A total of 23,450,456 ballots were issued to registered voters across California. Voters have the option of returning ballots by mail or in a drop box or voting in person. California also allows for same-day registration. The majority of returned ballots will be counted by the end of election night.
After the polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, of those ballots are delivered to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, where they are verified and tallied. County registrars are deliberate and expeditious with the vote count, even as they handle millions of votes under increasing political scrutiny.
Nearly two thirds of registered voters in California are concerned that the federal government might try to stop the vote count before all ballots are counted, an October UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times found.
Each county is responsible for collecting and counting ballots on election night and in the following weeks. The registrars then communicate those results, in batches, to the secretary of state. The counties with the most voters — Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange and Riverside — are prepared to process hundreds of thousands of ballots.
In Los Angeles County, the operation to deliver ballots to the processing center involves eight helicopters flying in ballots from Lancaster, Palmdale, Catalina and other far reaches of the county.
Where the votes still are being counted
The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and estimates how many votes were cast in each race using vote returns and other data.
One factor considered by analysts in calling a race early is where the remaining uncounted ballots are from. For example, if a Republican stronghold still has a large number of ballots to process, it may indicate a different outcome than if the ballots left to be counted were from a more left-leaning area.
The county has 30 days to submit certified results to the secretary of state. The Associated Press’ Estimated Expected Vote Percentage will remain at 99% until the state certifies the election on Dec. 11.
How many ballots have been processed so far
The speed of California’s vote count is determined by the state’s grace period for mail-in ballots. For a week after the polls close, county registrars will continue to accept and count ballots postmarked on or before Nov. 3.
Ballots with certain errors such as signatures on the return envelopes not matching the ones on the voter rolls have the opportunity to be corrected. Voters have until two days before certification to correct, or cure, their ballot.
Counties must provide the secretary of state an estimate of their remaining unprocessed ballots. Once available, The Times will track those reports as counties update the state each day.
WASHINGTON — In its latest chapter on religion in schools, the Supreme Court debated Tuesday whether Colorado may fund private preschools for 4-year-olds but exclude Catholic schools that refuse to serve same-sex parents and their children.
The court’s six conservatives, all of whom were raised Catholic, leaned in favor of ruling the state was discriminating based on religion.
The state offered funding to all preschools but said they must abide by an “equal opportunity” rule that forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said state officials “chose to impose a condition” they knew those Catholic schools “will be unable to agree to.”
In contrast, the court’s three liberals said the Catholic schools were not seeking equal treatment but a new right to discriminate.
“You are asking for a special rule for religious schools,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the state opened the funding program to all schools, including church-related schools. “The Catholic schools are not being excluded. They’re choosing not to participate because they won’t get an exemption,” she said.
In the last decade, the court’s conservative majority has strengthened the 1st Amendment’s protection for the “free exercise of religion.”
States and local governments need not offer public funds to private groups and entities, the justices said. But if they do so, they may not single out religious schools or people and deny them public funding that is open to all.
They struck down laws in Minnesota and Maine that denied scholarships or school funds to students who enrolled in a religious school. And they ruled the city of Philadelphia could not bar Catholic social services from providing foster care because they did not work with same-sex couples.
Despite that history, Colorado adopted a strong “equal opportunity” law in 2022 to go with its new state funding for preschools.
The state voters had approved a ballot measure in 2020 to provide public funding for a year of preschool prior to kindergarten. Both public and private schools were encouraged to participate.
The state pays for 15 hours per week and provides parents about $6,000 in tuition.
Lawmakers said eligible schools must provide children “an equal opportunity to enroll regardless of race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level or disability.”
The Archdiocese of Denver oversees 34 Catholic preschools. Parents were told they must support and affirm the teachings of the church, including on matters of gender and marriage.
In light of the new funding law, the church asked for an accommodation that would allow “faith based providers to participate in the program without compromising their sincerely held religious beliefs.”
The state refused. It said “no provider may discriminate against children or families in violation of the state statute.”
St. Mary Catholic Parish in Littleton, Colo., and two of its parents sued, alleging a violation of the 1st Amendment.
Their attorneys — the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty — argued that no LGBTQ+ family has been harmed or claimed discrimination under the preschool funding law, while “thousands of Catholic families have zero Catholic preschools available to them.”
They lost before a federal judge and the 10th Circuit Court. Those judges said the state did not target the Catholic schools or treat them differently from others because of their religious beliefs.
During Tuesday’s argument, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh voiced dismay over how this case arose.
“This seems like a would-be solution in search of a problem. Why are we here?” he asked a state attorney.
He and Barrett said same-sex couples did not seek to have their children enrolled in Catholic preschools. Meanwhile, other parents were denied state funds because of the marriage and family policies of the Catholic parishes.
The court is likely to hand down a decision in several months.
As a criminal investigation into Southern California Edison’s actions before last year’s deadly Eaton fire continues, the state’s for-profit utilities are lobbying for legislation that would protect their shareholders from paying for future catastrophic fires they cause.
According to slides recently presented by a Pacific Gas & Electric executive to a group of state senators, the utilities are asking for a permanent cap to limit their corporate liability for a fire where they are found to have acted negligently or imprudently. The slides were reviewed by The Times.
“If ratepayers are forced to pay the lion share for fires utilities cause, there is no imperative for the for-profit utilities to take safety and fire mitigation seriously,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog.
The utilities say their shareholders must be shielded from wildfire costs because the risk of future fires has damaged their credit ratings. Lower credit ratings mean the companies must pay higher interest rates on borrowing, an increased cost that gets passed on to electricity customers.
“It is in our customers’ interest to have action in 2026,” Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Wall Street analysts last week when asked about the utilities’ push in Sacramento for a liability cap.
Caroline Choi, Edison’s executive vice president of public policy and corporate affairs, told The Times that the proposal would not change the utilities’ focus on preventing fires. “Safety is our number one priority,” she said.
Executives at Edison and PG&E also recently told their investors that without the liability protection they may cut what they are spending on capital improvements, including to connect new housing developments and green energy projects.
PG&E recently sent letters to thousands of its customers, saying their projects could be delayed next year as it defers $2 billion in spending.
Those comments and PG&E’s letter have angered consumer advocates, wildfire survivors and some lawmakers.
On Sunday, state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes Altadena, sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission, pointing out that both companies continue to pay millions of dollars in dividends to their shareholders, while complaining that the wildfire risk had financially weakened them.
“Their decisions to delay or reduce investments in critical projects are particularly troubling given the billions of dollars in profits reported by their parent companies in recent years,” Perez wrote. “The Legislature must not be pressured to roll back utilities’ financial accountability for wildfires through threats to withhold the investments needed to serve our communities.”
The state’s three biggest for-profit utilities, which also include San Diego Gas & Electric, have been lobbying for protection from wildfire costs since early 2025. That’s when videos emerged showing two bright flashes coming from Edison’s transmission lines, just before the Eaton fire ignited.
A government investigation released in August concluded that the devastating fire ignited when an out-of-service transmission line that Edison had not used since 1971 was briefly reenergized in the high winds, causing sparks that landed in dried brush below.
The fire killed 19 people and destroyed a wide swath of Altadena, leaving thousands of families homeless.
Last week, Pizarro told investors that executives believed the utility acted prudently before the fire. If the utilities commission agrees that the company acted prudently, Edison’s liabilities for the fire would be fully covered by a $21-billion state wildfire fund.
If the commission instead determines that Edison acted imprudently — a California regulatory standard that is similar to negligence — the company’s shareholders would still pay no more than $4.3 billion for the Eaton fire under a 2019 law known as Assembly Bill 1054.
The law was passed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers to protect utilities from bankruptcy if their power lines spark a catastrophic fire. Since then, utility equipment has continued to spark major wildfires, even though the companies have charged customers tens of billions of dollars to prevent them.
The slides presented to state senators propose that the cap on damages — when a utility is found to have acted imprudently — be made permanent. Under current law, the cap will end when the state wildfire fund, as well as an additional $18-billion reserve created last year, are depleted, leaving shareholders exposed to greater costs of future fires.
The proposed limit on shareholder liability would be equal to 20% of each utility’s transmission and distribution equity rate base, which differs based on the size of the grid maintained by each company. This number for Edison is now $4.3 billion. For PG&E, it is $5.1 billion, according to the slides, while it is $1.5 billion for SDG&E.
The companies’ customers would have to shoulder the rest of a fire’s costs, which would be added to monthly electricity bills.
Mark Toney, executive director of the Utilities Reform Network, called the idea of permanently capping shareholders’ liabilities for fires “completely unacceptable.”
“There needs to be a cap on ratepayers’ liability,” he said.
Earlier this year, the utilities’ stock prices began to rise as executives told investors that Newsom was working on legislation to reduce the companies’ financial risks from fires.
But wildfire survivors were angered when details emerged that Newsom’s proposal would limit payments to victims for pain and suffering and cap attorney fees. Another proposed measure would have increased property insurance premiums across the state by reducing the amounts that insurers could collect after a utility-caused fire.
The utilities are now asking Newsom to call a special session in which lawmakers would debate how to reduce the utilities’ fire risks, including the possible limit on what shareholders would pay.
“A predictable limitation would enable utilities to maintain investment grade credit ratings to better access capital at lower borrowing costs for customers,” Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokesperson, said in an e-mail.
In February, Edison disclosed that the Los Angeles County district attorney was investigating whether Edison should be criminally charged for its actions leading to the Eaton fire. And last month, an investment firm published a report claiming that there was evidence that Edison “acted with conscious and willful disregard for the rights and safety of others,” which would make its shareholders liable for all Eaton fire costs. The costs have been estimated to be tens of billions of dollars.
Pizarro told investors last week that he believed there was no evidence that Edison acted criminally before the fire. And he similarly dismissed the investment firm’s report.
“Just to be very crystal clear on this, not only do we not see any basis for felony liability, we certainly don’t see any basis for allegations of conscious or willful disregard,” Pizarro said on the conference call. “I think I said this to all of you before — that is not something I lose sleep over.”
For all their dominance, California Democrats will emerge from Tuesday’s election facing considerable challenges.
As polls show nearly 6 out of 10 Californians believe the state is going in the wrong direction and even more anticipate bad financial times ahead, the state’s new governor and legislators will have to confront some chronic problems, including a severe budget deficit, housing unaffordability, homelessness, and rising energy and insurance costs.
They will also have to grapple with difficult decisions on whether the state can provide Medi-Cal healthcare to low-income residents, how to make the state more resilient to climate change, and who pays for wildfire damage.
“There’s not going to be a long honeymoon period,” said Mark Baldassare, the survey director at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
Californians are in a “pretty grumpy mood,” Baldassare said. Although their dissatisfaction is mostly hyperpartisan, with Democrats pointing the finger at President Trump and Congress as Republicans blame Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sacramento legislators, he said, a majority of Californians are worried about the state of the economy and want to see better government performance.
A construction worker on a new home under construction at the Taylor Morrison Avalon at Cypress.
(Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Affordability and housing
For voters, a key concern is unaffordability. More than half of Californians rank cost of living, inflation and the economy — along with housing cost and availability — as the most important issues facing California today.
The state has long suffered from a housing shortage, driven largely by local zoning restrictions, high construction costs and lengthy permitting bureaucracy. Newsom made housing a centerpiece of his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, initially pledging to build 3.5 million homes by 2025. He has largely fallen short of that goal.
Since Newsom took office in 2019, about 692,000 homes have been built across the state.
“I don’t know if anyone sees a new direction to go,” said Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego. California Democrats have passed a slew of laws designed to solve the housing crisis and spur home building, he said, but although they have helped at the margins, prices keep creeping up.
The median price of a California home has risen from about $570,000 in 2018 to $900,000 in 2026.
Even if California’s housing woes are partly a product of its successful economy, Kousser said, “that’s no solace for anyone trying to make the rent or have a place to live, so these will remain defining problems for the next governor.”
Before the governor can do anything, voters will decide whether to pass a series of consequential propositions on housing and taxes.
Proposition 1 would allow the state to borrow $11.25 billion for low-income and veteran housing, and Proposition 37 would allow the state to amass a $25-billion down payment assistance program for middle-class households. Proposition 45 would enable the state to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act to speed up reviews for housing, roads and water projects — a proposal that leaves many torn between protecting the environment and wanting more affordable housing.
“There are going to be a series of difficult choices that Californians will have to make,” Baldassare said.
Budget woes
One of the governor’s first challenges out of the gate will be submitting a state budget in January to legislators.
This fiscal year, California has an estimated $18.5-billion operating deficit, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. By the end of the year, the office predicts the state’s “wall of debt” to balloon to about $29 billion — even as the state’s economy and revenue have grown.
Lee Ohanian, a professor of economics at UCLA, said the major issue California faces is that the state budget has expanded about 75% in the last eight years. This translates to a 40% increase when adjusted for inflation.
California’s budget growth is particularly alarming, Ohanian said, considering politicians have had limited success in addressing major challenges such as homelessness and had delayed maintenance of public road and water infrastructure.
“It would have been one thing if that 75% increase had fixed all those issues,” Ohanian said. “But the next governor and state Legislature are going to be faced with some of the same exigencies that we’ve had for a very long time and they may struggle to pay for those repairs and that deferred maintenance. The question is: Where is the money going to come from?”
In many cases, Ohanian said, California’s ballooning budget has not resulted in higher quality of public services. The state’s school budget per classroom is over $500,000 a year, he noted, well above the national average. But only about 38% of California students met or exceeded state standards in mathematics.
“The Democratic Party just needs to at some point have a come to-Jesus moment,” Ohanian said. “With the amount of money we’re spending, we can do better.”
Leisure Picon, 35, with her 3-year-old daughter, Ivanka Mendoza, for a doctor’s appointment in Lynwood
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Healthcare for the masses?
After pledging in 2018 to bring universal healthcare to California, Newsom set about expanding the state’s Medi-Cal program that began under his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown.
In 2024, California expanded Medi-Cal to cover all income-eligible adults, regardless of immigration status.
Spending on Medi-Cal now accounts for 40% of the state’s total spending and is expected to reach $219 billion this fiscal year — more than double what it was a decade ago. But as the state faces massive cuts in federal Medicaid funding, rising healthcare costs and budget shortfalls, it has begun to roll back that commitment.
Last year, Newsom and state legislators agreed to freeze new enrollment for Medi-Cal benefits for adult immigrants without legal status. Next year, many adults under 60 enrolled in the program will also face a $30 monthly premium.
Democrat Xavier Becerra, who polls predict will beat Republican Steve Hilton by a wide margin, has promised to protect Californians’ health by “cracking down on fraud” and “cutting waste.” Becerra has significant healthcare experience after serving as secretary of Health and Human Services under President Biden, but he has yet to provide specific policy details.
More or less taxes? And who pays?
As Californians become more concerned about affordability, Baldassare said, they are becoming increasingly fiscally conservative. Polls now show a majority of Californians now say that they’d rather pay lower taxes and have fewer services.
But at the same time, about 6 in 10 likely voters also say the wealthiest Californians should pay more taxes.
“There’s a more liberal orientation, but that doesn’t translate into people saying ‘I want to pay higher taxes and have more services,’” Baldassare said. “It just is ‘I want to have more services. I want to be sure that we’re going to have healthcare’… but looking to others to take that fiscal responsibility.”
The midterms offered Californians a chance to weigh in on who should pay. The measure that grabbed the most headlines was Proposition 40, the so-called billionaire tax that would authorize the state to impose a new one-time tax on residents with assets over $1 billion.
But Californians also got to vote on a string of other tax measures that could affect the state’s budget. Propositions 41 and 42 would constrain state government’s ability to raise potential taxes on assets in the future, and Proposition 43 would make it more difficult for special taxes to be increased by local governments.
Proposition 3 would make permanent a temporary tax increase enacted in 2012 on individuals who earn at least $371,000 a year to fund schools and healthcare. Kousser described the original 2012 tax increase as a game-changer that allowed the state to redistribute wealth from rich to poor regions.
“If that political deal falls apart,” he said, “the state will face much more strain.”
Embers blow down a street as the Palisades fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
(Ethan Swope / Associated Press)
Who pays for wildfires?
As California contends with ever more catastrophic wildfires, Democratic politicians have so far failed to agree on who should be financially liable when a fire is sparked by electrical equipment: Wildfire victims? Insurers? Utility company investors? Ratepayers?
Earlier this year, Newsom pushed a controversial plan to limit utility companies’ liability, arguing that holding them fully financially responsible would raise the state’s already high power bills and thwart utilities’ ability to modernize and meet state clean-energy mandates.
But Newsom’s deal would have shifted more of the cost to property insurers, risking the prospect of rising insurance premiums. After wildfire victims dubbed the plan a corporate bailout, Newsom abandoned most of it and tried to push a compromise that would help fire victims receive quicker compensation. That deal also fell through, however, when the Assembly declined to vote on it
Political experts agree it will be a tricky issue to resolve.
The utility companies are not popular, said Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist. Yet to shore up utilities’ risk profile and prevent upward pressure on utility rates, he said, the state will probably have to grant some liability caps.
“We’re going to pay for it through utility rates, or insurance rates, or subsidies from the government,” Stutzman said. “Those are basically the three options — and none of those are going to be that pleasant for the governor or for the Legislature.”
Artificial intelligence
With momentum building for regulating AI, California is in a unique position as the hub of the technology boom.
Politicians in Sacramento face intense lobbying from major tech companies and venture capitalists as they seek to limit AI’s potential for disruption and misinformation without stifling an industry that’s fueling the state’s economic growth — and has provided a critical stream of tax revenue to the state.
But some political experts say the issue may not prove as thorny for California as issues like housing or wildfires.
Most voters oppose data centers in their areas and support AI safeguards. Even some AI pioneers are calling out for more regulation. In recent weeks, Anthropic and OpenAI have written open letters to Newsom urging stronger safety requirements.
“That creates an unparalleled political opportunity for a governor and the state to lead the nation in addressing the issues,” Kousser said.
Hundreds of homes have been bulldozed in the Dhubri district of Assam state in northeastern India as part of a government campaign to evict families it says do not legally live there. Local media says most of the 4,000 people displaced were Bengali-speaking Muslims.
The symphony orchestra takes its name from the Greek symphonía, meaning sounding in agreement, and orkhēstra which implies a public stage for dance or, in ancient Rome, where senators and other big shots sat. Democracy comes from dēmokratia, rule by the people. Even though the modern orchestra originated three centuries ago as a plaything of princes, there has always been an implicit connection — and tension — between orchestras and democracy.
Despite the orchestra never having been a financially sustainable model, dependent on some form of patronage, the symphony orchestra was embroiled in political activism by the early 19th century. Beethoven brazenly yanked the dedication to Napoleon from his “Eroica” Symphony when the “hero” proclaimed himself emperor in 1804, a betrayal of the democratic ideals of the French Revolution.
More than two centuries later, the orchestra continues to be a potent reminder of power to the people, a community of exquisitely trained artists marching to a beat, staying in tune and on message. In this year’s election season orchestras have been practicing the call for democratic thinking on a global scale, including in Los Angeles, Boston and Leipzig, Germany. Strikingly, this comes at a time when beleaguered orchestra musicians have also been demanding a more democratically minded workplace.
Throughout October and up to election day, Wild Up in L.A. has taken the lead in orchestral electoral activism. Its “Democracy Sessions” are an ongoing procession of interdisciplinary concerts, theatrical events, interactive gatherings, environmental presentations and gabfests in theaters, museums, libraries, parks, on neighborhood streets and around the L.A. River. Wild Up winds up its call for democracy with “Music to Vote By,” lunchtime solo acoustic sets, noon to 2 p.m., through Tuesday at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum Plaza in Little Tokyo.
Wild Up, itself, is a uniquely egalitarian collective, a chamber orchestra of composers and soloists, although one that nonetheless requires traditional leadership of its visionary founder, conductor Christopher Rountree. Rountree’s interdisciplinary “sessions” run from the musically sophisticated and accomplished to ad hoc and participatory funkiness, less designed to change minds than to relieve democracy anxiety.
A democracy zeitgeist, for instance, pervaded a performance at REDCAT of Louis Andriessen’s “De Staat,” a Dutch minimalist masterpiece from the mid-1970s. To intense rhythmic propulsion of piano and winds, four women vocalists intone excerpts from “The Republic,” in which Plato calls for rule of the people not the rule of music, fearful of a music that can alter “the most fundamental laws of the state.” Andriessen set out to show how mistaken Plato was.
Elsewhere, Rountree acted as an assembler, demonstrating democracy in action. In British composer Oliver Leith’s “Garland,” a kind of musical and theatrical tool kit, Rountree created a spectacle of song, dance, instrumental mayhem (whirly tubes, button whistles and the like added to the mix) and included amateur performers from the community hymn singing with the pros. It ended with a lovely appearance by a black horse all in the expanses of MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary. What does this have to do with the price of gasoline? Nothing more than a reminder that the quotidian world around us can be a hymn all by itself.
Wild Up’s performance of “Garland” at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.
(Josh Rose / Wild Up)
Germany is having its own brush with democracy with a recent election in which the far-right Alternative for Germany party won power in the central state of Saxony-Anhalt. The city of Leipzig borders that state, and its historic Gewandhaus Orchestra marked the days preceding the election with a democracy weekend it called “Reading the Signs.” The suggestion here was rather than falling for oversimplification and conspiracy theories when it comes to examining the interaction of “music, discourse and social action,” look to Beethoven.
That included a performance by Stegreif, an improvising orchestra that functions as a kind of German Wild Up. For Democracy Weekend, Stegreif “exploded” Beethoven’s “Eroica.”
It so happens that the Boston Symphony and Gewandhaus share a music director in Andris Nelsons, who has strived to bring the two orchestras together in joint projects. Sure enough, the BSO has been living up to its calling as the orchestra in the birthplace of American democracy. At Tanglewood, the orchestra’s summer home in the Berkshires, the orchestra celebrated the semiquincentennial with the premiere of Philip Glass’ “Lincoln” symphony and Yo-Yo Ma’s weeklong “We the People” residency, which offered a widely varied look at our democratic musical roots.
Then barely two weeks before the midterms, the BSO channeled Boston’s revolutionary spirit with explosive AI. At a time when much of the country sees artificial intelligence as a significant threat to democracy, the premiere of Tod Machover’s “already and not yet,” a concerto for orchestra with electronics bathed in AI, begs otherwise.
Machover’s brilliant new half-hour orchestral score asks AI for agency. It does so by treating the technology as stupid, musicians as creative artists and the audience as capable of opening its collective mind. It handles democracy not as a done deal, but a series of scary questions — and doesn’t trust the heartless machines for answers.
A commission in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the MIT Media Lab, “already and not yet” challenges us to make the world more beautiful by looking deeply into ourselves. The Media Lab is an unprecedented electronic playground born of AI. For one of the optimistic developers of AI, the musically minded computer scientist Marvin Minsky, the Media Lab functioned akin to a surgeon removing blockages to the imagination.
The interior of MIT’s groundbreaking Media Lab.
(Mark Swed)
Minsky was also a mentor to Machover, who has been at the Media Lab since the start and now heads the faculty. Machover’s AI is not a data collector in the sense of the commercial, data-gobbling, mind-numbing monstrosities lately foisted on the public. It becomes a new tool in his piece, not a way of life, something merely taught to listen and analyze in hopes of giving musicians a new idea or two.
With the help of an AI operator, Manaswi Mishra, who is embedded in the orchestra, the AI becomes the “already” in “already and not yet.” It doesn’t have much use in the tumultuous first movement, “SMASH UP,” when the world is a mess and that’s our problem. In the ethereal second movement, “WAKE UP,” players become individual and AI spits out responses that read as ordinary electronic mimicry, but the players, if game, take that as a challenge. Weirdly the machine brings them to life and as individuals. In the last movement, “STAND UP,” the machine is tamed! We frolic in a new, sonic wonderland. Even Thoreau might approve!
Can AI-assisted utopian art save democracy? That’s a tall order. Let it first try to do something about the BSO. As conductor, Kent Nagano was the ultimate listener (he can cut off the AI when it’s not interesting). After the performance he told me the orchestra was always game. And he sandwiched Machover with lithe, colorful Mendelssohn performances (including the Fifth Symphony).
But this is an orchestra in revolt, and it looked it. Grim of mien, many players on the night I attended sported red flowers on their lapels, a sign of their dissatisfaction with the administration for not renewing Nelsons’ contract when it expires this summer, after 13 years leading the BSO. The orchestra claimed it was broadsided by the announcement that management and Nelsons did not have a shared vision. The players want a say, an orchestra as democracy and more than just AI’s version of agency.
Ironically, Nelsons, who signed a nondisclosure agreement, doesn’t seem to show much vision when it comes to democracy. The Latvian conductor did not participate in Tanglewood’s democracy concerts (although he did conduct excerpts from John Adams’ “Nixon in China,” which sounded, in the radio broadcast, as having such a heavy hand that there was no room for free thinking).
In Leipzig, Nelsons’ contribution to the Gewandhaus democracy weekend was no democracy at all, only an irrelevant program of Tchaikovsky and Dvorak standards. Leipzig, bursting like Boston with young people, has become a German tech hub, it too could have used a whirl with democratic AI.
Top officials in California are bracing for unprecedented election interference from the Trump administration in coming days, including potential ballot seizures.
They are warning the public about such actions in striking messages casting President Trump and U.S. Department of Justice officials as threats to the vote and to American democracy. They have begged federal judges to reject warrant requests and hold the line against lawless probes. They have deployed armies of election lawyers and volunteer monitors, particularly to areas where congressional races could be close.
“California is dead serious about the security of [Tuesday’s] midterm elections. If Trump tries to meddle with California’s ballots, you can be sure as hell that we’ll prosecute those who help him,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday. “Californians deserve a free and fair election, and that is exactly what we’ll deliver.”
Those efforts, echoing others from Democrats in Congress and liberal officials in other political battlegrounds, are like nothing seen before in the U.S., and in response to an equally extraordinary campaign by the Trump administration to intervene in state-run elections based on claims — espoused by Trump for years — that voting in places such as California has been corrupted by widespread fraud.
On Monday, Justice Department officials redoubled their effort to block about 20,000 California ballots from voters who they allege may be noncitizens by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, after lower courts rejected the request — and as another judge in a separate challenge barred them Monday from demanding California officials segregate the same ballots. The Supreme Court denied the request.
They and local partners also rolled out criminal charges against seven noncitizens accused of illegally voting or registering — bringing the total number of lawful permanent residents recently charged with election-related offenses in the state to 35.
Beyond California, the Trump administration is trying to preemptively negate any win by the Democrat in the Alaska Senate race, based on claims that the presence on ballots of a third candidate with the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) is confusing voters.
The incumbent senator is identified as such on the ballot, and Alaska courts have already rejected similar challenges. A federal judge dismissed the administration’s suit Sunday.
The White House and the Justice Department have said they are simply trying to ensure American citizens’ votes aren’t diluted by illegitimate votes from noncitizens, and that Democrats aren’t able to steal the Alaska race by intentionally confusing voters.
But Democratic leaders have alleged that the lawsuits are part of a broader Trump administration effort to establish a “pretext” to challenge the outcome of Tuesday’s midterm elections if they don’t like the results.
On Saturday, Newsom wrote to federal district court judges across the state, urging them to deny any Trump administration requests for judicial warrants that would allow them “to seize ballots, election records, or certified voting technology while an election is underway and before the results are certified.”
Newsom wrote that he has “grave concerns” that federal agents will “quickly pivot” to making such requests in criminal courts given their mounting losses on other fronts.
The state’s “strict chain of custody, documentation, and retention laws related to ballots and ballot materials ensure any evidence of alleged wrongdoing tied to ballots or ballot materials is preserved and appropriately supervised by a court, so there is no legitimate law enforcement reason to seize ballots, ballot materials, and equipment needed to process and tabulate ballots,” Newsom wrote.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta — whose office has been fighting the Trump administration in court — has also been increasingly vocal about his belief that Trump will take increasingly drastic steps to try to control the election results.
“He’s intent on pulling out all the stops, engaging in whatever type of lying, cheating, and stealing is necessary to get the outcome he wants. He starts with the outcome and he backs it out from there, and will do anything seemingly necessary to try to get to the outcome that he wants — instead of letting the facts, and the law, and the votes determine what the outcome is,” Bonta said in an interview on MS NOW that he posted Sunday.
Elections experts point to the administration’s many losses in court as evidence that its efforts are not working, and said most voters won’t experience any problems with casting their ballots.
They said they do have concerns about future efforts by the administration to intervene, including through dramatic steps such as ballot seizures, but whether it takes such steps may hinge on whether the balance of power in the House or Senate depends on the outcome of a small enough number of close races.
If the expected “blue wave” is large and races are not particularly close, it will be more difficult for the Trump administration to sway the outcome in its favor and less likely it will even try to do so — even if Trump publicly rejects the outcome as illegitimate.
In announcing the latest charges, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, and San Luis Obispo County Dist. Atty. Dan Dow said the fight is not partisan. Six of the charges were federal; the seventh was brought by Dow locally.
Dow, the county’s district attorney since 2014 who has denied previous claims that he harbors anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments, last week announced that he was investigating a subset of “63 suspected non-citizens registered to vote” in the county from the broader federal list of 20,000 names statewide. On Monday, he appeared alongside Essayli to announce the one person charged in his county — and said more such cases could be coming.
He said California’s system, which requires registering voters to attest to the fact that they are citizens, is an “honor system” that doesn’t work.
One of those charged federally was Moria Dahan, 35, an Israeli national living in West Hills. Dahan was charged with making false statements on her naturalization application to become a U.S. citizen. Prosecutors alleged she illegally registered to vote, voted in person in 2024, and later falsely stated on naturalization papers, under penalty of perjury, that she had never claimed to be a U.S. citizen or registered to vote in a U.S. election.
Tiffany Feder, Dahan’s attorney, described the issue as a mix-up, and said her client never intended to illegally participate in voting. She said Dahan “was targeted through a very extensive scheme to induce her to register and vote,” and like other green card holders with limited English skills, believed the forms she was filling out were official and required.
“The truth is that the moment we discovered this, at her interview, we promptly withdrew her application for naturalization,” Feder said.
California has more than 23.4 million registered voters — meaning the 20,000 flagged individuals would account for less than one-tenth of 1% of all voters in the state, and the 35 charged a tiny sliver of that. State officials and election experts have pointed to the small numbers of arrests, despite a sweeping probe to find such voters by Essayli and others, as proof such fraud is rare.
Essayli argued the exact opposite Monday — saying the charges were just a “sampling” from the broader list of 20,000 individuals, and part of an effort to force state officials to take that list seriously by moving forward with local law enforcement partners such as Dow instead of waiting on the courts.
“Our goal is not to charge all 20,000 people,” Essayli said. “Our goal is to get California to not count the votes of noncitizens.”
WASHINGTON — On the day before the midterm election, Trump administration lawyers asked the Supreme Court to intervene and set aside ballots from 20,000 California voters who the administration says may not be citizens.
Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal on Monday.
“The Court should issue a limited injunction directing California to stop commingling suspected illegal ballots with legal ones,” he wrote, “pending completion of the United States’ appeal to the 9th Circuit and further review in this Court.”
He said the court should require “California to segregate mail ballots from persons whom the United States has identified as likely non-citizens. The court should also enter an administrative injunction to that effect while it considers this application.”
It’s not clear whether the court will see this as an emergency.
The appeal goes first to Justice Elena Kagan. She could ask for a response from California, which would take days.
Those judges said that Trump’s lawyers were wrong on the Constitution and that their complaint came too late for this election.
In May, more than 23 million Californians were registered to vote, and the majority lean in favor of Democrats. But Trump claimed again last week “there are hundreds of thousands of bad ballots, bad votes, in California. Millions, in my opinion.”
In mid-October, the Trump administration sued and said federal courts should require California and Los Angeles County to “set aside vote-by-mail ballots from persons identified by the federal government likely to be non-citizens.”
Federal law says that within 90 days of an election, officials may not “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
Separately, the Supreme Court also has repeatedly frowned on “late-breaking, court-ordered rule changes” involving elections.
The California court cases have also put a spotlight on the state vs. federal divide in election law.
Usually, federal laws are deemed to be the “supreme law” and override state laws that are in conflict. No one disputes U.S. prosecutors may bring criminal fraud charges against noncitizens who violate a federal law by registering with a state to vote and casting an illegal ballot.
But election rules and procedures are different. The Constitution says “the Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state,” unless Congress acts by law to “alter” its regulations.
The 9th Circuit judges in Friday’s opinion said that “this clause expressly dictates which sovereign has the authority to prescribe the manner in which congressional elections are conducted.”
“If the United States believes different procedures are necessary for vote-by-mail ballots, we believe it should take that suggestion to Congress, not the courts,” said Judges Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, a Biden appointee.
Dissenting Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee, called the administration’s proposal to separate the 20,000 ballots a “reasonable request” and a “modest remedy” for the problem of illegal voting.
“The Elections Clause functions as a default provision,” he wrote. “It invests the states with responsibility for the mechanics of congressional elections,” unless Congress adopts a different rule.
Scalia spoke for a 7-2 majority that rejected an Arizona law that required voters to show documentary proof of their citizenship when registering to vote. In the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, Congress said voters may register to vote by filling out a form and attesting under oath they are citizens.
California does the same under state law.
Scalia said the federal voter registration law did not allow Arizona to adopt new and stricter rules.
In dissent, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito said they would go farther to protect the states from federal interference in elections.
“Given states’ exclusive authority to set voter qualifications and to determine whether those qualifications are met,” Thomas said the Arizona restriction should have been upheld. “The Constitution reserves for the States the power to decide who is qualified to vote in federal elections,” Alito added.
Last month, Trump’s prosecutors brought fraud charges against 28 lawful immigrants in California who are alleged to have registered or voted in the past even though they are not citizens. They did so under a 1996 immigration law which made it “unlawful for any alien” to vote in a federal election.
The notion of segregating potentially suspect ballots is not a new issue for the Supreme Court.
In November 2020, Alito agreed with Pennsylvania state officials and said they should set aside late-arriving mail ballots to be counted separately.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state election officials and the state Supreme Court agreed to waive part of the state’s law and allow for counting mail ballots that arrived up to three days late.
Republicans strongly objected. That led to Alito’s order. But in the end, the small number of late votes made no difference because the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, decisively won Pennsylvania’s votes and defeated Trump.
The California dispute is different because the state has not changed its voting rules or election procedures. Instead, it is the Trump administration that sought a late change in California’s voting rules and election procedures.
WASHINGTON — An acutely contentious and historically expensive midterm campaign barrels to a finish Monday, on the eve of elections that will set the nation’s course for the remaining half of President Trump’s second term.
Republicans are bracing for a backlash from voters as Democrats prepare for gains — but the magnitude of any “blue wave,” and whether it could sweep not only the U.S. House but also the Senate into Democratic control, will be the key question as Americans finish casting ballots Tuesday.
Early voting had already seen strong turnout, including among influence blocs such as Latino and Black voters. Candidates spent the weekend crisscrossing their states and pulling in surrogates to make a final push for voters still on the fence.
Capping a turbulent first half of Trump’s second term, the campaign has been defined by affordability and economic issues that have created headwinds for Republicans and spurred a possible turn toward Democrats by voters. And as Trump has pushed the limits of executive power, the midterms could act as a consequential check on his presidential reach.
In recent polls, voters have consistently put Democrats several points ahead on the generic ballot and given a historically low approval rating to Trump.
Eyes are now on Senate control, as an unexpected competitiveness by Democrats in a handful of red states has put the majority into play. It would require a “massive” wave for Democrats, but the fact that it is a possibility at all reflects an “extraordinary situation,” said Thaddeus Kousser, a UC San Diego political science professor.
With seven toss-up seats, tough math for Democrats and tough polling for Republicans, the outcome is far from certain. There may not be a large difference between the Democrats eking out enough seats for the majority or Republicans succeeding at holding it, said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll.
“Just a little bit better night for the Democrats, and they pick up quite a number of these very close seats,” Franklin said. “Just a little bit better night for the Republicans, and Democrats fall slightly short in several of these competitive seats.”
The outcome in competitive races will not only set the dynamic between Trump and Congress for the next two years, but also hold signs for the 2028 presidential campaign. Both parties are closely watching how well Democrats can do in red states, how Republicans perform in Michigan and how far to the left Trump-voting districts swing.
The party out of power typically wins House control in midterm elections. This year, fatigue with Trump — fueled by the war in Iran, immigration policy, tariffs and other issues — merged with concern about prices, housing and AI issues to drive that movement toward the minority party, analysts said.
“This is an opportunity for the American people to try to put some brakes on the government,” said Todd Belt, a professor of political management at George Washington University.
The midterms are designed to function as a potential check on every presidency, said Christopher Warshaw, a Georgetown University public policy professor.
“The reason we have a democracy is in part because the out party does well in midterm elections,” Warshaw said. “That function of midterms is really important regardless of who’s in power.”
In many races, the quality of individual candidates also is poised to be a deciding factor, including in Texas, where Republican Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton has struggled to gain traction, and in Maine, where Democrat Troy Jackson has labored to confront Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ staying power.
The campaign has held significant twists, among them the unexpected death of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; the dropping out of Democrat Graham Platner from Maine’s Senate race; and the questions about the alleged involvement of operatives aligned with Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign in the presence of a spoiler candidate on the Alaska ballot.
And Trump gambled on a largely dismissive approach toward voters’ affordability concerns; in recent days, he has also drawn attention with off-script comments at his rallies about Republican candidates’ rear ends and for lashing out at a reporter who questioned why he had canceled his final two rallies, which Trump later rescheduled.
Voter turnout could also have a significant effect on results; both parties have worked to reach independent voters while turning out their bases.
Across the country, nonpartisan groups are holding last-minute voting events, encouraging people to fill out their ballots. A hotline run by a nonprofit coalition organized by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is receiving hundreds of calls a day about how to vote.
Brandon Waithe, 42, an Air Force veteran who has organized get-out-the-vote events through Project HALO, a voting initiative, said he hoped to help raise turnout.
He hosted a line dancing event in a Cleveland public plaza last month aimed at reminding people to vote — and to “tie some positive emotion to the act of voting,” he said.
“It’s like, ‘Ah, cool, all right, voting’s not so bad,’” Waithe said. “There’s no pressure. … We’re not telling you which party to vote for or which candidate. We’re just like, ‘Thank you for participating in voting.’”
The speed with which results are known Tuesday will partly depend on how large a blue wave might occur. The House majority could become clear Tuesday night, but the margin could take a little more time with swing races in slower-counting states such as California and Pennsylvania.
If the Senate majority comes down to Maine or Alaska and if those races are very close, the outcome will probably take some days to verify, Kousser said.
“What I’ve been telling people is you’re going to have to buckle up and wait,” he said.
And, of course, one of the few certainties of an election is that no one knows exactly what will happen. The electorate is volatile, said Sonoma State University political science professor David McCuan, and there are always wild cards.
“There will be a surprise on election night,” McCuan said.
The last day to register to vote online for the Nov. 3 general election was Oct. 19. You still can register to vote, however, through the “same day” voter registration process.
Here’s what you need to know.
Who can register to vote in California?
You must be a United States citizen and a California resident, 18 years or older on election day, not serving a state or federal prison term for a felony and not deemed mentally incompetent by a court.
How to register via the ‘same day’ voter registration process
Eligible citizens who need to register or re-register to vote within 14 days of an election can complete this process at county elections offices, polling places or vote centers.
You’ll need to re-register to vote if you’ve changed your:
name
residence address or mailing address
political party
If you’ve become a U.S. citizen fewer than 15 days before the election, you may register to vote by visiting your county elections office anytime before the polls close on election day. You must bring proof that you are a U.S. citizen and sign a form saying you are eligible to vote in California.
For more information, contact your county elections office; a complete list of contact information for each county office can be found here.
What documentation will I need to complete the registration process?
The application requires a state driver’s license or California identification card number, or you can use the last four numbers on your Social Security card.
If you don’t have any of those, you still can register. You’ll be assigned a unique identifier to validate your registration.
Here’s how that information is verified:
California ID numbers are matched with Department of Motor Vehicles records.
Social Security numbers are matched with Social Security Administration records.
Unique identifiers are verified by election officials.
What if I need a guide or voting instructions in another language?
Voters can choose to get election information in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai or Vietnamese by calling the phone numbers listed here or by using these online options to get help.
Where can I complete the ‘same day’ voter registration process?
You also can complete the same-day voter registration process on election day. All polling locations are open on election day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
What’s a provisional ballot and when will my vote be counted?
With same-day registration, you are “conditionally” registered to vote and your ballot is provisional.
The provisional ballot is a regular ballot that is placed in a special envelope prior to being put in the ballot box.
This just means that elections officials must confirm that you are registered to vote in that county and that you did not already vote in that election. After that information is confirmed, your ballot will be processed and counted.
SAN FRANCISCO — Rookie Yaxel Lendeborg scored a career-high 37 points and dished out six assists in a game in which Golden State rested stars Stephen Curry and Draymond Green, and the Warriors beat the Clippers 124-112 for their fourth straight win Sunday night.
Lendeborg notched his fourth game with 20 or more points, scoring five straight midway through the third quarter that gave the Warriors their biggest lead to that point at 83-68. He shot 13 for 19 — six of 11 from three-point range — and his points were the most by a Warriors rookie since Curry went off for 42 on April 14, 2010, at Portland.
With two 30-point performances among his initial seven games, Lendeborg joined Hall of Famers Wilt Chamberlain and Rick Barry as the only other Warriors to do so. Lendeborg bounced back from a tough outing in a win against the Lakers on Friday in which he fouled out.
Brandon Williams scored 17 points off the bench as the Golden State reserves contributed 40 points in all.
Rui Hachimura had 24 points and Kobe Sanders came off the bench to score 16 for the Clippers, who lost their fifth straight game.
Curry and Green had the night off for the front end of a back-to-back, with the Clippers also playing in the first of consecutive games.
Golden State has found a rhythm since starting 0-3.
Brandin Podziemski overcame a slow start to finish with 17 points, eight rebounds and eight assists and De’Anthony Melton added 21 points for the Warriors, who were big supporters of the Golden State Valkyries’ run to a WNBA championship that was capped by a thrilling Game 7 win Saturday.
Gabby Williams, Tiffany Hayes and Kiah Stokes walked through Chase Center a night after the Valkyries beat the Atlanta Dream in the first Game 7 in Finals history to huge cheers as they made their way to seats in the first quarter. The team was honored at midcourt in the first half.
The arena crew has been busy, changing the court after the Warriors played Friday night and again after Saturday’s WNBA finale.
Up next for the Clippers: vs. the Toronto Raptors at Crypto.com Arena on Monday.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act this year, U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures knew he was going to be targeted.
Alabama’s Republican-controlled Legislature soon after redrew the 2nd Congressional District, one of only two in the state represented by a Democrat, to make it easier for the GOP to win.
Figures, one of several Black members of Congress who saw their districts redrawn, has complicated that plan. He is fighting to hold on to his seat by not only rallying Black voters in cities such as Montgomery and Tuskegee, both steeped in the nation’s struggle for civil rights, but also talking to voters deep in conservative territory, tugging at their concerns over rising prices of food, fuel and fertilizer.
“We know that the deck has been stacked. We know that the rules have been changed in the middle of the game, but we know what we’ve got to do,” Figures told a cheering crowd recently in Montgomery. “All we’ve got to do is show up. All we’ve got to do is show out. All we’ve got to do is fight.”
National groups have taken notice.
Spending on television advertising in the district has gone from almost nothing to nearly $10 million in the last seven weeks, according to AdImpact, with Democratic groups outspending Republicans.
Figures’ race against Rhett Marques, a state lawmaker endorsed by President Trump, is drawing attention as another sign of potential trouble for Republicans as they try to hold their majorities in Congress. The contest also has become a rallying point for Black voters angry over how Southern states swiftly gerrymandered congressional districts after the Supreme Court decision.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker said the Alabama election is an opportunity to send a message on voting rights.
“The people of Alabama have a chance again to say this is a moral moment — ‘Not on my watch,’” Booker (D-N.J.) said during a campaign stop with Figures. “I will not stay seated while you try to take away our power.”
Racial gerrymandering
Figures was elected in 2024 after a federal court ordered new districts, ruling that the Legislature had unlawfully diluted the voting power of Black residents. Alabama is 27% Black and has seven U.S. House seats. With Figures’ victory, the state added a second Black member of Congress for the first time in its history, aligning its representation with its demographics.
But the Supreme Court decision last term paved the way for drawing new lines. The map Alabama is using on election day reduces the Black voting-age population in Figures’ district from 48% to 40%, making the district more likely to go Republican. Trump carried the area within the new district by 14 percentage points two years ago.
Despite the district’s conservative lean, Democrats are hoping a redistricting backlash and frustration over the economy will galvanize voters on Tuesday and send Figures back to Congress.
Some Black voters say they see echoes of the state’s Jim Crow past in the redrawing of the district.
“I’m 75, and history is repeating itself,” said Francis Fanning, a retired substitute teacher in Montgomery.
Sheyann Webb-Christburg was 8 in 1965 when she and other voting rights marchers were attacked by law enforcement in Selma.
“Much blood, sweat and tears was shed in an effort for African Americans to gain their right to vote,” said Webb-Christburg, who lives in Montgomery, and remembers a feeling of excitement when Figures was elected two years ago.
“It’s very sad that we are in this place,” she said. “But we still got to continue just as we did back in the ’60s. Lift our voices, because we always keep hope alive.”
Republican says he’s aligned with ‘Alabama values’
For the GOP, the new lines are about reclaiming a district that was reliably Republican before it was altered by the federal court.
“We have an opportunity to not only flip a seat from Democrat back to Republican here in Alabama, but to also hold the majority in the House with a win,” Marques said.
He emphasizes his legislative record, which includes support for school choice, law enforcement and restrictions on transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports and gender-affirming care for minors. Marques said he is more aligned with “the Alabama values in this district.”
He acknowledged voter concerns about affordability, but put the blame on President Biden’s administration.
Marques has deep ties to the heavily Republican areas of the district, where he served on the Enterprise City Council and ran an automotive store for decades.
“I know his values and I trust him,” said Coffee County Sheriff Scott Byrd, who appeared with Marques at an event with local law enforcement officials.
Republicans are optimistic about reclaiming the seat, but have expressed concerns about the potential for lackluster turnout as Figures mounts an aggressive campaign. Marques said he expects to prevail “if the Republicans and the people who believe in freedom” go vote.
U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the district is one of three dozen swing seats that will determine control of Congress.
“This seat absolutely will have a larger say on the direction of the country. Do we want conservative policies that are rooted in common sense, or do you want far-left socialists?” Scalise (R-La.) said at a campaign event for Marques in the city of Dothan.
From Black churches to Boll Weevil festival
Figures has been campaigning in both heavily Republican and Democratic areas as he seeks to maximize Democratic turnout while trying to persuade more conservative and independent voters.
He said affordability is the overriding issue facing all voters, from grocery and gas prices to farmers’ high fertilizer costs.
“The cost of living in this country is getting out of control. And we don’t come from a district or a state where people have the means to just continue to pump out money for $4 a gallon for gas or $8 for ground beef,” Figures said.
Figures often notes that the median individual income in Alabama is $34,000 and people struggle with access to hospitals and healthcare. He framed the race as a choice between “someone with a record of serving the people” or someone there to serve a president.
On an October weekend, his heavy schedule of stops included greeting people at the annual Boll Weevil Fall Festival in Enterprise, a predominantly white city of about 31,000. The festival is named for the cotton-destroying insect that forced the community’s pivot to more prosperous peanut farming a century ago.
The next day, he made a string of appearances through largely Black churches in nearby Dothan, urging people to vote.
Figures often notes that the district was never drawn as majority Black, but initially was split evenly between Black and white voters.
Speaking at Greater Beulah Baptist Church, a predominantly Black church in strongly Republican Houston County, Figures said the district was reconfigured in a way that makes it more difficult for “somebody who looks like me” to be able to win. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible, he said.
“Even though they are changing district lines, we still have the right to show up and make our voices heard,” he said.
Chandler writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines contributed to this report.
Donning a creepy mask of Democratic rival Xavier Becerra, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton dashed around a children’s Halloween event dishing out candy and warnings about potential liberal tax policies.
“Vote for Becerra, and your parents will have to pay every mile they drive. Isn’t that great?” Hilton sarcastically said at a Trunk or Treat gathering Saturday in Highland Park. “These children are very pricey because if their parents vote for Becerra, they will be taxed every mile they drive. Yay! Yay! Mileage tax! Mileage tax! Mileage tax!”
Becerra was not spooked when he heard of Hilton’s get-up and put-down.
With Tuesday’s election barreling toward them, Becerra and Hilton traded barbs and did their the best to gin up support as they crisscrossed California in what has been a relatively sedate race to succeed Democrat Gavin Newsom, who is wrapping up his final term as governor. Recent polls show Becerra leading Hilton by at least 20 percentage points, which is not a surprise in a state where Democratic voters vastly outnumber Republicans and GOP candidates last won a statewide election two decades ago.
Xavier Becerra, Democratic nominee for governor, speaks during a reception Friday in San Francisco.
(Lea Suzuki / San Francisco Chronicle / Getty Images)
Becerra has spent the waning days of the campaign stumping for Democrats in competitive House races in the Central Valley and Southern California.
Party leaders are trying to capitalize on broad anti-Trump sentiment to juice the state’s liberal electorate and win House seats that were redrawn to favor Democrats, including a Sacramento-area seat currently held by Republican-turned-independent Rep. Kevin Kiley.
“We’re not just gonna take back these seats in California. We’re gonna take back the House and the Senate,” Becerra told costumed and cheering volunteers during a quick Saturday stop in support of Richard Pan, the Democrat challenging Kiley. Trump, Becerra said, wants to “destroy democracy. That’s why we’re getting out to vote.”
“Everything the Trump administration has done so far is something I disagree with,” 19-year-old Arthur Galvan said after Becerra spoke at Pan’s campaign headquarters. But the UC Davis sophomore said his top priorities are education and one day being able to afford a home, even in Lincoln, the semi-rural and fast-growing town he grew up in.
“Compared to the rest of the state, housing over there is slightly cheaper. But even still, that’s not attainable,” Galvan said. “I don’t think that there’s many easy ways to go about this but it’s something that we have to look into.”
Asked about his support for a proposed mileage tax — which would require drivers to pay a fee based on the total number of miles driven in a period of time — Becerra said he is considering all options to maintain road funding as more Californians adopt electric vehicles and stop paying the gas tax.
“We need to pay for our roads and our bridges and our highways. We need to pay for mass transit. You can’t do it if you don’t have the money,” he said. “I’m not gonna say exactly how it will be, because that’s work we have to do with the Legislature, and with every community having a chance to speak up.”
Hilton, a former Fox News commentator and political advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, has embraced his underdog status. The quick-witted Republican has pinballed from California’s deeply-red northern territories to Democratic strongholds in San Francisco and L.A., generating enough heat to remain in the spotlight but not enough to catch fire. He tailgated with Chargers and Rams fans at SoFi Stadium on Sunday, and had planned to rally voters at a Bakersfield demolition derby the night before, but pulled out when rain was forecast.
Though endorsed by Trump, Hilton has framed his campaign around the many ills facing California — including the lack of affordable housing, a persistent and worsening homelessness crisis, entrenched budget deficits and high gas prices — all of which he blames on years of Democratic rule.
At the Halloween event on Saturday, Hilton asked Italia Sandoval’s 3-year-old daughter Milania if she would prefer candy or a potential mileage tax. The toddler, understandably confused, opted for candy. Her mother, 31, jumped in, saying that such a levy would mean less story time, field trips and park and library visits for her family’s home-schooled children and further hamper their dreams of one day buying a home.
“Taxes are killing Californians. I want to buy my own home. Can’t afford it,” said the Huntington Park resident, a registered Republican who become politically engaged after studying theater at Cal State LA.
The daughter of a Mexican immigrant said her husband proposed moving to Idaho because of the cost of living in California, but she balked because their families live here. So they found other methods of cutting their budget.
“I shop at Goodwills, yard sales, Facebook Marketplace, you name it,” Sandoval said. “I even sadly say I pick up clothes off the side of the street sometimes. … It’s taught me to be resourceful in this state. But it’s like, come on.”
Aided by his Halloween mask and cardboard cutouts portraying Becerra as a hand puppet controlled by Newsom, Hilton has turned his opponent into a symbol of California’s high cost of living and “killjoy” rules. During a Friday night rally in Sacramento, the Republican candidate lamented local bans on gas appliances and a statewide prohibition on flavored tobacco products.
“It’s ridiculous. They don’t mind the fentanyl, they give out free drugs to hopeless addicts, but you try getting flavored Zyn in California — no way. That is insane,” he said, drawing cheers mostly from younger audience members. Lawmakers approved the ban in 2020 and voters upheld it two years later.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton campaigns at a Trunk or Treat block party Saturday in Highland Park.
(David Butow / For The Times)
Though Becerra is considered unbeatable in blue California in the race, many Hilton fans are clinging to hope that the Republican candidate will overcome the odds.
“We need help. I bought a hybrid and still am like, the gas, it’s killing me,” said Marina Gabel, adding that the paycheck from her school district job is “crumbs.” The Roseville Republican wore a shirt to Hilton’s Sacramento rally that described Newsom as a “California Horror Story” in a nod to the long-running FX anthology series.
In the final days of his campaign Becerra seized on voter anxiety about Trump’s policies, heightened by the administration’s recent efforts to wrest control over state voting processes.
Becerra forcefully argued that Tuesday’s election is a referendum on the president, and accused Hilton of being beholden to a White House that has attacked immigrants, launched an unnecessary war against Iran and created economic havoc by imposing tariffs and other unhinged policies.
“We see that wolf in that sheep’s clothing. We see right through you, Donald Trump,” Becerra said Friday at a social club in San Francisco’s Castro district, one of the nation’s most iconic LGBTQ+ communities. “In California, we say no mas. …. that’s why this election is so important, because we gotta prove that California does not take a knee to Donald Trump.”
JUNEAU, Alaska — A federal judge on Sunday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block certification of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses.
Sullivan, an ally of President Trump, faces Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola in one of the country’s most closely watched races, with Senate control at stake. Tuesday’s ranked-choice election also includes two candidates who have done little campaigning, one of whom shares the incumbent’s name.
The lawsuit, filed less than two weeks before the election and with early voting underway, called for an investigation into whether votes for retired teacher Dan J. Sullivan were intended for the senator. The state said the case lacked merit and argued there would be no way to determine that without violating voter privacy.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason wrote in the order that the relief the United States seeks is “infeasible” because many voters have already cast their ballots. She said the cast ballots have been mixed together to the point where they cannot be matched to specific voters.
“More fundamentally, the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified ‘investigation’ of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy,” she wrote.
Attorneys for the Republican-led state government, Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee argued that the case lacked any legal basis and amounted to interference. The senator and his allies, including Trump, for months have portrayed Dan J. Sullivan as a sham candidate intent on confusing voters and helping Peltola.
In the week before election day, the New York Times reported that Peltola’s campaign was involved in efforts to recruit the challenger Sullivan. Dan J. Sullivan in June, shortly after entering the race, said he’d had no contact with the campaign about running. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
Peltola’s campaign responded by saying the campaign “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign” — a statement similar to one it released after Dan J. Sullivan launched his bid.
“I am not interested in tricking voters,” she said during a recent campaign event.
State courts, including the Alaska Supreme Court, rejected Republican-backed efforts to block the retired teacher from the August open primary ballot on which he appeared as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no party affiliation. The senator was listed as Dan S. Sullivan, Republican and incumbent.
Both Sullivans appear the same way on the general election ballot. Peltola placed first in the primary, followed by the senator. Dan J. Sullivan received about 2.5% of the primary vote, but that was enough to finish within the top four and qualify for the Nov. 3 ranked-choice election.
Attorneys for the Alaska Department of Law, led by Republican acting Atty. Gen. Cori Mills, represented state elections officials in the case and asked Gleason, who was appointed by President Obama, to toss the lawsuit. They filed a scathing response to the federal government’s complaint, calling it “meritless.”
Alaska also said the state had taken “significant steps” to distinguish the two Sullivans on the ballot. Voters who still might be confused could ask for help or look up candidate biographies and other information in state-distributed election pamphlets.
Gleason wrote that the administration’s attempt to block certification ran counter to the Constitution, which gives states the authority to run elections. She also cited the Supreme Court’s Purcell principle, which holds that federal courts should generally not change election rules too close to an election.
Alaska’s ranked voting system also offers a solution to possible confusion, the state wrote, allowing voters to rank the Sullivans as first and second choices, if they choose.
“That way, if the voter’s first-ranked Sullivan is eliminated, his vote would transfer to the other Sullivan,” attorneys Rachel Witty, Margaret Paton Walsh and Laura Fox wrote. “The voter’s vote would not ‘be transferred to Peltola’ as the complaint asserts, unless the voter chose to rank Peltola as his next choice instead of the other Sullivan.”
Trump for years has railed against Alaska’s use of ranked-choice voting in general elections. Republican state leaders have said that while they don’t like ranked voting, they want voters to “rank every Republican” candidate on this year’s ballot, especially with a high-stakes governor’s race featuring one Democrat and three Republicans.
On Thursday, the Justice Department escalated a criminal investigation over the same-named candidates on the Alaska ballot, issuing a raft of new grand jury subpoenas, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press. The FBI also has begun contacting people who donated to Dan J. Sullivan, some of whom told the AP that the agents were asking if they had been misled about which candidate they were supporting.
Riccardi and Bohrer write for the Associated Press. AP photographer Lindsey Wasson in Anchorage contributed to this report.
The Golden State Valkyries secured the Women’s NBA title in just their second season with a 68-63 victory over the Atlanta Dream.
After the Dream levelled the seven-match series on Thursday, Gabby Williams starred for the Valkyries with 30 points to seal the win in the first Game Seven in WNBA Finals history.
Williams also claimed the WNBA Finals Most Valuable Player award.
“It’s easy when the energy is this good and positive,” said Williams. I wouldn’t change a thing.
“All it took was good people. We have winners, we have people who are ready to put their bodies on the floor to win a game.
“They don’t care about scoring. They just want to do defence and rebounding. Do whatever it takes and we built a beautiful culture here.”
Twenty eight of Williams’ points came in the second half, including a three-pointer with just over two minutes remaining to edge ahead by 60 points to the Dream’s 57, before free throws by Tiffany Hayes and Veronica Burton closed out the win.
The Valkyries are the WNBA’s newest team, having been formed in 2024, and won in front of a sell-out crowd of more than 18,000 fans at San Francisco’s Chase Center.
It is the fourth time that Dream have lost the finals in their 18-year history.
The Trump administration’s online accounts are circulating images of a pumpkin carved with a sombrero design and a fake Halloween-themed background around a Black man apparently accused of food assistance fraud, in social media posts slammed by critics as racially inflammatory rhetoric.
Only days before the midterm elections, the posts coincide with the government’s sweeping campaign to show its aggressive immigration enforcement, and highlight efforts it says are needed to crack down on fraud to save taxpayers money — as rising healthcare costs and other economic stressors have made affordability a top voter concern.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins posted Saturday on X a photo of the Black man standing in front of stacks of what appear to be U.S. currency with the headline SNAP FRAUDSTER, an apparent reference to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. He is holding aloft what appears to be a bill set aflame.
“Some costumes come with a price tag. This one comes with a prison sentence,” it says against the backdrop of fake Spirit Halloween costume packaging.
Another photo posted by the White House on X on Thursday showed a pumpkin with the shape of a sombrero carved across it and the words “Spooky szn is here.”
The post by Rollins appears to be taken from an Instagram post from September 2025 by an account under the name Shawty Dred.
Earlier this month, Mercedes Reshard New, identified by the Justice Department as a social media personality also known as “Shawty Dred,” was arrested on federal charges for fraudulently obtaining more than $4 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits in Georgia.
It’s not the first time the White House has been accused of posting inflammatory images on official government social media accounts.
Just over a year ago during the government shutdown, the White House revived a deepfake video posted by Trump of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in a fake mustache and sombrero to accuse the Democrats of acting on behalf of illegal immigrants instead of U.S. citizens. Jeffries described the meme as bigoted. Administration officials played it on repeat in the White House briefing room, and Vice President JD Vance promised that the “sombrero memes will stop” when Democrats agreed to end the shutdown.
The NAACP did not respond to an email seeking comment, nor did the White House or Rollins.
The Trump administration in recent weeks has ratcheted up its anti-immigrant rhetoric and accusations of fraud, including against U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), whose Washington, D.C., home was searched by federal agents earlier this month. Federal authorities are investigating potential fraud in her family’s immigration paperwork. Omar, who was born in Somalia, is a naturalized U.S. citizen.
It also has taken a series of punitive steps linked to allegations of fraud in mostly Democratic-led states, including California and Minnesota, whose governors accused the federal government of targeting their states for political reasons.
Federal prosecutors said in a news release Oct. 21 that the influencer New controlled more than 350 fraudulent SNAP accounts under stolen identities between January 2020 and July 2026. He allegedly applied for his company, Shawty Dred LLC, to become an authorized SNAP retailer and used EBT debit cards to extract about $4 million from the accounts.
New’s Instagram account, which has more than 2 million followers, has flaunted his extravagant lifestyle, federal prosecutors said. Posts depict him flying on private jets, posing with Rolls-Royce vehicles in front of his “super mansion” and handling massive stacks of cash.
“Instead of this money feeding families in need, New, the social media personality known as ‘Shawty Dred,’ allegedly used the cash to bankroll a life of luxury,” Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta Marlo Graham said in the release.
New was indicted by a federal grand jury Oct. 7 on dozens of counts of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft, and one count each of SNAP fraud and illegal transactions with access devices. He was arrested Oct. 13 and remains in federal custody.
According to Fulton County, Ga., jail records, New has been arrested multiple times on suspicion of crimes including identity theft, insurance fraud, financial transaction card fraud, forgery and simple assault.
A federal defender listed in court records as representing New, Joseph Austin, did not return a phone message.
The billionaires targeted by the wealth tax on the November ballot include owners of some of California’s top sports teams and, among them, there will be winners and losers if voters approve the measure.
Which owners would be ensnared by the proposed tax on billionaires’ assets remains unclear, since it’s largely dependent on whether they are declared official California residents, at least for state tax purposes. And that’s before lawyers and accountants get involved, an almost certain bet if the ballot measure is approved by California voters.
So it’s possible that the majority owner of the Los Angeles Chargers, Dean Spanos, would have to pay the the wealth tax while the owner of the Los Angeles Rams, San Kroenke, would not — even though both their teams are playing on the same home field at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. It all depends on whether the state considers Spanos or Kroenke official California residents and how their assets are tallied.
Other wealthy team owners or co-owners who have residences in California and could be subject to the tax include the Golden State Warriors’ Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, the San Diego Padres’ José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones, the San Jose Sharks’ Hasso Plattner and the Anaheim Ducks’ Henry Samueli.
Among those who appear to live out of state, according to news reports, and may not be impacted: the San Francisco 49ers’ Denise DeBartolo York and John York, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Steve Ballmer, the San Francisco Giants’ Charles Johnson, the L.A. Kings’ and the L.A. Galaxy’s Philip Anschutz.
In August, embattled billionaire Mark Walter agreed to sell the L.A. Lakers to former Disney chief executive Bob Iger and venture capitalist Joshua Kushner. The proposed billionaire tax would apply to Iger, who lives in California, but not Kushner, who lives in New York. A spokesperson for Iger declined comment. Walter, who also owns the Dodgers and has been under federal investigation, told the California Post on Wednesday that he has no plans to sell the team.
There is uncertainty and disagreement about how the tax would be levied on sports team owners, and how their ownership stakes would be evaluated by the state when assessing their assets.
Representatives of the Warriors and Chargers, declined comment. Spokespeople for the Kings, Padres, Sharks and Ducks did not respond to requests for comment, nor did representatives of Kroenke or Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, who lives in California and whose $9.6-billion purchase of the Seattle Seahawks was finalized in September.
Legendary sports agent Leigh Steinberg warned that the proposed tax would have unintended consequences. “It creates an uneven playing field,” he said. “Out-of-state owners get an advantage over in-state residents.”
Steinberg, who has represented more than 300 professional athletes including Troy Aikman, Drew Bledsoe, Michael Vick and Oscar De La Hoya, said the increased tax could be passed on to fans if voters approve Proposition 40 on Nov. 3.
“Ticket prices are high enough anyway, and somewhat prohibitive to a working person or young person attending a game live,” Steinberg said. “The last thing in the world positive for the growth of sports is passing on that surcharge.”
Dodgers fans buy food at Dodgers Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% levy on many of the assets of billionaires, including their holdings in companies. It was crafted by a healthcare union to compensate for federal healthcare cuts signed by President Trump last year that will cost California an estimated $100 billion, impacting the state’s most vulnerable residents.
David Gamage, a tax law and policy professor at the University of Missouri’s law school, countered that consumers would be far more hurt by the impacts of the impending federal healthcare funding cuts than by potentially higher prices at sporting events.
“The billionaire wealth tax would address the healthcare crisis caused by the Trump administration slashing Medicaid and other healthcare funding. Passing the billionaire wealth tax would be expected to reduce healthcare costs and thereby keep the prices of hot dogs and other consumer goods lower,” Gamage said. “Trying to fool voters by implying otherwise is shameful.”
More than 200 billionaires live in California, some of whom moved themselves or their businesses out of the state because of the proposed tax. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of social media giant Meta, told company leaders that he planned to leave the state to avoid his control over the company being substantially diluted by being forced to sell enough stock to pay the proposed levy. Last week, the company announced the creation of a new nonvoting type of stock that would allow Zuckerberg to sell enough shares to pay the proposed tax while retaining his voting power in exchange for him agreeing to remain in the state for eight years.
Protesters in New York demonstrate against Elon Musk following the launch of the SpaceX initial public offering.
(Spencer Platt / Getty Images)
Proposition 40 supporters say that billionaire sports team owners have benefited from Trump’s tax cuts — dividends they didn’t share with the fans who spend hard-earned money to bring their families to games — and that they need to pay their fair share.
Opponents argue that professional sports are among myriad California economic engines that will suffer if voters approve the proposition, in part because owners based in the state would be subject to the tax while those who reside in other parts of the country would be exempt.
The measure “will also drive up the cost of operating a sports team in California, increasing the price of tickets, concessions and merchandise,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable. “This is just one of many ways Proposition 40 will cost Californians.”
A poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies released Thursdayshowed public sentiment had turned against the billionaire tax, with half of likely voters opposing it and 42% supporting it.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer addresses the crowd.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
More than $404 million has been donated to efforts supporting and opposing the wealth tax, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office. Proponents of the ballot measure had raised $36.5 million as of Thursday, while opponents received nearly $368 million.
The residency of billionaires is often difficult to ascertain, given that many have multiple properties across the nation and around the world. It is not solely based on where the person is registered to vote.
Among the “facts and circumstances” the California Franchise Tax Board considers are the person’s employer, their spouse’s and childrens’ locations, where mail is delivered, and the location of doctors, accountants, lawyers, country club memberships and houses of worship. The number of days spent in California also is factored into the board’s assessment of residency.
Lakers part-owner Patrick Soon-Shiong at a game.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire, owns 4% of the Lakers and recently became a co-owner of a new women’s professional volleyball team in Los Angeles expected to start competing next year.
Soon-Shiong noted that it’s not only wealthy Californians who oppose the tax. Teachers, firefighters and other groups oppose Proposition 40 because of concerns about long-term impacts on the state. And, as a businessman with stakes in sports teams, he predicted bad effects on pro sports.
“It’s really, really expensive to bring a family to watch a professional game, whatever that game may be,” he said during an interview in September. “All those costs will go up, and for sure, it’ll be passed down to the cost of the ticket.”
Times Library Director Cary Schneider contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — Xavier Becerra is poised to make history as California’s first elected Latino governor, according to a new poll.
But the survey shows voters, and Latinos in particular, have mixed views on the significance and impact of Becerra’s probable win.
According to the poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, the veteran Democratic politician was backed by 61% of likely California voters, compared with 34% who supported his Republican rival, former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton. That is slightly up from a September IGS survey that showed Becerra leading by 25 percentage points.
“He’s solidified almost unanimous support now among Democrats. Republicans are almost unanimous in the other direction,” IGS Poll Director Mark DiCamillo said.
Becerra, a former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, congressman and state attorney general, “hasn’t offended any significant parts of the Democratic Party” and has united the party’s voters by “hammering away” against President Trump, DiCamillo said.
When asked to name one or two top priorities for the election, 40% of likely voters chose pushing back against the Trump administration, followed by 34% who cited reducing the cost of living. It’s a reversal from the mid-September survey, when 44% of likely voters said the cost of living was a top issue and 37% listed fighting Trump.
Both of those issues far outweighed the concerns of California voters about other issues that dominated the political discourse in past elections, including fighting crime, creating jobs and improving public education and healthcare.
Becerra’s supporters “are over the top on fighting Trump administration policies,” DiCamillo said. “I mean, 62% of his supporters state that as their greatest concern in this election. It’s really uniting the Democrats.”
The survey reveals a generational split between voters: Those younger than 50 were more likely to name the cost of living as a top issue, while voters 50 and older were more likely to name Trump’s policies.
Latino voters were more evenly split between the two issues, and more focused on other needs than voters of other ethnic and racial groups. They were more likely to list priorities including reducing taxes, fighting crime and protecting immigrant communities than white, Black, or Asian American likely voters.
Days before voting ends in the Nov. 3 election, 53% of likely voters have a favorable view of Becerra and 41% see him unfavorably. Hilton’s image continues its upside-down trend: 56% view him unfavorably and 34% have a positive opinion.
“There’s been a lot of negative campaigning by Hilton, but it doesn’t seem to have had any impact,” DiCamillo said. “Becerra is just riding high on his image rating with the voters. This is the highest image rating we’ve measured for him.”
The survey asked voters whom they expected to win the race, regardless of which candidate they are supporting. Ninety percent of Democrats and 80% of voters not affiliated with a major party expected Becerra to win. Half of Republicans and 58% of those who identify as MAGA said they believed Hilton will win — a striking number in a state where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1 and the GOP has not won a statewide race in 20 years.
“They are hoping against hope,” DiCamillo said.
If he wins Tuesday’s election to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, Becerra would become the first-ever Latino elected governor and the first Latino in that office in 150 years.
Becerra’s support among Latino and white voters closely mirrors that of the overall electorate, with 60% favoring him. Becerra received a warmer reception from Black and Asian American voters in the state, according to the poll.
Asked how they felt about the possibility of electing a Latino governor, just over a third of all likely voters and 45% of Latino voters said they felt “proud.” But majorities of both groups — 52% of Latino voters and 58% of likely voters — believe electing the state’s first Latino governor is either “not too important” or “not at all important.”
For better or worse, voters also have low expectations about the impact of a potentially historic election.
Sixty-one percent of likely Latino voters, and 57% of total voters surveyed, do not believe that having a Latino governor would reduce racial inequalities in the state. And similar numbers doubt it would worsen racial tensions.
Among Latino voters, 40% believed electing a Latino governor would ease fear in their communities, but 43% disagreed. The remainder had no opinion.
“While greater than 4 in 10 Latinos feel proud and think it is important to elect a Latino governor, they also recognize that it will take much more than a single elected official to ease the fears and difficulties experienced by the Latino immigrant community,” IGS Co-Director G. Cristina Mora said. “With Trump still in office and prices still high, Latino voters seem cautious yet hopeful about the new governor.”
The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish from Oct. 19 to Sunday. Responses for the governor’s race poll came from a weighted sample of 1,477 respondents who already voted or were considered likely to vote in the November election, from a larger group of 2,787 registered voters throughout California. It has a margin of error of 3 percentage points in either direction.
CHANDLER, Ariz. — At balloon-adorned tables in red, white and blue, a handful of voters inside a church gymnasium listened as Medina Moore explained what to do if federal agents show up at the polls.
Call a hotline, she told volunteers, where attorneys will be ready to respond. Take videos, report what you see and remove yourself from any situation that becomes intense, she advised.
It was one of Moore’s final poll monitor trainings in the Phoenix area before election day, preparing a few new “peacekeepers” to join the ranks of about 200 she has recruited from local faith groups in the Phoenix area to greet voters, answer questions and keep an eye out for issues at voting sites on Tuesday.
“It feels very urgent this year,” said Moore, the voting rights organizer for the Arizona Faith Network, a coalition of religious groups. “We’re in an era of information overload. Being able to educate voters on what’s true and what’s not is very important.”
As lawyers nationwide prepare defenses against possible election interference by the Trump administration and election officials train for worst-case scenarios, ordinary citizens across the country are also readying to help. Through nonpartisan groups, parents are training to be poll monitors, law students are staffing legal hotlines, veterans are holding voting events and business owners are signing pledges to back local election officials.
The grassroots efforts, underpinned by various voting and democracy nonprofits, amount to a striking push by American voters to help uphold the nation’s election system in the face of possible threats from its own government. More than 21,000 people nationwide have been trained as nonpartisan poll monitors through the Election Protection coalition, the program that Moore used, along with thousands of others through other nonprofit and partisan efforts.
The effort is aimed at helping ensure voter turnout at a time when Trump’s rhetoric has eroded public trust in the system and many GOP-led states have enacted new ballot rules for voters to navigate. Worry among voters about whether their ballots will be counted has accelerated, according to organizers; in a recent AP-NORC poll, just under half of American voters expressed confidence that midterm votes will be counted accurately.
“People who vote occasionally or it’s their first time voting or they haven’t voted in a while, they all have questions on ‘If I vote, will my vote count?’” said Rebekah Caruthers, president of the Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights group that is working with college students to monitor voting on campuses. The best way to combat those fears, she said, is for as many people as possible to “show up and exercise their right.”
Since returning to office, Trump has undertaken a sweeping effort to exert control over and cast doubt on U.S. elections, and the administration has intensified its efforts as the midterms draw closer.
“Be careful of the voter fraud,” Trump said at a Texas rally Tuesday. “We’re going to watch that voter fraud.”
Glendale Mayor Jerry P. Weiers, Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Andy Biggs, Cindy Biggs and Sam Darmo, co-chair of the Assyrian-American Republican coalition and president of Assyrians for Justice, stand for the national anthem at an event in Glendale, Ariz., on Oct. 24, 2026.
(Rebecca Noble / Getty Images)
This week, Trump offered $1 million to anyone who reports voter fraud that leads to a conviction, the latest in a string of incentives he has floated related to the midterms and another suggestion of rampant election fraud.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche last week said the Justice Department did not intend to interfere with elections. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) committed to a peaceful transfer of power if Democrats win a majority, saying, “We’re going to follow the Constitution,” but predicted there would be no transfer because Republicans would win the majority. Trump told reporters Tuesday that he would respect the election results “if they’re honest elections.”
Preparations by lawyers, nonprofits and Democratic lawmakers to anticipate how the Trump administration could try to interfere with the midterms have been underway for months. Courts have already blocked many of the administration’s steps, including attempts to access state voter rolls, restrict voting by mail and demand states change some election rules.
The grassroots effort has grown out of existing programs — the Election Protection coalition has been operating since 2000 — but interest from volunteers is particularly high this year, organizers from several groups said.
“Voters are responding to the moment that we’re in right now,” said Saige Draeger, a senior policy associate at Verified Voting, a nonprofit that advises states on the use of voting technology and is part of the Election Protection coalition. “I think they feel like it’s incumbent upon everybody to make sure this election goes smoothly.”
In Arizona, an epicenter of Republican efforts to deny the 2020 election results, partisan tensions have long been high, and residents cite concerns about potential political violence surrounding the election.
Now, election denialism is on the ballot: The Republican nominees for governor, secretary of state and attorney general each played a role in Trump’s denial of the 2020 results. Alex Kolodin, the Republican candidate for secretary of state, filed lawsuits challenging the 2020 election results.
The outcome of the race could be consequential for the 2028 election, because secretaries of state play a key role in certifying their states’ results, and presidential elections can come down to a single swing state. Along with the Arizona race, those in Nevada, Michigan and Georgia are being closely watched by pro-democracy groups.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signs a commemorative bill before a game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers at Chase Field on Sept. 3, 2025, in Phoenix.
(Norm Hall / Getty Images)
On street corners, the campaign signs for Kolodin and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, the Democratic incumbent, duel: “Protect every vote,” say Kolodin’s. “Protect your vote,” Fontes’ read.
Organizers focused on election protection efforts stress that the goal is to ensure every voter casts their vote and the person who gets the most votes is declared the winner — all regardless of political party.
“With the level of polarization that we have nationally right now, people might mistake and think that calling for a free, fair, democratic election is somehow partisan,” said Hardy Merriman, an organizer with the Hold the Line project, which has recruited about 650 volunteers to ask their local leaders to sign on to a pledge affirming they back free and fair elections. “It’s really important for actors to get off the sidelines … and say, no, actually it’s not.”
The mission of the poll monitors is to answer voters’ procedural questions, ensure no one is incorrectly turned away from voting and provide a friendly nonpartisan face — “be a peaceful presence,” Moore said. They can help voters navigate state laws — in Arizona, for instance, a requirement to show an approved form of identification when voting.
The monitors are also trained to call the attorney-staffed hotline to report anything out of the ordinary: long lines that may deter people from voting, people being turned away from the polls, aggressive electioneering from partisans outside the polling place or law enforcement showing up at voting locations.
Monitors trained through the Election Protection coalition will be stationed in 40 states and the District of Columbia, while about 3,000 legal professionals will be staffing the hotline, said Camille Wimbish, national director of campaigns and field programs for the Election Protection coalition, which is a project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
“It gives voters reassurance that there is someone who has their back at voting locations,” Wimbish said. “It also just shows our determination as a community to stand up and say that we care about our elections, we want election day to be a joyful, peaceful, celebratory experience for all of us.”
PJ Boone-Edgerton Longoni, 70, who attended Moore’s mid-October training in Chandler at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, said the idea of poll monitoring made her a little nervous, but she believes there is a “high-stakes need” for citizens to show up.
“I want to be a support,” she said. “All this misinformation gets people not to trust anything, and that lack of trust causes things to fall apart — because democracy is based on trust.”
Ahead of the Wisconsin game, USC got back two key offensive linemen from injury, left guard Hayden Treter and Paige.
However, the line still struggled against Wisconsin, allowing quarterback Jayden Maiava to get sacked five times and playing a factor in the Trojans’ limited run game.
Paige said the group needed to do “a little bit of everything” better in the run game. Raymond told reporters that factors like communication and physicality were among the causes of the line’s struggles.
“It wasn’t good enough,” Raymond said Wednesday.
Treter, who previously missed two games because of injury, was listed as out on Thursday’s availability report after exiting the loss to Wisconsin early.
Alston, freshman tight end Mark Bowman and defensive tackle Jahkeem Stewart were among the notable USC players listed as questionable Thursday. Bowman, who racked up two touchdowns and more than 200 receiving yards in his first five collegiate games, hasn’t played since the Oregon loss in late September.
Stewart, who has been listed on the availability report and then played in each of the last four games, said he feels “great.”
“Just slowly getting better for the team,” Stewart said. “Can’t wait to go out there and perform.”
While the Trojans are dealing with some injuries, the highest-profile injury is on the other side as the Buckeyes will be without their star quarterback Julian Sayin, who was injured during Ohio State’s win over No. 4 Indiana on Oct. 17.
Sayin, who is expected to miss the rest of the season, had the second-most passing yards in the Big Ten (2,007), tied for the most passing touchdowns (19) and the highest passer rating (184.9).
Since Ohio State had a bye last week, coach Ryan Day hasn’t had to announce whether freshman Luke Fahey or sophomore Tavien St. Clair will get the start in Sayin’s stead. Riley and defensive tackle Jide Abasiri both told reporters that the team is preparing for both and will be ready to adjust during the game.
“There’s an expectation that there will probably be some sort of adjustment in some way, and we’ll have to do a good job handling that,” Riley said of planning for two quarterbacks. “I think that’ll be one of the keys, I’m sure, to this matchup.”
The Trojans are set to kick off their high-stakes Halloween-homecoming matchup with the Buckeyes at 4:30 p.m. Saturday.
Voter ballots were mailed to all registered California voters starting Oct. 5. But if you prefer to vote in person, here’s what you need to know about casting your ballot ahead of and on election day, Nov. 3.
How can I vote in person now?
The first vote centers opened for early in-person voting on Oct. 24 but only in Voter’s Choice Act counties. L.A. County is among the 30 VCA counties where you can vote in person early.
But in-person early voting expands significantly Saturday, with locations open across the state.
To find your polling location, you can visit your county elections official’s website or the secretary of state’s website here.
