Our live coverage has ended. Read more about the 2020 election here
The Supreme Court has allowed the counting of ballots in North Carolina received nine days after the election as long as the ballots are postmarked by Election Day, dealing a victory to Democrats.
The court’s order is a loss for Republicans and the Trump campaign that had asked the court to reinstate a three-day extension that had been set by the legislature last June.
Newly sworn in Justice Amy Coney Barrett took no part in the decision because she did not have time to fully review the briefs.
A federal appeals court had allowed the nine day extension that was set by the State Board of Elections amid the pandemic, as part of a legal settlement.
United States Postal Service districts in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida all saw major declines in the on-time processing of first-class mail, according to court filings made by the USPS on Wednesday.
Election mail, like ballots, are treated like, and often mailed at, first-class.
The lower the score, the lower the percentage that is traveling through the system on time.
Tuesday’s on-time processing of all first class mail in the Philadelphia Metro District sank to 43%, down from the weekly average of 77% two weeks earlier. USPS’ Detroit District’s score isn’t much better, down to 53% from the weekly average of 72% on Oct. 10. While these scores include more than just election mail, it’s a troubling statistic in the final full week before Election Day.
The Ohio Valley, Central Pennsylvania, Greensboro, North Carolina and Lakeland, Wisconsin, districts all saw first-class mail processing scores drop into the low 60s on Tuesday.
USPS’ Baltimore District, which has never recovered from the July deluge of delayed mail, sank to a dismal 39% on Tuesday.
But despite the poor numbers for first-class processing, a more targeted measure of on-time ballot processing showed significantly better numbers.
Processing scores for ballots heading to voters, according to the data, is at 89%, down from 95% on Monday and 94% on Friday. Completed ballots heading to election officials is at 95%, according to the data, up from 93% on Monday and 95% from Friday.
CNN has reached out to the USPS for comment on the low numbers for first-class processing.
First-class mail rates have yet to recover from their July and August lows. Typically, first-class mail rates are well above 90%.
USPS argues that the data is not an indicative of its on-time delivery performance, saying it “does not produce accurate, reliable information, as it is incomplete (and) subject to change.” In the court filing, their lawyers argued that specific days of the week tend to have lower or higher scores; scores on Monday tend to be lower because there’s a bigger volume of mail to process from the weekend, since mail isn’t delivered on Sunday.
An Oct. 19 Inspector General report found that changes implemented in July by USPS and new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy were largely responsible for a significant slide in mail delivery.
The report said DeJoy oversaw 57 “Do It Now FY strategies” in addition to three policies he directly implemented: no late or extra trips, a complete reorganization and restructuring of USPS; and that he attempted to eliminate overtime for mail carriers.
Democrats are pointing the finger squarely at DeJoy.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement, “Despite his assurances, the Postmaster General has failed to fix the problems he created and cannot be relied on for the on-time delivery of Election Mail. At this point, Americans should either vote in person or drop their ballot in an official drop box to avoid their ballots not being delivered on time.”
President Trump announced a new plan aimed at the Hispanic community, called the “American Dream Plan,” at a campaign rally in Goodyear, Arizona, on Wednesday — six days before Election Day.
“Today I am announcing the American Dream Plan. Over the next four years, the American Dream Plan will bring more than 2 million new jobs to Hispanic communities, create over a half a million new Hispanic owned small businesses — which will end up being large businesses if I know you and I know you well,” Trump said.
Remarking on the expansion of Hispanic-owned businesses, Trump called them “great, natural businesspeople.”
The President also said the plan would “expand opportunities for federal contracting” and would “increase access to capital by hundreds of billions of dollars.”
CNN has reached out to the White House for more information about the plan.
The American Dream Plan appears to be similar to the President’s “Platinum Plan” — an outline of how the Trump administration plans to establish and enhance goals set for the Black community if Trump is elected to a second term.
The Trump campaign, and several other groups, filed an action against Minnesota’s secretary of state on Wednesday asking that mail-in ballots received after Election Day be separated.
The action comes amid an appeal against a federal court decision keeping the seven-day acceptance period for mail-in ballots as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3.
The action asks for the ballots to be separated so “post-election remedies will be available for violation of the federal-law requirements at issue in this appeal.”
The suit goes on to repeat claims already being made in current litigation, saying that allowing ballots after Nov. 3 violates a federal mandate that federal elections occur on Election Day and violates the “time, place and manner” statute.
Plaintiffs requested that all “late-arriving” mail-in ballots be separated so that they can “preserve the petitioners’ ability to challenge the legality of the secretary’s actions” and ensure fairness in the election. Without this, the plaintiffs would have no effective remedy, the action said.
The action is also joined by the Senate Victory Fund, the House Republican Campaign Committee, and Ryan J. Beam, a Minnesota resident who is unaffiliated with any party, the lawsuit read.
CNN has reached out to the secretary of state’s office for comment.
We’re six days to the election.
Bottom line: If you’ve got a mail-in ballot, you probably shouldn’t mail it.
Similarly, while some states still allow voters to request mail-in ballots, it might be too late to receive it in the mail.
Kathy Boockvar, the secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, told CNN’s Jake Tapper Tuesday that even though Pennsylvania can count mail-in ballots received up until Nov. 6 (three days after Election Day), she’d rather people just drop their ballots off.
“At this point, we’re a week out, right? We’ve all heard of stories of ballots being delayed in the mail. I don’t want anybody to lose their opportunity to vote, so I want every voter who has the ability to drop it off in person,” Boockvar said.
Voters in most places can also deliver their ballots directly to their election offices to sidestep any potential mail delays. There’s usually also the option to vote early or on Election Day. But the mail-in window is about closed.
In states that allow the counting of ballots received after Election Day — including the battleground states of Ohio, Iowa and Nevada — it’s still possible too use the postal system and be outside that seven-day recommended time period. But the mail-in window is just about closed. There are other options. (Read about them here.)CNN’s voter guide is here
Still, the US Postal Service is dealing with a lot of ballots. CNN’s Paul Murphy has been keeping track of their efforts to get them delivered on time.
Note: The Wall Street Journal tracked average delivery times for first class mail in key states and found delivery times at six days in nearly every state that requires ballots to be received by Election Day.
New data: The postal service submitted data to a federal court Tuesday as part of a case related to election mail and reported mixed results — a lower score for election mail headed to voters and an improved score for mail headed from voters to election offices.
Verify receipt: It is essential, if you mailed your ballot, to make sure it was received, either by tracking it online or calling your local election office.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris appeared to push back at allegations made by her detractors that she’s a socialist at a drive-in mobilization event in Tucson, Arizona, today.
“In the spirit of the late great John McCain I think it’ll start with a little straight talk,” Harris said.
“And our values, reflect the values of America. Our values, tell us we have witnessed the worst, the biggest disaster of any presidential administration in the history of this country. Our values tell us that,” said Harris who then recited the death and infection toll of the pandemic.
Former Rep. Gabby Giffords and her husband and Senate candidate Capt. Mark Kelly also delivered remarks before Harris’ speech as well as Rep. Raul Grijalva and Tucson Mayor Regina Romero.
The anonymous senior Trump administration official who wrote a 2018 New York Times op-ed and a subsequent book critical of President Donald Trump is Miles Taylor, he revealed in a statement to CNN on Thursday.
Taylor, who was chief of staff to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, wrote a lengthy statement explaining why he penned the 2018 op-ed declaring he was part of the “resistance” inside the Trump administration working to thwart Trump’s worst inclinations. Taylor said that he wanted to force Trump to respond to the charges he was leveling without the ability to attack the messenger specifically. Trump called the op-ed treasonous.
“Issuing my critiques without attribution forced the President to answer them directly on their merits or not at all, rather than creating distractions through petty insults and name-calling,” Taylor added. “I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves.”
Taylor joined CNN as a contributor in September 2020.
Taylor’s statement answers one of the biggest mysteries of Trump’s presidency. Trump responded furiously to the op-ed when it was written in 2018, and urged then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the matter. There was an internal hunt at the White House to uncover the identity of the author, and it spawned months of parlor games in Washington guessing at who was behind the op-ed through the speech patterns and phrases used.
A year later, Taylor released the anonymously authored book titled, “A Warning,” which included new details critical of the President from inside the Trump administration. He wrote that members of Trump’s team considered sabotaging him to prompt Trump to resign, and that many administration officials kept their own letters of resignation in their desks or on their laptops.
Since leaving the Trump administration in 2019, Taylor endorsed Democrat Joe Biden in August and co-founded a Republican group that is opposed to Trump.
The White House has criticized Taylor since his endorsement of Biden, and Trump called him a “disgruntled employee.”
Taylor said he was hopeful that more people inside the government would speak out against Trump, noting that several senior officials have done so in different ways since leaving the administration.
In the 2018 op-ed, which was titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” Taylor anonymously wrote that “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
But Taylor said that original assertion was incorrect.
“The country cannot rely on well-intentioned, unelected bureaucrats around the President to steer him toward what’s right,” Taylor said Wednesday. “He has purged most of them anyway.”
Watch here:
Pennsylvania officials have notified the Supreme Court that the Office of the Secretary of State of the Commonwealth has issued guidance to all county boards directing them to “securely segregate” all main-in and civilian ballots received between Nov. 3 and Nov. 6.
This was done because of an ongoing legal challenge brought by Republicans in Pennsylvania.
They have asked the Supreme Court to block a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that allowed the counting of ballots received three days after the election, even if there is no legible postmark.
The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the petition.
Following a briefing delivered by the public health experts who advise him on Covid-19, Joe Biden delivered remarks on the pandemic, sharing that the group had discussed the upward slope of confirmed infections and talked about the actions that will be needed to turn it around. He said that it was made worse by the “administration’s declaration of surrender.”
Biden once again urged Americans to wear masks, arguing that it is not political, but that it’s patriotic.
He argued that the refusal of the Trump administration to recognize the reality of the pandemic “is an insult to every single person suffering from Covid-19.” Biden went on to say that he knows “all too well how it feels to lose a loved one.”
Continuing to criticize the current administration for its handling of the pandemic, Biden said that the attendees at Trump’s rally who were stranded in a parking lot in Nebraska last night represent “an image that captures President Trump’s whole approach to this crisis.”
The Democratic nominee said that even if he wins, he won’t be able to end the pandemic just by “flipping a switch.”
“Even if I win, it’s going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic. I’m not running on the false promise of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch,” Biden said. He added that he’ll start on his first day “doing the right things. We’ll let science drive our decisions.”
Biden just voted early “by appointment” at Delaware’s Carvel State Office Building.
WATCH:
More than 50% of registered voters have cast a ballot in the general election in North Carolina as of Wednesday at noon, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
In North Carolina, a resident can register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day during the early, in-person voting period. That period runs through Saturday.
Voters can no longer request an absentee by mail ballot. The deadline for requests was Tuesday.
No one really knows how this election night will go, but here are some scenarios. First, make three assumptions (which could be wrong, but are backed up by data):
Now let’s apply those assumptions to what we know about election night:
Excitement for Biden early — The explosion of early voting in Florida, a state that allows officials to process those ballots ahead of time, means there could be a whole lot of already-counted vote to be reported when the last polls close in the state at 8 p.m. ET.
The same could be true in in Georgia and North Carolina, two more key states with early poll closings.
If those early results do favor Democrats, that means the early returns on election night could potentially look better for Biden than the final results.
Why? As CNN’s Adam Levy writes:
Then, excitement for Trump — But this possible early Biden bump may not last if states like Florida report early voting when polls close.
Election Day returns, which could favor Republicans, may very well make things tighten up as the night progresses. It could feel very exciting to watch CNN’s John King at the Magic Wall and see the numbers get closer. Tune in!
The Biden campaign is continuing to pour money into advertising in the closing stretch of the campaign — the campaign’s ad reservations now total more than $40 million for just the final week, following some recent additions.
This contrasts with moves earlier this week from the Trump campaign, which pulled back some advertising in Florida and shifted bookings to joint buys with the RNC.
Here’s where Biden added to bookings for the final week, with the additions totaling about $4.2 million:
When President Trump left Omaha on Tuesday, thousands watched and cheered in the frigid air as Air Force One took off into the night sky. But for these loyal supporters, their experience at the Trump rally was far from over.
For the next several hours, hundreds and hundreds of people who attended the rally were stranded, as a chaotic scene unfolded on dark roads on a remote stretch near the Omaha airport. They waited for buses that didn’t arrive, unable to reach the site because of a clogged two-lane road.
Many people started walking to their cars, parked three or four miles away, which blocked the roads even further. Several medics were seen by CNN giving attention to people in the bone-chilling evening air. The temperature was right at freezing, but wind chills were far lower.
Earlier in the night, the President commented on the weather.
Samantha Zager, deputy national press secretary told CNN in a statement: “President Trump loves his supporters and was thrilled to visit Omaha last night. Despite the cold, tens of thousands of people showed up for his rally. Because of the sheer size of the crowd, we deployed 40 shuttle buses instead of the normal 15, but local road closures and resulting congestion caused delays. We always strive to provide the best guest experience at our events and we care about their safety.”
After the rally, police officers tried to control the scene, but struggled to bring order to the pandemonium. There were no campaign advance teams in sight. One local advance volunteer said they were given no instructions how to get supporters back onto the buses.
“We need at least 30 more buses,” an Omaha police officer said, shaking his head.
Some background: For months, the Trump campaign has utilized the practice of busing supporters from parking lots to the rally sites as a way to accommodate the large crowds. His events have been held in locations such as small airports that don’t normally draw rally-sized crowds and therefore don’t have onsite parking available to support the crush of people and crowds.
That has created a scenario where thousands of people are left to wait for hours after the event ends for buses to shuttle them back to their cars. At event in Gastonia, North Carolina, last Wednesday, hundreds of supporters were forced to make the decision to either wait for the bus or walk several miles down a busy road, without sidewalks, to their parking lots.
Even those who make it on a bus only do so after a long wait packed in with hundreds of other people — most not wearing a mask — until they board the bus where every single seat is taken and no social distancing is practiced.
Remember: It’s unlikely that any of the rally-goers would change their votes since they count as some of the most committed supporters. But it’s hardly the kind of local news you want to generate — especially in Nebraska, which is experiencing a fourth-straight week of record Covid cases.
With additional reporting from Betsy Klein and Ryan Nobles
Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence tested negative for Covid-19 this morning, according to a White House official.
At least 3,631,565 ballots have been cast in North Carolina as of 5:00 a.m. today, according to data provided by the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
That means almost 49.5% of all currently registered voters in NC have already voted in the 2020 election.
Put another way, six days before Election Day, North Carolina voters have cast more than 76.5% of the total number of votes cast in the entire 2016 Election.
Here’s a breakdown of the votes cast in North Carolina so far according to state data:
Some more context: In North Carolina, a resident can register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day during the early in-person voting period at a “One Stop Absentee” Early Voting location. The early voting period runs through Saturday in North Carolina.
Voters can no longer request an absentee by mail ballot in North Carolina. The deadline to request was yesterday. A final total for absentee ballot requests should be available later Wednesday.
North Carolina law requires ballots be postmarked before or on Election Day by 5 p.m. The deadline for when an Election Day postmarked ballot can be accepted has been appealed to the US Supreme Court.
There is no SCOTUS opinion on the North Carolina deadline yet, but lower courts have upheld the extended deadline. The deadline is currently set at Nov. 12, but Republicans have asked for it to be rolled back to the legislature-set deadline of Nov. 6.
An absentee ballot can be returned in person at an early voting site through Saturday. It can also be returned in-person to the voter’s county board of elections office by 5 p.m local time on Election Day. North Carolina does not have ballot drop boxes.
More than 68.5 million Americans have voted so far with a week to go until Nov. 3, according to a survey of election officials in all 50 states and Washington, DC, by CNN, Edison Research and Catalist.
Here are the numbers: In 2016, more than 136.5 million ballots were cast in the presidential election. The 68.5 million ballots cast so far represents about 50.2% of that 2016 total.
Eighteen states have also crossed their halfway marks for total 2016 ballots cast, including seven of CNN’s 16 most competitively ranked states: Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Colorado and Nevada.
Remember: We don’t know how many of those votes are from people who would have voted on Election Day, and how much represents the start of a huge surge in voting.
More than 8.1 million people cast their vote in Texas, including the first 15 days of early voting, according to data posted on the Texas Secretary of State website Wednesday morning. That represents 48.06% of registered voters.
The state could eclipse the 2016 overall vote in the 2020 early vote. So far, the number of early votes this cycle accounts to almost 91% of the overall vote in Texas in 2016 — with three days of early voting plus Election Day remaining.
In addition to the enthusiasm in the state, the number of registered voters has grown 12% since 2016 or almost 1.9 million people.
If this trend holds, the state is on track to far surpass the 59% of registered voters who cast a ballot in 2016.
On Tuesday, 335,659 people voted in person, bringing the total in-person votes to 7,257,472. Cumulative ballots-by-mail so far this cycle were 891,824.
The final day of early voting in Texas is Friday.
A group of voters gave their thoughts on who they are casting their ballots for in the 2020 election, citing the coronavirus pandemic, racial unrest and candidate personalities in their decisions.
The panel did not use the voters’ last names. The voters have all been on previous “Pulse of the People” voters panels on CNN’s “New Day.”
For the first time ever, Stephanie said she voted for a Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.
During a 2017 panel, Sherri gave Trump an F grade on his presidency, saying she “almost immediately regretted” voting for him. Nonetheless, she said she cast her ballot for Trump this year.
She said she voted for Trump because he spoke out against the removal of Confederate statues. “I think the one thing that also moved me was the civil unrest, the cancel culture, and then the Democratic response was void,” she added.
Voter Vanity said that while she was not sold on Sen. Kamala Harris as Biden’s running mate at first, she has since fully supported the Democratic ticket.
Jimmy, a farmer, said the coronavirus pandemic has not changed his decision to cast his ballot for Trump.
“It might be partly his fault, don’t get me wrong, but it ain’t all the his fault,” he said.
“You do what you want to do … They want to go out and get in a crowd and go to a bar and that’s their business, and if they die, I’m sorry,” he added.
Bobby, who voted for Trump in 2016, said he is considering not even voting in this election because it’s “exhausted” him. He said that he feels like Biden is “trying to sell me a new car.” On Trump, “it’s been fun having Rodney Dangerfield as President, it’s been entertaining. I like a lot of things he says, I don’t like a lot of things he does,” he said.
Voter Dale was a Republican before Trump.
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TikTok said today it will reduce the distribution of claims of election victory before official results are confirmed by authoritative sources.
Eric Han, TikTok’s US head of safety, announced that premature claims of victory surrounding the 2020 election will be restricted if the Associated Press has not declared a result.
Han also said the company is working with third-party fact-checkers who are “on expedited call during this sensitive time.”
The huge surge of early voting in Texas’ rapidly growing cities and inner suburbs likely marks the end of unchallenged Republican dominance in America’s second largest state — a seismic shift in the nation’s electoral landscape.
Even if President Trump retains enough rural strength to hold Texas in next week’s election, which many still consider the most likely outcome, the swelling voter turnout in and around the increasingly Democratic-leaning cities of Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Fort Worth points toward a return to political competition in the state after more than two decades of almost uninterrupted Republican ascendancy.
Just alone in Harris County, which is centered on Houston, 1.15 million people had voted through Monday evening, compared with 1.3 million total in the 2016 election.
The state’s other big cities and inner suburban counties are experiencing comparable increases.
“We expected a lot of turnout,” Lina Hidalgo, the Harris County judge (the equivalent of a county executive) told CNN. “We didn’t expect this level.”
Some local analysts believe that with turnout cresting, and a recoil from Trump swelling Democratic support, Joe Biden could win the counties centered on those five big cities by more than a million votes combined — roughly double Hillary Clinton’s margin in them in 2016 and possibly 10 times Barack Obama’s advantage across the same places in 2012.
Whether or not Biden wins the state, or even precisely meets that prediction, a shift of anything approaching that magnitude would provide Democrats a formidable foundation from which to challenge the Republican hegemony over Texas — a foundation that will only grow stronger through the 2020s as these urban and inner suburban counties across what’s known as the “Texas triangle” drive the vast majority of the state’s population and economic expansion.
While Trump and other Republicans are consolidating crushing advantages in small-town and rural communities, Murray says, the stagnant or shrinking population in those places means Republicans “just can’t keep pace with this big [metro] vote.”
Republicans still have many advantages in Texas — particularly overwhelming support in its sprawling rural areas — and most observers consider Trump something between a slight and a substantial favorite to hold it.
Read the full analysis here
