Politics

Pointing in particular to the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, he said that Trump’s false claims about a stolen election have “fueled the dangerous rise of political violence and voter intimidation over the past two years.”

Six days before major midterm elections, Biden said, “As I stand here today, there are candidates running for every level of office in America, for governor, for Congress, for attorney general, for secretary of state, who won’t commit to accepting the results of the elections they’re in.”

“That is the path to chaos in America.,” he declared. “t’s unprecedented. It’s unlawful. And, it is un-American.”

Emphasizing that it is the first federal election since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Trump’s attempts to overturn the will of voters in the 2020 presidential election, Biden called on voters to reject candidates who have denied the results of the vote — which even Trump’s administration declared to be free of any widespread fraud or interference.

Biden asked voters to “think long and hard about the moment we are in.”

“In a typical year, we are not often faced with the question of whether the vote we cast will preserve democracy or put it at risk,” he said. “But we are this year.”

Biden delivered his remarks from Washington’s Union Station, blocks from the U.S. Capitol, the White House said, just six days before polls close on Nov. 8 and as more than 27 million Americans have already cast their ballots.

“It’s from Capitol Hill, because that is where there was an attempt to subvert our democracy,” said White House senior adviser Anita Dunn told Axios, referencing to the Jan. 6 attack.

“The threat of political violence which most Americans find abhorrent, the idea that you would use violence to further your political means, it’s something that unites almost all Americans and that we can all be united against, and obviously, we’ve seen horrible things happen quite recently,” Dunn said.

Previewing Biden’s remarks, she said the Democratic president “will be very clear tonight that he is speaking to people who don’t agree with him on any issues, who don’t agree on his agenda, but who really can unite behind this idea of this fundamental value of democracy.”

“What we are seeing is an alarming number of Republican officials suggest they will not accept the results of this election,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

“This is not a regular moment in time,” she added. “He’s going to call it all out.”

Before Biden’s speech U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said he’s reviewed the attack on Pelosi’s husband and said he believes today’s political climate calls for more resources and better security for members of Congress after a massive increase in threats to lawmakers following Jan. 6. He also made a rare call to stop the rancorous conspiracies that have swirled around the attack.

“Our brave men and women are working around the clock to meet this urgent mission during this divisive time,” he said in a statement. “In the meantime, a significant change that will have an immediate impact will be for people across our country to lower the temperature on political rhetoric before it’s too late.”

“They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country,” Biden said then.

In contrast to the September remarks, which drew criticism from some corners for being paid for by taxpayers, Biden’s Wednesday night speech is being hosted by the Democratic National Committee.

“The president will address the threat of election deniers and those who seek to undermine faith in voting and democracy; and the stakes for our democracy in next week’s election,” the DNC said.

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PHOENIX (AP) — The elected leaders of an Arizona county who had considered following the lead of a rural county by expanding their hand-counts of ballots from next week’s election rejected the effort Wednesday.

The majority on the Pinal County board of supervisors said they saw no reason to doubt the current hand-count audits that verify machine tabulation results or expand them to include more precincts as one supervisor proposed.

That leaves rural Cochise County alone in the state in pursuing a full hand-tally of all their ballots, a move that is being challenged in court as illegal.

During Wednesday’s meeting of the all-Republican Pinal County board, Supervisor Kevin Cavanaugh proposed doubling or tripling the number of precincts chosen for the post-election hand-count audit.

He pointed to the repeated and unfounded claims by former President Donald Trump about ballot tabulation machines that have fired up his supporters and also said that Hillary Clinton has made similar statements. The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee criticized that year’s election but conceded to Trump, publicly acknowledged his victory and attended his inauguration.

“But as the concerns have been brought to me, the question is, is the machine reliable?” Cavanaugh said. “Are the count of the ballots that come out of machine reliable?”

He asked the board to approve the expansion, to ensure the hand-count sample is large enough to get what he said would be a statistically reliable number of ballots.

The proposal found little support from the other four Republicans on the board, although they took public comment on the issue for more than an hour. Those comments were overwhelmingly against the proposal, even from a local county GOP party leader.

Kathy Nowak, who sits on the executive committee of the county Republican Party, said she’s been involved in the normal hand-count audits a half-dozen times and the tallies matched the machine count every time.

“It seems to me that we are very solid,” Nowak told the board. “I think (expanding the count) is absolutely ridiculous.”

But two local residents vehemently pushed for the higher hand-count number, including Daniel Wood, who argued that the vote tabulation machines the county uses are not legally certified.

“Over 200 years, we have had a hand-count in this nation of the people, for the people and by the people,” Woods, who said he was a combat veteran, told the board. “All of a sudden we use machines and it’s no longer legal. That’s horse crap.”

County Attorney Kent Volkmer debunked that argument at a recent board meeting, showing the federal certifications for the machines.

Others urged the board to flatly reject the expanded hand-count proposal, calling it a way for those who deny President Joe Biden’s victory to gin up controversy and saying it has nothing to do with election integrity.

“This is all about stirring the pot and sowing distrust in our system, often with wild-eyed conspiracy theories because of their candidate’s loss,” said Noel Reck, a Democrat from Casa Grande. “I urge the board not to validate or placate election-deniers and vote against this costly and unnecessary expanded hand-count.”

Board member Stephen Miller said he was confident in the county’s Recorder and election director and that the typical audits confirm the accuracy of the tabulation machines. He also said it is up to the Legislature to decide if the required hand-tally of ballots from 2% of the precincts on up to five races needed to be expanded.

“I think it’s been accurate enough, and I believe it’s going to be a fair election,” Miller said. “And I think that there’s no reason to go down this path of changing the rules, just before the election.”

The rejection of the expanded hand-count in Pinal County, a once-rural area just south of the Phoenix metro area that has seen an explosion of growth in the past decade, stood in stark contrast to the approach in southeast Arizona’s Cochise County.

There, the two Republicans on that three-member board last week pushed though a plan with backing from the GOP county Recorder to hand-count all early and Election Day ballots.

Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich issued an informal opinion last week saying hand-counting all the ballots to ensure they matched the machine tally was legal. His view goes against that of the secretary of state’s election director, who said in letters to the board that while Election Day ballots can all be hand-counted, that is illegal for early ballots, which make up more than 80% of Arizona votes.

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

An independent group called the Arizona Alliance of Retired Americans sued Cochise County and several of its officials on Monday to stop the expanded hand-count. A judge plans to hear arguments in the case on Friday.

A similar effort in Nye County, Nevada, was halted by that state’s Supreme Court last week, but officials there are vowing to restart the count as soon as possible.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — It was his last stop of the day on a West Coast swing, a backyard fundraiser at a TV producer’s home in Los Angeles, and President Joe Biden was telling the crowd how tough the past few years have been.

He ticked off challenges: Technology that’s made it easier to corrupt the truth. Russia and China’s efforts to upset the world order, surging inflation at home. The lingering pandemic. The after-effects of the Capitol riot. Election deniers and their impact on the upcoming nationwide voting.

Still, for all of that, Biden insisted, the nation’s best days lie ahead.

The upbeat heart of the president’s message is the same wherever he goes. In Detroit or Los Angeles. Syracuse, New York, or Hagerstown, Maryland. To throngs in an auditorium or a few dozen in a weathered union hall, the Democratic president declares he’s never felt more hopeful.

“I truly believe we’re just getting started,” he told a crowd in Florida on Tuesday. “I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today.”

Yet this refrain of Biden’s presidency — this promise that things will get better — is butting up against his own dire political projections: A Congress potentially controlled by what he’s labeled “ultra-MAGA” Republicans as he faces midterm elections that will define, and quite possibly stifle, the next two years of his term.

Biden always leans heavily on the positive. But he has to do so when many voters are feeling the pain of higher prices and harbor deep concerns about the fragility of democracy itself.

He is delivering his second speech on threats to the nation’s system of government in as many months Wednesday night, including the prospect of key races across the country being won by candidates he believes would upset voting procedures and confidence.

Presidents “almost have to will themselves into a sense of optimism. If they can’t project hope that we can surmount our difficulties, then they’re sunk and we are, too,” sad Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton who now runs a speechwriting and strategy firm in Washington.

And it’s anything but clear that Biden’s optimistic vision is breaking through. Just 25% of Americans said the country is headed in the right direction in an October AP-NORC survey.

Throughout history, leaders have tried to strike the right balance — leveling with people about the challenges at hand but also giving them cause to hope.

President Barack Obama tried during the 2010 midterm campaign when he was hopeful about the nascent economic recovery but mindful that so many voters were still hurting. His party saw a “shellacking” in the House.

Now, less than a week before Election Day, the nation is in an unprecedented, newly uncertain time, marked by the punishing pandemic economic fears, a mounting wave of hate crimes and political violence. Growing numbers question whether democracy can survive — and whether their leaders can meet the moment.

That’s a difficult line for any president to walk — too much Pollyanna talk can sound simply delusional.

“If you get carried away with it, as a politician or a president, you risk becoming detached from people’s actual experience,” Shesol said.

Biden’s upbeat message is ridiculed by Republicans, whose midterm pitch is tied to a picture of a nation beset by rising crime and inflation. Even a basic metric like last week’s report that the economy grew again after two quarters of contraction was subject to alternate interpretations: Biden said it was evidence the country’s recovery was continuing to “power forward;” Republican Rep. Kevin Brady dismissed it as fleeting “ghost growth.”

“Joe Biden is completely detached from reality,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said last month. “Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, they can’t afford rising gas and grocery prices, and real wages are down.”

Those who know Biden best insist he’s a realist: It’s not that he believes things are great all the time; it’s that he think there’s always room — and a path — to get better.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said Biden knows when to hold out hope and when to walk way. He gave the example of Biden’s billion-dollar infrastructure plan. The deal fell apart in spectacularly public fashion a few times, but Biden wouldn’t relent until it passed with bipartisan support. On other pieces of legislation, he has cut loose when it was clear he couldn’t strike a deal.

“It’s a terribly difficult balance, but I think he strikes it as well as anyone can,” Casey said.

The president’s outlook is shaped in part by personal tragedy: His first wife and young daughter died in a car crash in 1972 that also injured his two sons. Later, son Beau died of cancer at 45. There’s nothing anyone can say to him that’s worse than what he’s already experienced, friends and staff often say.

Add to that his long experience in government and “he’s not hit with surprises,” said Ted Kaufman, Biden’s longtime friend and a former Delaware senator. “He has the kind of force of his own personality, but it’s leavened by the facts on the ground.”

Despite Biden’s efforts to convince the nation of its best self, doubts course through the electorate, particularly about the future of U.S. democracy.

Only about half of Americans have confidence that votes in next week’s midterm elections will be counted accurately, according to AP-NORC polling. Just 9% of adults think democracy is working “extremely” or “very well,” while 52% say it’s not working well.

Support of false election claims runs deep among Republicans running for office. Nearly 1 in 3 of those seeking election to posts that play a role in overseeing, certifying or defending elections have supported overturning the results of the 2020 presidential race, according to an Associated Press review.

White House senior adviser Mike Donilon says Biden has “never underestimated the moment we’re in. But I think he has always believed that the overwhelming percentage of the country still holds what he believes to be the core values that have always defined America.”

The president, Donilon added, knows there’s push-pull between the country at its best and worst.

He added: “Part of moving the country forward to a better place is recognizing the reality you’re facing, making the case of what should be rejected, what the country can rally around, and creating a picture of where the country can be.”

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Associated Press Writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

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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.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers learned long ago to lean into his lack of charisma, and he was at it again in an appearance before the Milwaukee Rotary in the final weeks of the race. “I’m not the flashiest guy in the room,” Evers said, pivoting quickly to portray Republican Tim Michels as the opposite — a “radical” and “dangerous” force who could be a threat to democracy.

“Mr. Michels supports policies that, frankly, I don’t believe the people in Wisconsin support,” Evers, a Democrat, told the group’s members.

Michels’ own closing argument dismisses such concerns as he promises voters progress on economic issues, safer streets and better schools.

“From my very first day in office to my very last day in office … I am always going to be about the Wisconsin economy and the hardworking people in this state,” Michels said at a rally in Waukesha, the heart of the conservative Milwaukee suburbs.

As Evers and Michels near the end of a race polls show as about even, the stakes couldn’t be higher in swing-state Wisconsin, one of the nation’s few remaining presidential battlegrounds. Whoever wins will be in office for the 2024 election, with the power to certify the results of that race — or reshape the state’s election machinery ahead of it.

Evers certified President Joe Biden’s win; Michels, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has said that “maybe” the 2020 election was stolen, giving credence to baseless claims of election fraud. Michels has also been unclear about whether he would accept 2024 results, wants to do away with the state’s bipartisan elections commission and has promised to sign a raft of bills Evers vetoed that would make it more difficult to vote absentee.

Democrats said Michels provided evidence of his intentions this week when he said at a campaign rally, “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.” Michels’ spokesperson Brian Fraley said Michels merely meant Republicans would be rewarded for doing a good job.

Evers, the low-key 70-year-old who spent his career in education before knocking off then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2018, is counting on voters liking his approach and wanting to keep him as a check on the Republican Legislature, which has increasingly swerved to the right. He’s already vetoed more bills than any governor in modern state history.

Evers’ style makes him a difficult candidate to defeat, said Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff under Trump and a former Wisconsin GOP state chairman.

“Milquetoast is tougher to beat,” Priebus said. “Sort of do-nothing people who don’t have personalities are tougher to beat.”

Evers is hoping Biden’s low approval ratings do not weigh him down. Evers is trying to become the first governor in 32 years to win reelection who is the same party as the sitting president.

The 60-year-old Michels, whose last run for office was for U.S. Senate in 2004, has cast himself throughout the race as a political outsider. He touts his time in the U.S. Army and his background helping to run a family construction business, Michels Corp., that employs more than 8,000 people and made him a multimillionaire.

More money has been spent on television ads by Republican and Democratic groups in Wisconsin’s governor’s race than any other in the country, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign spending. Michels has largely self-financed his run, spending about $19 million through late October.

Evers has campaigned on his effort to “fix the damn roads,” improving access to rural broadband Internet services and signing a middle-class tax cut passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. He also reminded voters of near-record low unemployment throughout his term and federal COVID-19 relief money he’s passed along to small businesses and law enforcement.

He wants to send local governments and schools more money, plans that have been thwarted by the Republican-controlled Legislature in the past. Evers proposed sending voters a tax rebate earlier this year, spending down some of the state’s budget surplus, but Republicans blocked it.

Michels has spoken generally about “massive” tax reform, reducing crime, “reforming” education and “election integrity,” but is often short of details on what exactly he wants to do or how he plans to do it. He accuses Evers of failing to improve school performance, being soft on crime and not doing more to quell violent protests that erupted in Kenosha in 2020 after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man. Evers counters that he did all that was asked by local law enforcement.

Michels also faults Evers for not doing more to open the state during the COVID-19 pandemic. Evers says he was saving lives by following the recommendations of public health officials, doctors and scientists.

Michels has said he would sign all the Republican-backed bills that Evers vetoed, which includes measures expanding gun rights and cutting unemployment benefits. Michels wants to expand the taxpayer-funded private school voucher program, a move that former state schools chief Evers says would destroy public education, and says he’s open to breaking the Milwaukee school district into smaller ones.

Michels also said he’s open to lowering the state’s income tax to a nearly flat rate, a move that economists blasted as primarily benefiting the rich.

Michels has been at perhaps his most unclear when it comes to the one issue Evers hopes voters have on their minds when casting their ballots — abortion.

As he was straining to win his primary this summer, Michels repeatedly said the state’s 1849 near-total abortion ban was the “exact mirror” of his position. But he flipped in September, saying he would sign a bill with exceptions for rape and incest.

As political surrogates flood the state in the race’s closing days there have been two notable absences — Biden and Trump. Evers rarely talks about the president and Michels doesn’t mention Trump. Polls show both are unpopular in the state.

Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, and lost it in 2020, both times by a margin of less than a single point. Evers defeated Walker in 2018 by 29,227 votes — just a little more than 1 percentage point. A Marquette University Law School poll of 679 likely voters conducted Oct. 24 through Tuesday and released Wednesday showed the race between Evers and Michels to be a tie, with each candidate at 48%.

“It’s just gotten tighter and tighter and tighter,” pollster Charles Franklin said.

Evers, when encouraging Democrats to vote early, says he always expected it to be a close election.

Michels jokingly told his supporters last week that he expects a “Wisconsin landslide.”

“Before you get too excited … a Wisconsin landslide probably means we’re winning by two or three points,” he said.

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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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LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A shortage of poll workers has concerned local election officials in some parts of the country as the midterm elections approach. Not so in Michigan.

Conservative groups and local Republican Party operatives who have pushed false claims about the 2020 presidential election have recruited poll workers here by the thousands. Similar recruitment efforts on the right have bolstered the ranks of poll workers in some other states with nationally watched races.

Seeding the ranks of front-line election workers with people recruited by groups promoting election conspiracies has raised alarms among some that the people at the foundation of the election system could try to undermine it.

“It concerns me when the motivation to serve as a poll worker is fueled through misinformation and people who have been fed lies, in some cases, for years now,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. “Since the spring, clerks have come at us with concerning questions they’re getting and in some cases, hundreds of poll worker applications that seem to be motivated by nefarious intent.”

In Oakland County, the state’s second-most populous, Republicans “discouraged about the outcome of the 2020 election” have been urged to sign up as poll workers through a new Republican National Committee recruitment program.

“If you’re angry, fed up and fearful of a repeat of the horror show of November 2020, then this is one way you can help,” the Oakland County GOP website reads.

In Florida, three men who are part of the Miami-Dade GOP executive committee and also are reported to have ties to the far-right Proud Boys extremist group applied for and qualified to serve as poll workers in Miami. Election officials said they decided not to assign a precinct to one of them after learning he had been charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Former President Donald Trump’s refusal to admit his loss in the 2020 presidential race and his repeated lies about widespread fraud have permeated the Republican Party and persuaded almost six in 10 GOP voters that the election was somehow stolen from him. There is no evidence of widespread fraud, and Trump’s claims have been rejected by dozens of judges and debunked by top officials in his own administration.

The falsehoods have led some GOP officials to push efforts aimed at ensuring what they insist is “election integrity.” Among those efforts are the steps taken across the country to recruit and train people to work at polling places and serve as poll watchers who monitor for problems.

The RNC said it has made a multimillion-dollar investment for this year’s election cycle that includes 17 state “election integrity directors” and 37 in-state “election integrity counsels.” The group says it has recruited over 11,000 poll workers in Michigan. In neighboring Wisconsin, the recruitment effort has brought in an additional 5,000

In Milwaukee, that effort has led to five times as many partisans becoming election workers as in previous years. The head of the Milwaukee Election Commission, Claire Woodall-Vogg, said she is confident the system of checks-and-balances will catch anyone who might try to interfere with voting, noting that a second election inspector must sign off on each task.

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

The fraud claims about 2020 are especially deep-seated in Michigan, where the GOP candidates for governor, secretary of state and attorney general have repeated them.

Election inspector manuals created by Michigan for America First, an affiliate of former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn’s group The America Project, encourage supporters to work at polls because “election cheating and fraud is not possible without collusion from poll workers.”

Poll workers, known as election inspectors in Michigan, are hired, trained and paid by local governments to assist in running elections. They are required to disclose party affiliation and are expected to be impartial in their duties as government employees, but do not have to live in the county where they will work the polls.

In Flint, the Michigan GOP and RNC are suing election officials to force them to hire more Republican election inspectors. Michigan law compels clerks to strive for equal party representation, but local officials say worker shortages often make that goal impossible to reach.

Several issues with poll workers in Michigan already have surfaced this year.

Before the state’s August primary, a Republican candidate for governor instructed poll workers to unplug voting equipment as a way to root out potential fraud.

In Macomb County, just north of Detroit, Clerk Anthony Forlini has faced backlash for his decision to hire activist Genevieve Peters to help recruit poll workers. Peters was outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection and is seen on video encouraging the crowd to “storm the gates.”

Forlini said getting election deniers involved in the process helps them “believe in the systems we’ve put in place.”

A township clerk south of Grand Rapids had a similar intention when he invited James Holkeboer to participate in the primary. The clerk, Michael Brew, was quoted in police records as saying that Holkeboer “is a person that doesn’t have a lot of confidence in the election process.”

Holkeboer is now charged with falsifying election records and using a computer to commit a crime. He faces up to five years in prison after inserting a USB drive into an electronic poll book the night of the primary. He told investigators he wanted his own copy to make sure the voter roll matched one that had been obtained through records requests.

“It was extremely alarming and incredibly egregious,” said Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons, a Republican.

The Michigan Democratic Party is not recruiting election inspectors but is instead ensuring it has “eyes and ears on the ground” through poll watchers to ensure there is no voter intimidation or interference from within, said Erica Peresman, the party’s voter protection director.

She said that while the party has recruited for these positions in the past, the effort was boosted due to “what we have been reading about with regard to the Republican Party’s efforts and its allies’ efforts this year.”

Peresman said Democrats are prioritizing polling locations such as Detroit where the party is especially concerned about partisan behavior.

GOP leaders targeted Detroit following the 2020 presidential election, claiming fraud was possible there because just 170 of the 5,486 election officials were Republicans.

Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said Republicans sent her a list of 800 names to be poll workers earlier this year, a significant increase over previous election years. She said she welcomed the extra help and invited them to complete the necessary training — though only 200 did.

“I think they just found for themselves that it wasn’t going to be as easy as we thought it was going to be to disrupt the process,” Winfrey said.

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Associated Press writers Carrie Antlfinger and Claire Savage in Milwaukee, and Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami contributed to this report.

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Joey Cappelletti is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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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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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin appeals court and a circuit judge this week shot down attempts backed by liberals seeking orders that local election clerks must accept absentee ballots that contain partial addresses of witnesses.

The rulings come within days of Tuesday’s election and as more than 503,000 absentee ballots have already either been returned or cast in person.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson are both up for reelection in the battleground state. Numerous lawsuits have been filed leading up to the election focused on which absentee ballots can be counted or rejected.

The status quo for determining whether an absentee ballot has enough of a witness address to count remains as it has been for the past 56 years, Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas said in an order Wednesday. Wisconsin elections have been conducted, and absentee ballots counted, the past 56 years without a legally binding definition of what constitutes a witness address on a ballot, Colas wrote in his order.

“Since then, until the present, clerks have been legally free to interpret the term,” he said. They have done that in good faith, Colas said, drawing on non-binding guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, its predecessors, and advice from attorneys.

Current guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission is that an address must include three elements: a street number, street name and municipality. Rise, Inc., a group that works to get young people to vote, argued that election clerks across Wisconsin are not consistently using that definition.

Rise sought an order that an address requires only enough information to determine the location of the witness. But Colas said it was inappropriate to issue an order that changes the status quo, rather than preserves it.

In another other case, the 1st District Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal of a ruling from Dane County Circuit Judge Nia Trammell rejecting a request from the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin seeking a ruling that an address can only be missing when the entire field is left blank.

The appeals court said it would not hear the case because it did not meet criteria for granting an appeal.

Trammell’s ruling in that case echoed the one from Colas on Wednesday. She said that loosening the witness address requirement “would upend the status quo and not preserve it” and “frustrate the electoral process by causing confusion.”

Very few ballots are returned in Wisconsin with missing or incomplete witness addresses.

The Legislative Audit Bureau last year reviewed nearly 15,000 absentee ballot envelopes from the 2020 election across 29 municipalities and found that 1,022, or about 7%, were missing parts of their witness addresses. Only 15 ballots, or 0.1%, had no witness address.

The issue of what constitutes an acceptable address arose after another judge in September sided with Republicans and ruled that election clerks aren’t allowed to fill in missing information.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Republican U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney is a Trump-backed Christian conservative who is anti-abortion, pro-coal and thinks marriage should be “ between a man and a woman.” Democrat Barry Wendell, his opponent in next week’s election, is an openly gay Jewish man who supports abortion rights and replacing fossil fuels with clean energy.

You’d think the candidates — who couldn’t be more different — would have a lot to talk about. But Mooney hasn’t shown much interest in debating or even engaging with Wendell. The sitting congressman is more interested in talking about the last Democrat holding statewide office in West Virginia, Sen. Joe Manchin.

Mooney is expected to breeze to victory in deep-red West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, and he’s all but completely ignored Wendell. Instead, he’s spending much of his energy on Manchin, who endorsed Mooney’s opponent, outgoing Rep. David McKinley, during the state’s May primary. The two GOP congressmen were pitted against each other after population losses cost West Virginia a U.S. House seat, and Mooney won handily.

Manchin has not yet officially announced whether he’ll run for reelection in 2024, and Mooney vows that his primary concern is seeing himself and other conservatives get elected and take back the majority in the U.S. House.

But the Republican congressman’s focus on Manchin is fueling speculation that he might run against him in 2024, which he’s doing nothing to tamp down. In an interview with the AP, Mooney said a Senate race is something to consider. He said the Democratic Party in West Virginia is “nearly obliterated,” calling Manchin “out-of-touch.”

“It’s something I’m certainly going to look at,” he said. “I don’t know how arrogant you have to be to think that as a Democrat U.S. senator, you can instruct Republicans who vote in primaries how to vote.”

Less than three months ago, he released a “Mooney for Congress” television advertisement solely targeting Manchin, whose profile has been raised nationally by his role as a swing vote on several major spending packages in the divided U.S. Senate. The ad asserts the Democrat “sold out West Virginia” when he voted to support Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

“Suddenly, Joe Manchin is backing Joe Biden’s liberal agenda. Manchin is supporting legislation that will raise our taxes, tax our coal industry and devastate West Virginia communities,” the ad states. “Alex Mooney won’t let Joe Manchin and Joe Biden destroy our coal industry and devastate West Virginia.”

Manchin played a key role in the drafting of the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests nearly $375 billion to fight climate change, caps prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients and extended health insurance by extending subsidies provided during the coronavirus pandemic.

But Manchin, who has received more campaign contributions this election cycle from natural gas pipeline companies than any other lawmaker, won concessions on the climate front. The bill includes money to encourage alternative energy and to bolster fossil fuels with steps such as subsidies for technology that reduces carbon emissions.

West Virginia’s coal industry is a shell of what it once was — coal production has declined more than 50% in the last decade.

Meanwhile, Wendell says Mooney agreed to do a virtual candidates forum with a local newspaper but the congressman hasn’t made himself available for a debate or to participate in any in-person events in the district alongside Wendell. He said he feels like both Republicans and Democrats, including Manchin, are ignoring his challenge.

“They don’t think there’s a chance,” he said.

Wendell, a 73-year-old retired substitute teacher and Social Security Administration claims representative, said he decided to run for Congress as a Democrat in West Virginia because nobody had entered the race with more political experience.

“I kept hoping somebody else would run. I just thought, ”‘Well, if nobody else is going to do this, I guess I have to do it,’” said Wendell, whose political experience consists of a four-year stint on city council in Morgantown, the state’s third-largest city. “My primary motivation was not to let the Republicans walk away with this election without having to put up a fight.”

Throughout his campaign, Mooney has hammered away at the need to reduce U.S. inflation and protect gun laws. He feels no need to talk much about the ongoing ethics inquiries he’s facing.

The nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics referred Mooney to the House Committee on Ethics last year based on allegations that he used campaign money for personal expenses, including trips to resorts and to Chick-fil-A.

Shortly after Mooney’s primary win, a report was released by the congressional watchdog group confirming that he likely broke House rules when he accepted a trip to Aruba in March 2021 allegedly paid for by a campaign client and family friend. The report also said two former Mooney staff members told the OCE that he “tampered with or withheld documents” and that Mooney refused to cooperate when the office tried to investigate the claims.

Mooney has insisted that he’s reimbursed campaign client HSP Direct and that no taxpayer funds were used to pay for the trip. He says his office is fully cooperating with the Committee on Ethics. But he has not seemed too concerned.

“I think voters are just focused on whether or not (candidates) are going to fight for their freedoms in this country, which are under serious attack right now with the current Congress and administration,” he said. “That’s what I’m focused on.”

Wendell, who moved to West Virginia from California a decade ago, said he has tried unsuccessfully to ask the national Democratic party for more funding and support, to no avail.

Mooney has raised almost $4.4 million this election cycle on the race in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional district — with the most sizeable donations coming from conservative super PACS, according to federal election commission records. Much of that money was used to bolster his primary campaign. Wendell has spent just under $25,000.

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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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MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — The Democrat running to be Georgia’s top elections official says a closer look at incumbent Republican Brad Raffensperger’s record will reveal he’s no hero for refusing to do the bidding of former President Donald Trump.

“There seems to be this idea that he is a moderate Republican, and that is not true at all,” Bee Nguyen, a state House member, said after a speech last week in the central Georgia town of Milledgeville.

While other Republican nominees for secretary of state embrace false claims that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election, Raffensperger stands by his refusal to bend to pressure from Trump to “find” enough votes to give him a win in Georgia. A recording of the phone call he took from Trump is now evidence in a Georgia criminal investigation.

“I report the results, and sometimes people don’t like that,” Raffensperger said at an Oct. 18 debate sponsored by the Atlanta Press Club. “And I’ve had to stand up to the incredible pressure. And I’ll continue to stand up to pressure, because when I do that, I’m standing up for you the voter; I’m standing up for the Constitution and I’m standing up for the rule of law. Many people buckled and folded. I didn’t, and I won’t.”

Those actions have given Raffensperger an appeal that’s making it harder for Nguyen. She’s one of a slate of strong Democratic downballot candidates running in Georgia, and has raised an unusually large $3.2 million to run for a sometimes-obscure office. That’s more than the $3 million Raffensperger has raised, including $850,000 in loans to himself.

But Nguyen faults Raffensperger for endorsing Georgia’s new voting law, which has narrowed the opportunity to cast mail ballots, banned giving food or water to waiting voters, curtailed ballot drop boxes and reduced opportunities for voters to cast a provisional ballot if they show up at the wrong place on Election Day.

Nguyen also reminds voters that as a state lawmaker, Raffensperger held a no-exceptions opposition to abortion.

“Georgia voters need to understand his record, which is out of touch with the majority of Georgians, from the personhood bill that he introduced, which would have eliminated even basic forms of birth control, to his stances on voting,” Nguyen said. “We deserve better than somebody who believes that the office’s duty is just to count the vote.”

Nguyen needs to sway independents and even some Democrats who may vote for Raffensperger. After being left for dead as Trump heaped scorn on him, Raffensperger proved himself quite politically alive in May’s Republican primary. He defeated challengers including Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, who objected to Georgia’s electoral votes being counted for President Joe Biden. Thousands who previously voted in Democratic primaries cast ballots in the GOP contest that day, possibly providing the votes necessary for Raffensperger to avoid a runoff.

No one would mistake Raffensperger, an engineer who grew wealthy after founding a concrete engineering company, for a dynamic speaker. His campaign consists mostly of interviews and talks to civic clubs. He has positioned himself above the fray, writing a book called “Integrity Counts” about the 2020 elections.

Even with Raffensperger’s primary victory, claims of election fraud haven’t been banished from Georgia’s secretary of state race — Libertarian Ted Metz is aiming for votes by claiming there are “still unresolved issues in the 2020 election” and says the outcome is ”not credible.”

With women’s access to reproductive health care now in play as a major driver of voting nationwide, Nguyen says Raffensperger’s opposition to abortion could become an issue if nurses get in legal trouble for aiding abortions that are now mostly banned in Georgia. That’s because the secretary of state’s office helps administer licensing for the Georgia Board of Nursing.

“We will keep fighting to protect our basic freedoms, including the freedom to vote and the freedom to choose,” Nguyen told the crowd in Milledgeville.

Raffensperger countered that his office only provides administrative support and said Nguyen “fundamentally” doesn’t understand the office’s role.

“We don’t select the boards, the boards run their shop,” Raffensperger said. “They are responsible for licensing, discipline and rules. Job 1 is to know the job, and you don’t know the job.”

But Nguyen notes Raffensperger in 2020 fired the board’s executive director in a dispute unrelated to abortion.

She also says Raffensperger hasn’t supported county election officials, noting that he recently had to retract incorrect guidance saying voters could be challenged at polling places. And she says he was inexcusably slow in calling in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to pursue a criminal inquiry into how Trump-aligned election deniers breached voting equipment in southern Georgia’s Coffee County.

“It’s been 21 months, no one has been held criminally accountable … It took a year and a half to bring GBI in to investigate those claims,” Nguyen said in the debate. “This is about public trust, and the secretary of state’s office mishandled that investigation.”

Raffensperger defended his performance, saying “People broke the law, they should be investigated, held accountable, and go to jail.”

He seeks to tie Nguyen to how Stacey Abrams, now in a rematch against Gov. Brian Kemp, ended her 2018 race. She acknowledged Kemp would be governor, but refused to use the word “concede,” arguing Kemp had abused his two terms as secretary of state to hurt the Democrats’ chances of winning elections. Raffensperger and others argue that Abrams’ claims were damaging in the same way Trump’s acts were after 2020.

“Don’t you think that election denial is a threat to our democracy?” Raffensperger asked Nguyen.

Nguyen, though, keeps trying to persuade voters that Raffensperger is the threat to freedom, saying in an Oct. 19 appearance that high early turnout doesn’t prove voting is secure.

“We in Georgia know that we have always had to out-organize voter suppression,” Nguyen said. “Under Brad Raffensperger’s tenure, voting rights have become more restrictive in the last four years, not more expansive.”

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Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy

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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PHOENIX (AP) — The Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate from Arizona, Marc Victor, dropped out of the race Tuesday and urged his supporters to vote for Republican Blake Masters.

Victor’s endorsement a week before the midterm elections could help Masters further narrow the gap with Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.

The endorsement came after overtures to Victor from Masters campaign aides and after Masters persuaded Victor in a phone conversation to back him. Victor posted video of their 25-minute discussion on his website.

“After that discussion, I believe it is in the best interests of freedom and peace to withdraw my candidacy and enthusiastically support Blake Masters for United States Senate,” Victor said in a statement released by the Masters campaign. “I intend to assist in any way reasonably possible to elect Blake.”

The race is one of a handful that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. The chamber is now divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting tiebreaking votes.

Some Republicans had worried that Victor would act as a spoiler, drawing votes from right-leaning voters who might have supported Masters in a head-to-head matchup against Kelly.

The impact will be blunted, however, because the decision comes so close to the election that Victor’s name will still appear on all ballots. Hundreds of thousands of people have already voted, and many more have mail ballots in hand.

Victor is a defense attorney and longtime advocate for Libertarian ideas he terms the “live and let live” movement. He was critical of both Masters and Kelly during the race’s only televised debate. He has also said he’s considering changing his party affiliation to Republican to run against Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in 2024.

“This is another major boost of momentum as we consolidate our support against the extreme and radical policies of Mark Kelly and Joe Biden,” Masters said in a statement.

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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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When is early voting over in the midterm elections?

Well, where do you live?

All states have their own rules and deadlines for ballots cast before Election Day, by mail or in person.

Early voting got a big boost in 2020, when many states made the practice more available, as the nation voted amid the coronavirus pandemic. Voters made use of it, too, with an unprecedented 103.2 million people casting early ballots in the presidential election, eager to avoid long lines and crowded polling stations, or simply drop off their ballots in official collection boxes

Now, as the early voting period winds down for the 2022 midterm elections, a look at when things are slated to wrap up:

IN-PERSON VOTING

Every state offers the opportunity to cast early ballots — some by mail, some in person, some both. For places with in-person early voting, the windows in which someone can cast an early ballot vary from more than a month to just over a week.

Early voting and in-person absentee voting starts as early as nearly six weeks ahead of Election Day itself in places such as Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, South Dakota, Vermont and Virginia.

In a lot of places, in-person, early voting is open right up to Election Day itself. Others, including Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and Ohio accept voters until the day before the election.

Some, like New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina — where the practice is new this year — and Oklahoma wrap up the process the Saturday before Election Day. And Louisiana closes its early polls a week before Election Day itself.

MAILING IN THE VOTES

In a number of states, voters can cast their ballots early by mail.

Most places require that mail-in ballots be postmarked by Election Day, but many states will accept them in the weeks following the election. Illinois accepts mail-in ballots two weeks after the election, while Maryland and Ohio will accept ballots up to 10 days post-election.

In Colorado, where all registered voters receive mail-in ballots automatically, most votes are cast this way, although there are some in-person voting centers. Ballots can be dropped off up until the polls close.

Michigan requires its mail-in ballots to be received by the time polls close, as do other states including Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

WHEN DO EARLY VOTES GET COUNTED?

Before early mail-in votes can be counted, they have to be processed. This means that elections officials open up any paper ballots, verify signatures and sort them into correct piles.

When all of that can start varies state-to-state. Some places can get a head start, while others have to wait until Election Day itself, which can make some vote counts long and chaotic.

Some states can start processing ballots as early as three weeks before Election Day. Counting can even start ahead of poll closings, too.

In New Jersey, early mail votes can be processed before Election Day and counted before the polls close.In Washington, D.C., these votes can’t be processed until Election Day and can’t be counted until after the polls close.

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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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