This Pennsylvania voter feels something just wasn’t right in the 2020 vote. So he’ll be watching the midterms up close

John P. Child has a strong view about the 2020 presidential election: “I think it was stolen, fair and square.”

He’s not the type to stage a coup, he says. But he no longer trusts local officials to run elections. 

So, like a growing number of Americans who support former President Donald Trump, he’s taken training classes put on by conservative groups on how to be a poll watcher in the 2022 midterm elections. This time, he will be able to see for himself.

It comes as part of a nationwide movement led by MAGA influencers who have circulated false information about election fraud, with former Trump adviser Steve Bannon the most prominent. 

On a recent episode of his “War Room” podcast, Bannon said: “Biden is illegitimate, and we’re gonna prove it. … It’s never going to happen again.” 

Bannon hosts many guests who are working to build an army of conservative poll workers, such as Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who tried to help overturn the 2020 election. “All over the country, we’re deploying people to be poll watchers to watch everything that’s happening,” Mitchell said. 

Some of these MAGA influencers tour the country. David Clements tells crowds that that voting machines are extremely vulnerable. He concludes his presentation with a stirring appeal that the audience members do more than consume content. “You have to get in the ring,” he said in Michigan. “You can’t fight this on social media.” 

This is having a real effect. CNN met Child, a realtor, outside a training held by Delaware County Conservatives in suburban Philadelphia. The organizer had expected only a couple people, but about a dozen showed up, and she had to hunt for more chairs.  

Child showed CNN the training documents, which go through many technical and procedural details of how votes are counted after polls close — and question whether each is an avenue for cheating. They cast a cloud of suspicion over the vote without any proof.  

“My head was spinning at the end of it,” he said of the presentation, explaining that he went to the seminar a second time to understand the issue better. 

“I would vote, you know, every time and … hit the buttons and go home,” he said. “And the seminar basically showed us what happens after your vote. And that’s that was an eye opener.”  

“The one thing I remember vividly is the paper in the touch-writer,” he said of what he had learned about the special materials required that were not regular copy paper.

“So if you see that there’s Hammermill being brought out, you’re supposed to say, hey, stop, stop the proceedings.” 

Child raised a few debunked claims of election fraud. When CNN showed him proof the claims were false, he accepted it – he was even friendly about it. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that something had gone wrong. He thought elections should go back to paper ballots and a single day of voting.

Paper trail: “People come to us at county council meetings and say, ‘We need to use paper ballots!’ And I’m like, ‘We do use paper ballots. Do you understand we use paper ballots?” Delaware County Council member Christine Reuther told CNN. “The votes are cast on a paper ballot, and then they are scanned, and the results of that vote are tabulated on the scanner. But you’re not really voting on the scanner, you’re voting on the paper ballot, and that paper ballot is maintained as a record of the voter’s vote.”

At a county council meeting, it was clear officials were frustrated by the several citizens who used the public comment period to make false claims about election fraud. That frustration makes sense: Delaware County has now fought 15 lawsuits against 2020 election deniers. It won all of them. But the county told CNN it had cost $250,000. Reuther said she was worried about how much more time and money this movement would drain with the midterms and the 2024 election. 

Pennsylvania may have some of the most closely watched races nationally, with a US Senate seat and the governorship hanging in the balance. Delaware County was once a Republican stronghold, but has steadily become more Democratic over the last decade. In the last election, the entire county council went Democratic for the first time.

“Those things are fairy tales,” Carl Belis, who has been a poll worker in several elections, told CNN of public comments claiming the voting machines were vulnerable to fraud.

Belis wasn’t worried about working in this election in Delaware County. If someone tried to disrupt the voting, the police would be called. “Across the nation? Yeah, I think there’ll be some problems, definitely. Which is why I say to people, ‘Be prepared now. Don’t be stupid like on January 6.’”

Child says he just wants the rules followed. And if Democrats win, he will carry on with his life. “What, am I going to start a revolt? No,” he said. “Have to accept it. What else are you gonna do?” 

Read the full story here and watch the interview below:

House Republicans are in active discussions to immediately hit the ground running if they take power on Tuesday and target what has become one of their top priorities: Investigating President Joe Biden’s son.

On Nov. 9 – the day after the midterm elections – Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, who is likely in line to chair the House Oversight Committee, told CNN he is going to resend a letter to the Treasury Department demanding the agency fork over any suspicious bank activity reports linked to Hunter Biden.

A previous request was rebuffed, but Comer said the department may be more inclined to cooperate when it becomes clear Republicans are going to be in charge of the House, meaning the GOP will have newfound subpoena power.

And the following week, Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, are planning to hold a joint press conference laying out what they’ve already uncovered about Hunter Biden, according to sources familiar with the matter.

On Friday, Jordan released more than 1,000 pages of his committee’s investigative roadmap alleging political interference by the FBI and Justice Department based in part on whistleblower allegations, while rehashing some previous claims and requests that Republicans have made.

The younger Biden, who is facing a federal investigation into potential tax violations and allegedly making a false statement over a gun purchase, has not been charged with any crime. But Republicans are planning to focus in large part on Biden’s overseas business dealings as they try to link him to his father, though it remains to be seen what if any evidence they have uncovered.

Hunter Biden has also denied wrongdoing in his business activities.

The woman who helped turn Mehmet Oz into a household name is backing the Republican candidate’s opponent in Pennsylvania’s key Senate race.

Television icon Oprah Winfrey announced on Thursday night that she prefers Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman over Oz in the midterm election contest.

“If I lived in Pennsylvania, I would’ve already cast my vote for John Fetterman, for many reasons,” Winfrey said during a conversation she hosted on voting.

Oz rose to national fame as a regular guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and later when Winfrey backed his own spinoff, “The Dr. Oz Show.”

Winfrey told New York Magazine in 2021 that it was “up to the residents of Pennsylvania to decide who will represent them.”

Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, cheered the endorsement on Thursday night.

Winfrey during the conversation also voiced support for other Democratic candidates in key races, including North Carolina’s Cheri Beasley, Florida’s Val Demings, Wisconsin’s Mandela Barnes, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, Texas’ Beto O’Rourke, and Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams.

The struggle between election deniers and democracy defenders is playing out in vivid detail than in Arizona, which is one of the most important battleground state in the nation.

The Grand Canyon State has also been the site of some of the most dramatic scenes in the fight over the future of democracy. Those include former President Donald Trump’s attempts to pressure state officials to overturn the 2020 election results; the repeated partisan “audits” that ultimately reaffirmed Biden’s win; and the alarming scenes late last month of masked activists — some of them armed — turning up to monitor and film voters at ballot drop boxes in a quest to prevent widespread voter fraud (that has so far proved non-existent). 

The contest between Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who was elected in a 2020 special election to fill the seat of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, and GOP nominee Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who won his primary after embracing Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, has played out against that backdrop. 

A Fox News poll released Tuesday showed no clear leader in the Senate contest, while a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday gave Kelly the edge, 51% to 45% among likely voters. 

Entering the general election phase of the campaign, Masters had appeared to be pivoting toward more moderate stances that would broaden his appeal — removing some of his more extreme positions on abortion and the 2020 election from his campaign website and acknowledging during a debate with Kelly that he had not seen evidence of voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. 

But he reversed course after receiving a phone call from Trump urging him to “go stronger” on election denialism, a conversation that was captured in a Fox documentary. 

Kelly has argued that he has shown his independence from the Biden administration in Washington, DC, seeking to distance himself from national Democrats on immigration in a border state. 

Read more here.

President Joe Biden on Friday will once again tout the CHIPS and Science Act on Friday to highlight his administration’s investments in domestic manufacturing in an effort to boost an incumbent Democrat facing reelection and continue his efforts to draw a contrast with Republicans.

Biden will tour the headquarters of communications company Viasat on Friday in Carlsbad, California, alongside Rep. Mike Levin, the incumbent Democrat who is vying for reelection next week, a White House official said. Biden joined Levin for a rally Thursday evening in neighboring Oceanside, California.

The event will also come hours after the release of the October jobs report — the last before Tuesday’s election — and Biden is likely to address the new jobs numbers during his remarks.

Biden’s event on Friday marks the fourth time this fall that Biden has hit the road to tout the CHIPS Act in an effort to highlight his legislative accomplishments and investments in domestic manufacturing while also hoping to boost Democratic lawmakers. Biden made similar trips to New Albany, Ohio; Poughkeepsie, New York; and Syracuse, New York in September and October, where he credited the efforts of Democratic lawmakers in those states — including Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the House Democratic campaign chief who is locked in a tight race, and Democratic Ohio Senate nominee Rep. Tim Ryan.

In August, Biden signed the bill into law. The CHIPS and Science Act is set to invest more than $200 billion over the next five years to help the US regain a leading position in semiconductor chip manufacturing.

Speaking four days before Election Day, Biden on Friday is also expected to continue his efforts to draw a contrast with Republicans.

“These events emphasizing the President’s commitment to building more in America stand in stark contrast to Congressional Republicans, who have spent the last several weeks talking about ripping away the progress we’ve made, raising costs for working people, and putting Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block,” a White House official said.

As White House officials prepare for the last jobs report before the midterm elections set to be released Friday morning, they are hoping for a number that’s not too low, but not too high. It would be the “Goldilocks” outcome for the administration.

Economists forecast a gain of roughly 200,000 jobs in October – a number that would land in the window of 150,000 to 300,000 jobs added that White House officials want to see.

President Joe Biden and his economic team have known for months that a cooling of the economy is a necessity to crack the pervasive price increases that have handed a significant advantage to Republicans on the issue, which voters consistently cite as most important.

At its heart is Biden’s most significant economic success: A dramatic jobs recovery from the pandemic-driven economic crisis he walked into on his first day in office. More than 10 million jobs have been added since Biden’s inauguration and the unemployment rate sits at 3.5%.

The tight labor market, however, has exacerbated the soaring price increases that have imperiled Democrats’ hold on their majorities in the House and Senate. That, in turn, has driven the Federal Reserve to trigger four consecutive jumbo rate increases, including the most recent three-quarters-of-a-point move this week.

It’s the political paradox that looms over the last major piece of economic data before Election Day – one that comes at a moment that finds Democrats desperately trying to make up ground on the economy.

Becca Balint is on track to become the first woman to represent Vermont in Congress. 

It is the only state in the country that has never had a woman in its congressional delegation. Balint, a former schoolteacher currently serving as the president pro tempore in the state Senate, defeated Lt. Gov. Molly Gray and physician Louis Meyers in the primary election. 

She entered primary day with the support of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and other leading progressive politicians and groups. Balint, who is gay, also benefited from significant outside spending from the LGBTQ Victory Fund, which poured about $1 million into the race, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ campaign arm. 

She was also endorsed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of neighboring Massachusetts – likely helped her among primary voters, who tend to lean even further left than even the average Vermont Democrat. 

Balint enters the general election as the overwhelming favorite to win the seat being vacated by Rep. Peter Welch, who is running to fill Leahy’s seat in the Senate. This was the first Democratic House primary in Vermont with no incumbent on the ballot since 2006, when Sanders gave up his seat to run for the Senate. 

President Joe Biden took his first major steps toward decriminalizing marijuana by pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession at the beginning of October.  

Now, voters in several states will also weigh in on the issue — deciding whether to make recreational marijuana legal. “Yes” votes on these ballot measures mean the voter supports legalization: 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which serves to protect and enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments, was enacted in response to voter suppression in the 1960s by state governments, local governments and law enforcement. But, in its history, parts of it have been challenged and cut — most recently the US Supreme Court heard the latest arguments in October of this year.

The first gutting of the Voting Rights Act came in 2013, when the court invalidated the system of preclearance, which forced states and jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination and extremely low voter turnout to clear new voting restrictions with either the federal government or a federal court in Washington, DC.

But in the case, Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that the formula for determining which states and locations must preclear voting law changes was based on data from 1964, 1968 and 1972.

The second gutting of the Voting Rights Act came in 2021. In the case Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Supreme Court upheld provisions of an Arizona law that would throw out ballots cast at the wrong precinct and limited who could collect absentee ballots. The decision opened the floodgates to new restrictions in GOP-controlled states and called into question protections in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act against vote denial, or making it hard for people to vote.

Now the court is looking at upending the Section 2 protection against vote dilution, or making votes meaningless, with a case out of Alabama concerning the state’s congressional map. More than a quarter of Alabamians are Black, but the map created only a single majority-Black congressional district out of the state’s seven districts. A federal court ruled the map harmed minority voters, but in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court allowed the map to remain in place while it considers the case.

Alabama’s Republican secretary of state has argued that considering race to draw maps that give power to Black voters is itself discriminatory. A result favorable to Alabama could let the state draw congressional lines in such a way that no minority voters would ever have a reasonable chance of achieving proportionate influence.

Learn more about changes to the Voting Rights Act