Impact2020: October 28, 2020
In today’s Impact2020 briefing, we take a look at how military service members could play an outsized role in Florida, an area of concern for Democrats in the early voting numbers and why international election observers are no longer allowed in North Carolina.
On the Ground
Military impact
Absentee voting is surging across the country, including with a group that could play a critical role in Florida: service members.
Tara Copp reports for the Miami Herald that one out of every five military absentee ballots in the 2016 election were cast in the nation’s largest battleground state. “Based on data collected by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, more than 252,000 of the military’s 1.3 million active duty forces voted through an absentee ballot in 2016,” Copp writes. “Just over 50,000 of those ballots were cast in Florida, almost 33,000 in Washington state and 20,000 in Texas.”
But there’s growing concern that the “pressures of the pandemic and strain on the U.S. postal system will delay those votes.” Military voting advocacy groups “are raising awareness that in many key battleground states, later deadlines for military absentee ballots means those votes must still be included, even if they arrive after Election Day.”
“We’ve seen in the past, obviously Florida is the key example, that it can come down to a single state and not very many votes,” said Jack Noland, a researcher for Count Every Hero, a nonpartisan military voting advocacy group. “It is not out of the realm of possibility, at all, that some of these statewide or down-ballot races could be determined by overseas and military voters.”
The U.S. Postal Service reports that as of Oct. 22, almost 48,000 absentee military ballots have been returned, compared to 33,000 on the same date in 2016.
Playing catch-up
With nearly 6.8 ballots already cast, Florida has now officially surpassed its early voting totals from 2016. But the Miami Herald’s Aaron Leibowitz reports “while statewide turnout has been impressive, turnout in Miami-Dade County — among Democrats in particular — has been lagging somewhat.”
“Entering Tuesday, about 45% of all registered voters in Florida had cast ballots, including 51% of Democrats, 46% of Republicans and 34% of independents,” Leibowitz writes. “In Miami-Dade, … the turnout was less than 46% of registered voters Tuesday, state data shows. That includes 52% of Republicans, 47% of Democrats and 37% of independents.”
Even though Democrats still hold an advantage of 80,000 votes in the county, strategists think Joe Biden will need to run up the score there to defeat President Donald Trump.
Florida Democratic strategist Steve Schale said the data doesn’t “overly worry” him, noting that Democrats in Miami-Dade “tend to catch up over time.” But he added: “I would like to see turnout increase — and yes, we need improvement.”
Reversing course
After allowing the practice in the past, North Carolina’s election board has denied international observers access to polling sites on Election Day, Michael Wilner and Chiara Vecellone report for the Raleigh News & Observer.
The decision caught members of the mission by surprise, forcing them to cancel their trip last minute. Nat Perry, a spokesman for the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, an international organization that monitors the fairness of elections worldwide, said the group considers North Carolina’s decision a “breach of commitment.”
Credit: Ethan Hyman, News & Observer
In an Oct. 22 letter to the group about the decision, state board of elections executive director Karen Brinson Bell cited a law that only North Carolinians can be present in polling places. But that law had not been mentioned during previous observation missions, Perry said, including the 2018 midterms.
Wilner and Vecellone note that “some states, such as Texas, have consistently denied access to observers from overseas, but North Carolina is not one of them.”
Listen Up
The final episode of the Beyond the Bubble podcast before Election Day is coming later this afternoon. The team breaks down the state of the battleground map, the biggest surprises of the campaign and what results they are most looking forward to seeing. Download and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts.
Trail Mix
Battleground state watch
Hundreds of people who attended Trump’s rally Tuesday night at an airfield in Omaha, Neb. “spent up to three hours in freezing temperatures waiting for buses to take them back to their cars,” Aaron Sanderford reports for the Omaha World-Herald.
The Raleigh News & Observer’s Will Doran dives into the surge of unaffiliated voters in North Carolina.
The Columbus Dispatch’s Jackie Borchardt and Céilí Doyle explore just how deep Ohio’s rural-urban divide has grown since the 2016 election.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Tamari looks into how Biden’s polling lead in Pennsylvania is different from Hillary Clinton’s four years ago.
A Michigan judge “struck down Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s directive banning the open carry of guns at polling places on Election Day,” Paul Egan reports for the Detroit Free Press.
Election disruption
After originally denying a request, the office of the Director of National Intelligence reversed course and agreed to brief Florida Reps. Stephanie Murphy and Michael Waltz on the efforts by Iran and Russia to undermine the election, Ana Ceballos and Alex Daugherty report for the Miami Herald.
In Pennsylvania, more than half of the 3 million voters who applied for a mail-in ballot have returned them, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Julian Routh reports.
Lehigh Valley, Pa. election officials believe they are better equipped to handle the flood of mail ballots thanks to high-speed ballot envelope openers that can tackle 40,000 envelopes an hour, the Allentown Morning Call’s Jon Harris reports.
A federal district judge ruled that Texas voters are required to wear face masks when voting in person, “invalidating an exemption for polling places that Gov. Greg Abbott had included in his statewide mask mandate,” Jolie McCullough writes for the Texas Tribune.
Number of the Day
7
Biden leads Trump by 7 points, 51% to 44%, in Michigan, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Not clowning around
Credit: Oregon Public Health Division
Despite her appearance, Claire Poche of the Oregon Health Authority was very serious about providing an update on confirmed cases of and deaths from COVID-19 — and about trick-or-treating safety.
For Planning Purposes
Oct. 28
President Donald Trump travels to Arizona and Nevada
Vice President Mike Pence campaigns in Michigan and Wisconsin
Harris visits Arizona
Oct. 29
Joe Biden and Trump visit Florida
Pence travels to Iowa and Nevada
Oct. 30
Biden visits Iowa and Wisconsin
Harris travels to Texas
Oct. 31
Biden visits Michigan
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This story was originally published October 28, 2020 at 1:16 PM.