election

May 19 (Asia Today) — More than 60% of young South Koreans and college students do not trust elections or political opinion polls, according to a survey released ahead of the June 3 local elections.

The Korean Law Consumers Federation, a legal advocacy group, released the results Monday after surveying 1,201 young people and college students from 119 universities nationwide. The respondents had an average age of 23.4.

The survey found that 60.37% of respondents said they do not trust elections or political opinion polls, while 38.80% said they do.

Despite the distrust, 59.95% said they would definitely vote in the local elections, and 35.89% said they would try to vote.

Asked whether one vote can have an important effect on election results, 75.27% agreed, while 24.56% disagreed.

On early voting, 53.54% said there is a possibility of election fraud, while 40.30% said such claims are completely false.

The survey also asked about possible constitutional revisions. A total of 62.28% supported including language related to the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement in the Constitution, while 35.97% opposed the idea.

However, 91.01% opposed removing the word “freedom” from the Constitution.

The survey included 53 questions and was conducted with the help of student volunteers. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.83 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260519010005434

DENVER — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday commuted the sentence of election conspiracy theorist Tina Peters following pressure from President Trump, the latest instance of the president using his influence to reward those who echoed his baseless claims of mass fraud as the cause of his 2020 election loss.

Trump has championed the case of Peters, a 70-year-old former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind bars after being convicted in a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system. She will be released June 1.

In April, a Colorado appeals court upheld her conviction but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud, a decision that Polis praised.

In a letter to Peters, Polis wrote that she was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison. “However, this is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes,” the governor wrote.

He added that Peters’ application “demonstrates taking responsibility for your crimes, and a commitment to follow the law going forward.”

Trump posted around the time of the announcement on his social media platform: “FREE TINA!”

Jeany Rush, 76, wears a We the People pin along with numerous Free Tina Peters stickers during the Colorado Republican State Assembly on April 11 at Massari Arena on the Colorado State University Pueblo campus in Pueblo, Colo.

(Timothy Hurst/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

‘Affront to the rule of law’

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold criticized the decision by the governor — a fellow Democrat — saying that “it was a dark day for democracy” and that ”selling out our state’s justice system for Trump is an affront to the rule of law.”

“A clear message is being sent to those willing to break the law and attack democracy for the president — they will likely not face consequences for their actions,” Griswold said at a news conference.

Peters has been serving her sentence at a prison in Pueblo after being convicted in 2024 by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump.

Peters sneaked in an outside computer expert, an associate of MyPillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — a fellow election denier — to make a copy of her county’s Dominion Voting Systems election computer server as state officials updated it in 2021. Peters joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof of election rigging, after which video and photos of the update, including passwords, were posted online.

After the commutation announcement, Peters issued a statement through her attorney thanking Polis and apologizing.

“Five years ago I misled the Secretary of State when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong,” Peters said. “I have learned and grown during my time in prison and going forward I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”

She also condemned threats and violence against voters, county clerks and election workers.

Gubernatorial candidates weigh in

Polis is ineligible to seek reelection due to term limits, and the candidates running to succeed him weighed in on his decision.

Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat in the race, said that he vehemently disagreed with the commutation and that Peters knowingly broke the law, undermined elections and was convicted by a jury.

“Lawlessness only breeds more lawlessness,” Bennet said. “With President Trump continuing to attack Colorado, we must do everything we can to stand strong for our institutions and the rule of law.”

A Republican candidate, state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, said she would have preferred that the trial judge revisit Peters’ sentence as ordered by the appeals court before the governor considered any commutation.

“A commutation or pardon by a governor should be reserved for truly extraordinary circumstances,” Kirkmeyer wrote in a statement. “The governor has a responsibility to apply justice fairly, consistently, and without bias.”

Trump’s influence

Peters was convicted of state, not federal, crimes, which put her beyond the reach of Trump’s pardon power, which he used to free those convicted of crimes for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. So the president championed her cause through the media.

Trump has lambasted both Polis, calling him a “Scumbag Governor,” and the Republican district attorney who prosecuted her, Daniel Rubinstein, for keeping Peters in prison. He has referred to Peters as “elderly” and “sick.” Earlier this year, Trump uninvited Polis from a White House meeting with governors over the case.

The president had said Colorado was “suffering a big price” for refusing to release her. His administration has been choking off funds, ending federal programs and denying disaster aid. It also announced the dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command from the state to Alabama.

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Assn., said the commutation “signals that it is open season on our election and election officials.”

“Gov. Polis is bending the knee to the same political voices and conspiracy theories that are undermining belief in our democratic institutions,” Crane said. “This is now Gov. Polis’ legacy. He will not be able to run from it.”

Peters’ health

Peters’ lawyers have said her health has declined in prison. Peters, who had part of her right lung removed in 2017, started coughing frequently after the prison’s heating system was turned on for the winter and has had trouble sleeping due to chronic pain from fibromyalgia, her lawyers said.

In January, Peters was involved in a scuffle with another inmate but was found not guilty of assault following a prison disciplinary hearing, Colorado Department of Corrections spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia said. Peters was found guilty of being in a location without authorization.

The federal Bureau of Prisons tried but failed to get Peters moved to a federal prison. In January, Polis said he was considering granting clemency for Peters, calling her sentence “unusual and harsh“ for a first-time, nonviolent offender. In March he repeated those arguments in a lengthy post on the social media platform X.

Polis defended his decision Friday in a social media post.

“I’ll always stand for free speech and to make sure that we live in a country that no matter what your viewpoints are, you are not incarcerated longer because of them,” Polis said.

In contrast to some other Democratic governors, Polis, who portrays himself as a political iconoclast, has at times taken an accommodating stance toward Trump. Though he criticized the president’s tariff and immigration policies, the governor praised earlier moves by Trump such as creating the Department of Government Efficiency, which was run by billionaire Elon Musk, and the choice of vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

Slevin and Riccardi write for the Associated Press. AP writers Ali Swenson in New York, Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed to this report.

Right-wing challenger Flavio Bolsonaro faces new scrutiny over a film funding scandal, which could affect his race against incumbent Lula.

A new poll has reaffirmed the tight race for Brazil’s presidency this year, with both the left-wing incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his right-wing challenger, Flavio Bolsonaro, tied in a head-to-head contest.

On Saturday, Datafolha, the polling firm for the Grupo Folha media conglomerate, released its latest numbers, tracking the candidates’ progress in the run-up to October’s generation election.

Nearly 2,004 responded to the latest survey, which asked them to identify whom they would vote for if Lula and Bolsonaro progressed to a run-off.

Lula, now 80 years old, is angling for a fourth nonconsecutive term.

Brazil’s presidents are limited to two four-year terms at a time, and Lula first served as president from 2003 to 2011, championing social programmes to reduce hunger and increase federal assistance to the poor.

Bolsonaro, on the other hand, is hoping to continue his father’s far-right political legacy. The eldest son of imprisoned former President Jair Bolsonaro, Flavio — a senator representing Rio de Janeiro — has pledged to seek his father’s release should he be elected.

Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for attempting to plot a coup and subvert the election results in 2022, which saw an end to his term and the beginning to Lula’s latest.

Saturday’s poll results put Lula and the younger Bolsonaro in a dead heat.

Both candidates received 45 percent of the polled voter support, with an additional 9 percent indicating they would cast “null” ballots. The remaining 1 percent was undecided.

But the poll, conducted on May 12 and 13, was conducted before the latest scandal involving the younger Bolsonaro’s campaign gained public traction.

Controversy over film deal

On May 13, The Intercept Brasil, a news publication, printed a report containing leaked WhatsApp messages between Bolsonaro and a banker arrested for an alleged fraud scheme, Daniel Vorcaro.

Bolsonaro had reportedly approached Vorcaro to finance a film about his father’s life, called Dark Horse.

The Bolsonaro family has long maintained that Jair Bolsonaro is a victim of political persecution, and it had tapped US actor Jim Caviezel to play the ex-president.

According to The Intercept’s reporting, Flavio Bolsonaro and his brother Eduardo Bolsonaro had soliciting funding from Vorcaro, who ultimately pledged $24m, or 134 million Brazilian reals, to the film project.

In a statement, Flavio Bolsonaro acknowledged that he had reached out for financing, but he denied the exchange had anything to do with Vorcaro’s alleged fraud scheme.

“It is necessary to separate the innocent from the criminals,” the statement said. “In our case, what happened was a son seeking PRIVATE sponsorship for a PRIVATE film about his own father’s life.”

Left-wing lawmakers, however, have called for an investigation into the incident.

The controversy over the Dark Horse film is not the only scandal to have rocked Flavio Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign in recent months.

In December, the senator entered the presidential race with his imprisoned father’s blessing.

But shortly afterwards, he faced criticism for statements appearing to suggest he might withdraw from the race in exchange for his father’s freedom. He later clarified that his candidacy was “irreversible”.

In April, Brazil’s Supreme Court also gave the go-ahead for federal police to investigate whether Flavio Bolsonaro had made defamatory statements about Lula.

While Lula was the frontrunner by a wide margin in late 2025, Bolsonaro has since narrowed the gap, leading to the two candidates racing neck and neck before October’s election.

The former mayor of a conservative Kansas town was taken into custody by immigration authorities after acknowledging last year that he had voted in elections despite not being a U.S. citizen.

Joe Ceballos, who was born in Mexico and is a legal permanent U.S. resident, was detained Wednesday during a meeting at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Wichita, Kan., according to his attorney, Jess Hoeme. He said Ceballos now fears he could be deported.

The 55-year-old resigned as mayor of Coldwater in December while facing state charges over voting as a noncitizen. While seeking citizenship in 2025, Ceballos admitted during an interview that he had voted, not knowing that green card holders don’t qualify, Hoeme said.

Ceballos was charged with voting illegally but pleaded guilty in April to misdemeanors in a deal with the Kansas attorney general. His case has drawn attention from the Trump administration and inspired supporters in his community, some of whom held signs reading “We Support Mayor Joe” and “ICE Out” as Ceballos walked into the federal building in Wichita.

“Let Joe go!” the crowd yelled.

“Thinking what could happen — it’s just kind of crazy,” Ceballos told reporters. “Obviously nervous. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know where they’re going to take me and what I can and can’t do inside there.”

An email seeking comment from the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.

Trump and other Republicans have been warning of the dangers of noncitizens voting in elections since the beginning of the 2024 presidential election. Research, even by Republican election officials, show the problem is rare.

This year, Trump has been pushing Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE Act, which among other things would require documented proof of U.S. citizenship to register and vote.

The administration also has significantly upgraded a program within Homeland Security that checks citizenship. At least 25 states, most of them controlled by Republicans, have used that system to check their voter rolls.

Ceballos was brought to the U.S. from Mexico by family when he was 4 years old. Hoeme said lawyers would next try to get an immigration judge to release him on bond.

He said Ceballos, at age 18, was encouraged to register to vote on the spot during a school field trip to the Comanche County courthouse. Ceballos has previously said in interviews with reporters that he voted for Republicans.

He was twice elected mayor of Coldwater, population 700, and also served on the city council. Ceballos won a new term in November but resigned after state Atty. Gen. Kris Kobach charged him with voting without being qualified and election perjury.

Kobach’s office, however, reached a deal with Ceballos. He pleaded guilty to disorderly election conduct, which Hoeme described as a misdemeanor similar to disturbing the peace.

“He has not been convicted of any kind of voter fraud. It should not have impacted his immigration status,” Hoeme said. “The Trump administration and ICE have doubled down on nonsense that he is a criminal.”

Ceballos has been a popular figure in Coldwater, where an advertisement in the Western Star newspaper encouraged people to support him.

“He’s kind of got to live the American dream, to come from absolutely nothing and build up — I don’t know about wealth — but to build up a business and have a job and be a productive part of society,” longtime friend Ryan Swayze told Wichita station KAKE-TV.

White writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday turned down an appeal from Virginia Democrats whose new voter-approved state election map was canceled by the state’s Supreme Court.

The justices made no comment, and the legal outcome came as no surprise.

The U.S. Supreme Court has no authority to review or reverse rulings by state judges interpreting their state’s constitution — unless the decision turned on federal law or the U.S. Constitution.

But the Virginia ruling came as a political shock, particularly after 3 million voters had cast ballots and narrowly approved a new election map that would favor Democrats in 10 of its 11 congressional districts.

That would have represented an increase of four seats for Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Even worse for Democrats, the court setback in Virginia came a week after the Supreme Court’s ruling in a Louisiana case had bolstered Republicans.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices reinterpreted the Voting Rights Act and freed Republican-controlled states in the South to dismantle districts that were drawn to favor Black Democrats.

In the two weeks since then, the GOP has flipped seven districts in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida.

The Virginia Supreme Court decision pointed to a procedural flaw which turned on the definition of an “election.”

To amend the state Constitution, Virginia lawmakers must adopt the proposal twice — once before a “general election” and a second time after the election. It is then submitted to the voters.

Last fall, Democrats proposed to amend the state Constitution to permit a mid-decade redistricting.

However, by a 4-3 vote, the state justices said the General Assembly flubbed the first approval because it took place on Oct. 31 of last year, just five days before the election.

By then, they said, about 40% of the voters had cast early ballots.

In defense of the Legislature, the state’s attorneys said the proposed amendment was approved before election day, which complies with the state Constitution.

But the majority explained “the noun ‘election’ must be distinguished from the noun phrase ‘election day’.”

It reasoned that because early voters had already cast ballots before the constitutional amendment was first adopted, the proposal was not approved before the election.

The dissenters said the election took place on “election day” and the proposal had been adopted prior to that time.

The state’s lawyers adopted that view in their appeal and argued that under federal law, the election takes place on election day.
But the Supreme Court turned away the appeal with no comment.

The result is that a state amendment that won approval twice before both houses of the Legislature and in a statewide vote was judged to have failed.

The state says it will use the current map, which had elected Democrats to the House in six districts and Republicans in five.

The US state of Louisiana will hold several primary elections on Thursday, including for the United States Senate, the state’s Supreme Court, and a slate of local offices.

Notably absent will be the primary, in which members of the Democratic and Republican parties will select their candidates for the state’s six US House districts ahead of the general elections in November.

The primary vote has been paused by the state’s governor following a major Supreme Court ruling that opens the door to redrawing the state’s congressional district map, eliminating one of two majority-Black districts.

Rights groups have challenged the pause, saying it violates both the US and the state’s constitutions.

The situation comes amid a wider national redistricting battle, which has been shifting both parties’ electoral calculus ahead of consequential midterms that will determine control of the US House and Senate and, in turn, set the tone for the final two years of US President Donald Trump’s second term.

Here’s what to know.

What did the Supreme Court ruling do?

The 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in late April undid a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 meant to protect Black voting power from being diluted.

That can be achieved by effectively carving up areas with large Black populations to diminish their electoral influence. Black voters in the US have historically heavily skewed Democratic.

The ruling said that congressional districts could only be challenged if there was evidence of racist motivation behind how they were drawn. Dissenting liberal justices and critics have said such motivations would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to prove.

Specifically related to Louisiana, the court ruled that a congressional map drawn in January of 2024, which created a second Black-majority district in the state, was unconstitutional.

That map was created following a legal challenge claiming that Louisiana was in violation of the Voting Rights Act because it had only one Black majority district out of six, despite Black residents making up one-third of the state’s voters.

Why did Louisiana pause its primary?

The Supreme Court ruling on April 29 came about two weeks before Louisiana’s US House primary elections were scheduled.

That left Republicans in the state scrambling to draw new maps ahead of the vote.

“Allowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters,” the state’s Governor Jeff Landry said in a statement on April 30.

He said his order suspending the vote “ensures we uphold the rule of law while giving the [state] legislature the time it needs to pass a fair and lawful congressional map”.

On Wednesday, Republicans in the Louisiana State Senate advanced an initial redrawn map.

What have rights groups said?

A coalition of voting and civil rights groups has challenged the suspension of the election, charging that some segments of voters, including those in the military or casting “absentee” ballots, may have already voted.

They further said the abrupt change in date would confuse and subsequently disenfranchise voters while undermining voter education groups already distributing information about the election.

“This illegal executive order threatens the integrity of our democratic system and disregards the voices of voters who have already participated in the May primary election in good faith,” the groups, which included the Legal Defense Fund, the League of Women Voters of Louisiana, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Harvard Law School Race and Law Clinic, said in a joint statement in early May.

“By attempting to suspend an ongoing election, state officials are creating confusion, undermining public trust, and placing partisan interests above the constitutional rights of Louisiana voters,” the statement said.

What is the wider context?

The standoff in the southern state comes amid a wider, and unorthodox, flurry of congressional redistricting in the US.

While redistricting has historically taken place every decade following the US census population count, President Trump called on Republicans in Texas last year to redraw their maps to create more Republican-leaning districts.

That kicked off a flurry of tit-for-tat redistricting efforts by Democratic- and Republican-controlled state legislatures alike. To date, the US states of California, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, Utah, Tennessee and Florida have redrawn their maps ahead of the midterms.

Republicans are expected to net more seats than Democrats in the push. While that is expected to cut into the margin, Democrats are still tentatively favoured to retake the US House in November.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Presenting a utility bill as a valid form of identification at a voting precinct in West Virginia has gone the way of the tavern polling place and the punch-card ballot.

State lawmakers tightened an existing voter identification law by requiring photo ID at the polls, with some exceptions. The law was used for the first time in Tuesday’s primary election, and officials said they’ve seen very few glitches.

“The whole point of the law is just making sure you are who you say you are,” Secretary of State Kris Warner said Monday.

Voters will nominate candidates for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and state legislature. They also will elect two new state Supreme Court justices.

During the in-person early voting period that ended Saturday, Warner said his office hadn’t heard of anyone who demanded to vote without a photo ID. He said the state had asked residents to use photo IDs for the past few elections, so “it was not a big shock that it was now law.”

During his statewide travels over the past two weeks, Warner said he was told of some instances where people returned to their vehicle to retrieve a photo ID after entering a polling place. Another voter used an exception to the law by filling out a form that was verified by a poll worker who has known them for at least six months. There also were exceptions for first-time voters.

Most states either require or request some form of ID for in-person voting at the polls.

Proponents say the West Virginia law will cut down on voter fraud and that a photo ID is already required for everyday tasks such as getting on an airplane or buying alcohol.

The bill sailed through the Republican-supermajority legislature last year. All votes against it were cast by Democrats, some who argued it would suppress access to the polls. State Democratic Party Chair Mike Pushkin said no credible evidence was shown during legislative debate that West Virginia had a widespread problem with ineligible voting. Pushkin said the legislation was “designed more for political messaging than solving actual problems.”

But Warner said it allows senior citizens to use expired driver’s licenses, as long as it was valid on their 65th birthday

“I wanted to make sure it didn’t prevent anyone from voting,” Warner said.

Forms of identification that are no longer accepted at polling places include utility bills, bank statements, hunting and fishing licenses, bank or debit cards, and concealed carry gun permits. Acceptable forms of photo IDs include a driver’s license, U.S. passport, military ID, employee ID issued by a government agency and a student ID from a high school or college.

Monongalia County Clerk Carye Blaney said for several years her county has used an electronic system to scan bar codes on the back of driver’s licenses to check in voters at polling places.

“I think that it makes voters feel more secure, or it confirms for the voters the security of our elections when we are verifying a photo to a person,” Blaney said.

Raby writes for the Associated Press.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Thousands of Louisiana voters have already cast early ballots for congressional candidates in what soon could be the wrong districts. Alabama’s primaries are a week away, but the state could force a do-over for voting on U.S. House races. A new congressional map in Tennessee upended races that had been underway for months.

Republicans’ rush to gerrymander congressional districts across several Southern states after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling hollowed out the Voting Rights Act is confusing voters and creating logistical headaches for local election officials. The changes are hitting while primary season is in progress.

The chaotic upheaval to an election season that could determine which party controls the U.S. House is the latest fallout from an intensely partisan gerrymandering battle initiated by President Trump last year to protect Republicans’ slim majority.

The Supreme Court’s decision last month severely weakening the Voting Rights Act required Louisiana to reconsider a map drawn in 2024 with two majority minority congressional districts that elected Black representatives. The GOP-controlled Legislature could eliminate one or both in a state where roughly 30% of the population is Black.

The ruling also encouraged Republicans in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee to consider eliminating four Democratic districts among them, three represented by Black lawmakers. Florida has a new map meant to cost Democrats four of their eight seats, out of 28.

In Louisiana, 66-year-old New Orleans resident Sallie Davis voted early last week. Her ballot allowed her to vote for Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, but a sign at her polling booth showed his race crossed off with a ballpoint pen. She was confused and frustrated — especially when a poll worker told her to go with what the sign seemed to convey. She’s now worried that her entire ballot will not be counted.

“I was supposed to believe a piece of paper with an X on it marking out the person I wanted to vote for,” she said, her voice breaking as she recounted her experience later. “I think I have been disenfranchised. I think my vote, that I just voted on, it’s not going to count or something. I think it’s illegal.”

Primaries postponed, deadlines compressed

Louisiana’s primary is on Saturday, and a week of early voting there began May 2, two days after the Republican governor declared an emergency and suspended congressional primaries to give lawmakers a chance to draw a new map.

Republican Secretary of State Nancy Landry’s office said nearly 179,000 primary ballots had been cast as of Friday, including about 53,000 absentee ballots returned by mail. She said the ballots included U.S. House races, but votes in those contests won’t be counted.

In Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee, Republicans justified pursuing new maps by saying that electing more Republicans would better reflect their states’ conservative values. Alabama lawmakers passed legislation Friday allowing a do-over of congressional primaries.

Alabama’s primary is May 19, and voting in congressional races will occur then as planned, but with the old districts. Those votes would end up not counting if a court allows the switch to different districts.

Mississippi held its primaries in March, but a federal court has ordered it to redraw its state Supreme Court districts, and Trump is pushing Republicans to redraw the state’s four congressional districts.

A special session of its Legislature is set for May 20. Renovations of the House chamber will force members to meet at the Old State Capitol, where, decades ago, Mississippi lawmakers passed Jim Crow laws suppressing Black voting.

“Modern-day voter suppression relies on election administration errors and chaos, and that’s what we’re going to see play out in all of these states,” said Amir Badat, a Jackson, Mississippi, voting rights attorney and activist.

Tennessee continues yearlong fight

Tennessee was the first state to enact a new map since the U.S. Supreme Court decision, but Trump’s push for redistricting started in Texas last year. Democrats countered in California and tried but ran afoul of the courts in Virginia.

Before Tennessee’s GOP-controlled Legislature passed a new map last week, the state’s elections coordinator told county officials in a memo what that would mean: reprogramming election systems, retraining poll workers and possibly adjusting precinct boundaries, meaning some voters’ polling places could change.

Tennessee’s congressional primaries still will be held Aug. 6 as planned, and candidates have until Friday to qualify for the ballot. Those who qualified previously will get a pass if they can run in a new district with the same number.

In South Carolina, lawmakers could move all the state’s June 9 primaries to August, or just the congressional races. While mail balloting is limited because the state requires an excuse to do it, more than 6,800 mail ballots already had been sent to voters — with 260 returned — as of Friday, according to the state Elections Commission.

Holding a separate election for congressional primaries would cost $3 million and the time for preparations would be compressed, Conway Belangia, the commission’s executive director, told lawmakers Friday.

“It will be difficult, but it will be possible,” he said.

Activists see problems ahead for voters

Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP’s Louisiana State Conference, is hearing “total confusion” as voters call him and ask, “Is there an election?”

“People say, ’I ain’t going to vote because the governor’s suspended the election,’” he said. “But he didn’t, he only suspended one aspect of it.”

In Alabama, Senate Democratic leader Bobby Singleton said he has been fielding calls from public officials who also are confused.

“These are the people who are the head of elections,” he said. “They don’t know what to do.“

Voting rights activists see problems that arose in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2022, when Republican legislators divided the state’s capital city into three congressional districts to take a seat from Democrats, as a harbinger of what Memphis voters could face this year. A state report said more than 3,000 Nashville-area voters were assigned to incorrect districts and more than 430 cast ballots in the wrong races in the November 2022 election.

“It’s going to be really hard for the election commissions to be able to keep up with this short timeline,” Matia Powell, executive director of the voting rights nonprofit Civic TN, said during a conference call Friday with other voting rights activists in the South.

Some fear confusion will lead to distrust and apathy

Anneshia Hardy, executive director of Alabama Values, which provides support to voting and civil rights groups, said people will lose trust in elections if they believe the rules can change every two years.

“Once people stop believing that the process is stable and fair, disengagement is going to increase, and that’s one of the biggest dangers here,” she said. “Democracy doesn’t just depend on voting systems existing but really on people believing that their participation matters.”

At least a few Democratic voters who went to the Louisiana Capitol on Friday to protest the gerrymandering expressed doubt about whether they still have a political voice.

Davis came to the State Capitol in Baton Rouge and had a bullhorn with her for a protest in which she yelled, “Whose vote? Our vote!”

David Victorian, a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran from Baton Rouge, said: “I’m concerned for the survival of the democracy that we’re supposed to be living in.”

Hanna and Brook write for the Associated Press. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan. AP writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., and Kim Chandler, in Montgomery, Ala., contributed to this report.

A Labour MP said: “Not sure voters in Wigan, Wandsworth, Salford or Sunderland voted Reform because they thought we needed more advisers from a different era of Labour politics. I think this shows that Keir doesn’t even understand the problem, never mind the solution.”

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A national redistricting battle over U.S. House seats swung toward Republicans on Friday, as a Virginia court invalidated a Democratic gerrymandering effort and Republicans in Alabama approved plans for new primary elections if courts allow GOP-drawn House districts to be used in the November midterm elections.

The Alabama legislation, which was signed quickly into law by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, is part of an effort by Republicans in Southern states to capitalize quickly on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.

Tensions ran high in the Alabama Statehouse. And Republican lawmakers in Louisiana and South Carolina also faced staunch opposition from civil rights activists and Democrats as they presented plans Friday to redraw their congressional districts.

The action came just a day after Tennessee enacted new congressional districts that carve up a Democratic-held, Black-majority district in Memphis. The state Democratic Party sued on Friday, seeking to prevent the districts from being used until after this year’s elections because of the tight time frame

Even before last week’s Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana case, Republicans and Democrats already were engaged in a fierce redistricting battle, each seeking an edge in the midterm elections that will determine control of the closely divided House. That battle tilted further toward Republicans when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday that Democratic lawmakers had violated constitutional requirements when placing a redistricting amendment on the ballot.

Since President Trump prodded Texas to redraw its congressional districts last summer, Republicans think they could gain as many as 14 seats from new districts in several states while Democrats think they could gain up to six seats. But the parties may not get everything they sought, because the gerrymandering could backfire in some highly competitive districts.

Alabama primaries could be in flux

Demonstrators outside the Alabama Statehouse on Friday shouted “fight for democracy” and “down with white supremacy.”

“I was out there in 1965 marching for the right to vote, and now we are back here in 2026 doing the same thing,” Betty White Boynton said.

During debate inside the statehouse, Black lawmakers sharply criticized the Republican legislation, saying it harks back to the state’s shameful Jim Crow history. The new law would ignore the May 19 primary results for some congressional seats and direct the governor to schedule a new primary under revised districts, if a court allows it. Lawmakers also approved a similar bill related to state Senate districts.

“What happened here today is that we were set back as a people to the days of Reconstruction,” Democratic state Sen. Rodger Smitherman said after the vote.

Senate Democrats shouted “hell no” and “stop the steal” as the vote occurred in the Alabama Senate.

The special primary would happen only if the courts agree to lift an injunction that put a court-selected map in place until after the 2030 census. That order required a second district where Black voters are the majority or close to it, resulting in the 2024 election of Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who is Black. If a court lifts the injunction, Republican officials want to put in place a map lawmakers drew in 2023 — which was rejected by a federal court — that could allow them to reclaim Figures’ district.

“With this special session successfully behind us, Alabama now stands ready to quickly act, should the courts issue favorable rulings in our ongoing redistricting cases,” Ivey said in a statement.

Virginia ruling centered on timing of election

Democrats had hoped to gain as many as four additional U.S. House seats under new districts narrowly approved by voters in April. But the state Supreme Court invalidated the measure because it said the Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements.

To place a constitutional amendment before voters, the Virginia Constitution requires lawmakers to approve it in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between. The legislature’s initial approval of the redistricting amendment occurred last October — while early voting was underway but before it concluded on the day of the general election. The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January.

The Supreme Court said the initial legislative approval came too late, noting that more than 1.3 million ballots already had been cast in the general election, about 40% of the total votes ultimately cast.

Louisiana lawmakers look at map options

A Louisiana Senate committee considered several redistricting options Friday from Republican state Sen. John “Jay” Morris that would eliminate either both or one of the current Black-majority U.S. House districts.

“Every one of these maps reduces Black voting power in every one of the districts. And I think that’s a problem,” Democratic state Sen. Sam Jenkins told Morris.

Morris denied that the proposed redistricting maps were racially discriminatory. He said his goal was to be “respectful of the traditional boundaries” of the state’s six congressional districts.

“I don’t think we should care that much about race,” Morris said.

The only four Black congressmen who have represented Louisiana since the end of the Reconstruction era appealed to state senators to keep two majority-Black districts in a state where one-third of voters are Black.

Leona Tate, who as a 6-year-old girl was escorted by federal marshals through a racist white mob trying to prevent her from desegregating a New Orleans elementary school, told lawmakers she felt they were taking a step backward in time by reducing Black political power.

“You have a choice in front of you: You can draw a map that reflects what Louisiana actually is — a state where Black voices belong in the halls of Congress,” said Tate, 71. “Or you can draw a map that tells my grandchildren that their votes don’t count, that their faces don’t matter and that the progress I helped build with my own two feet as a 6-year-old can be erased at will.”

South Carolina considers a House map

A small group of South Carolina lawmakers held a rare Friday meeting to discuss a proposed new congressional map intended to allow Republicans a clean sweep of the state’s seven U.S. House seats.

The hearing was the first step in redistricting. But its future remains murky. The state Senate has yet to agree to consider new districts later this month, an action that would require a two-thirds vote.

The new map has some Republicans nervous. Breaking up the 6th District, represented by Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), makes the other six districts less Republican.

At Friday’s subcommittee meeting, lawmakers heard hours of testimony, almost all against the new map. The hearing included a consultant who reviewed the map, saying it appeared to be legal under the Supreme Court’s decision in the Louisiana case.

“I agree if the law allows us to do it, then we can do it,” Democratic state Rep. Justin Bamberg said. “But I can slap somebody’s mama and it’s not the right thing to do.”

Some absentee ballots already have been returned for the state’s June 9 primary elections. The legislative subcommittee advanced a plan to delay the congressional primaries to August and reopen a candidate filing period, if a new map is approved.

Chandler, Brook, Collins and Lieb write for the Associated Press. Collins reported from Columbia, S.C.; Brook from Baton Rouge, La.; and Lieb from Jefferson City, Mo.

“We’ve been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, yet what Reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been Conservative, but equally, we’re proving in a big way that we could win in areas that Labour has dominated since the end of World War I.”

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.

The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.

“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion.

Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn U.S. House map as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting done elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.

Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade after each census to account for population changes. But Trump started an unusual flurry of mid-decade redistricting last year when he encouraged Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts in a bid to win several additional U.S. House seats and hold on to their party’s narrow majority in the midterm elections.

California responded with new voter-approved districts drawn to Democrats’ advantage, and Utah’s top court imposed a new congressional map that also helps Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans stand to gain from new House districts passed in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee. They could add even more after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, which has prompted some other Republican states to consider redrawing their maps in time for this year’s elections.

Virginia currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans who were elected from districts imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census. The new districts could have given Democrats an improved chance to win all but one of the state’s 11 congressional seats.

Under the Demcoratic-drawn map, five districts would have been anchored in the Democratic stronghold of northern Virginia, including one stretching out like a lobster to consume Republican-leaning rural areas. Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads would have diluted the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia would have lumped together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.

The state Supreme Court’s seven justices are appointed by the state legislature, which has toggled back and forth between Democratic, Republican and split control over recent years. Legal experts say the body doesn’t have a set ideological profile

The case before the court focused not on the shape of the new districts but rather on the process the General Assembly used to authorize them.

Because the state’s redistricting commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers had to propose an amendment to redraw the districts. That required approval of a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between, to place the amendment on the ballot.

The legislature’s initial approval of the amendment occurred last October — while early voting was underway but before it concluded on the day of the general election. The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January. Lawmakers also approved a separate bill in February laying out the new districts, subject to voter approval of the constitutional amendment.

Judicial arguments focused on whether the legislature’s initial approval of the amendment came too late, because early voting already had begun for the 2025 general election.

Attorney Matthew Seligman, who defended the legislature, argued that the “election” should be defined narrowly to mean the Tuesday of the general election. In that case, the legislature’s first vote on the redistricting amendment occurred before the election and was constitutional, he told judges.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas McCarthy, argued that an “election” should be interpreted to cover the entire period during which people can cast ballots, which lasts several weeks in Virginia. If that’s the case, he told justices, then the legislature’s initial endorsement of the redistricting amendment came too late to comply with the state constitution.

In January, a judge in rural Tazewell County, in southwestern Virginia, ruled that lawmakers failed to follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session last fall. Circuit Judge Jack Hurley Jr. also ruled that lawmakers failed to initially approve the amendment before the public began voting in last year’s general election and that the state had failed to publish the amendment three months before the election, as required by law. As a result, he said, the amendment is invalid and void.

The Virginia Supreme Court placed Hurley’s order on hold and allowed the redistricting vote to proceed before hearing arguments on the case.

Lieb writes for the Associated Press.

Who won the 2020 election?

Was the Capitol attacked on Jan. 6, 2021?

Can Donald Trump be elected to a third term as president?

No brainers, right?

The answers are, of course, “Joe Biden,” “yes” and “no.” Any fact- and reality-based American would say so. But that humongous class of people pointedly doesn’t include the president of the United States. And apparently for that reason, his nominees for federal judgeships — the very jobs in which you’d most want fact-based individuals — hem, haw, stammer and ultimately decline to give direct answers when Democratic senators test them with such easy-peasy questions at confirmation hearings.

One after another, month after month, Trump nominees for district and appeals courts across the land say that the answers to the questions are matters of debate, of “significant political dispute.” Well, they’re in dispute only because Trump says they are, as does every ambitious officeholder and office-seeker desperate to remain in the retributive ruler’s good graces — including, alas, would-be judges.

To watch them squirm and then squirt out the same rehearsed reply, the same legalistic word salad, just like the dozens of nominees before them would be hilarious (see below) if it weren’t so ominous for the rule of law in the nation.

Trump nominees for other high-ranking jobs, likewise prepped for Senate Democrats’ questions by their Trump handlers, give the same rote response. But the fact that candidates for lifetime seats on the federal bench, making decisions of life-changing consequences for millions of Americans, would choose to dodge the truth is most sickening.

In their truth-trolling to keep Trump happy, lest he yank their chance at new black robes, these candidates fail the test of judicial independence. As one Democrat, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, told four district judge nominees last week at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, their humiliating hedging “on an issue of fact” — Biden won in 2020 — “reflects not only on your honesty but really on your fitness to be a federal judge.”

Indeed. That judicial nominees would curry Trump’s favor bodes ill for future federal jurisprudence in the one branch of government that’s stood up for the rule of law against Trump, repeatedly, when Congress and the Supreme Court have not. To be fair, a number of judges confirmed in Trump’s first term have been among the many who’ve ruled against his and his administration’s second-term abuses of power. Yet just as Trump has populated his Cabinet and executive branch with sycophants, unlike in Trump 1.0, he’s obviously applying new litmus tests to potential judges. One of them, clearly, is playing along with his election lies.

His nominees’ failure to speak truth to Trump’s power should be disqualifying. But they’re not disqualified, because the Senate is run by Republicans who share their fear of him.

That fact is a big reason to hope that Democrats capture the majority in November’s midterm elections and that, under new management, the Senate will finally take seriously its constitutional “advice and consent” responsibility to act as a check on Trump nominees for the final two years of his term — including, perhaps, one for the Supreme Court.

And, yes, this is Trump’s final term, for all of his teasing about “Trump 2028.” The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment says as much in its opening line: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Yet the four wannabe district judges at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing — Michael J. Hendershot of Ohio; Arthur Roberts Jones and John G.E. Marck, both of Texas; and Jeffrey T. Kuntz of Florida — struggled over that clear language.

All four hesitated when Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, asked them to describe the amendment. He even read its initial words before querying Marck, “Is President Trump eligible to run for president again in 2028?”

Marck paused, then sputtered: “Senator, with ah, without considering all the facts and looking at everything, depending on what the situation is, this to me strikes as more of a hypothetical of something that could be raised.”

“It’s not a hypothetical,” Coons countered, then asked again whether Trump is “eligible to run for a third term under our Constitution.”

“Um, I would have to, to review the, the actual wording of it,” Marck blabbered.

Coons turned to the others: “Anybody else brave enough to say that the Constitution of the United States prevents President Trump from seeking a third term?” Silence.

“Anybody willing to apply the Constitution by its plain language in the 22nd Amendment?” Coons persisted. Crickets.

His Democratic colleague, Blumenthal, inquired of the foursome, “Who won the 2020 election?” All agreed in turn that Biden “was certified” the winner. None would say he “won” because — as we and they know —Trump insists to this day that he won; he’s turned the power of his “Justice” Department to trying to prove that obvious falsehood. Far be it from these future judges to contradict the president who nominated them.

Here’s Hendershot’s gibberish to Blumenthal’s simple query: “Senator, I want to be mindful of the canons here. I know this question has come up many times in these hearings and it’s become an issue of significant political dispute and debate. So, with, with that, I would say that, that President Biden was certified the winner of the 2020 election.”

After the others replied similarly, Blumenthal turned justifiably scathing: “It’s pretty irrefutable that Joe Biden won the election. But you’re unwilling to use that word because you are afraid. You are afraid. Of what? President Trump? That is exactly what we do not need on the federal bench today. We need jurists who are fearless and strong, not weak and pathetic.”

Apparently unshamed, each similarly demurred when he asked if the Capitol had been attacked. “You’ve seen the videos, have you not?” Blumenthal blurted.

No matter, Senator. These would-be triers of fact apparently won’t believe their eyes. Not when their patron, the president, insists on lies.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes

The Humboldt County Office of Elections made an unnerving discovery Monday: a stack of 596 sealed ballots from the most recent election left at the bottom of a locked voting drop box.

The uncounted ballots would not have affected the outcome of the November statewide special election for Proposition 50, the county office said in a news release Wednesday. However, officials said they’re working hard to have all the votes legally counted.

The office discovered that the ballots were uncounted because of a staff error. When workers checked the drop box, there was a miscommunication about whether it had been fully emptied, the office said.

“That outcome is unacceptable and runs counter to the core of what this office stands for,” Juan Pablo Cervantes, county clerk-recorder and registrar of voters, said in a statement. “While the mistake occurred after an election worker did not follow proper procedures, the responsibility for what happened ultimately sits with me.”

After the ballots were discovered, elections staff confirmed that the sealed ballots had not been tampered with, and they worked with the California secretary of state to determine next steps. Under California law, the ballots should have been counted before the election was certified on Dec. 5 and destroyed six months later.

The Office of Elections said it had altered its protocols to ensure such a mistake does not take place again, implementing a new “lock out, tag out” procedure to ensure each drop box is empty and secured before election results are finalized.

“I promise you that we are taking this seriously,” Cervantes said. “We will strengthen our processes and continue pushing toward the standard our community expects and deserves.”

The discovery comes as California continues to be under a microscope for allegations of voter fraud.

Within minutes of polls opening for California’s special election in November, President Trump took to Truth Social to claim that the Proposition 50 vote — which redrew several congressional districts to favor Democratic candidates — was rigged.

“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump wrote.

When asked later that day to explain Trump’s claims on how the election was allegedly rigged, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said California has “a universal mail-in voting system, which we know is ripe for fraud.” She also accused the state of counting ballots from undocumented immigrants.

Elections officials and Democratic leaders including Gov. Gavin Newsom decried those claims as baseless. “The bottom line is California elections have been validated by the courts,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a November statement.

More recently, Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco has drawn scrutiny for using his position as Riverside County sheriff to seize some 650,000 ballots in the county to determine whether they were fraudulently counted. Critics decried the move as another attempt by Republican election deniers to disenfranchise voters.

Humboldt County, which encompasses 4,052 square miles of rural California below the Oregon border, has largely avoided election-related turmoil in recent years. In 2008, however, Humboldt election officials discovered that software they used to tally votes had failed to count 197 ballots from one precinct.

More recently, nearby Shasta County has become a hotbed of election denialism and MAGA politics, with its Board of Supervisors voting in 2023 to end the use of Dominion Voting Systems machines in favor of pursuing a hand-counting system.

Times staff writers Hailey Branson-Potts, Jenny Jarvie and Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — State elections officials warned voters Tuesday to send their mail-in ballots in early following changes at the U.S. Postal Service that has led to slower mail service throughout California.

Atty. General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber said vote-by-mail ballots should be put in the mail at least a week before the June 2 election.

The officials also cast skepticism about social media posts that urges Democrats to vote “late” and to rally around one candidate in order to ensure a Republican doesn’t win. The posts are similar in wording and have spread on Facebook in the last week.

Bonta said the posts, which were brought up by the Times at a news conference in Sacramento, could be “misinformation” or “disinformation” and “potentially unlawful.”

“Get your ballot in the mail at least a week early,” he said. “You want to make sure your vote is counted. And the misinformation that you’re referencing is the misinformation we’re trying to combat.”

Voters using the postal service to mail their ballot within a week of the election should go inside the post office and ask that their ballot be postmarked, or can drop off their ballot at a secure voter box, officials said.

The new guidance follows sweeping changes made at the United States Postal Services last year that has reduced the number of trips to pick up mail at post offices in mostly rural areas in the country, including California.

A Times analysis of last year’s November special election found that there was a significantly higher number of mail-in ballots that arrived too late to be counted compared to the 2024 election.

Rural counties saw some of the biggest increase in rejected ballots because they came in too late, The Times found.

The changes to the postal service are nationwide, but are particularly relevant in California because the vast majority of people vote in the state using mail-in ballots.

Voters who mail a ballot on election day, or even two days before, may not see their vote counted because it will arrive too late, Bonta told reporters.

“You want your vote to be counted, I want your vote to be counted,” Bonta said. “If you vote earlier, you maximize that possibility that it will.”

Vote-by-mail ballots are considered late if they are not postmarked on or ahead of election day or if the postmarked ballots do not arrive within seven days of the election.

Weber’s office also said it would look into a recent trend of social posts that urge California Democrats to “vote late” in the June 2 election.

The posts, which have appeared on Facebook and Instagram, are similar in wording, and tell Democrats to hold off from voting early to ensure that two Republican don’t make the two top spots, and to rally around one Democrat.

California’s primary election system allows the two candidates who received the most votes to advance to the November election, regardless of party.

With many Democrats crowding the ballot this year, some Democratic leaders have expressed concern fear that two Republicans — businessman Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — will take the top two spots because Democratic voters will be splintered among the party’s top seven candidates.

The validity of the social media posts are under scrutiny.

One post on Facebook last week, for instance, purports to be written by historian Heather Cox Richardson. The post warned voters not to vote until after all the debates in California have concluded and the front-runner is clear.

Richardson told the Times she’s not connected to the post. “I didn’t write it and we can’t figure out who did,” she said in an email. “I haven’t— and won’t— take any position in a primary.”

The last statewide election in California was closely watched after the U.S. Department of Justice said would monitor polling sites in some California counties following a request by California Republican Party officials.

However, the election proceeded without any incident.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday sent a letter to elections officials in the state’s 58 counties that highlighted recent legislation mandating that California ballots be counted within 13 days, instead of 30 days. Newsom thanked the elections staff for their work and urged a speedy vote count.

“We must acknowledge that the longer the voting count takes,” Newsom wrote, “the more mis- and disinformation spreads.”

ATLANTA — The Department of Justice is seeking the names of every person who worked in the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that Donald Trump has long accused of widespread voter fraud he falsely says cost him victory against Joe Biden in the state that year.

Lawyers for the county filed a motion on Monday night to quash a grand jury subpoena that asks for the names and personal contact information of county employees and volunteer poll workers. This latest action comes after the FBI in January went to a Fulton County elections warehouse and seized ballots and other documents from the 2020 election, which Georgia’s certified totals showed Trump lost in the state to Biden by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million cast. Trump, a Republican, still insists the election was stolen from him even though judges and his own attorney general concluded otherwise.

Monday’s court filing says the subpoena is meant to “target, harass and punish the President’s perceived political opponents.” The request is “grossly overbroad and untethered to any reasonable need,” the county’s lawyers argue. It “cannot yield any evidence that could result in a criminal prosecution,” they wrote, arguing that the statute of limitations on any federal crime related to the 2020 election has already expired.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.

County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts, in an emailed statement, called the subpoena “yet another act of outrageous federal overreach designed to intimidate and chill participation in elections.”

“Let me be crystal clear. Fulton County will not be intimidated,” said Pitts, a Democrat who’s running for reelection.

Since the 2020 election, Trump “has obsessively propagated the debunked conspiracy theory that Fulton County ‘stole’ the 2020 election from him,” the county’s lawyers wrote. “And he has made it clear that he seeks retribution against those who refuse to indulge his baseless claims.”

Trump has already targeted individual poll workers like Ruby Freeman, who was attacked by him and his supporters after the election. Freeman, who’s Black, has said she was forced to flee her home after false claims of election fraud against her led to racist threats and strangers showing up at her home.

The grand jury subpoena, dated April 17, was served on the county’s director of elections on April 20, the county’s court filing says. It seeks the “name, position/function, residential and email addresses, and personal telephone number(s)” for thousands of election workers “ranging from county employees who assisted on election day, to bus drivers who operated a mobile voting location, to volunteers and temporary poll workers,” the filing says.

The subpoena “is a chilling escalation in the campaign to terrorize Fulton County election workers,” the county’s lawyers wrote, adding that threats arising from the current political environment have caused election workers to “fear for their physical safety.” That and other stresses “including the likelihood of being scapegoated by public officials” are causing election workers to leave their jobs “in unprecedented numbers,” they wrote.

The county’s lawyers note that the subpoena directs the county to provide the records not to the grand jury but to an out-of-state Justice Department lawyer or to the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit used for the seizure of the county’s 2020 ballots in January.

The January seizure of the ballots and other records from Fulton County was one in a string of moves by Trump’s administration to obtain past election records from critical swing states. The FBI in March used a subpoena to get records related to an audit of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County in Arizona. And the Justice Department in April demanded that Michigan’s Wayne County turn over its ballots from the 2024 election, which Trump won against Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.

The Justice Department is also fighting numerous states in court for access to voter data that includes sensitive personal information. Election officials, including some Republicans, have said handing over the information would violate state and federal privacy laws.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.

West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has firmly rejected stepping down after her party’s defeat in assembly elections. PM Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party swept West Bengal in elections Banerjee claims were directly interfered with.

WASHINGTON — As states scramble to postpone presidential primaries, election workers abandon their posts and voters worry about the risk of contagion in crowded polling places, the question of how the nation is going to pull off a general election in November has generated increasing anxiety.

Some states are much better prepared than others.

In a significant swath of the nation, however, most voters still lack the one viable option for casting ballots that doesn’t put their health at risk in a time of pandemic: voting by mail.

Now the decades-long push by advocates and many lawmakers to make that alternative universally available has gained new momentum amid a public health crisis. Backers are racing to overcome longstanding political barriers so that states that have resisted can start confronting the huge logistical challenges involved in a quick shift away from in-person voting.

“Ohio, Louisiana, Georgia and other states are showing that without vote-by-mail, states might not be able to hold elections at all,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in an email, referring to states that have postponed scheduled primaries. He and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are rallying colleagues behind their bill that would require all states to allow citizens to vote absentee.

“I understand that standing up a new election system will be a heavy lift, but in the face of this pandemic, vote by mail is the best choice we have to keep our democracy running,” Wyden said.

Casting ballots by mail — or at drop-off locations on and before election day — is a familiar habit in the West. California has allowed any adult citizen who cares to vote absentee to do so for years. Washington, Oregon and Colorado have already moved over to 100% mail or drop-off voting, with California headed in that direction.

Deeply Republican states like Utah also allow anyone to vote absentee.

Yet in 16 states concentrated mostly in the Northeast and the South, voters are expected to show up on election day unless they can claim one of a set of excuses for an absentee ballot.

Some states have been reluctant to meddle with a tradition of civic engagement on election day. More recently, states governed by Republicans have resisted a change after President Trump repeatedly — and falsely — suggested that reforms that bring down barriers to ballot access had led to widespread voter fraud by Democrats.

The rapidly spreading pandemic has some rethinking their rules. Connecticut, for example, has temporarily changed its restrictions to make concerns about the virus a valid excuse for anyone who wants to vote absentee.

But in some states, election officials are powerless to act without changes in state law or a mandate from Congress, which has the power to set rules for federal elections.

“We need emergency action now,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law scholar at UC Irvine who advocates a temporary federal requirement that every voter in America have access to a mail-in ballot for the 2020 election.

“We cannot postpone the election because there are places under lockdown. We need to have a Plan B ready.”

Election experts stress that putting off the general election until things settle down is not an option. The Constitution does not allow a president to serve beyond four years without reelection. But some officials still see a conspiracy.

“No elected official or journalist should use a potential health concern to advance his or her own political agenda,” Alabama Secretary of State John H. Merrill said last week after a local columnist charged the state’s absentee voting restrictions invite an election-day meltdown. The state Legislature there has repeatedly rejected proposals for universal vote by mail.

A proposal passed by lawmakers in New Hampshire was vetoed in September by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who warned it would erode the state’s standing as a role model of civic engagement.

“Even if people agree this is an emergency and we may need to do this, it’s hard to just wash out of your mind thoughts you have had your entire life,” Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who focuses on voting, said of skeptical elections officials.

A voter survey he conducted recently found Democrats were far more heavily in favor of universal mail voting than were Republicans. The irony, he said, is that it was GOP public officials who played a key role a couple of decades ago in seeding the movement toward voting by mail.

These days, however, the pressure on election officials is coming mostly from Democrats, who are watching in dismay as their primary election has been disrupted in nearly half a dozen states.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez on Tuesday implored states that have not yet held their primaries to embrace voting by mail instead of postponing their elections to a later date.

By the fall, the coronavirus crisis could have passed — or it could just be getting a second wind. In 1918, the deadly influenza pandemic that hit in the final year of World War I first appeared in the winter, subsided in the summer, then roared back in the fall, disrupting that year’s presidential campaign.

The consequences of giving voters no alternative in November but to show up at polls could be dramatic in states that continue to resist. Most poll workers are over age 60, putting them at high risk if COVID-19 is still spreading. Many may just decide not to show up, as was the case in some of the primaries held this week.

The need to sanitize machines after every voter, possibly take the temperature of voters as they enter polling places and enforce social distancing — which could lead to historically long delays in both voting and tallying votes. That, in turn, could shake voter confidence in the integrity of the election.

“Are we going to say to people they can’t vote because they have a 100-degree temperature?” said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland, Ore. “I think about all the complexities involved in trying to make polling places safe for people to cast ballots, and I get very nervous.”

Until this election cycle, Gronke had been reluctant to champion a federal mandate giving all voters access to absentee ballots, worrying it would be too heavy-handed. The outbreak has changed his thinking.

“We are in an emergency,” he said.

The prospects for the Wyden bill are uncertain. There are not yet any GOP co-sponsors for the proposal, which the senator has pushed in some fashion since 2006. But even if the Senate balks, election experts are hopeful more states will aim to expand mail-in voting for November on their own.

Time is fast running out. The logistical issues involved with shifting millions of voters over to mail-in ballots are monumental. Even many states that already encourage all residents to mail or drop off their ballots will probably struggle with the deluge, said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

“There is a huge amount that needs to be done to prepare for this,” Weiser said. She pointed to everything from the lack of vendors equipped to print so many ballots, to a potential shortage of the specific paper needed, to all the new equipment states would need to count and sort the votes.

There are other components for states to wrestle with: safeguards to ensure ballots are properly collected, finding and training large numbers of workers for what could prove a complicated undertaking, and putting in place backstops to avoid system malfunctions and clerical errors that can turn election day into a mess.

Even if the Wyden bill stalls again, lawmakers still may put money in the stimulus legislation moving through Congress to help states confront these logistical hurdles. Especially when the alternative could be a lot of Americans excluded from the ballot box come November.

“We don’t have flexibility on when this election is,” said Weiser. “There will be a very large number of people who will not be able to vote in person. It won’t be safe for them to do so. They need to have this option.”

The city attorney’s office is charged with prosecuting a wide array of misdemeanors, including drunk driving, public intoxication, petty theft, trespassing and other lower level crimes.

Roy, 34, has promised to place a heavy emphasis on the legal process known as diversion, which allows defendants to avoid incarceration and instead obtain court-supervised social services, such as anger management or addiction counseling. In cases involving nonviolent crimes, diversion is more likely than jail to keep people from becoming repeat offenders, she said.

“It makes not only the person whole, but the community safer,” she said.

Ashouri, 43, said she is the only candidate to work within the city attorney’s criminal branch, handling cases involving guns, drunk driving and domestic violence. During a one-year stint as a reserve deputy city attorney, she concluded that too many minor cases were heading to trial.

“We need to focus on cases that are harming people,” she said. “Los Angeles is the capital of hit-and-runs. The city doesn’t take vehicular crimes seriously.”

McKinney, 58, pointed to his lengthy history prosecuting felony offenses, many of them homicides. In an interview, he argued that the city is not properly prosecuting quality-of-life crimes, which has in turn left the city feeling less safe.

“It looks dirty. It looks dingy. It looks chaotic. It feels chaotic,” he said.

McKinney criticized Feldstein Soto for dismantling specialized units in her office, including those focused on domestic violence and gangs and guns.

Feldstein Soto, 67, cast those changes in a different light, saying she carried out “a strategic rebalancing” of the criminal branch that redistributed the office’s workload. She said the office’s gang unit “lost its primary mission” in 2021, because of a legal settlement that effectively ended enforcement of the city’s 46 gang injunctions.

On the campaign trail, Feldstein Soto has highlighted her work fighting sex trafficking on the city’s notorious Figueroa Corridor and, more recently, nearby Western Avenue. She said the city has shifted emphasis away from arresting sex workers and toward the prosecutions of the johns.

The city attorney said she also has worked to expand “restorative justice” programs, including one that holds outdoor court proceedings on Skid Row.

The challengers say Hernandez has failed to making meaningful headway on homeless encampments in Chinatown, Lincoln Heights and other parts of the district.

“People feel they do not have safe and walkable streets,” Robledo said. “People are disappointed, and I am too.”

Robledo, 67, wants to shut down the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the city-county agency that oversees social services at the city’s hotels, motels and other interim housing.

Hernandez touts a $6.3-million state grant she helped secure to house homeless people living in or near the Arroyo Seco riverbed. She’s bringing a new 65-bed interim housing facility to Cypress Park and has worked to beef up services near MacArthur Park.

“I’m not focused on what folks are saying about us not delivering the services,” Hernandez said. “I know in my district we’re doing the work.”

Hernandez supports Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program, which has cleared encampments across the city, but wants greater transparency on how its money is spent.

Grande and Robledo also favor Inside Safe but say it is too expensive and needs to be reworked. Claros is the only candidate in the race who outright opposes the program, saying he would vote against any additional funds to keep it going.

“When we look at it now and we just do the numbers, it’s been a failure,” Claros said. “We’ve got to completely course correct and get away from that.”

Calanche, 57, supports Inside Safe but believes it isn’t addressing the root causes of homelessness, particularly mental health and drug addiction. Those issues are the responsibility of county government, which has its own public health and mental health agencies, she said.

To make real progress on those issues, the city should create its own public health department, similar to those found in Long Beach and Pasadena, Calanche said.

“There needs to be a different vision to address this issue,” she said.

Calanche, Claros, Grande and Robledo support Municipal Code 41.18, which prohibits homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools and daycare centers. That law allows the council to create 41.18 zones around “sensitive use” locations, such as public libraries and freeway overpasses.

Hernandez is a longtime opponent of 41.18, calling it ineffective and inhumane. She has voted against dozens of 41.18 zones that were created by her colleagues in the San Fernando Valley, the Westside and South Los Angeles.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger was the only supervisor against it. She pointed to the fact that the tax was a “general” tax, meaning the money won’t be earmarked for healthcare costs. That means politicians have final say over how the money gets spent rather than voters, she said.

Some cities within L.A. County say they’re also rattled over the tax, unleashing a stream of opposition letters against the tax. The California Contract Cities Assn. argues a sales tax hike would “disproportionately burden the very residents the County seeks to protect.” Shoppers near the county line, they warn, likely would start crossing it to shop.

Some of these cities say they have the trust issues when it comes to county ballot measures. When voters approved Measure B in 2002 to fund the county’s trauma center network, an audit years later found the county couldn’t account for whether the money actually had been spent on emergency medical services. And some cities feel they never got their fair share of funds from Measure H, the homelessness services tax measure passed in 2017.