Our live coverage has ended. Read more about the 2020 election here.
Cindy McCain announced her endorsement of Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president Tuesday night.
In a series of tweets, the wife of the late Sen. John McCain gave her reasons for backing Biden.
Biden announced during a fundraiser Tuesday that McCain is endorsing him because of President Trump’s remarks about service members as reported in the Atlantic. Cindy McCain also appeared in a video during last month’s Democratic National Convention celebrating Biden and her late husband’s long-time friendship.
Biden later responded, tweeting that he was “deeply honored” to have her support and friendship.
“This election is bigger than any one political party. It requires all of us to come together as one America to restore the soul of the nation. Together, we’ll get it done,” Biden tweeted.
Read her tweets:
Sen. Kamala Harris marked the death of 200,000 Americans from Covid-19 at what appears to be her most rally-like speech today during a voter mobilization event in Detroit, Michigan, since she began traveling, using the opportunity to slam President Trump.
Speaking at a podium, after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Harris said Detroit reminded her of Oakland, California, and she’s happy to be back.
“There’s so much that is about Detroit as, as not only a measure of our country and its excellence, but also as a measure of the challenges that we face as a nation. And so Joe and I feel a particular sense of responsibility to be here and to be present,” she said. “You know Jill Biden was here last week, Joe was in Michigan the week before. We will keep coming back. Because, so goes Michigan goes the rest of the country as far as we are concerned.”
President Trump told reporters he will announce his pick to replace the last Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Saturday at 5 p.m.
He said he has spoken to “many people” when asked how many people he has interviewed. “I’ve spoken to many and we are getting close to a decision,” Trump said.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett was back at the White House Tuesday for a second day in a row, signaling she is the overwhelming favorite to replace Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, according to two sources familiar.
Trump told reporters that the country will need all nine justices in order to decide on the legality of mail-in ballots following the November elections.
“I’m getting very close to having a final decision made. Very close. I’m going to make it, I believe, at 5 o’clock on Saturday. I’ll be having a conference,” Trump said on the White House South Lawn ahead of his departure to an event in Pennsylvania.
Trump also disputed Democrats’ suggestion that if he goes forward with a nominee ahead of the election it could tear the country apart, telling reporters, “I don’t think so.”
“We need nine justices. You need that. With the unsolicited millions of ballots that they’re sending, it’s a scam. It’s a hoax. Everybody knows that,” Trump argued. “And the Democrats know it better than anybody else, so you’re going to need nine justices up there. I think it’s going to be very important.”
“Doing it before the election would be a very good thing because you’re going to probably see it. Because what they’re doing is trying to sow confusion,” Trump continued, adding that he has a constitutional obligation to nominate a justice.
“I think you’ll be very impressed by the person chosen,” Trump said.
The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned the public Tuesday that foreign actors might spread disinformation about the results of the 2020 election and encouraged voters to be patient with delayed results.
“The increased use of mail-in ballots due to COVID-19 protocols could leave officials with incomplete results on election night,” the agencies said in a statement, highlighting the possibility that “foreign actors and cybercriminals” could use disinformation to “exploit the time required to certify and announce elections’ results.”
The warning told Americans to get information from “trustworthy sources” like official government election websites. The warning also said that when dealing with reports of problems with voting or results, Americans should “verify though multiple reliable sources” and should think twice before sharing unverified material on social media.
The agencies specifically said foreign actors might try to confuse votes by creating and spreading disinformation about “voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud” after the polls close.
While the warning focused only on foreign-based disinformation, domestic actors have recently spread similar claims about the election results.
President Trump has already repeatedly lied about voter fraud and questioned the legitimacy of the vote-counting process. Additionally, White House officials have ignored warnings from election officials about delayed results, and instead have stated that there should be a projected winner on election night.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he is confident the state can avoid many of the major issues that it saw during the June 9 primary election, despite a projected record turnout in November.
Georgia’s chaotic voting experience during the primary featured long-lines and extreme wait times in densely populated Fulton and Dekalb counties in the Atlanta metro areas. It was caused by a high volume of in-person voters and absentee ballots combined with fewer available poll workers and polling locations due to coronavirus fears.
“I think we’re much better prepared. Coming into the June primary we had to do really a 180 change,” Raffensperger said during a “How to Vote 2020” webinar hosted by the Atlanta Press Club when asked if he thought they could avoid what happened in June.
He said he is working hand-in-hand with county managers to make sure they have the resources they need to avoid major issues.
“Everyone is working together, and they are really focusing to make sure that we have a smooth a process as possible,” Raffensperger said.
He also said they are “well on their way” to hitting their goal of recruiting 25,000 new poll workers for Election Day.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins said she will vote against anyone President Trump names to fill late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat because “we’re simply too close to the election.”
The Maine senator issued a statement on Saturday, saying that she believes waiting until after the election is the right decision.
She reiterated that statement today.
However, Collins’ announcement may not make a difference, as more Republicans fall in line with GOP leaders are now making clear they are pressing ahead to get the nomination confirmed before Election Day, which would amount to one of the quickest proceedings in modern times. And it comes despite Senate Republicans’ refusal to move on then-President Barack Obama’s nomination of Garland to a seat in 2016 when they said his choice — eight months before November — was too close to the elections.
Currently, there are 53 GOP senators — meaning Republicans can only lose three votes to advance the nomination if Vice President Mike Pence stepped in to cast a tie-breaking vote.
So far, only two Republicans — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Collins — have voiced opposition to taking up whomever Trump nominates to fill Ginsburg’s vacant seat before Nov. 3.
It is unclear if there will be any further defections within GOP ranks.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is receiving a closed-door election security briefing Wednesday afternoon from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, top US counterintelligence official Bill Evanina and election security official Shelby Pierson, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The briefing is happening after Ratcliffe had told Congress last month that lawmakers would only be briefed in writing, not in person, before he reversed that position last week.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, is planning to return to the Capitol to attend the briefing.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is also receiving a closed-door briefing on the election and US cyber operations from Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command.
Acting Senate Intelligence Chairman Marco Rubio criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday for invoking the Senate’s “two-hour rule,” which shuts down Senate committee meetings, which included another briefing the intelligence committee had scheduled with Evanina.
Schumer objected to the Senate conducting business in protest of the Republican plans to move forward with a Supreme Court confirmation following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
It’s not yet clear when the House Intelligence Committee will receive an election security briefing.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that the names Democrats have heard so far as potential Trump’s Supreme Court nominees “are not acceptable at all, not even close.”
When asked whether there are any Trump nominees Democrats could get behind, Schumer replied, “Well, you know, right now they come from the list of the Federalist Society, which has some very strict strictures and that makes it very, very difficult, but you’d have to wait and see each nominee. The names we’ve heard are not acceptable at all, not even close.”
Schumer said the GOP moving forward with this vote is creating a lot of “mistrust” and “ill-feeling” between senators across the aisle “in a way that I haven’t seen it occur…in a very long time.”
“It’s hard…when they do such an about-face on such an important issue that’s so dramatically contradictory,” Schumer said, specifically calling out Sen. Lindsey Graham and Leader Mitch McConnell for 2016 remarks against confirming President Obama’s Supreme Court pick of Merrick Garland during a presidential election year.
But he added that “we’ll always have to try.”
On whether he intends to eliminate the filibuster if Democrats take the majority in the Senate, he echoed many previous comments saying “everything is on the table.”
When asked why Democrats are opting to use procedural tactics that could create a slow down, Schumer said, “we invoked the two hour rule because we can’t have business as usual when Republicans are destroying the institution as they have done.”
Former first lady Michelle Obama spoke to young voters Tuesday about the importance of casting a ballot.
“Voting is easy. It is something that we can do. Don’t listen to people who will say that somehow voting is rigged and your vote will get lost and it won’t be counted. That is not true,” Obama said in a conversation with actress Zendaya during an event hosted on Instagram Live by When We All Vote, Obama’s voter engagement organization.
“I don’t want people to be discouraged by those conspiracy theories that are being peddled out there about the validity of our election process because it’s just not true,” Obama said, in a nod to efforts meant to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election, including comments made by President Donald Trump that voting by mail is not secure.
Obama emphasized current misinformation about voter fraud and stressed to viewers the importance of not succumbing to voter intimidation.
Obama also talked about both voting by mail and in person, adding that all voters must have a plan in place. She encouraged those watching to visit her organization’s website, Whenweallvote.org, for assistance with election oriented questions.
Obama also did an Instagram Live with Jennifer Lopez Tuesday, during which she spoke about her and former President Barack Obama’s relationship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She called Ginsberg an “amazing force of a woman.”
“To think about how far she had to come, and how hard she fought to make sure that we had the rights that we deserve to protect our interest as women to protect our rights, to control our bodies, that is the legacy,” Obama said.
When We All Vote has been live on Instagram throughout the day in celebration of National Voter Registration Day. On Tuesday evening, Obama will be live again via When We All Vote with actress Ayesha Curry and basketball player Chris Paul.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday she expects President Trump to lay out his vision for health care in the coming two weeks.
When a reporter asked McEnany if the President’s health care plan actually exists, McEnany responded by saying, “No, it certainly does exist.”
Additionally, Vice President Mike Pence said President Trump will take executive action soon guaranteeing that Americans with pre-existing conditions must be covered by health insurance, even as his administration works to dismantle those protections under the Affordable Care Act.
“In the days ahead I would anticipate that the President will be taking some action under his executive branch authority to make it clear to every American that those who are facing pre-existing conditions will be covered under insurance plans,” Pence said in an interview with CBS News. “They will not be denied coverage.”
Trump is expected to deliver remarks on health care when he visits Charlotte on Thursday.
Some context: This comes as Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden intends to make a push on health care that is focused on defending the Affordable Care Act and its sweeping protections for pre-existing conditions.
Twice as many Ohio absentee ballots have been requested compared with the 2016 election cycle, the state’s top election official announced Tuesday.
Nearly 1.8 million applications have been received compared to 805,000 at this same point during 2016 cycle, Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose said in a press release.
LaRose said over the past week alone, there were 385,657 new absentee ballot requests.
Facebook on Tuesday said it shut down more than 150 fake accounts run from China that included accounts posting about November’s US presidential election.
The accounts “posted content both in support of and against presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy wrote in a post on the company’s website.
Graphika, a social media analytics company commissioned by Facebook to study the network of accounts, wrote in its report Tuesday, “In 2019-2020, the operation began running accounts that posed as Americans and posted a small amount of content about the US presidential election. Different assets supported President Donald Trump and his rival Joe Biden; one short-lived group supported former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. The operation did not single out either candidate for preferential treatment. Many of the accounts in this phase of the operation were barely active.”
Facebook did not say if the accounts were tied to the Chinese government, only that the accounts were run from China’s Fujian province. Though the company did point out that the accounts had been posting about “Beijing’s interests in the South China Sea.”
Graphika said accounts in the network had defended Beijing.
Gleicher stressed that most of the activity focused on South East Asia and only a very small amount of activity focused on the 2020 election.
However, there was a sense of urgency in Facebook’s announcement Tuesday.
The company normally discloses takedowns like this once a month, and the next announcement not due for another week or two.
Gleicher told reporters Tuesday given the nature of the company’s findings “we thought that it was important that people should be aware of what we are seeing.”
Ben Nimmo, head of investigations at Graphika told CNN, “The US-focused content was the least and last part of the operation. It ran one group each to support President Trump, Vice President Biden and Pete Buttigieg; all together, they had under 2,000 members. Some of their fake accounts did not engage with political content at all, and liked content from the US military instead. Most of the US-focused assets were taken down when they were a few months old, so they didn’t have time to build a substantial audience.”
Maine’s Supreme Court has sided with the state’s Democratic secretary of state and has rejected a Republican challenge to ranked-choice voting in the upcoming election. The ruling means Mainers will use ranked-choice voting in the presidential election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, barring further appeals.
The five judge panel ruled that the secretary of state acted correctly in rejecting a ballot referendum on the future of ranked-choice voting – which would’ve meant Maine couldn’t use the voting method for this year’s election.
How this works: Ranked choice voting allows voters to rank all of the candidates by preference and for a voter’s next choice to considered if their first candidate doesn’t have enough votes to be viable.
The decision is the latest twist in a long legal battle over ranked-choice voting in Maine.
Neil Siegel, who worked as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2003, said rushing to confirm a new nominee to fill the vacant SCOTUS seat doesn’t allow for the democratic process to take place –– something that requires more time than “speed dating,” he said.
Siegel is no stranger to the steps of this process. He served as special counsel to Delaware Sen. Chris Coon during the confirmation of Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
So, here’s what he means when he talks about “advice and consent” and “public evaluation.”
Advice and consent: This is the job of the Senate – to advice the President on a qualified nominee to fill a vacant seat. This happens as the President’s short list goes through background checks and a vetting process, but also a confirmation hearing where Senators have an opportunity to learn about the nominee.
“Consent” refers to the confirmation of the nominee after this hearing and “advice” phase. Republicans ended the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, so it takes only a simple majority. Vice President Mike Pence can break a 50-50 tie, which in this case, might happen if three Republicans decide they won’t vote for Trump’s nominee.
Public evaluation: Outside organizations can do their own vetting and research on nominees and submit recommendations – something CK Hoffler, the president of the National Bar Association, says is difficult to accomplish when the confirmation process is rushed.
She said the National Bar Association has a team of scholars vetting potential nominees right now, but said the speed this confirmation is moving is “compressing that process.”
“Rushing to get someone appointed and confirmed before the election, in less than 45 days, takes away the democracy and it takes away the ability of organizations who are doing proper vetting with their ability to vet the process,” Hoffler said.
She said moving so quickly that other organizations don’t have time to look into nominees is “undemocratic” and “makes it so that the American people will not have the ability to even see and vet these candidates that will be ruling on such important issues.”
The North Carolina State Board of Elections announced Tuesday that it will extend the date that county boards will accept ballots by mail to 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, if they are postmarked on or before Election Day. The NCSBE also updated the process for voters to fix an absentee ballot with missing information.
In a joint filing in the Wake County Superior Court, the NCSBE agreed to allow a voter whose witness does not fill out required fields on the envelope containing the absentee ballot to correct that mistake through an affidavit of the voter.
The filing leaves the witness requirement for absentee ballots in place. North Carolina, a key battleground state, had previously passed legislation that only one witness signature would be required due to conditions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The lawsuit originally requested the witness requirement be eliminated altogether.
North Carolina allows for a process called “vote curing.” As part of the agreement, which must be approved by the court, absentee ballots where a voter signed in the wrong place, did not print their name, did not print their address, did not sign, signed on the wrong line, or is missing a voter certification signature can be “cured” with a an affidavit sent to them by their county board of elections.
According the a press release from the NCSBE, “incomplete witness information is the main problem with absentee ballot envelopes.”
The joint motion, if approved by the court, would also allow individuals who return ballots in person to do so without filling out a written log. Instead, the person returning the ballot would orally state certain information, which the elections worker would document. If the person is not authorized to return the ballot, the elections worker would ask for more information.
The political arm of a physicians’ group that advocates for health care access and affordability is circling President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort with mobile billboards calling attention the nation’s 200,000th coronavirus death.
“Trump lied. 200,000 Americans died. Trump failed to protect America from COVID-19,” is the message on the side of the black vans, which began their circuit at 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday and will continue until 6 p.m. ET.
The Committee to Protect Medicare PAC has also announced plans to spend more than $1 million on digital ads targeting Trump’s handling of the pandemic. A new one will run between now and Election Day, in eight swing states: Arizona, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Florida.
The group hopes to reach 1.2 million viewers over Comcast VOD, streaming TV, on Facebook and Instagram, and in pre-roll ads online. It is also targeting voters in Georgia and Florida exclusively on Facebook and Instagram.
“It simply didn’t have to be this way,” the group’s executive director, Dr. Rob Davidson, says in the 30-second version of the spot, which features real doctors speaking directly to camera and condemning the administration’s pandemic response.
“Two hundred thousand Americans are dead because of incompetence,” another doctor says. “Some of them,” another adds, “were my patients.”
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris tweeted after the US surpassed 200,000 coronavirus deaths.
“There’s a devastating human toll to this pandemic — and we can’t forget that,” Biden said in his tweet.
Harris called it a “tragic milestone.”
Read their tweets:
Journalist Chris Wallace, moderator of the first 2020 presidential debate, has announced the topics of the event.
According to a news release from the Commission on Presidential Debates, they include:
The first presidential debate will be held next Tuesday in Cleveland, Ohio. The debate is set to begin at 9:00 p.m. ET.
The topics are subject to possible changes due to news developments.
CNN headed to a pop-up voter registration event in DC as part of National Voter Registration Day, a nonpartisan holiday designed to encourage and empower citizens across the country to register to vote.
CNN’s Kristen Holmes spoke to voters and organizers of the event about the importance of this year’s election and is answering any questions you may have about the voting process.
You can find important election deadlines and local voter resources in CNN’s Voter Guide here.
Watch:
The two Los Angeles-based NFL teams have joined 12 other franchises committed to serve as polling sites for the upcoming November elections.
To commemorate National Voter Registration Day, the Chargers and Rams announced on Tuesday that their new SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, will become a vote center location.
There are now 14 clubs who have committed to provide election support. Along with the Chargers and Rams, the others include: the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, Seattle Seahawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Washington Football Team.
The NFL announced on Tuesday several other initiatives to encourage civic engagement, including closing team offices to encourage NFL employees to serve as poll workers on Election Day and launching their “Latinos Vote” campaign.
