The latest on the 2020 election

Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats gave his first television interview since he was replaced as DNI in 2019, disputing many of the claims President Trump has made about the integrity, or lack thereof, of the upcoming election.

Coats specifically said that he has not seen any evidence of “widespread fraud,” despite Trump’s many unfounded claims that this will be a corrupt election.

Coats also said that Russia is the country he is most worried about interfering in the election.

“They’re the New England Patriots of messing with elections. I think they do it better than anybody else,” he said, adding that the US intelligence community has “full confidence that the Russians are going after our elections.”

He said Russia is trying to undermine our confidence in democracy.

The former DNI also warned that to him, the nightmare scenario is that Americans feel their preferred candidate was denied the election leading to violence.

“The nightmare scenario is on election night people will draw conclusions, or days after, will draw conclusions that their candidate has been denied the victory and that public riots will result, that violence might result from that,” Coats said.

More than 4 million North Carolina voters have now cast their ballots. 

As of 5:30 p.m., state data shows 4,022,865 total votes cast.

That means roughly 55% of all currently registered voters in North Carolina have already voted in the 2020 election. 

With five days until Election Day, North Carolina voters have cast just about 85% of the total number of votes cast in the entire 2016 Election. 

The overwhelming number of early voters chose to vote in-person. 

Nearly 80% of people who requested a mail-in ballot in North Carolina have already cast their vote in the 2020 election.  According to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, through Oct. 28, around 273,000 voters who requested an absentee ballot are yet to vote. 

The North Carolina State Board of Elections said roughly 1.36 million voters requested absentee by mail ballots through the request deadline of Oct. 27. Of those, through Oct. 28, roughly 852,000 successfully returned their mail-in ballots and more than 233,000 chose to vote in-person during the early voting period instead.

More than 80 million people have voted in the US so far with five days left until Election Day, according to a survey of election officials in all 50 states and Washington, DC, by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist.    

These votes currently account for about 38% of registered voters nationwide, as pre-Election Day voting is surging nationwide amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  

States are also reporting record turnout compared to last cycle. The 80.1 million ballots cast so far represents about 59% of the more than 136.5 million ballots cast in the 2016  presidential election.  

So far, 28 states and Washington, DC, have also crossed their halfway marks for total 2016 ballots cast, including 10 of CNN’s 16 most competitively-ranked states: Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine, and Nevada.  

About half of the votes already cast this cycle comes from those 16 key states, which will play a crucial role in determining who wins the presidency this year.  

Some voter information comes from Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations and is giving insights into who is voting before November.

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Actor Paul Rudd was seen on Thursday morning handing out cookies to early voters in Brooklyn, New York, waiting in the rain cast their vote.

Brian Rosenworcel, drummer for the band Guster, told CNN he was in line to vote at the Barclays Center when Rudd began to hand out blueberry and cream cookies to people in line.

“I was standing in line and I thought Paul was just there to vote, but then he starts handing out cookies to people in line, and he waited to greet people as they exited to say thanks for voting in the rain,” Rosenworcel said.

The drummer took this video of the moment:

Seven years ago, businessman Tom Steyer took a bet on the youth vote.

At the time, critics told him that organizing young voters was too expensive, he said. His response: “It was too expensive not to."

With five days until the 2020 election, the former Democratic candidate and current Biden surrogate said, “If you think about where we are in 2020, I think that I was right.”

In 2013, Steyer founded NextGen America, the youth-oriented, progressive nonprofit. According to the organization, they have deployed over 17,000 volunteers in 11 battleground states to engage with, register, and mobilize young people ahead of the 2020 election. (Steyer stepped away from NextGen last year as he prepared for his own bid for the presidency.)

Steyer could not have predicted the wave of crises afflicting young voters in 2020, he said: the Covid-19 pandemic, job losses, climate change and a national reckoning with race.

“The fact that young people do get this [urgency] and are turning out in such numbers is a critical element in terms of achieving what they want,” he said.

Steyer believes the difference maker leading to high youth voter turnout in 2020 could be the stark differences between the two presidential candidates and young people’s ability to imagine a future under a Biden presidency, he told CNN.

Steyer, a longtime climate activist, believes that in part, that the climate crisis is motivating young voters to get behind Biden.

“I think a big reason that the Biden-Harris ticket is so compelling for young people and why there’s such high turnout and why there's such a huge Democratic to Republican spread is the climate plan,” Steyer said.

Biden and Harris are “running on climate,” he told CNN. “They are appealing to young people on an issue that is at the core of their future and at the core of their present.”

Across the board, young voters on the left and right both recognize the need to address the climate crisis. Among likely voters from both parties, 76% of likely voters ages 18-29 believe the government should do more to deal with the environment, also according to Harvard’s youth poll.

There have been two positive Covid-19 cases “involving individuals attending the recent campaign rally in Gastonia,” the Gaston County Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement released Thursday.

The department stressed that the two cases are "not thought to be an indication of spread from the rally at this time, but rather two independent cases among individuals who were in attendance.”

President Trump rallied there last Wednesday. 

“Because of the large number of potential contacts from the rally, and the inability to alert them directly, the community is being notified so they can assess their own risk and take appropriate actions. Anyone who was in attendance at the rally is encouraged to monitor their symptoms and seek testing if needed,” the health department statement said.

One of the two people who attended the rally and later tested positive was a member of staff from local outlet WCNC Charlotte, according to a statement released by station management on Thursday. 

"WCNC has done its own contract tracing and notified all known parties who interacted with the employee. The employee is not experiencing any symptoms and will continue to quarantine at home per the Gaston County health guidelines," the statement reads. 

It continues: "Because of the large gathering and lack of mask wearing by many of the participants at the event, WCNC requested the COVID-19 test out of an abundance of caution. WCNC asked all four staff members who attended the event to be tested. We had 1 positive, 2 negative, awaiting results for 1 more. A fifth staff member, who did not attend the rally but was in close contact with the staff member who has tested positive, is also awaiting test results."

CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment. 

CNN's Brian Ries contributed to this report.

Watch:

Joe Biden campaign's Michigan arm released two new digital ads of Lizzo encouraging young voters in the state to vote early for Democratic nominee and his running mate, Kamala Harris. 

In the first ad, Lizzo tells young people to make their voices heard by voting for Biden, Harris and Sen. Gary Peters. Lizzo, a Detroit native, says, “It’s good to be back home in the city that I’m from. I’m here because this is the most important election of our lifetime and this year, Michigan is going to decide the future of our country.”

Lizzo encourages her “fellow young people” to vote early, pushing viewers to Iwillvote.com.

The second ad is geared toward students at the University of Michigan. All University of Michigan undergraduate students are currently under an emergency stay-in-place-order, after data showed that Covid-19 cases among Michigan students represented more than 60% of all local cases. 

Lizzo references the stay-at-home-order on the University of Michigan’s campus, explaining that students can still go out to register and vote early. She reminds students that there is an open polling center on campus.

President Trump’s campaign has announced that it is postponing tonight’s rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, due to wind.

In a statement, the campaign said “Because of a wind advisory issued with gusts reaching 50 miles per hour and other weather conditions, the outdoor Fayetteville, NC rally has been postponed until Monday.”

The National Weather Service has issued a wind advisory in effect until 7 p.m. for winds of 20 to 30 mph, gusting to 50 mph. Trump’s rally was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. ET. 

The CNN team on the ground reports that there are no perceptible wind issues at the moment.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden kicked off his swing through Florida Thursday in Coconut Creek in Broward County, where he implored Floridians to get out and vote.

Wearing his signature aviators as he delivered remarks in the Sunshine State, Biden told the voters, “I believe you’re going to change the course of this country for generations to come. This election is the most important one you’ve ever voted in.”  

The Democratic nominee slammed President Trump, who’s also campaigning in Florida today, for holding “super spreader events.”  

“President Trump's super spreader events – and he's spreading more virus around the country, and here in Florida today,” Biden said. “He's spreading division in addition to the virus," Biden added. "Division and discord. We need a president to bring us together, not pull us apart.”

Biden, who has been attacked repeatedly and without evidence by Republicans and Trump for being a socialist, spent a considerable amount of time in his speech appealing directly to Cuban and Venezuelan communities.  

“We have to vote for new Cuba policy as well,” Biden said. “This administration’s approach isn't working. Cuba is no closer to freedom and democracy today than it was four years ago.”  

He argued that he is the best president to fight for democracy in countries like Cuba and Venezuela, slamming Trump as being the “worst standard bearer” for democracy after he has so long embraced dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.   

“President Trump can’t advance democracy and human rights for the Cuban people, or the Venezuelan people, for that matter, when he has embraced so many autocrats around the world, starting with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un of North Korea,” Biden said. “Trump is the worst possible standard bearer for democracy in places like Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea. For my entire career, I stood for democracy, human rights for freedom of the press, assembly, freedom of religion and against dictators whether they're left or right.”

Watch the moment: