers said that in addition to suggesting fewer videos containing misinformation, YouTube did not recommend any videos supporting QAnon.

Nevertheless, a report released this fall by New York University faulted Meta, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube for amplifying Trump’s false statements about the 2020 election. The study cited inconsistent rules regarding misinformation as well as poor enforcement.

In a statement emailed to the AP, YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said the platform, which is owned by Google, has invested in efforts to identify misinformation and limit its spread. The most visited channels and videos about the election all rely on trustworthy, authoritative sources, she added.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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