Our live coverage has ended. Read more about the 2020 election here.
An official Republican poll watcher was charged with assault on Friday after shoving an election judge who wouldn’t let him into an early voting center in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Gary Pendleton, a 73-year-old Republican who previously served as a Wake County commissioner and member of the State House of Representatives, tells CNN he intentionally went to the Northern Regional Center early voting location about an hour before the polls opened to observe the set-up.
He told CNN he went to the polling place “to watch for fraud potential.”
Pendleton said he had previously been allowed into other voting locations before the polls officially opened. But when he arrived on Friday, election officials would not allow him inside before the polls opened. He said he tried to get in anyway, but the location’s chief election judge “got in his face” to stop him. A police report filed after the incident, and obtained by CNN, said the victim was 71 years old.
Wake County Elections Director Gary Sims said the election judge didn’t do anything wrong by making Pendleton wait until the polls opened to come inside. The election judge is a Democratic appointee.
Pendleton said he was cited for class three misdemeanor assault.
“We both had on masks, but I wasn’t about to let him sit three feet from my face, so I pushed him back to get him out of my face,” Pendleton said, blaming the scuffle on partisan tensions. “If I had it to do all over again, I would’ve just turned around and walked out the door. But I was really bent out of shape.”
President Trump has repeatedly urged Republicans to “watch” for fraud at the polls, including as trained poll watchers and as ordinary citizens trying to ferret out “corruption.” He has spent months spreading lies about widespread voter fraud, which does not exist in US elections.
Pendleton was an official poll observer who was appointed and trained by the local Republican Party and authorized to be at the voting location.
The Minnesota Department of Health said it has so far traced 20 cases of Covid-19 back to a rally held by President Trump in Bemidji last month, or to related events.
Of the 20 cases, 16 are among people who attended the rally, including two who are now hospitalized. Four people said they participated in counter-protests that same day, the state department of health told CNN. The state is describing it as an “outbreak.”
The rally took place on Sept. 18 in an airplane hangar. According to a CNN producer who attended the event, at least 2,000 people were in attendance.
The state has traced another eight cases to other campaign events held throughout the state. One case has been linked to a rally for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Sept. 18 in Duluth. Three cases have been linked to a Vice President Mike Pence’s speech in Minneapolis on Sept. 24. Another three cases have been traced to attendants of a Trump rally in Duluth on Sept. 30 and one more case linked to an event featuring a speech by Eric Trump in Becker, Minnesota, on Oct. 1.
The state has a tracked a total of 28 Covid-19 positive cases to various campaign events in the last few weeks.
“We determined this through contact tracing case interviews,” Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director for the Minnesota Department of Health, told CNN previously. Ehresmann noted that it’s not possible to reach everyone who might have been infected because people may not remember or they may not be willing to say where they were.
Vice President Mike Pence slammed the Biden-Harris campaign’s stances on several key issues, including the Supreme Court, health care and taxes, in a campaign speech in Selma, North Carolina.
He criticized Joe Biden’s remarks on court-packing at last night’s ABC town hall, saying it’s time that he “come clean. Give the American people a straight answer.”
On the issue, Biden said he is “not a fan” of court-packing, but whether he ultimately seeks to push for more seats on the Supreme Court depends on how Senate Republicans handle the confirmation process of Amy Coney Barrett.
Biden said he would take a clearer position on court-packing before the election, after seeing how the confirmation process plays out.
Pence again defended Barrett and her faith, telling his supporters: “(Trump) nominated a brilliant, principled, conservative woman who loves the Constitution to the Supreme Court of the United States, Judge Amy Coney.”
At President Trump’s insistence, Hope Hicks, one of the President’s top aides, very briefly addressed a Make America Great Again Rally in Ocala, Florida, Friday night.
Trump himself started chanting “we want Hope” to get his adviser to come to the stage.
“We can share a microphone now,” she quipped to Trump. Both Hicks and the President tested positive for Covid 19 a little more than two weeks ago.
“Thank you all so much and thank you President Trump. I have stage fright, so…” Hicks said, before leaving the stage.
Election officials in Florida are taking steps to remove ex-felons from the voter rolls if they still owe court debts, according an email sent this week to county elections officials obtained by CNN.
The state’s elections director, Maria Matthews, told local elections supervisors on Tuesday that they would begin to receive files on convicted felons “whose potential ineligibility is based on not having satisfied the legal financial obligations of their sentence.” The email added that if local officials received information about registered voters who are ineligible from sources other than the Florida Department of State, “you should act on it.”
The email was first reported by Politico.
The move comes after more than 1 million Floridians with felony convictions had their voting rights restored through a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2018. But Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature later passed a bill saying ex-felons must settle all financial obligations such as fines, fees and restitution before their voting rights are restored.
A federal judge ruled in May that that state law amounted to an unconstitutional “pay-to-vote system,” but in September a federal appeals court overturned that decision.
Local officials told CNN that the new directions from the state might not impact voter rolls for the 2020 election.
Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley said Friday that he “wasn’t really surprised that they’re starting up the process of felon review,” but he said the lengthy removal process would prevent his office from actually taking anyone off the rolls by Election Day.
He said the county has seven days to send a letter to the registered voter, and then the voter has 30 days to respond. “And if they don’t respond we have to advertise… so there are various different requirements that would prevent us from taking someone off before November 3rd.”
Though he didn’t think many Florida voters would actually be removed before election day, Earley said it’s possible that if felons with court debts end up voting, their ballots could be challenged after the election.
Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, a Republican appointee, said in a statement that the federal appeals court rulings makes it clear that, “the law, with respect to legal financial obligations, is now clear, and there is no legal basis for the department to ignore the obligations spelled out in Florida Statutes.”
Lee said her department is legally required to review information from a number of sources related to felons whose voting rights have not been restored, and if that information is credible and reliable, that is shared with local supervisors.
A coalition of liberal-leaning voting rights and advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, condemned the state’s efforts to remove people with felony convictions and legal financial obligations.
As more states begin in-person voting this week, there appears to be a trend of eye-popping turnout compared to this point in 2016. This is in addition to the record-shattering interest in vote-by-mail.
Here is a collection of data from some states that show the best available comparisons to 2016:
Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris underwent PCR testing for Covid-19 Friday and Covid-19 was not detected, according to a Harris aide.
This comes just a day after the campaign halted the California senator’s travel through the weekend after a non-staff flight crew member and Harris’ own communications director, Liz Allen, tested positive for coronavirus.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tested negative for coronavirus Friday.
“Vice President Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected,” the Biden campaign said.
Biden is touching down in Michigan at this hour for a pair of campaign events in the Detroit area. He is expected to deliver remarks on health care and participate in a voter mobilization event.
Former President Barack Obama will make his first campaign stop for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden next week on Wednesday in Philadelphia, an official tells CNN.
This is a solo campaign stop for Obama, the first of a handful he is poised to make in the final two weeks of the campaign and comes on the eve of the final debate.
Biden is scheduled to be in debate prep that day, the official said, and the two are not expected to campaign together — until possibly the final weekend or days of the race.
The Commission on Presidential Debates has released the topics for the final presidential debate that will take place next Thursday in Nashville, Tennessee.
The six topics are:
As was also the case with the first debate, the topics list is subject to change based on news.
The debate will start at 9:00 p.m. ET and run for 90 minutes without commercial breaks. NBC journalist Kristen Welker will be the moderator.
As the US surpassed 8 million Covid-19 cases, President Trump struck a noticeably different and more empathetic tone in an appeal to seniors in Fort Myers, Florida, on Friday, telling Americans he feels their pain.
The President doesn’t often address the human toll the virus has taken on Americans, other than to say that one death from the virus is too many.
Trump also spoke of unity, saying that “in times of challenge we turn to our fellow Americans for a shoulder to lean on. We turn to god for healing and strength, and together we will overcome.”
But Trump soon returned to more familiar territory, claiming once again the US is “rounding the turn” on the pandemic and attacking those who point to rising cases across the country.
“My message to America’s seniors today is one of optimism, confidence and hope. Your sacrifice has not been in vain. The light at the end of the tunnel is here. We are rounding the turn,” he said. “Don’t listen to the cynics and angry partisans and professional pessimists. We are Americans and we will prevail. We are prevailing, we are.”
Latest US Covid-19 data: The US has recorded more than 8,008,000 cases, Johns Hopkins University says. That total is likely a vast undercount of actual infection totals because of a low testing capacity early in the pandemic, researchers have said in several reports.
Perhaps more concerning than Friday’s milestone is a recent rise in cases per day. The country’s one-week average of new daily cases has moved above 53,000 — an increase of more than 55% in just over a month, Johns Hopkins data show.
Watch the moment:
The reopening of voter registration in Virginia this week allowed more than 14,000 people to newly register or update their registration, an official said Friday.
Department of Elections spokesperson Andrea Gaines told CNN that 7,293 voters registered or updated their registrations on Wednesday, and 7,044 registered or updated their registrations on Thursday.
The registration window was reopened after the state’s citizen’s portal website was unavailable for much of the day on Tuesday, the final scheduled day to register. The issue was caused by a construction crew hitting a data cable, officials said, and service was restored Tuesday afternoon.
There are nearly 6 million voters registered for the November election in Virginia.
Moments ago, President Trump took the stage in Fort Myers, Florida, to speak at a “Protecting America’s Seniors” event.
According to excerpts of his speech from the White House, Trump will give a message of “optimism, confidence, and hope” to the nation’s seniors.
“America’s seniors remind us that we have inherited an extraordinary legacy. You are the generation that defeated fascism, triumphed over communism, sent American astronauts to the moon, and built our country into the greatest and most powerful nation the world has ever known,” Trump will say according to the prepared remarks.
Joe Biden’s town hall on ABC averaged 13.9 million viewers on Thursday night, easily surpassing the Nielsen ratings for President Trump’s town hall on NBC.
That alone was a result virtually no one in the TV business expected. And that’s not even the most surprising part.
The Trump town hall was simulcast by two of NBC’s cable channels, MSNBC and CNBC, but even when those channels are included in the total, Biden — on only one network — still prevailed.
The Trump town hall averaged 10.6 million viewers on the NBC broadcast network. On MSNBC, Trump reached 1.74 million viewers, and on CNBC, about 671,000 viewers. So Trump’s gross audience across the three channels was 13 million, about one million fewer than Biden’s audience on ABC alone.
Staffers at ABC News privately admitted to their surprise when the preliminary ratings came in on Friday.
The Nielsen ratings only measure viewership on TV sets. Both town halls were also live-streamed to phones, computers and other devices.
In the run-up to Thursday night, the Biden campaign embraced the popular ratings narrative and predicted that Trump would outrate Biden. Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said “we’re gonna have a much bigger audience than Joe.”
Trump has been a Nielsen connoisseur for decades. While hosting “The Apprentice” on NBC, he paid close attention to the performance of his show and routinely exaggerated its success. He has continued to fixate on TV ratings during his years in the White House and has frequently congratulated Fox News for its ratings victories.
But when the TV ratings have disappointed him, he has also shifted to other metrics; when Biden had a bigger TV audience for his convention, Trump complained that “Online Streaming Numbers” weren’t being counted in the totals.
Read more here.
Young Americans from across the country will protest the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett on the steps of the Supreme Court on Saturday, organizers tell CNN.
The rally, which organizers are calling “McConnell v. Justice,” will show elected officials that young people are committed to holding their elected officials accountable, organizers say.
Progressive activists from Alabama, Colorado, California, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas, Virginia and more are traveling to Washington, DC, for the event.
These leaders care about a number of issues including racial justice, police reform, LGBTQIA rights, disability rights, access to reproductive rights, immigrant rights, environmental justice and gun violence prevention – all of which, they say, are at stake with Barrett’s nomination.
The organizers are also calling for the Senate to halt the nomination process of Barrett, demanding that there should be “no confirmation until inauguration.”
The youth-led rally will feature a number of speakers including: Aalayah Eastmond, 19-year-old gun violence prevention activist; Mari Copeny, 13-year-old environmental justice activist who has fought for clean drinking water in Flint, Michigan; Rachel Gonzalez, 21-year-old disability justice activist who has advocated for the Affordable Care Act; and Ty Hobson-Powell, 25-year-old leader in the fight for DC statehood.
In addition to the featured speakers, young people from across the country are joining the McConnell v. Justice coalition.
Tay Anderson, 22-year-old director-at-large on the Denver School Board, told CNN that he has traveled to D.C. with 60 young Coloradans between the ages of 13 and 45.
“If we have to travel 1,600 miles from Colorado, we will,” Anderson said, adding that many in his group had never been to DC prior to their arrival Thursday.
Jonathan Sweeney, a 22-year-old from Ohio, told CNN that he is joining the McConnell v. Justice protest because as a gay man, he “can’t afford to have Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court.” Sweeney added that, as an Ohioan, his vote could end up in the hands of the Supreme Court.
Likewise, Deja Foxx, a 20-year-old advocate for reproductive rights, traveled from California for the protest.
Foxx told CNN she cast her first ever presidential election ballot for Biden and Harris before getting on the plane to DC Friday.
“I’m protesting because I know that when you have control over your body, you have control over your future,” Foxx said Friday, adding that she believes Barrett “poses a serious threat to choice for my generation and those to come,” she said.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney released a statement responding to President Trump’s refusal to denounce conspiracy theories during his NBC Town Hall Thursday night.
Romney urged parties to “expel the rabid fringes” and warned both parties “may be opening a door to a political movement that could eventually eclipse them both.”
Some context: Trump doubled down on his refusal to denounce QAnon conspiracy theorists, saying in last night’s nationally televised town hall that “they are very much against pedophilia” and he agrees with that sentiment.
QAnon’s main conspiracy theories — none based in fact — claim dozens of Satan-worshipping politicians and A-list celebrities work in tandem with governments around the globe to engage in child sex abuse. Followers also believe there is a “deep state” effort to annihilate Trump and that the President is secretly working to bust these pedophilic cabals.
Read Romney’s statement:
Ivanka Trump is holding what her team is calling a “socially distanced rally” in Cincinnati, Ohio, today – but it will be different from the rallies President Trump holds, as well rallies and events headlined by Pence, Donald Trump Jr., and Women for Trump.
A campaign official tells CNN that Ivanka’s rally will include temperature checks and the audience is being told to wear masks and keep them on. The chairs also appear to be spaced. It is unclear if these measures will be enforced, or how, as the rally has yet to get underway.
Around her father, however, Ivanka Trump’s behavior regarding masks is another story.
She did not wear a mask at his presidential debate, and at a large Trump rally in Pennsylvania last month, she did not wear a mask or social distance, taking the stage to wave with her husband and young children. More recently, while campaigning solo in Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina, Ivanka Trump hosted maskless campaign events in semi-outdoor structures.
Trump has mocked Joe Biden for holding socially distanced campaign stops and for consistently wearing a mask.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson announced Friday that open-carry of guns will be banned on Election Day at polling places, clerk’s offices and other locations where absentee ballots are counted.
Benson’s directive prohibits Michigan residents from open-carrying firearms “in a polling place, in any hallway used by voters to enter or exit, or within 100 feet of any entrance to a building in which a polling place is located.”
Benson continued, “I am committed to ensuring all eligible Michigan citizens can freely exercise their fundamental right to vote without fear of threats, intimidation or harassment. Prohibiting the open-carry of firearms in areas where citizens cast their ballots is necessary to ensure every voter is protected.”
This guidance only applies to Election Day itself, when long lines and large crowds are expected across the state. Early voting in Michigan is limited to people dropping off or filling out absentee ballots at election offices, and Benson’s guidance on firearms does not apply to these situations.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel supported this decision, according to the press release. Nessel and Benson are both Democrats, and said the directive was necessary to clarify state laws already on the books.
Michigan State Police is expected to issue accompanying guidance to law enforcement following the announcement of this directive.
This announcement comes after 14 people were charged in a domestic terror plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Since then, pressure has been mounting on state’s top election and law officials to ensure a safe election in November.
President Trump and his allies have also encouraged supporters to join an “army” of poll watchers, stirring fears of voter intimidation.
More than 20 million ballots have been cast in 45 states and DC, according to a survey of ballot data by CNN, Edison Research and Catalist.
As of Friday, ballots are available in all 50 states and DC. The votes cast so far represent about 15% of the more than 136 million ballots cast for president in 2016, though experts predict higher turnout this year.
Democrats continue to lead Republicans in ballots cast in each of CNN’s key states for which there is party data available, according to Catalist, a data company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and non-profit issue advocacy organizations. Catalist has analyzed more than 16 million of the ballots cast so far in 36 states.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats account for more than three-quarters of the ballots cast so far. They hold a 20-point lead in Florida and a 32-point lead in North Carolina.
None of these states have seen dramatic changes in party breakdown this week, but the Florida margin has narrowed very slightly (about two points) in the last week, so we’ll watch to see if that continues.
Here are insights from two key states where the candidates are campaigning today:
Florida: After his town hall last night, President Trump wakes up in Florida, where he is scheduled to deliver remarks on seniors and then hold a rally this afternoon. Trump carried the Sunshine State by just over one percentage point in 2016.
Catalist data analyzed so far shows the number of ballots already cast in Florida has more than doubled compared to four years ago.
Florida Democrats have a major lead over Republicans in ballot returns so far and account for half of all pre-election day votes. This is a stark contrast to four years ago at this point when Republicans led Democrats 43% to 40% in their share of ballots returned.
The racial composition of Florida’s early voting electorate has shifted somewhat since 2016, with White voters making up a slightly smaller share of those who’ve already cast ballots and Black voters making up a slightly larger share. At this point four years ago, White voters comprised 77% early voters; they now represent 72%. Black voters, meanwhile, have expanded their share of the early vote from 8% in 2016 to 11% currently. Hispanic voters comprise about 12% of those who’ve already voted in Florida, on par with 2016 levels.
Michigan: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden heads to Michigan for campaign events Friday. Trump was the first Republican to carry the Wolverine State in a presidential election since 1988, defeating Hillary Clinton by less than half a percentage point.
In the 2018 midterms, Michigan voters passed a ballot measure that allowed any registered voter in the state to cast a ballot by mail without an excuse. That was a big change from 2016, and the difference in early voting between the two elections is clear.
About 3.5 times more Michiganders have already voted this year compared to this point in 2016, according to Catalist data, with the biggest changes apparent when looking at early voters by age.
At this point four years ago, 83% of those who had cast ballots already were 65 or older. Now, those voters only account for 53% of early voters. Every other age group accounts for a greater share of the pre-election vote now than they did at this point in 2016, but the largest increase has come from voters 50-64 who were 11% of the votes cast four years ago and are now 25%.
The racial breakdown of voters who’ve cast early ballots in Michigan has changed slightly from this point in 2016. 85% of Michigan voters so far are White, down from 88% four years ago. Black voters make up the second largest share at 11% (up slightly from 9% four years ago). Hispanic and Asian voters each make up 2% of those who have voted so far – both up a single point from 2016.
Notably, this racial breakdown is still more White than Michigan’s final electorate in 2016. According to exit polls, 75% of Michigan voters were White, 15% were Black and 5% were Latino.
Take a look at the numbers:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement that he will “proudly vote to confirm” President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee judge Amy Coney Barrett when it comes to the Senate floor next week.
He also defends the quick timeframe and process of the confirmation, and says the threat of court packing by Democrats won’t deter Republicans from moving forward.
Here’s what happens next in Barrett’s confirmation process:
Some background: The battle over the vacant seat of late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become a key 2020 campaign topic. Trump and Senate Republicans have been pushing to confirm Barrett before Election Day despite the outcry of Democrats.
At the fourth day of Barrett’s confirmation hearings yesterday, Democratic senators moved to indefinitely delay the proceedings because millions of Americans are voting for the next president. They argued that there’s never been a Supreme Court justice nominated this close to the election and confirmed before it. The Senate has taken half the average time to consider the nomination.
Republicans disagreed, saying that a Republican president and a Republican-led Senate confirming a conservative justice on the Supreme Court is compliant with the Constitution and the Senate’s history.
