Georgia’s secretary of state says 4 people may have attempted to cast multiple ballots during early voting period
More than 4 million Georgia residents turned out for early voting – the most in the state’s most recent elections, but only four people may have attempted to cast multiple ballots, the secretary of the state’s office said Saturday.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger hailed it as the “most successful” early voting period in the state’s history because “voters trust the process.”
Raffensperger’s office said the state’s safeguards during the early voting period allowed election officials to identify four people who may have violated state law and “potentially used various tactics in order to attempt to cast multiple ballots.”
The secretary of the state’s office said if the investigation shows they broke the law, they will be referred to local district attorneys. The office did not release any additional information.
“Four years of progress brought us here. We’re battle-tested and ready, regardless of what the critics say. And we’re going to hold those who interfere in our elections accountable,” he said in a statement Saturday.
Georgia residents were allowed to vote early between Oct. 15 and Nov. 1.
New Louisiana election laws creating challenges for voters with disabilities
New laws aimed at protecting the 2024 presidential election from fears about fraud are creating unexpected barriers for some of the nation’s more than 40.2 million voters with disabilities, disability rights advocates have told CBS News.
Laws in more than 20 states now restrict various elements of mail-in ballots including limiting the kinds of assistance a voter can ask for. Restrictions like those limit the ability of health aides and nurses to help prepare a ballot for the people they care for – and some even threaten criminal charges for aides who help too many people to vote.
“If I owned a nursing home or a group home, I [would] put out a memo to my staff saying, ‘don’t help anybody out because if you end up helping two people out by mistake, you could, could go to jail,'” said Andrew Bizer, a disability rights attorney in New Orleans. “And it also puts the folks with disabilities in a really terrible situation.”
Many of the new laws came after the 2020 elections when former President Donald Trump questioned the security of mail-in voting.
A new study released by the Rutgers Program for Disability Research found that there has been a 5.1% increase in people with disabilities eligible to vote in 2020. Among that growing population, 7.1 million eligible voters with disabilities live in seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This shows the potential impacts that restrictive mail-in voting laws could have in next week’s election.
Click here to read more on how new laws are impacting Louisiana.
Harris criticizes House speaker for suggestion GOP would probably try to cut federal semiconductor aid
Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson for his suggestion that Republicans would probably try to cut government subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing.
“It is my plan and intention to continue to invest in American manufacturing,” the Democratic nominee told reporters in Milwaukee.
Johnson has walked back his comments, saying he only meant that Republicans would “streamline” the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. The Louisiana Republican has said there will be a “very aggressive” first 100-day agenda if Republicans win back control of the White House.
The CHIPS and Science Act has pumped billions of dollars into producing computer chips in the U.S. and has supported union jobs in battleground states.
Harris said Johnson’s comments are just “further evidence of everything that I’ve been actually talking about for months now about Trump’s intention to implement Project 2025.” She is referring to the multi-pronged conservative initiative that includes a detailed blueprint for the next Republican president to usher in a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch. Former President Donald Trump has denied any involvement with Project 2025.
The vice president said Johnson only walked back his comments because “their agenda is not popular.”
“That’s why I have the support of Democrats and independents and Republicans because they want a president of the United States who stops playing politics with their lives,” she said.
Trump criticizes pro-Harris ad about women voting
Former President Donald Trump criticized a pro-Harris ad that assures female voters that their husbands don’t need to know who they voted for. The ad is narrated by actress Julia Roberts, who Trump said he was “so disappointed in.”
“She’s going to look back on that and she’s going to cringe. ‘Did I really say that?'” Trump said, in part, during a call into Fox News’ “Fox & Friends Weekend.” “It doesn’t say much about her relationship, but I’m sure she has a great relationship. But the wives and husbands, I don’t think that’s the way they deal.”
He added: “Can you imagine a wife not telling a husband who she’s voting for? Did you ever hear anything like that? Even if you have a horrible, if you had a bad relationship, you’re going to tell your husband. It’s a ridiculous ad. So stupid.”
Trump then said that he has “surrounded (himself) with women,” naming his wife Melania, his former press secretary Kellyanne Conway and adviser Susie Wiles.
During his call into the Saturday show, Trump also repeated the claim that he didn’t know the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who made the racist joke about Puerto Rico at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally a week ago.
“They took out this gorgeous, unbelievable, patriotic evening, and they sort of stained it a little bit by a comedian that I have no idea who he is,” Trump said.
Court denies request to force count of votes for Green Party’s Jill Stein in Ohio
Votes cast for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in Ohio will not be counted despite her name appearing on the state’s ballot in Tuesday’s election after an appeals court panel denied her motion seeking to force the election chief to tally them.
The three-judge panel on the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday against her request for an injunction targeting Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Friday in a dispute over the person listed as her running mate on the ballot.
Stein filed as an independent presidential candidate in Ohio because the Green Party lost state recognition several years ago. She listed Anita Rios — the party’s 2014 nominee for governor — as a placeholder running mate until Butch Ware was nominated at the national convention on Aug. 17.
Ware’s nomination happened after an Aug. 12 state administrative deadline for replacing an independent vice presidential candidate, according to elections officials. LaRose’s office granted a request to remove Rios’ name but said Ware could not be added.
LaRose has instructed Ohio’s 88 county election boards to inform the electorate that votes for Stein “will be void and will not be counted,” according to court documents.
Inside Viktor Orbán’s not-so-secret mission to elect Trump
During a speech this summer in front of thousands of supporters, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, detailed the close connections he has nurtured with former President Donald Trump.
“We have entered the policy-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team,” Orbán said. “We have deep involvement there.”
The former president speaks highly of the Hungarian leader, too. During his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump described Orbán as one of the world’s “most respected men” — a “strong man” and “a tough person.”
Beneath the close public relationship between the two leaders are what sources have described as frequent and detailed exchanges that delve deeply into political and governing strategy. Should Trump win the election next week, theirs could become a defining foreign policy relationship for a second Trump term.
Click here to read more.
By Flora Garamvolgyi and Madeleine May
Spike Lee, Kerry Washington, Jon Bon Jovi and others join Harris on campaign trail
With just three days until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris is making her final push in two battleground states – Georgia and North Carolina – as she seeks to strengthen turnout among voters in the South.
At a rally and concert in Atlanta, Georgia, Harris will be joined by director Spike Lee. Singer Victoria Monét will deliver remarks. There will be performances by 2 Chainz, Big Tigger, Monica and Pastor Troy.
Harris will then head to Charlotte, North Carolina, where she will be joined by actress Kerry Washington, who will deliver remarks. There will be performances by Brittney Spencer, Jon Bon Jovi, Khalid and The War and Treaty.
No Democratic presidential candidate has carried North Carolina since Barack Obama in 2008, although it has been decided by less than 3 points in every election since.
Harris is planning to make multiple stops in Michigan on Sunday, shifting to a Democratic-leaning state in the so-called Blue Wall where her allies believe she is vulnerable.
On the state of the presidential race
CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O’Keefe and CBS News Congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane have covered some of the biggest stories of this election cycle. Now, with just three days before Election Day, both give their opinions on the state of the race.
Was your ballot received and counted? How to check your 2024 election vote
While voting by mail has become more common since the pandemic, a few recent mishaps have shaken some voters’ faith in the system. Just this week, ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington were set ablaze, while in Miami, a stash of sealed ballots fell out of an election worker’s truck, stoking concern among voters.
If you already cast your vote by mail, or are planning to in the coming days, but are worried about it reaching its final destination, your state might allow you to track your ballot’s status online. Beyond reducing call volume to local election offices, these tracking systems can restore faith in the voting process, said national election expert Amber McReynolds.
Read here for steps on how to track your ballot.
Nicole Wallace, George W. Bush’s former communications director, calls on her old boss to denounce Trump
Nicole Wallace, on her MSNBC show “Deadline: White House,” made a public plea Friday night to her old boss, former President George W. Bush, to speak out against former President Donald Trump before Election Day.
Wallace, who was White House communications director in the Bush administration, said she understands better than most that after his presidency, he prefers to speak through his actions, his work with veterans and his presidential library.
But after Trump’s insults and use of violent language about former Rep. Liz Cheney, the daughter of his vice president, Wallace said she contacted his office to see if “anything would change his mind about staying silent before the election.”
An adviser told her Bush did not want to insert himself into the election.
After playing on air some of Bush’s own words about what Americans do to defend liberty in the face of threats, Wallace said, “We have a right to hope that those who have stood for freedom and celebrated those who have protected it might have a last-minute change of heart in the closing hours of this campaign.”
Texas won’t allow federal monitors in Texas polling locations, says top state election official
Texas’ top election official, Secretary of State Jane Nelson said the state will not be allowing federal monitors into Texas polling locations.
“Texans can be confident in the state’s strong measures to ensure election integrity,” Nelson said in a post on X, where she also posted her letter to the Justice Department.
The Justice Department enforces federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all eligible citizens to access the ballot. The department regularly deploys its staff to monitor for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections across the U.S.
The Justice Department, in its enforcement of federal voting rights laws, regularly sends monitors to ensure voting rights compliance. It had announced plans Friday to send monitors to 86 jurisdictions in 27 states, including eight locations in Texas.
Supreme Court denies GOP request to block counting of certain provisional ballots in battleground Pennsylvania
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to freeze a decision from Pennsylvania’s highest court that required election officials to count provisional ballots cast by people whose mail ballots are invalid because they lacked mandatory secrecy envelopes.
The order from the justices means that election officials in the key battleground state must tally provisional ballots submitted on Election Day by voters who returned defective mail ballots, either because they didn’t include secrecy envelopes or failed to sign or date the outer envelope.
Trump holds final Wisconsin rally of campaign
Donald Trump held his final Wisconsin rally of the 2024 campaign Friday night, returning to Fiserv Forum, in Milwaukee, the site of the Republican convention, to deliver his closing message to the Badger State. In 2016, he narrowly won Wisconsin but he lost the state’s 10 electoral votes to Joe Biden in 2020.
The rally was plagued by microphone problems. People in the upper sections in the back of the arena couldn’t hear Trump, and he expressed frustration with the technical issues.
“I’m seething. I’m working my ass off with a stupid mic,” Trump said.
He then made crude gestures toward the mic stand, complaining it was too low. He held the microphone for the rest of the rally but complained about how heavy it was several times. He also threatened not to pay the contractor.
“Do you want to see me knock the hell out of people backstage?” Trump asked. “I don’t ask for much. The only thing I ask for is a good mic. And this is the second time today that this happened.”
He loosely blamed campaign manager Susie Wiles for the microphone issue.
By Olivia Rinaldi and Katrina Kaufman
Harris and Trump both rally in Milwaukee area Friday night
Both Donald Trump Trump and Kamala Harris campaigned in the Milwaukee area Friday night, going into the final weekend of the 2024 campaign. Harris didn’t deviate much from her standard stump speech in West Allis, Michigan, a Milwaukee suburb of Milwaukee. She urged people to vote who haven’t yet cast their ballots.
“No judgment, no judgment at all — but do get to it,” Harris said, before reviewing the list of her campaign promises and litany of grievances against Trump.
Cardi B, who spoke shortly before Harris, told the crowd she didn’t intend to vote this year, but “Kamala Harris changed my mind.”
She called Trump a “bully” and said, “I can’t stand a bully, but just like Kamala, I stand up to one.” Cardi B repeatedly said she was nervous about speaking at the rally. Women, she said, have to work 10 times harder than men “and still, people question us.”
