Elections

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed legislation to increase security for the state’s voting systems and protect Californians’ ability to cast ballots in an effort to guard against potential interference in the Nov. 3 election, including by the Trump administration.

Newsom pointed to the Trump administration’s recent effort to restrict mail-in voting through the U.S. Postal Service, which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the presence of federal monitors at California polls last year as evidence that Trump “will continue his efforts to interfere with the November election.”

“Donald Trump won’t stop until he can exert dictatorial control over your free vote and disenfranchise millions of people this November. California will stop him at every opportunity,” Newsom said in a statement.”We have no bigger task than fighting to protect the right to vote from interference and meddling — the future of democracy is on the line. These bills today build upon the wall California has built to safeguard our electoral process.”

The governor signed the package of bills at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, where a year earlier federal agents gathered outside a political rally he was hosting. Then Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who had been leading the immigration operations in California, was among those outside the event, joined by agents in helmets, camouflage, masks and holding guns. Newsom described their presence as political intimidation.

One bill Newsom signed Saturday cites efforts to “weaponize law enforcement authority for political purposes,” including Republican “Sheriff Chad Bianco’s seizure of ballots in Riverside County,” and the election monitors sent by the U.S. Justice Department to polling sites in five counties during a 2025 special election on redistricting.

Such moves “have given rise to unprecedented concerns about law enforcement interference” in elections and “[demonstrate] that these threats are not merely hypothetical,” the bill by Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) reads.

The law, Senate Bill 884, which takes effect immediately, requires counties to open ballot drop-off locations 30 days before an election — two days earlier than usual — and allows counties to ban electioneering, or trying to influence voters’ decisions, within up to 200 feet of polling sites. It also bans police from making arrests near voting locations except for crimes against people, property, or disrupting the voting process.

Bianco, a GOP candidate for governor who placed fourth in the primary, drew swift condemnation and legal challenges this spring after he ordered deputies to seize more than 650,000 ballots from the Riverside County elections office. Voting rights groups and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta challenged the move, which is being decided by the California Supreme Court.

Bianco carted off truckloads of ballots from the Riverside County Registrar of Voters in February after securing a warrant based on claims that the office allowed fraudulent votes in the special election to redraw California’s congressional districts under Proposition 50 in 2025.

Earlier this year, Newsom signed a bill preventing local and federal law enforcement agencies from taking ballots without a warrant.

On Saturday the Democratic governor signed a bill making it a felony to seize or order the seizure of ballots, election records or voting machines. Future seizures could be punishable by up to four years in prison.

“The federal administration and those seeking to spread lies about our democracy continue to call for interference in elections in ways we have never seen before in this country,” Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), the bill’s author and a former longtime county elections chief, said last month. “AB 282 helps ensure that every lawfully cast vote can be counted, and that the will of the voters of every political party will be respected.”

Republican lawmakers argued in previous hearings that the bill is unnecessary because it is already a crime to steal ballots.

Another bill, Senate Bill 259, makes it a crime to interfere with a mail ballot on the way to or from a voter or order the seizure of ballots that are in transit to a local elections office.

Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1664, which requires elections officials to immediately notify the attorney general and secretary of state immediately upon learning of any warrants, subpoenas or law enforcement investigations involving election records or voting equipment.

Newsom also signed bills to boost protections under the California Voting Rights Act, including an explicit ban on voter suppression and expanded access to election materials in languages other than English.

The governor also signed legislation to require more transparency from social media influencers who are paid by political campaigns. The measure, Assembly Bill 1130, came in the wake of a controversy in the June primary election when social media influencers took on a more visible role in the campaigns.

Candidates including Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer paid thousands of dollars to influencers who posted videos endorsing Steyer or talking about him in a positive light. These videos did not always disclose that influencers were paid by a candidate’s campaign.

Russia’s parliamentary elections offer an excellent opportunity for a new round in the information war between the West and Russia. Western politicians, experts and journalists have been given yet another convenient occasion to tell their target audiences that democracy has long ceased to exist in Russia; that the federal parliament, like any other representative body, in practice determines nothing in Russian life; and that all genuinely important decisions for the country are made not even by the government but exclusively in the Kremlin, by an extremely narrow circle of individuals accountable to no one.

Therefore, in the view of many critics of the Russian authorities, elections in Russia need not have been held at all: their outcome was predetermined by Kremlin political strategists and, in any event, will have no significant impact on the country’s future.

And yet even the most biased outside observer could hardly fail to notice the obvious: the Russian authorities made consistent and persistent efforts to ensure that these elections attracted the highest possible participation and were conducted successfully under current electoral law. For at least the past several months, the country had experienced heightened political activity.

Leading politicians and state officials constantly reminded the electorate of the importance of the coming elections. Governors of politically “problematic” regions were urgently allocated additional subsidies. Payments to certain categories of public-sector employees and pensioners were hastily indexed. And inevitable but unpopular or painful decisions for the public – for example, the forthcoming significant nationwide increase in housing and utility tariffs – were postponed until after the elections.

Even possible shifts in Russia’s position on the conflict with Ukraine and future relations with the West were often linked in public and political discussions to the results of the September elections, which were supposedly meant to “untie the hands” of the Russian leadership, although there were very different, sometimes diametrically opposed, views about how exactly the leadership would use these “untied hands”. In any case, it must be acknowledged that the Kremlin did not take the easy path of its opponents in Kyiv, who simply postponed the 2024 Ukrainian presidential election until better, “postwar” times, despite clear discontent and muted grumbling from part of Ukraine’s political class.

What is going on here? Why should the Kremlin invest so much energy and so many resources in what is often interpreted outside Russia as little more than an unconvincing simulation of genuine political competition? Why launch a new full electoral cycle while a large-scale military conflict has yet to end, when the normal boundaries of peacetime political democracy tend, one way or another, to narrow?

It is difficult to suppose that holding elections in Russia is driven solely by Kremlin strategists’ obsessive desire to impress, at all costs, either their external opponents or their partners abroad. As for the former, they would not change their views about the nature of the Russian political system, even in the hypothetical event that the elections ended in a complete triumph for the radical opposition and a crushing defeat for all pro-Kremlin candidates. Such a scenario would most likely lead to endless speculation about yet another “cunning Putin plan”, intended to mislead a credulous Western public and conceal the consistently authoritarian nature of Russia’s political regime.

As for the latter, it is hard to imagine that the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Belarus or China are seriously concerned about the state or future of Russian democracy. The political systems of their countries, like those of many other foreign friends and partners of Russia, to put it mildly, do not entirely conform to the classical standards of Western liberal democracies. It is doubtful that Kim Jong Un, Alexander Lukashenko or, say, Mohammed bin Salman, or even Donald Trump, would suddenly decide to offer Vladimir Putin wise advice on how to organise polling stations properly and count votes.

It is hardly likely that the Kremlin felt an urgent need to erect elaborate and expensive but not especially durable scenery on the Russian political stage when the reaction of the potential audience to the forthcoming theatrical production was known in advance. It seems more logical to assume that the Russian authorities need elections not as cosmetic decoration for the façade of their political system, designed to attract the indifferent gaze of an outside observer, but as a quite effective and, above all, much-needed mechanism for maintaining dialogue between the authorities and society in the difficult geopolitical and socio-economic conditions of autumn 2026.

First and foremost, the Russian authorities are fighting hard for a high turnout, creating the most comfortable possible conditions for their voters to cast their ballots. This is no accident. A high turnout is convincing evidence of the population’s continued political activity and of the fact that Russian society has not descended into political apathy and wholesale cynicism. The idea of active civic participation is far from an empty phrase for the country’s leadership. In this sense, even a vote against the main “party of power”, United Russia, is clearly preferable to the alternative of a significant part of the electorate conspicuously choosing not to participate in the elections.

No less important, the authorities need the election results as a barometer of current public preferences, something even the most accurate opinion polls or in-depth sociological research cannot replace. Contemporary Russia undoubtedly has its own, albeit relatively narrow, political spectrum of “systemic opposition” parties reflecting the differing interests and expectations of various social, economic, age and regional groups. The constantly changing balance of power between these parties must, one way or another, be taken into account by the authorities when determining the future priorities of their strategy.

For example, relative success for the Communist Party, A Just Russia and candidates from other left-wing parties would be a signal that the authorities should pay more attention to social programmes, the fight against economic inequality and social polarisation, and to countering the many remnants of “wild capitalism” left over from the 1990s. Conversely, a large number of votes cast for the New People party and other right-wing candidates would provide grounds for accelerating structural economic reforms and creating additional opportunities for the private sector, including small and medium-sized businesses. Strong electoral results for the Liberal Democratic Party would indicate growing nationalist tendencies in Russian society. The authorities may respond to such political signals in different ways, but they cannot ignore them and must therefore read shifts in public sentiment correctly.

Moreover, it can be assumed with a considerable degree of confidence that the State Duma elections will, one way or another, lead to substantial changes in the composition of not only the lower house of the Russian parliament but also Russia’s federal government. Following the elections, significant personnel changes are likely to take place in the executive branch – both at the federal level and at other levels. Such personnel changes, in turn, will make room for fresh ideas, innovative programmes, unconventional projects and proposals. There is a clear demand for renewal in Russian society today. Parliamentary elections are one way of responding convincingly to this demand without calling into question the stability of the state’s overall strategy or its senior leadership.

The Duma elections are the first parliamentary elections held during the special military operation, during which Russian society has changed considerably. In a sense, they can be called a large-scale political experiment whose outcome remains difficult to predict with precision. For example, it is still difficult to determine with confidence which political force will be supported by the majority of people who have participated in the special military operation or who remain on the line of contact. No less uncertainty remains regarding the likely political preferences of many residents of the new Russian regions, for whom the September elections will be their first State Duma election in their new status.

Such an experiment probably carries a degree of risk for the Russian leadership. Nevertheless, the leadership appears prepared to take that risk, not without reason viewing elections not only as an important but as an indispensable mechanism for public confirmation of its continuing political legitimacy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Magdalena Andersson will likely face several challenges as she tries to get Sweden’s other left-wing parties to unite.

Sweden’s opposition leader has officially begun talks to form a coalition government after the country’s left-wing bloc won a slim majority in last week’s election.

Magdalena Andersson, leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, was asked by Parliament Speaker Andreas Norlen on Friday to begin efforts to form a new government.

Norlen’s request follows the resignation of centre-right Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who stepped down on Thursday after the general election result was confirmed.

“I have now been tasked with exploring the possibility of forming a government. A task I undertake with great humility and will act constructively to put together a new government,” Andersson said in a statement posted on Instagram.

“My approach to the work that is now taking place is that all political forces now need to put party tactics aside and put Sweden and the Swedish people first.”

Andersson will likely face a series of challenges as she tries to persuade Sweden’s other left-wing parties to unite and form a new administration. The left-wing bloc won 176 of Parliament’s 349 seats in last week’s vote, securing a razor-thin majority of three seats.

Andersson is expected to seek the support of three other left-wing parties: the Greens, the Centre Party and the Left Party.

The socialist Left Party says Andersson will have to award some of its MPs cabinet posts to win their support. However, the liberal Centre Party insists it will not support such a government.

Andersson has until September 28 to form a government. If she fails, Kristersson, whose centre-right bloc won 173 seats, will try to form a coalition.

Coalition and minority governments are common in Sweden because the country has two major left- and right-wing blocs, both of which contain four parties.

The process of forming a government following the 2022 election took more than a month.

HENRICO, Va. — In-person voting for this year’s midterm elections began Friday, ushering in the final six weeks for Americans to decide which party they trust to lead Congress through a cost-of-living crisis, a prolonged war in Iran and other pressing issues.

Election administrators say they are prepared and confident the vote will be accurate and secure. Nevertheless, President Trump has continued with efforts to denigrate certain voting methods and reshape how elections are run, through court challenges, an expansive federal hunt for noncitizen voters and a pressure campaign to force election officials to share sensitive voter data.

Friday marked the start of early voting in Virginia. Voters in a handful of other states, including Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota, can cast absentee ballots in person, typically at a local election office or voting center. More expansive early voting is scheduled to begin in those and other states in the coming weeks.

At a voting location in Fairfax, Virginia, 18-year-old college student Sanya Singhal was among the first to vote early in person Friday morning, arriving well before the site opened to get in line.

“Why not just have a little fun in life, you know, try to be the first early voter?” she said. “I really want to participate in my democracy.”

At a voting location in suburban Richmond, a poll worker rang a bell as the building opened and about a dozen voters in line began to file in. Stephen Gura was excited to be the first.

“This election is critical. We need to stop the Trump agenda. We need to start electing people who will stand up for people in this district,” said Gura, who added that he voted for U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, and Shannon Taylor, the Democratic nominee against Republican incumbent Rob Wittman in the 1st Congressional District.

The Nov. 3 election includes votes for governor and state legislature in most states and will determine whether Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House and Senate. If Democrats retake Congress, it will alter the trajectory of the final two years of Trump’s term, most likely leading to investigations and other oversight efforts.

Voting underway after unusual redistricting and Trump’s bid to control how elections are run

At the suburban Richmond voting center, a steady stream of voters flowed in and out for the first hour of early voting. William Curry, a 74-year-old retiree who described himself as a libertarian-leaning independent conservative, voted for Warner’s Republican challenger, Bert Mizusawa, and Wittman. Curry said he generally approves of the job Trump has done, apart from the war with Iran.

“He’s in a mess he can’t get rid of,” Curry said of the conflict.

On a rainy day in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Bill Goehring, 67, said he voted early at the county office because he will be traveling later. He voted for a mix of Democrats and independents, and said Trump’s “dictatorial tendencies are bad for America.”

The start of early voting comes at a time of deep angst among many Americans about issues including rising gas and grocery prices, the war in Iran, the looming risks of artificial intelligence and Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.

It also follows an unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House that began when Trump urged the Republican-controlled legislature in Texas to redraw its congressional map to help the party. California and other states followed.

The changes affect millions of people: Research shows 1 in 10 Americans this fall is a resident of a different congressional district than in 2024.

Those partisan efforts are expected to continue before the 2028 elections after a landmark ruling this year from the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the federal Voting Rights Act’s protections against racially discriminatory redistricting.

As the start of early voting approached, Trump was focused on efforts to assert federal control over election administration, even as the Constitution bestows the power to run elections on the states and, in some cases, Congress. The nation’s highest court rejected Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots this week, but several of his administration’s other efforts to influence the voting process and mine state voter lists for illegitimate voters continue.

Virginia’s attorney general said Thursday that Trump’s administration may have violated several of the state’s laws after a whistleblower accused federal employees of misrepresenting themselves on voter lookup tools to hunt for noncitizen voters. In a letter, Attorney General Jay Jones demanded that the Department of Homeland Security confirm in writing whether it had directed anyone to access Virginia voters’ information without first obtaining permission from those voters.

Trump for years has raised the specter of widespread noncitizen voting in U.S. elections, and this year is no exception. But despite his administration’s insistence that hundreds of thousands of people are illegally on voting rolls across the country, research continues to show noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare.

David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Republican president continues “his disinformation campaign and his attack on election officials.” But he said he thinks despite that and other challenges, “ultimately the process will hold as it has in past years.”

Advocates suggest voters cast their ballots early

Voting rights advocates have encouraged voters this year to cast mail ballots early, in part because of concerns about recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations that could delay the application of postmarks to ballots.

“Voting early, whether in person or by mail, is good for all of our communities because it gives voters options, eases lines on Election Day and can even mean faster results,” said Hannah Fried, co-founder and CEO of the voting rights group All Voting Is Local.

The top official at the U.S. Postal Service also encouraged voters who cast ballots by mail to get them in early.

“We say seven days,” postmaster general David Steiner said in an interview. “Everything is solved if people vote early.”

In a news briefing Thursday, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon urged people not to be swayed by stories they might have seen or read that cast doubt on election operations. They would be able to vote “just like they always have,” he said.

“I just want to reaffirm that Minnesota’s elections are fundamentally free, fair, accurate, honest and secure,” he said.

Swenson, Rankin and Raza write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York and Raza from Sioux Falls, S.D. AP writer Mike Catalini in Philadelphia and AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren in Fairfax, Va., contributed to this report.

Russians head to the polls from Friday to Sunday to elect members of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, in the first parliamentary election to be held since the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The vote comes as Russians face a slowing economy as well as Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries and warehouses far from the front line.

United Russia, the governing party that backs President Vladimir Putin, is expected to keep its dominant position.

The authorities are presenting the election as a chance for voters to have their say. Critics argue that with no genuine opposition on the ballot, the result is largely settled in advance.

So why are the elections worth watching? Here is what you need to know:

How do Russia’s elections work?

Starting Friday and lasting through Sunday, Russians will elect members of the lower house, the State Duma.

They will also cast ballots in local elections.

Voters in 11 regions will elect their governors, and 39 regions will elect members of regional legislatures.

Voting is spread over three days to boost turnout among the 111 million eligible voters and includes areas Russia occupies in Ukraine. Electronic voting is allowed.

Half of the Duma’s 450 seats are filled by party lists and the other half are contested in single-ballot races.

What is United Russia?

Russia’s governing party, formed in 2001 from a merger of pro-Kremlin parties, has backed Putin and dominated the parliament ever since.

United Russia won more than two-thirds of the Duma’s seats in the 2021 election. It is again poised to dominate the body.

The party’s list is led by political heavyweights: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat for 22 years, and Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s powerful mayor.

In an apparent bid to add fresh faces to what is widely seen as a party of bureaucrats, its third-highest-ranking official is war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny, who was badly wounded by a Ukrainian drone.

Members of United Russia have pledged to back the war effort and Putin’s maximalist goals in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Who else is running in Russia’s elections?

Alongside United Russia, other “systemic opposition” parties that vote in sync with the government on key issues are also expected to remain.

The liberal Yabloko Party, the only registered political party that opposes the war, was initially on the ballot, but the Supreme Court ordered it removed in August.

It cited, among other reasons, that the antiwar stance was akin to seeking the violation of Russia’s territorial integrity. Yabloko now runs only single-ballot races.

The Communist Party has been a leading force in the Federal Assembly since the 1990s, led for more than three decades by 82-year-old Gennady Zyuganov, a former Soviet official.

Throughout Putin’s rule of more than a quarter-century, the Communists have criticised some aspects of government policy but carefully avoided any criticism of him. They steadfastly support the war in Ukraine.

Alexander Bratersky, a political analyst and independent journalist, told Al Jazeera that the race for second place is worth watching.

If the Communist Party nab second, it would “suggest voters are angry about economic hardship and falling living standards”.

The Liberal Democratic Party, an ultranationalist force that has been a significant presence in the legislature since the early 1990s, will also likely retain some influence in the Duma.

Like the Communists, it staunchly supports the war and boasts of having multiple veterans as members.

Other smaller parties round out the ballot.

The party known as A Just Russia has been on Russia’s political scene for 20 years. A social-democratic party, it competes with the Communists for older and middle-aged voters nostalgic for the Soviet past, and it supports the war in Ukraine.

The New People Party was founded shortly before the last parliamentary election in 2021, seeking to position itself as a liberal voice representing younger voters and technocrats. It won just more than 5 percent of the vote, allowing it to form a small faction.

Bratersky described the party as “a liberal-leaning party backed by some Kremlin people who are more technocratic and more pro-peace”.

He said it appeals to the “middle-class audience”, and after the Kremlin banned Yabloko, it has been viewed as its substitute.

“So, if they come third with a good number of votes, this is a sign that those who are antiwar used them as their legal avatar,” he said.

Other parties seeking seats include Communists of Russia, a small rival of the main Communist Party; the Party of Pensioners; the Green Party; the Party of Direct Democracy; and the Motherland Party.

Why do the elections matter to the Kremlin?

While these elections may seem routine, the fact that they are the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is what makes them important, Bratersky told Al Jazeera.

He said that Putin has linked the elections to support for the war: Endorsing United Russia at its party congress in August, Putin said the party’s duty was “to do everything for victory” in the war in Ukraine.

“This shows that the Kremlin is a bit worried since the elections are the only legal way to show disrespect for the Kremlin,” Bratersky said. “Even Putin’s core fans hate United Russia as a corrupt force.”

How have past elections gone?

Since Putin first came to power in 2000, United Russia has won every Duma election, usually by a wide margin.

The results have repeatedly been disputed.

In 2011, allegations of vote-rigging set off the largest street protests of Putin’s rule.

After the 2021 vote, independent monitors and statisticians said the party’s real support was far lower than the official count.

The authorities have rejected claims of widespread fraud. Opposition parties and critics of the war have increasingly been kept off the ballot.

Israeli prime minister pledges to advance two bills aimed at addressing the ‘immense damage’ done to Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to pass a law that would revoke the citizenship of anyone who defames ⁠Israel’s soldiers, including the directors of NAZA, a documentary about Israeli soldiers’ killings of civilians in Gaza.

Directed by Israeli journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, NAZA documents allegations that mass civilian deaths were built into Israel’s target decisions in its genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza – something Netanyahu and the army reject.

The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival last week. During his acceptance speech, Abraham said “our country is doing these crimes” and highlighted that Israel is systematically and deliberately targeting Palestinians in Gaza.

“NAZA” takes its title from an Israeli ⁠military term for expected “collateral casualties” and is built around anonymous interviews with intelligence officers and soldiers.

It has been harshly criticised in Israel, with the military examining potential legal action against those involved in it.

But it has also played into the charged domestic political atmosphere before Israel’s October 27 election, as public opinion polls suggest Netanyahu’s ‌right-wing coalition could fall short of a majority in parliament.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu accused several of his election rivals of failing to take a tough stand against the documentary, claiming this made them unfit for office.

On Wednesday, he pledged to advance two bills that he said would address the “immense damage” done to Israeli soldiers in the film.

“The first [order]: To revoke the citizenship of anyone who defames [Israeli] soldiers, and the second: To hit them in their pockets and increase the statutory damages for defamation they can ⁠be sued for by 20 times,” Netanyahu said in a social media video. “We ⁠will hit them both in their pockets and in their citizenship, as their place is not with us.”

Netanyahu cited three examples in proposing the bills: “The recent film NAZA which portrayed [Israeli] officers and soldiers as war criminals”, 2025 remarks by left-wing ex-general-⁠turned-politician Yair Golan that “a sane country does not kill children as a hobby”, and a military legal officer’s 2024 leak of a video showing ⁠soldiers abusing a Gaza detainee.

In 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court passed a law that permits stripping citizenship from Israelis who carry out actions that constitute a breach of trust against the state. Any new legislation would likely face similar court challenges.

More than 73,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023, according to health authorities.

Fewer than half of Americans believe the upcoming midterm elections will be “free and fair,” amid a broader decline in confidence in vote counts, according to a new nationwide poll.

While 49% of respondents said they expected the elections to be free and fair, 23% said they did not expect them to be, and 28% said they didn’t know what to expect.

Americans are more confident that ballots, once cast, will be counted accurately, though their trust in that varies depending on their political affiliation — with 63% of Democrats, 58% of Republicans and 49% of independent voters saying they are either “somewhat” or “very” confident in an accurate count, the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections at UC San Diego poll found.

That is a sharp decline from after the 2024 election, when 77% of Democrats, 82% of Republicans and 73% of independents expressed such confidence, the same pollsters found then.

Lauren Prather, one of the center’s co-directors, said the latest findings reflect a decline in trust but also nuance in how respondents understand what it means to have a “free and fair” election — with an accurate count of cast ballots being a major factor, but not the only one.

Of those respondents who said they don’t know if the election will be free and fair, about a third — 31% — also said that they were “somewhat confident” that the vote would be counted accurately, Prather said.

The poll also asked an open-ended question, inviting respondents to share what a “free and fair” election means to them, she said, and trust in the count was a “central part of people’s definition” and a “dominant theme.” However, they also identified other things, she said — with about a quarter of respondents also pointing to “voter access and voter eligibility, as well as freedom from interference and intimidation and having a real choice of candidates,” Prather said.

“In other words, trust in the count is the anchor of how Americans understand what it means to be free and fair but it sits within a broader set of concerns about the integrity of the whole process,” she said.

The polling reflects an American electorate that has grown increasingly concerned about U.S. elections amid unprecedented claims of widespread voter fraud from President Trump and his administration, and increasing warnings from Democrats and independent election experts that those claims — which Trump has made without evidence and which experts deny — are part of a broader effort to interfere with the election and intimidate voters.

Thad Kousser, the center’s other co-director, said the findings are in line with a broader era of distrust in civic institutions in the U.S., but also a result of the fact that “people are following different signals from their leaders” as to the trustworthiness of U.S. elections — with vastly different messaging coming from leaders on the left and the right.

Poll respondents shared some concerns about the fairness of the November midterms, he said, but also split by wide margins on other concerns based on their political affiliation.

Voters across party lines shared concerns about gerrymandering, the poll found — with 48% of both Democrats and independents and 36% of Republicans saying they distrust that congressional district lines are drawn in a way that fairly reflects what voters want.

“Nobody has loved the redistricting wars that have been a big story throughout this year,” Kousser said.

After Trump urged Texas and other Republican-led states to launch unprecedented mid-decade efforts to redraw their congressional lines to bolster their party’s chances of retaining control of the legislature through the remainder of Trump’s term, Democrats fought back — including in California, where voters passed Proposition 50 to allow state Democrats to redraw congressional lines in their party’s favor.

On potential foreign interference, 32% of Democrats, 42% of independents and 48% of Republicans said they didn’t trust that U.S. elections are well-protected.

More than three-quarters of Americans — including 79% of Democrats, 76% of Republicans and 75% of independents — said they were “concerned that misleading audio or video ‘deepfakes’ created using AI will impact” the midterms.

But on other issues — including those most discussed by the political establishment — the political divide was much starker, the poll found.

For example, while 53% of Republicans said they distrust that ballots are counted accurately, just 19% of Democrats said so. While 52% of Republicans said they distrust that noncitizens are prevented from voting, just 12% of Democrats said so.

Meanwhile, Democrats and independents were more concerned than Republicans about eligible voters being able to cast their ballots without facing obstacles or intimidation, the poll found.

Many poll respondents said they expected to face intimidation from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at or near polling locations — with such fears being particularly pronounced among voters of color, who were about four times as likely as white respondents to say they expected such intimidation, the poll found.

While 49% of Black respondents, 45% of “Hispanic” respondents and 40% of Asian American and Pacific Islander respondents said they expected to face intimidation, just 11% of white respondents said so, the poll found.

Overall, 35% of respondents said an ICE presence would make them less confident of an accurate vote count, compared with 23% who said it would make them more confident. Those responses also varied greatly by race — and partisan leaning.

White respondents were nearly split, with 29% saying it would make them less confident and 28% saying it would make them more confident. Respondents of other races were vastly more likely to say an ICE presence would make them less confident — with 38% of Black respondents saying they would be less confident and 10% saying they would be more confident; 43% of “Hispanic” respondents saying less and 18% saying more; and 57% of AAPI respondents saying less and just 6% saying more.

Nearly 60% of Democrats said an ICE presence would lower their confidence, and less than 8% said it would increase their confidence. Among Republicans, meanwhile, about 46% said it would increase their confidence, and less than 9% said it would decrease it.

Kousser said the polling gives the sense that a “free and fair” election “means something more to people than simply tallying up correctly the votes of those who were able to cast a ballot.”

“You might doubt that the election was free and fair if you are concerned that congressional districts are gerrymanders, or that some voters stayed away from the polls because of worries about intimidation, or that some people cast a ballot who were not, in fact, eligible,” he said. “These concerns, which can come from all different parts of the ideological spectrum, could lead people to be concerned that [a] ‘correctly counted’ election was not, in fact, fully free and fair.”

Kousser and Prather said what effect diminished trust in elections will have on the midterms and how Americans view the results remains unclear, but will depend in part on how close the election is and what messaging leaders — particularly Trump — share about the results once they come in. Prather said she did not expect it to diminish turnout.

The national survey of 5,016 American adults was conducted Sept. 1-9, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4%.

The United States Supreme Court has rejected Donald Trump’s bid to restrict voting by mail ahead of the November midterm elections, in a setback to the US president’s efforts to change rules governing elections.

The ruling on Monday by the conservative supermajority court allows states to continue sending out mail ballots as they have done for years, dealing a blow to Trump’s plans to stop the ballots before the elections and halting possible last-minute legal actions as voting begins in some states.

Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the security of mail-in voting, citing debunked claims of widespread election fraud associated with it. That is despite the president voting by mail himself, including during the 2024 election.

Mail ballots, in place for decades, have been found to increase voter turnout and currently account for a third of all votes cast in the US.

Here’s what we know about the legal challenge to overturn them:

What are mail-in votes?

Voting by post works by sending ballots to the homes of registered voters, who then mail them back before a deadline.

Eight states, several of them Democratic-leaning – California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington – as well as the District of Columbia, allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail.

Others only allow smaller elections to be conducted by mail.

Although there are cases of forgery or repeat voting, they are rare and amount to just four in 10 million mailed votes, according to the Brookings Institution.

What has Trump said about the mail-in votes?

Trump falsely blamed his 2020 presidential election loss on mail-in voting fraud. He and his supporters also opposed changes made during the COVID pandemic to expand mail-in voting.

During the 2020 Republican National Convention, Trump called mail-in voting changes “the greatest scam in the history of politics”.

His attempt to push the SAVE America Act, which calls for sweeping voting laws, has stalled in the US Senate. The bill, passed in the House of Representatives in February, faces opposition over concerns that millions of voters will be disenfranchised.

How did Trump target mail-in votes?

In March 2026, Trump signed an executive order directing the US Postal Service to take control of mail voting by designing new envelopes with special barcodes that would allow the federal government to ensure ballots are only from eligible voters.

For the midterms, that move would force all states to adopt a uniform envelope style in a short time.

The order also required states to provide the US Postal Service with a list of eligible voters ahead of elections. Several government departments, including Homeland Security and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, would also have the voters’ lists.

The postal agency was additionally empowered to deny mailed ballots if they did not comply with new standards or were not associated with registered voters on the states’ lists.

What happened to the order?

Democrats and activists challenged the order in several courts, resulting in a series of back-and-forth rulings between May and August.

US District Judge Indira Talwani imposed an injunction against the rule in June on the basis that it likely violated the US Constitution. Talwani also noted in her injunction that Trump’s executive order would be impossible to apply when the midterms were already so close.

But her ruling was overturned by the conservative-majority Supreme Court in late August in a temporary judgement.

The Supreme Court had not decided at the time whether Trump’s move was constitutionally legal. Rather, it only sided with the Trump administration on procedural grounds after the administration argued that Democrats sued too soon.

What does the latest judgement mean?

In the latest and final decision, the Supreme Court refused to lift Judge Talwani’s injunction.

In a brief written order that did not go into detail, the court noted that the administration was likely to fail in its push to restrict mail-in votes ahead of the midterms.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump, voted with the majority against the administration, though he indicated he could support the policy at a later stage. Two judges, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented.

Critics have long warned that restricting mail-in ballots could disenfranchise some voters who typically rely on this method.

It could also disrupt the delivery of mailed votes, as some states, including Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin, have begun sending in midterm ballots.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail, ruling it is too late to impose new postal service rules for the November election.

The justices on Monday turned down an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers, who argued the government needed a new and untested system of unique bar codes to track all the ballots of the tens of millions of people who vote by mail.

Instead, the justices left in place a judge’s order that prevents the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing the new rules for the midterm elections.

Concurring, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed it was too late to enforce the new rules for this election.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The decision in USPS vs. California is a victory for California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general for 22 other Democratic-led states who sued to block the new rules.

Last week, they warned there would be chaos and confusion if Trump’s rules were put in effect now.

Bonta cheered the decision late Monday, calling it “a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law” in a case where the stakes “could not have been higher.”

“Voting is the fundamental right from which all other rights flow, and all 50 states allow ballots to be cast by mail in some form. In California and several other states, mail voting is the primary way elections are conducted,” Bonta said. “Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic.”

He said his office “will remain vigilant in safeguarding our elections,” and urged voters to make their voices heard.

Under the proposed rules, state and county election officials across the nation would be required to enroll each voter with a unique bar code and submit this data to a new online portal that, as of last week, was not yet functioning.

Without the individualized bar codes, states could not send ballots through the mail. In California, that would mean election officials would have to enroll 23 million voters with new bar codes before state ballots could be mailed.

“Compliance with the USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the state attorneys general told the court last week.

The impact would not be limited to Democratic-leaning states. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said it would be “an unmitigated disaster” if the new rules were put into effect now. About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast ballots by mail in 2024.

But Trump has maintained, without providing evidence, that voting by mail leads to widespread cheating and fraud.

In March, he issued an executive order that called on the postal service to do more to “enhance election integrity.”

“Unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots,” he said.

Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.

State attorneys general argued that the Constitution entrusts states, not federal officials, to conduct elections. While Congress may impose new rules, it is not done to limit voting by mail or to empower the postal service to do so, they said.

Trump and his lawyers maintained the administration had a duty to combat fraud, including in elections.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer described the new rules as “modest measures that will help prevent and restrain potential gross abuses of the mails to perpetrate a fraud on the Nation.”

And he said the federal government, the states and the voting public would face irreparable harm if the new Postal Service rules were not allowed to be applied to the coming election.

But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, in Boston, ruled the postal service may not put its new regulations into effect for the Nov. 3 election. She found the Trump administration had presented no evidence to the court of widespread fraud existing, while the states had presented ample evidence that implementing such a system on such a fast timeline posed tremendous risk.

The 1st Circuit Court affirmed her order and said the administration’s lawyers “have not even seriously challenged the … detailed findings about the chaos and widespread disenfranchisement that would occur between now and November 3 should the USPS rule take immediate effect.”

On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — also blocked the new Postal Service rules from being implemented in separate cases brought by the NAACP and Democratic groups, finding they clearly exceeding the Postal Service’s authority in elections.

What the future will hold is unclear. The courts did not declare the new rules to be illegal or unconstitutional, though multiple lower courts have suggested that parts of the plan likely would be — including by exceeding the Postal Service’s authority to intervene in elections.

Much of the debate before the appellate and high court related to the rushed timeline under which the Postal Service was seeking to implement the changes. With that set aside by the Supreme Court’s ruling that the rules will not apply this election, the debate in the lower courts may shift focus to whether the new regulations can be applied to the 2028 elections.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, chair of the Democratic Assn. of Secretaries of State, said the high court’s ruling was a clear loss for Trump, and that state election officials are ready to continue their fight to protect U.S. elections if necessary.

“This ruling affirms what our Constitution has always held: Elections belong to the American people, not a desperate man in Washington,” he said.

Opposition bloc leads in tight Swedish election with 95% counted.

Sweden’s centre-left opposition bloc has held a narrow lead as the far-right party saw its support slip, with about 95 percent of the districts counted.

The Swedish Election Authority reported on Monday that the four opposition parties were projected to hold 176 seats in the 349-seat parliament, called the Riksdag, while the remaining 173 would go to four parties that make up or support the current conservative-led government.

Results may not be clear until early votes and overseas ballots are counted on Wednesday. If the left-leaning bloc emerges victorious, it could take even longer to form a government because of ideological tensions among its parties.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is seeking a second term and has been leading the country since 2022 with a centre-right coalition that relies on the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots. He could remain in office if the left-wing bloc wins its thin majority but fails to form a government.

The Sweden Democrats saw an unexpected drop in support, losing three percentage points compared with the 2022 general election, slipping from 20.5 percent to 17.5 percent. This marked the first time the far-right party suffered a loss in voter backing since it entered parliament in 2010.

Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats held onto first place, but a 28.1 percent share registered as one of their worst performances in more than 100 years, complicating any bid to assemble a working majority.

While the result appears somewhat out of step with recent far-right gains across parts of Europe, including Germany and Italy, the Sweden Democrats remain firmly entrenched as a dominant force in parliament.

The dip in support could be tied to changing voter priorities. In the past, many people voted for the far right, “simply because they liked their stance on refugees”, without necessarily agreeing with other policy positions, Anders Sannerstedt, a political scientist at Lund University, told AFP.

Even with a reduced vote share, the Sweden Democrats retain substantial leverage.

A closely divided legislature leaves any future government with a fragile working margin, ensuring the party remains an unavoidable force in parliament.

More broadly, the Sweden Democrats have already rewritten the boundaries of Swedish politics. Over the past decade, its once-fringe demands for strict asylum caps, easier deportations and tougher policing have been absorbed into the mainstream, with both the centre-right coalition and the Social Democrats shifting rightward to match public sentiment.

Democratic state parties announced Monday that they are launching an operation for the midterm elections they’re calling the “New Battlefield Project,” intended to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up.

Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are distributing white papers advising judges what they should do if the government tries to seize ballots.

The unprecedented efforts are in response to President Trump’s equally unprecedented moves to interfere in this year’s midterm elections, which include attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements to register to vote and directing the Postal Service to play a central role in deciding which voters should get a mail ballot.

The anxious contingency planning as voting gets underway has become a marker for how fraught democracy has become in the country that once stood as an example to the world.

“We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have now,” said Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible.

Trump has given Democrats plenty of reasons to organize a resistance

Democrats say they have reason to plan for doomsday scenarios. During his first term, Trump refused to accept his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden and attempted to overturn the vote, only to be defied by career officials and more establishment Republicans. Upon returning to power, Trump has stocked his administration with those who helped his 2020 efforts, has used the federal government to target his political enemies and pardoned more than 1,000 people prosecuted for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that was intended to halt the certification of Biden’s win.

Incumbent presidents’ parties usually lose ground in the midterms, but Trump has pulled out the stops to try to keep that from happening this time. He’s demanded Republicans redraw maps to create more safe seats for themselves in the House of Representatives, held last week’s unusual midterm convention and tried to change election rules even as states begin to send out ballots.

The advice for judges asked to approve search warrants for ballots, for example, was inspired by the Trump administration’s seizure of 2020 ballots and other election records in Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta, based on old, disproven conspiracy theories.

Rick Hasen, a UCLA Law professor and director of the school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, noted that Trump has expressed regret that he didn’t take more aggressive action to overturn the 2020 results, such as ordering voting machines to be seized.

“All these things take what was off the wall and put it on the wall,” Hasen said. He said that while it is important not to unduly scare voters about what might happen, it’s “hard to walk the line between alarmism and complacency.”

Trump’s actions worry Democrats. Administration calls them common sense

Last year, Democrats worried that Trump might intervene in off-year elections in California, Virginia and elsewhere, only to have voting go smoothly with no clashes with the federal government.

“The only ‘fears’ Americans have about our elections are being fueled by extreme liberal Democrats who refuse to support commonsense legislation that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections and other basic election security measures like Voter ID,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Blis said in a statement.

Still, the stakes are far higher in the midterms, which will determine whether Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress. So far Trump has been unable to change voting procedures before the midterms.

Courts halted Trump’s first attempt to reshape election rules via executive order last year. The president backed a bill in Congress to make even more sweeping changes but it’s stalled in the Senate because of opposition from Democrats and some Republicans.

Then Trump tried to limit mail voting by executive order, but the courts again blocked it, saying the changes couldn’t happen before the midterms. That case is before the Supreme Court. Election officials warn that it would be impossible to implement Trump’s requirements in time for this election.

Litigation about election rules has reached such a pitch that the National Bar Association last week announced an initiative to help voters of both parties understand last-minute election rule changes and to create a hotline for those who encounter trouble casting ballots.

Concerns that polling places will become targets for immigration agents

Every election, the two major parties mobilize massive operations of attorneys, staffers and volunteers to monitor polling places and ballot counting. The Republican National Committee said it’s already recruited a record number of poll watchers.

“The RNC has spent this entire cycle preparing not just to defy history in November, but to protect it,” spokeswoman Ally Triolo said. “We’ve built the largest election integrity operation in Republican Party history because our mission is simple: secure every legal vote and ensure Americans can trust the outcome of our elections.”

Democrats also have expanded their operations, and the Association of State Democratic Parties is adding to that effort with its “battlefield” recruitment project. That also will include a network to share information about online threats and manipulation, said Jane Kleeb, the chair of the group and of the Nebraska Democratic Party.

“If they’re saying they’re going to put armed people outside polling places, we should put friendly people outside polling locations to film them,” Kleeb said in an interview. “There’s a whole new battlefield we have now.”

Kleeb was referring to widespread fears among Democrats that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be deployed to the polls, something that multiple administration officials for months have denied will happen. There have been scattered instances of ICE officers at polling places over the past year, usually saying they’re in pursuit of or investigating a specific person. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this month it’s possible that could happen again in November.

In an indication of the distrust of the administration’s reassurances, civil rights groups and the city of Denver last week filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to formally bar ICE from polling places. They cited a law dating to the Civil War era prohibiting armed federal agents at election sites.

“This administration is basically using the rhetoric that undocumented citizens are voting and that they’re going to have DHS and ICE at the polls to try and intimidate and suppress the Latino vote,” said Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the plaintiffs.

Activists see Minneapolis immigration protests as a midterms model

A staple of the election buildup is a series of tabletop exercises in which each side runs hypothetical scenarios to practice its response. As part of that, Democrats and civil rights groups are rehearsing for the possible deployment of ICE agents or the National Guard to polling sites, although the Pentagon has said it has no plans to deploy troops to the polls.

Levin, of Indivisible, said his group has run 17 different scenarios preparing for what could happen in November. But the first priority, he said, is to boost turnout.

The No Kings network, which has spearheaded large anti-Trump protests over the president’s second term and includes Indivisible, is launching a campaign encouraging early voting that will peak with rallies Oct. 17.

Others are organizing among both left-wing and more traditional groups to push back if the administration is aggressive in November. Some look to the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis as a possible model.

Two activists were shot and killed by ICE agents during those January demonstrations, and the administration eventually backed off the aggressive crackdown the president had launched against the city.

“We recognize there might be a similar moment in November, where Trump attempts to do that again, where everyday working people and students need to band together and say, ‘Actually, no, this is our country, you don’t get to decide who gets elected or who gets to take office,’” said Kidus Girma of the left-wing Sunrise Movement.

Riccardi and Brown write for the Associated Press.

On Monday, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in the Philippines will hold its first parliamentary election since it was established in 2018. The vote will officially mark the end of the transition period under the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA), an interim regional government appointed in 2019.

The election is a significant milestone in the Bangsamoro struggle. It is the outcome of decades of armed conflict and negotiations between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government of the Philippines.

The vote will test the Philippine government’s commitment to the peace process and the MILF’s commitment to the democratic process.

The struggle for self-determination

BARMM is located on Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippine Archipelago, and it covers roughly the territories inhabited by the Moro people, a native Muslim-majority group. For centuries, the Moro enjoyed self-governance in independent states and resisted Spanish colonialism. Following the Philippines’s independence in 1946, they continued their struggle for self-determination.

In 1989, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was created by Manila to give some devolved rights to the Moro. However, ARMM largely failed to address local grievances and demands due to its weak structural power. It was given limited autonomy in political and fiscal decision-making, but it did not manage to improve socioeconomic conditions in the region. The MILF continued the armed struggle.

In 2012, President Benigno Aquino III recognised the ARMM as a “failed experiment”. Under his administration, the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro was signed between the government and the MILF, paving the way for a new political entity.

Six years later, under President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, the Organic Law for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was promulgated. This legislation granted the region greater fiscal autonomy, a regional government, a parliament, and a justice system.

Then the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro was concluded to outline the mechanism of transition from ARMM to BARMM and set up the MILF-dominated BTA to lead it. All of this is culminating in the parliamentary election, which will determine the makeup of the region’s first legislative body.

A contested election

The vote comes at a time of heightened tensions in BARMM and internal divisions within the MILF. Two camps have emerged within the movement – one loyal to MILF Chair Al Haj Murad Ebrahim and another supporting Chief Minister Abdulraof Macacua.

Last month, Macacua joined the newly formed Bangsamoro Federalist Party (BFP), which will compete in the elections against the MILF’s political wing, the United Bangsamoro Justice Party (UBJP). Shortly after, his convoy was attacked, but he survived unscathed.

In early September, Macacua and 40 commanders were dismissed from the MILF’s military wing for alleged insubordination.

These tensions have prompted increased public anxiety about possible post-election unrest. There are other factors that could overshadow the vote.

In past elections, vote-buying was widespread, election-related violence was rampant, and electoral fraud and manipulation were pervasive. If these practices repeat at a large scale, the electoral outcome may not necessarily provide a straightforward measure of the will of Bangsamoro’s people. It may also not be an accurate reflection of whether they are satisfied with the transitional government or not.

The MILF presents itself as a champion of moral governance. If it is to retain this label, it should not give in to widespread vote-buying and electoral manipulation. It should also not let internal rivalries turn violent.

But there are already some alarming signs. Prominent MILF figures have conveyed that if the UBJP, the front’s political wing, sees manipulation and fraud, its members are ready to fight. They have also suggested that since the MILF led the transition, it should remain in power. On social media, some citizens have condemned the MILF camp’s threats, calling such tactics un-Islamic.

Before the vote, Manila has deployed military forces in key areas. This has heightened people’s fears that fighting with the MILF may erupt. The tense situation might lead to a low voter turnout.

Under these circumstances, the future of the Bangsamoro is riddled with uncertainties.

Whatever happens in the election, we must remember that the future of BARMM is a shared responsibility. The Philippine government and the Bangsamoro parties are duty-bound to honour the peace agreement. In addition, the people must exercise their civic rights and responsibilities to help sustain the peace achieved after a long and painful armed conflict and to move toward a prosperous Bangsamoro land.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

ATLANTA — Security researchers say rapid advances in artificial intelligence are making it more critical to address a flaw in Georgia’s voting equipment that can allow voters to be matched to their ballots after they have been cast.

The system’s vulnerability has been drawing increased attention, with election security advocates criticizing state election officials for failing to fix it before the November elections. Georgia election officials say they have taken steps to address the potential harm, but some advocates say the state is not going far enough.

The vulnerability does not allow votes to be changed or cast doubt on election results, but it could let someone see how others voted. That is important because ballot secrecy is a fundamental right under the state constitution, and violations could create an opening for legal challenges.

The development comes in an election season of uncertainty, as President Trump threatens to interfere with the midterms, and he has long demanded that states turn over voter rolls. Georgia has been a particular focus, as Trump continues to deny he lost the state in 2020 to Joe Biden. Earlier this year, the FBI seized ballots cast in that election from a Fulton County election hub.

While the flaw in Georgia has been known for a few years, the widespread adoption of AI tools and the blistering pace of its sophistication have election security experts raising alarms.

This is “a bit of a wake-up call because it illustrates how much more easily vulnerabilities can be exploited now that AI can do all of the technical work for you,” said J. Alex Halderman, a voting technology specialist at the University of Michigan who was part of the team that exposed the flaw.

Other jurisdictions across the country use the same voting equipment made by Liberty Vote, which was known as Dominion Voting Systems before the company was sold. But many have applied a software update to fix the flaw, and some other states do not allow the public release of records that are needed to exploit it, said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group focused on election technology.

Georgia, a presidential battleground with one of the nation’s most closely watched U.S. Senate races this year, is the only place where the system is used statewide. Lindeman said that, combined with an open records law that has allowed access to key documents, creates a “perfect storm.”

“It’s really embarrassing that this is still a possibility,” Lindeman said.

How does voting work in Georgia?

Georgia voters make their selections on touchscreen voting machines that print paper ballots voters insert into scanners to tally the votes.

Such cast-vote records detail the votes from each ballot. Those records and electronic ballot images created by the scanners are randomized. But the software flaw allows them to be put back in the order they were cast, according to a report by researchers who discovered it in 2022.

Along with other publicly available data, that information could be used to match voters to their ballots, the researchers wrote.

Max Springer, a Princeton University researcher who was not involved in the original research and studies AI, said he gave a publicly available AI assistant that research. He said it was able to reverse the shuffling of electronic ballot records from Georgia’s May primary and then tell him what other records it would need to match names to ballots.

He then gave the AI assistant the early voting list for the counties he examined and the cast-vote record file, which could be obtained through a public records request. It was able to create “buckets of ballots and potential voters,” he wrote in a blog post. In many instances, that made it possible to match voters to their ballots.

In cases where ambiguity remained, he wrote, he got the public audit log for the ballot scanners and precinct check-in records and was able to match most ballots to specific voters.

“AI coding tools are essentially supercharging laymen people to exploit vulnerabilities,” Springer said in an interview.

Why does ballot secrecy matter?

Georgia’s Constitution says elections “shall be by secret ballot,” and state law requires voting machines to “permit voting in absolute secrecy so that no person can see or know any other elector’s votes.”

A lack of ballot secrecy can make it easier to buy or sell votes and increase the danger of coercion to vote a certain way by family members, political organizations, employers or government officials. It also is information that could be invaluable to political campaigns.

Gabriel Sterling, special projects manager in the secretary of state’s office, pushed back on the concerns. He said it would be easier to use mail ballots if vote-buying or coercion was the goal and that it probably would be cheaper for campaigns to just increase outreach to voters who fit a certain profile than try to identify voters this way.

State Election Board member Salleigh Grubbs proposed a rule during the board’s August meeting that would have required the secretary of state’s office to apply the software update recommended by the manufacturer by Tuesday.

“Each [voter] has one vote, and no one is entitled to know how it was cast,” Grubbs said. “That privacy protects more than the individual voter. It protects the integrity of the entire election.”

In a letter to the election board, an agency lawyer argued that the update has not been certified by the secretary of state, the implementation would take months, and the Legislature has not provided necessary funding. The board rejected Grubbs’ proposal. Some members said they did not believe they had the authority to order the secretary of state to act and they raised concerns about the short timeline before the November midterms.

Board member Sara Tindall Ghazal, who voted against the proposal, said it is “intensely frustrating” that the software update has not been applied. But she pointed out that it is a felony to reveal how someone voted, which should serve as a deterrent.

“I hate the fact that it’s even physically possible, but there are very, very severe penalties if somebody were to actually do this,” she said.

What’s being done?

The secretary of state’s office sent guidance to county election officials instructing them to refer open records requests for certain records to the secretary of state’s office. It will release them with the problematic information blacked out and decline to release other information and documents.

Sterling said the office is working with a vendor to scramble the original order of ballot images and cast-vote records before they are made public. Halderman said that precaution would be necessary to keep someone from reconstructing the order.

While some other jurisdictions have applied the software update that reportedly fixes the problem, some have done what Georgia is now trying to do by restricting public access to the records needed to exploit the flaw.

Marilyn Marks is executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, which advocates for election transparency and security and raised the alarm about the vulnerability. She argued that withholding documents is not the solution and that steps need to be taken to ensure ballots cannot be traced to voters in the first place.

“When Georgia’s election records contain identifiers that can be used to trace ballots to voters, the only legal and acceptable answer is to stop recording that information — not restrict public access to sensitive unlawful information to insiders and commercial vendors,” she said.

With time growing short before the elections, Marks said a workable interim solution would be to collect ballots in locked boxes at precincts and then shuffle and scan them at a central tabulating center.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.

The far-right Sweden Democrats party could enter government for the first time if right-wing bloc wins.

Voters in Sweden are heading to the polls in an extremely close general election that will see either the far right enter government for the first time or the centre-left opposition reclaim power.

Opposition leader Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats was among the first to cast her ballot after polling stations opened at 8:00am (06:00 GMT) on Sunday.

The 59-year-old, who in 2021 became the first woman to serve as Sweden’s prime minister, voted with her husband at a school in her home municipality of Nacka, south of Stockholm.

Pre-election opinion polls have long credited the four parties in her left-wing bloc with a comfortable lead over conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s four-party alliance, which includes the far-right Sweden Democrats.

But the gap narrowed significantly in the final days of the campaign.

“It is now up to the Swedish people to decide which direction our country should take. Should we have a government entirely dominated by the Sweden Democrats? Something that has never happened in Sweden before? Or should we have a government led by me, which will steer Sweden in a new spirit of cooperation?” Andersson told reporters after voting.

Her party has pledged to boost the welfare state and help struggling households cope with the rising cost of living.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is seeking a second four-year term at the helm of the European Union nation.

He has led Sweden since 2022 with a three-party centre-right coalition. It relies on outside support from the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration, far-right party that has moved towards the political mainstream, for a parliamentary majority.

If the right-wing bloc is re-elected, the Sweden Democrats can expect Cabinet posts in the next government.

Kristersson has promised to focus on improving Swedes’ everyday lives, following his government’s clampdown on organised crime and immigration.

“We want to use our new and far better preconditions to improve the lives of ordinary people … to make Sweden great again,” Kristersson told news agency AFP before the vote.

The Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, took 20.5 percent of the vote in the 2022 election to become the biggest party on the right.

Kristersson announced in April that his conservative Moderates would allow the party into government if the right has a majority – though he would remain prime minister even if the Sweden Democrats are the stronger party.

Voting stations close at 8:00pm (18:00 GMT) when exit polls are expected to be published, with the first reliable results expected several hours later.

Some eight million people are eligible to vote in the election, in a country of 10.6 million where voter turnout regularly tops 80 percent.

About half of voters have cast their ballots in advance.

President Donald Trump is making himself the centre of the Republican Party’s campaign for the 2026 midterm elections, but growing concerns within his own party are raising questions about whether a Trump focused strategy can attract the independent voters Republicans need to retain control of Congress.

At the Republican Party’s first ever midterm convention in Dallas this week, Trump urged voters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot” as he sought to recreate the enthusiasm and turnout that helped him win the presidency in 2016 and 2024.

The strategy is designed to energise Trump’s loyal supporters, but it comes with significant risks. Trump’s approval ratings have fallen sharply among independents, while inflation and the war with Iran have created vulnerabilities for Republicans seeking to defend their congressional majorities.

Trump Puts Himself at the Centre

Trump’s message at the convention was straightforward: the midterms should be treated as a referendum on his presidency.

Rather than allowing individual Republican candidates to campaign primarily on local issues, the party is seeking to nationalise the election around Trump’s agenda and political brand.

The approach reflects Trump’s continued dominance within the Republican Party. His most committed supporters remain highly loyal, and party activists believe his presence can motivate voters who might otherwise stay home during a midterm election.

But the strategy also exposes Republicans to Trump’s weaknesses.

A president who is popular among Republican voters but significantly less popular with independents could become an obstacle for candidates fighting in competitive districts and states.

The Independent Voter Problem

The divide between Republican voters and independents is particularly important.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in late August found Trump’s overall approval rating at 33%, the lowest level of his presidency. His approval among Republicans stood at 82%, while among independents it had fallen to 22%.

That creates a difficult electoral calculation.

Republicans need Trump’s supporters to turn out, but they also need to persuade voters who are not firmly aligned with either party.

Five of the 15 Republicans interviewed at the convention expressed doubts about whether Trump was the party’s strongest messenger for reaching independents.

Even those who supported putting Trump at the centre of the campaign acknowledged that the strategy carried risks.

The Economy Could Be Trump’s Biggest Vulnerability

The convention also highlighted a gap between Trump’s political messaging and voters’ economic concerns.

The high cost of living remains one of the most important issues facing American voters, but Trump devoted relatively little attention in his convention speeches to addressing those concerns.

He instead claimed that food prices were rapidly declining, despite government data indicating otherwise.

Trump also promised a $5,000 “Trump dividend” for every American adult if Republicans retain control of Congress, without explaining how the payments would be financed.

The economic issue presents a particular challenge because Republicans cannot rely solely on Trump’s popularity with their base if voters are dissatisfied with their personal financial circumstances.

Republicans Still See Trump as Their Best Option

Despite the concerns, most Republicans at the convention supported the strategy.

Ten of the 15 Republicans interviewed said putting Trump front and centre was the party’s best approach. They argued that his ability to energise Republican voters outweighed the risks created by his lower support among the broader electorate.

For many Republicans, the alternative may appear even less attractive.

Trump remains the party’s most powerful political figure, and his supporters are among the most engaged parts of the Republican electorate.

The question is whether that enthusiasm can be converted into the broader coalition required to win competitive races.

Democrats Welcome the Strategy

Democrats have little incentive to discourage Republicans from making the election a referendum on Trump.

The Democratic Party can use the president’s economic record, approval ratings and handling of foreign policy to argue that voters should reject Republican candidates as a way of rejecting Trump’s agenda.

Republicans are attempting to counter that strategy by portraying Democrats as increasingly radical and warning that a Democratic victory would threaten American values and way of life.

For Republican activists, the argument is that concerns about the Democratic Party could ultimately outweigh dissatisfaction with Trump.

But that calculation may be more difficult in closely contested districts where voters are less ideologically committed.

Vulnerable Republicans Keep Their Distance

The tension between Trump’s national strategy and individual candidates’ electoral needs was visible at the convention itself.

Some of the Republican Party’s most vulnerable candidates did not attend the Dallas gathering, instead remaining focused on their own districts.

For candidates representing competitive areas, distancing themselves from the national political environment could allow them to emphasise local concerns and avoid becoming entirely associated with Trump’s approval ratings.

That creates a potential contradiction within the Republican campaign.

The party leadership wants Trump at the centre of the election, while some candidates may have more to gain by keeping their own campaigns focused on local voters.

What Comes Next?

Trump is likely to remain heavily involved in the Republican campaign as the midterms approach.

His political organisation can provide candidates with fundraising, publicity and access to a highly motivated voter base.

But Republican candidates will have to decide how closely they want to associate themselves with him, particularly in competitive districts.

The party’s success may ultimately depend on whether it can combine Trump’s ability to mobilise his core supporters with messages that address the economic concerns of independent and moderate voters.

Implications and Analysis

The Republican Party’s dilemma is fundamentally about the difference between mobilising voters and persuading voters.

Trump is highly effective at the first. His political brand can generate enthusiasm among Republicans and give supporters a reason to participate in an election in which he himself is not on the ballot.

The harder question is whether he can do the second.

Midterm elections are not presidential elections, and congressional candidates often need to build broader coalitions than those required to win a party’s presidential nomination. If Republican candidates make the election entirely about Trump, they may benefit from stronger turnout among his supporters but also inherit his weaknesses among independents.

The Dallas convention therefore represents a calculated gamble.

Republicans appear to believe that Trump’s ability to energise their base is more valuable than the potential cost of alienating voters outside it. Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to welcome any strategy that allows them to make the election a referendum on a president whose approval among independents has fallen sharply.

The Republican Party’s challenge will be to ensure that Trump remains an electoral asset rather than becoming the only issue voters are asked to consider.

If his political machinery succeeds in bringing disengaged Republicans back to the polls, the strategy could strengthen the party’s position.

But if economic dissatisfaction and concerns about Trump’s broader record dominate among independents, putting him at the centre of the campaign could give Democrats exactly what they want: a national election in which every Republican candidate is forced to defend a president who is not actually on the ballot.

With information from Reuters.

Members of the high court have exchanged accusations after one justice was accused of involvement in a bank scandal.

Brazil’s Supreme Court has cancelled a second straight day of deliberations as suspicions of corruption, political bias and police interference loom over several of its members.

Cancellations are rare at the high court. But on Thursday, Chief Justice Luiz Edson Fachin nixed a second consecutive session, calling for the court to reconvene on Tuesday instead.

The decision was spurred by an ongoing crisis among the court’s members.

The divisions emerged on September 1, when one justice, Andre Mendonca, unsealed a series of federal police documents that appeared to show a disgraced banker, Daniel Vorcaro, seeking advice from another justice, Alexandre de Moraes.

De Moraes has rocketed to prominence in recent years for his roles in high-profile cases.

He presided over the trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro after prosecutors accused the far-right leader of plotting a coup following his 2022 election defeat. De Moraes also oversaw suspensions of platforms like X and Rumble for failing to abide by court orders, making him a target for Brazil’s right wing.

The document release authorised by Mendonca, a Bolsonaro appointee, contains roughly 30 text messages sent to a phone number associated with de Moraes, allegedly from Vorcaro.

In response, de Moraes has accused Mendonca of abusing his authority on the court for political gains. He requested a probe into whether Mendonca interviewed Vorcaro without the presence of police or prosecutors.

Tuesday’s session will involve the full Supreme Court bench, and 10 of the justices will discuss whether the 11th member, de Moraes, should be investigated over the text messages.

The tit-for-tat on Brazil’s high court is the latest fallout from the Banco Master corruption scandal.

Vorcaro, the head of the Banco Master financial institution, was arrested in November 2025 on accusations he defrauded investors of billions in lost funds, in one of the biggest banking scandals in the country’s history.

The collapse of Banco Master’s private banking arm left behind more than $7bn in debt.

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum have become embroiled in the unfolding scandal as new details emerge.

The turmoil risks affecting October’s general elections, including a pivotal presidential election.

Left-wing incumbent Lula Inacio Lula da Silva is set to compete for the presidency against Jair Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro.

Both Lula and Senator Bolsonaro have called for investigations into the Supreme Court justices.

The Bolsonaro family itself has been dragged into the Banco Master scandal. In May, the publication Intercept Brasil released a report showing that Senator Bolsonaro petitioned Vorcaro for funds to finance a film about his ex-president father, who is now serving a 27-year prison sentence.

Senator Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing, claiming he did nothing more than seek private sponsorship for the film, entitled Dark Horse.

But on Thursday, Brazilian police executed dozens of raids related to the Banco Master scandal, including some that targeted two figures involved in the film: Karina Gama, the head of a production company, and Congressman Mario Frias, who served as executive producer.

Senator Bolsonaro has called the probes “attempted political interference” ahead of the elections.

WASHINGTON: President ‌Donald Trump said he did not regret going to war against Iran despite the impact the conflict may have ​on the November US midterm elections.

“I don’t believe in the word ‘regret.’ You can always question yourself a little bit,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham when asked if he regretted the Iran war due to the impact it may have on the elections.

“If ‌I had ‌it do again, I would ​do ‌exactly ⁠as ​I did,” ⁠Trump said in the interview broadcast on Thursday on “The Ingraham Angle” show.

Trump dismissed suggestions that some of his supporters were upset and demoralized about the war.

“I don’t think they’re demoralized. I think they’re very proud of the fact that I’m not letting ⁠Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

Trump ‌reiterated his thinking that ‌the war will end immediately after ​the midterm election.

“It ‌ends right after the election,” Trump said in ‌the interview. He made similar comments on Wednesday, alleging Tehran was trying to influence the elections that will determine whether Trump’s Republican Party retains control of Congress.

The rise in ‌oil and gas prices due to the US-Israeli war on Iran has become ⁠a major ⁠issue for Republicans in the lead-up to the elections.

The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28 and Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.

Trump has cited weakening Iran’s nuclear capabilities as one of his war objectives. Iran does not have ​nuclear weapons and says ​its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes. The US is nuclear-armed.

*Some interviewees asked that their surnames be withheld because of the political nature of the interviews.

Malmo, Sweden – A very Swedish political tradition is playing out in Malmo, the country’s third-largest city. Rows of twee campaign booths, known as “election cottages”, are packed into a corner of the central square.

National polls have Sunday’s election on a knife-edge, with the centre-left opposition bloc led by the Social Democrats just a few percentage points ahead of the right-wing group – a gap that has tightened over the past month.

In the middle of the row, representatives of the Left Party and the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), bitter rivals from opposite ends of the political spectrum, campaign a metre apart.

Migration is a key election issue. Multicultural Malmo, with more than a third of the city’s 368,000 residents born outside Sweden, has become the centre of the debate.

For the right, the city represents failures of integration, a cautionary tale it says of what happens when immigration goes unchecked. Beyond Sweden, Malmo draws disproportionate interest.

In 2017, the populist English politician Nigel Farage branded it the “rape capital of Europe”, a claim a leading Swedish criminologist dismissed as nonsense, while Germany’s far-right AfD has used it in its narratives about the dangers of immigration.

Strength in diversity

In the city’s town hall, a grand building with a Dutch Renaissance-style facade, Anfal Mahdi, an opposition councillor in Malmo for the Left Party, sits amid the splendour of green velvet chairs, historical oil paintings and royal portraits.

Right-wing politicians ignore the socioeconomic challenges of living in the areas built under Sweden’s “Million Programme”, she said, referring to an ambitious scheme to build one million new homes between 1965 and 1974.

It began as a social housing initiative for working-class Swedish families. In later decades, as many of those families moved out, the apartments were allocated to migrant and refugee newcomers.

Observers say what began as a utopian welfare project gradually became the physical framework of today’s segregated suburbs.

Mahdi, whose family fled Iraq after the Gulf War, grew up in one of these areas during cuts to the welfare state that had defined modern Sweden, as public spending tightened after its early-1990s economic crisis.

But what they lacked in welfare, they made up for in diversity, she said.

“I had friends from Bosnia, Palestine, Somalia and when we grew up we did not have much, but we leant on each other,” she said.

The city’s most famous son, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, grew up in Rosengard, a Million Programme estate on Malmo’s eastern side that police still classify as a “particularly vulnerable area”. The famous footballer regularly credits the area for shaping the skill and confidence that defined his career.

“It’s often in these neighbourhoods that people can shine; there is a sense of community that doesn’t exist elsewhere,” said Adam*, a 20-year-old florist who also grew up in one of the areas Sweden officially labels “vulnerable”.

He rejects the stereotypes associated with Malmo, saying young people here are far more concerned with the cost of living, finding work and the everyday pressures of getting by.

Mahdi shared this sentiment, saying “wallet politics”, relating to healthcare and unemployment, are central issues for all sections of society.

Healthcare tops voters’ concerns nationally, while unemployment in Malmo, at around 11 percent, is among the highest of any Swedish municipality.

But not everyone sees it that way.

Lena, a 78-year-old campaigner for the Moderate Party, which leads the right-wing bloc, believes integration along with schooling are taking centre stage. At the last election cycle, it was care for the elderly, she said.

Jacob, a 19-year-old resident who was speaking to representatives of various parties, said a taboo has been broken with more young people turning right, including towards the SD, now polling as Sweden’s second-largest party.

The far-right party with neo-Nazi roots could enter government for the first time if the right-wing bloc wins: Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has promised cabinet posts, including the migration portfolio.

‘Divisive politics’

Sara, a woman in her twenties of Palestinian heritage, said “divisive politics” are normal now. The rhetoric around immigration and Islam in particular has left her feeling some “don’t want integration or even assimilation, they just want you to leave”.

Under the current right-wing government, many teenagers who grew up in Sweden with their families were ordered to leave on turning 18 while their parents were allowed to stay. The government paused the separation in March after a public outcry and moved to reform in June.

In February, the Swedish Migration Agency ordered an eight-month-old boy born in the country, Emanuel, to be deported alone to Iran while the rest of his family kept their permits.

The system concerns Binto Drammeh, whose father is of Gambian heritage.

“Our uncle was made to leave as he didn’t meet the income threshold,” she told Al Jazeera.

The government has repeatedly raised the salary threshold for work permits, most recently in June, when it increased from 80 to 90 percent of the Swedish median wage.

Failing to meet it could ultimately lead to a deportation order.

Criminal networks

Crime is another main election issue.

With a population of 10.6 million, Sweden has one of Europe’s highest rates of deadly gun violence, even though lethal violence fell last year to its lowest level since 2012.

Among the challenges, criminal networks are recruiting children as young as 12 to transport weapons, sell drugs and carry out contract killings. In 2024, Danish gangs were found to be hiring Swedish teenagers to carry out shootings and bombings.

How to tackle the problem divides the parties.

The right prioritises punishment and deterrence, while the left and centre-left emphasise tackling root socioeconomic causes, rehabilitation and preventive social work. The lines are not always clean, however: the Social Democrats backed lowering the age of criminal responsibility, while the Left, Green and Centre parties voted against it.

TikTok politics

Young voters appear more engaged than at the last election.

Lena of the Moderate Party said: “I haven’t met one person who said they won’t vote,” while Mahdi said the Palestine issue has had a galvanising effect.

“Right now, all the posts on my TikTok page are from party accounts; they got a lot of likes and views and many videos are trending,” said Jacob, the 19-year-old resident.

Yet some are undecided about whom to vote for, partly because of Sweden’s unusual bloc system. Built on the idea of consensus, it means a vote for one party’s policies may be diluted in coalition, or are hard to push through.

“I will be honest, I have not voted yet,” Adam said, as he looked out at the array of campaign booths next to his flower stand. “Young people are interested in politics, but many of us think that no matter who comes, nothing will really change.”