Politics
Why aren’t hurricane-impacted states trying to extend voter registration?
UPDATE (Oct. 10, 2024, 2:15 p.m. ET): Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida on Wednesday evening, leaving a trail of destruction that killed at least 11 people and left millions without power.
With Hurricane Milton expected to make landfall in Florida Wednesday night, many people in the Sunshine State are bracing for potentially historic devastation. Meanwhile, federal officials are questioning the Federal Emergency Management Agency‘s capacity to handle another catastrophic storm so soon after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across North Carolina and five other states.
Given Helene’s human toll and Milton’s expected disaster, you might ask, “Who could possibly think about an election at a time like this?” And yet, for election administrators in these states, there is little choice. A presidential election waits for no one.
And so, from Tallahassee to Charlotte, state officials already have consulted applicable statutes and regulations and modified typical procedures to ensure that their residents can freely and fairly exercise their rights to vote.
To date, none of the impacted states’ officials with authority over elections has voluntarily extended registration deadlines.
In particular, North Carolina’s five-member board of elections voted unanimously on Monday to give voters in 13 counties multiple accommodations, including more time to request and receive ballots by mail. The board also gave county boards latitude — so long as a bipartisan majority is in favor — to change their schedules and hours for early voting, which begins on Oct. 17, among other things. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis implemented similar adjustments for 13 counties in his state through an executive order he signed last week.
On one hand, they should be applauded for their quick thinking and flexibility in the face of disaster. But they should also be asked whether the measures they’ve taken went far enough, especially with respect to eligible voters who had yet to register before Helene hit. To date, none of the impacted states’ officials with authority over elections has voluntarily extended registration deadlines, even as roads remain buckled, phone lines have not been restored, and designated polling sites are damaged, inaccessible and unusable.
In North Carolina, that’s perhaps understandable. After all, prospective voters can register and then vote on the same day if they go to an early voting site between Oct. 17 and Nov. 2.
But the failure to protect potential, eligible voters in other places makes little sense.
For instance, in South Carolinaas of Oct. 4, “[s]everal county voter registration offices were closed for days before being able to reopen for registration,” while offices in three counties remained closed, according to the South Carolina Election Commission. Yet neither the attorney general nor the governor took action to extend the voter registration deadline.
Therefore, the South Carolina Democratic Party suedasking a court to order the state’s election commission to extend the registration deadline. And on Oct. 4 — the deadline for in-person registration and just days before the deadlines for electronic and mail-in registration — Judge Daniel Coble gave all South Carolinians until Oct. 14 to register, whether in person or by mail, email, fax or internet.
Coble, who was initially appointed by GOP Gov. Henry McMaster and allowed the state to enforce its six-week abortion ban earlier this year, might not seem the likeliest judge to take what seems like a liberal approach to voting access. But faced with the choice of unfairly denying the franchise to hurricane victims versus giving other potential voters extra, unearned days to register, he erred on the side of facilitating all citizens’ ability to vote.
Voting rights advocates in other Helene-impacted states have taken notice. On the day of Georgia’s voter registration deadline, Oct. 7, the NAACP‘s Georgia chapter and two other groups filed a lawsuit in Atlanta federal court seeking an immediate extension to Oct. 14 as well. Noting that there is historically a spike in voter registration right before the deadline, these plaintiffs argued that there are likely “thousands of voters who could not register while power was down, roads were impassible and county election and post offices were closed.”
Declarations from local leaders underscore how some registration efforts had to be abandoned in the wake of Helene. For example, one Georgia non-profit focused on voter registration, education and turnout efforts in historically marginalized communities not only canceled all door-to-door canvassing efforts in two Georgia counties between Oct. 4 and 7, but also could not pick up and drop off voter registration materials to the board of elections in one of those counties because its office has been closed since Sept. 27.
Indeed, on Oct. 8, just one day after the Georgia deadline, the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, issued an executive order extending a state of emergency for nearly 70 Georgia counties through Oct. 16. Yet judging by his statementsGeorgia’s secretary of state seems to think Helene will not cause anything more than minimal disruption to this election if that. His website similarly suggests the most important election-related accommodations necessary for Georgians impacted by Helene are allowing them to receive their absentee ballots at a new, temporary address or helping them obtain a new state ID if theirs was lost due to Helene.
In the meantime, a hearing was held in the Georgia case on the afternoon of Oct. 9. There, Judge Eleanor Ross denied the plaintiffs’ request for one form of emergency relief that would extend the deadline, but scheduled a second hearing for Oct. 10 where, according to NAACP Conference of Georgia President Gerald Griggs, she asked for testimony from prospective voters who were not able to register because of the hurricane. After the hearing, Griggs remarked, “So we lost the battle but might be able to win the war.”
And then there is Florida, where, on Monday, Florida’s registration deadline, DeSantis issued a new state of emergency for 54 counties and suspended tolls across Central and Western Florida to allow residents to begin recommended or mandated evacuations. Yet DeSantis also maintained Monday that the registration deadline should not be extended, arguing, “People can register today. There’s nothing inhibiting you registering today. The storm,” meaning Hurricane Milton, “has not hit yet.”
That did not sit well with Florida’s NAACP or its League of Women Voterswhich, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday to extend the registration deadline, arguing that between Helene recovery and Milton preparation, it was “impossible or unduly burdensome” for many Floridians to register by Oct. 7.
In that case, too, a judge held a hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for emergency relief for the afternoon of Oct. 9. He ruled against extending the deadline. As of publication time, the plaintiffs had not decided whether to appeal.
Will Georgians ultimately get the relief South Carolinians have already received — and that Floridians have been thus far denied? Watch this space.
WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.
But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.
“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”
Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.
“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.
What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.
The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.
Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.
“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.
Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.
“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”
Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.
Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.
Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.
Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.
“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”
Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s Playbook PM newsletter.
Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words