Nov. 4, 2022 US election coverage

Dan Walsh, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and a Libertarian candidate in the 2020 presidential election, says he is casting his ballot for the Democratic Senate candidate in this year's midterms.

Walsh said he is voting for John Fetterman because he believes he “represents the average person” and will deliver on affordable healthcare, which is his number one concern since he was blinded in one eye while playing basketball 10 years ago while living in Florida.

“I could not get any help until several years later when I came back home from Florida up to Pennsylvania,” said the native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Walsh described his political philosophy as voting for the candidate, not the party.

Born and raised a Democrat, he became a Republican when he lived in Florida. Fed up with the two-party system in 2000, Walsh switched to being an independent.

In 2016, he said he voted for Trump. In 2020, he thought both Joe Biden and Trump were too old to run for President and instead voted for Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen.

“We need the young people to take charge in political office,” Walsh added. 

Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake on Friday said she hasn’t seen anything so far that would make her argue the election has not been fair – after saying she will only accept the outcome of “a fair, honest and transparent election” and consistently promoting lies about the 2020 election on the campaign trail.  

“I haven’t seen anything. We’ll see what happens. You know, we’ve got a team of attorneys and we���ve got poll watchers and we’re going to make sure eyeballs are out. We want to make sure this is run well,” Lake said in response to a question from CNN at a campaign event on the border.

She went on to attack her opponent, Katie Hobbs, saying in part that she knew the people of Arizona would never vote for the Democratic candidate.

Last month, when pressed repeatedly by CNN’s Dana Bash, Lake would not commit to accepting the results of the election if she lost. 

“I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” she told Bash.

Lake said in a later interview with ABC that she would accept the outcome of “a fair, honest and transparent election.”

The Arizona GOP ticket — Lake, Senate candidate Blake Masters, Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh and Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem – on Friday held a news conference at the US-Mexico border in Cochise County, Arizona.

A former Milwaukee election official who allegedly obtained military ballots for fake voters undermined the trust of the public, the state's top election official said Friday.

The remarks came hours after charges were officially filed against Kimberly Zapata.

The former deputy director of the Milwaukee Election Commission was charged with one felony count of misconduct in public office and three misdemeanor counts of making false statements to obtain or vote through absentee ballots.

Administrator Meagan Wolfe, who heads the Wisconsin Elections Commission, emphasized the alleged actions would have no impact on voting in the midterm elections.

In an interview with prosecutors, the criminal complaint says, Zapata said she sent military voter absentee requests to municipal clerks using fabricated names “because she wanted to make a point that there is fraud in existence. She stated that it is not the conspiracy theories out there, but she wanted to bring the actual true fraud out.” 

It added: "Zapata stated that she felt overwhelmed due to the threats of violence the Election Commission was receiving, in addition to the constant daily harassment and accusations of lying and hiding things. She stated she wanted the truth to come out so that they could focus on the actual problems.” 

“We will litigate this in the courtroom, not the media,” Zapata’s attorney Michael Maistelman told CNN.

Wolfe told reporters the system worked exactly as intended under state law and that she is confident the military ballots would have been caught before being counted.

In this case, the ballots were reported by the state representative they were allegedly sent to. However, if that had not happened, “your local election official has the tools and ability to follow up with somebody if something looks unusual,” Wolfe said.

Wolfe added that because military ballots make up such a small portion of total votes and are part of some federal monitoring requirements, they’re watched very closely.

Former President Barack Obama was blunt about the stakes in Arizona when he campaigned for Democrats on the midterm ballot this past week.

If Republicans win key offices in the state, said Obama, “democracy as we know it may not survive in Arizona. That’s not an exaggeration. That is a fact.”

He’s not wrong.

According to The Washington Post, 12 of the 13 Republican nominees for federal and state office in Arizona this year have questioned the results of the 2020 election.

That very much includes Kari Lake, the party’s nominee for governor. Lake has become a favorite of the Trumpist wing of the party thanks to her smooth camera presence (she was a local TV anchor for years). She is even touted as the female version of the former president (although I would argue Lake is more strategic and more on message than Trump has ever been).

The biggest thing she shares in common with Trump is that election denialism sits at the core of her messaging. She has repeatedly called the 2020 election “stolen” and said that had she been governor, she would not have certified the result in the state.

Lake also has not committed to accepting the results of her race. “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash recently.

Lake is far from alone. Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters has pushed several conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Mark Finchem, the GOP nominee for secretary of state, has suggested there are votes in some counties that should have been set aside because of supposed irregularities.(There has never been any evidence put forward of said irregularities.)

Arizona is then, as Obama said, something of a pure litmus test: Is election denialism something that voters are, at minimum, willing to accept in their candidates? Or is it something that appeals these candidates to voters?

And if the likes of Lake and Finchem are in control of the election machinery come 2024, is there any hope of a fair and transparent result in one of the likely swing states of the next election?

The Point: Tuesday is a defining moment in the history of Arizona. It’s a moment where democracy is very much on the line.

A version of this story appeared in The Point newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

Optics are everything in the final days of the campaign.

So Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and her fellow top-ticket Republicans went big on Friday, heading down to a section of former President Donald Trump’s unfinished border wall, which Lake promised she would start building again if elected.

Immigration remains a major concern for many Arizona voters, particularly the independents who could decide the state’s hotly contested top races. GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters told CNN this week that it is a key issue that’s helping him build momentum and win over voters: “We’ve got a wide-open southern border – moderates don’t like that,” he said. 

Immigration is also an area where Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has taken great pains to distance himself from the Biden administration’s approach — stating in a debate last month he “stood up to Democrats when they’re wrong on this issue … including the president.”

The Biden administration’s struggles with a border policy have frustrated many Democrats, as CNN has previously reported.

Lake said she would call on the Arizona legislature to declare the building materials for the wall as “abandoned federal property” so the state "could start constructing President Trump's wall."

Lake was joined on her border tour in Cochise County by Masters, as well as GOP secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem and Republican attorney general nominee Abraham Hamadeh as well as several Arizona sheriffs.

During her campaign, Lake promised to “issue a declaration of invasion” over the immigration crisis at the southern border, arguing that it would give her greater powers as governor.

You can learn more about the legal theory in the video below. 

RELATED

Arizona GOP governor candidate wants to 'declare an invasion.' Here's what she means | CNN Politics

Homeschool mom Michelle Schofield says her family is struggling with higher prices, but she is casting her ballot in Pennsylvania's Senate race based on wider, national issues.

Schofield, who lives in Delaware County, is supporting Democratic nominee John Fetterman because she believes he will protect freedoms that are important to her. “This election is so much bigger than just Fetterman. We need him on the Senate.”

Reproductive rights and the economy were the main topics of discussion at the event she attended Friday for Fetterman in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. 

“I feel like a lot of us are feeling threatened. I have a granddaughter. I am a woman, and I don’t really want people dictating to me how I can go see my doctor or the conversations I can have with my doctor,” Schofield said. 

“When it comes to inflation, I understand that it’s something that happens. It’s a wave, it comes and goes. It goes up and down. But the price gouging, there needs to be a law against price gouging,” Schofield added. 

President Joe Biden says he remains optimistic about next week's midterm elections, and predicted Democrats will hold both the House and Senate — despite apparent Republican momentum heading into the vote.

"I know you always ask me how we’re doing. We’re going to win this time around I think," Biden told reporters in California, where he was campaigning with a vulnerable Democrat in a district Biden won handily in 2020.

Biden has been bullish on Democrats' chances next week, even as many Democrats grow increasingly anxious about their party's prospects. The President's campaign schedule — in blue states stumping for candidates in closer-than-expected races — is itself a signal of Democrats' vulnerabilities.

Still, Biden insisted that most voters appreciated his message. And he took issue with some coverage suggesting his rallies lacked enthusiasm.

"I find that most of the debate that occurs in the places that I’ve visited, I know you don’t think it but I think we have pretty good crowds. They’re fairly enthusiastic. You don’t write it that way, but they are," he said. 

"I find that the thing that gives me the most confidence is the fact that the policies we’ve initiated, people care about," he went on. "They want more. I don’t know anybody who’s really opposed to us bringing down the medical prices, prescription drugs, all those things. So I feel optimistic. You can smile."

Biden was heading to Illinois, where he will campaign for Democrats in the Chicago area, before traveling to Pennsylvania on Saturday for a rally alongside President Barack Obama.

Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman underlined what he said was a sharp difference between himself and his GOP rival Mehmet Oz on the issue of abortion at an event in Delaware County on Friday.

He noted Oz's comment at their only debate on Oct. 25 that “local political leaders” should be involved in a woman’s decision to get an abortion.

Fetterman and Oz are locked in a tight race in one of the pivotal Senate races this midterm cycle.

In the Oct. 25 debate, the GOP candidate said he thought the issue of abortion should be left to “women, doctors, local political leaders,” a continuation of his argument that states, not the federal government should decide the issue.

Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor, appeared on stage with Pennsylvania Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon. They talked about a variety of topics, including what Scanlon called a “defining moment for our democracy,” voting rights, the Jan. 6 insurrection and election integrity.

As typical for these events, Fetterman addressed his stroke at the start. 

Motioning to the screen in front of him rolling closed captioning, Fetterman said, "It has really deepened just how critical it is to make sure that there needs to be things like captioning, which I'm using now, right now, and includes it all, to all those kinds of things that make more people able to fully participate.”

During the conversation, Fetterman also said he supported the Second Amendment but would fight for common sense gun laws, which he said Oz did not back.

First lady Jill Biden will spend the final days ahead of midterm elections traveling to Texas, Virginia and Maryland, according to the White House. 

From Arizona on Saturday, where the first lady will stump for Sen. Mark Kelly, Biden will head to Houston on Sunday. There, she will attend four political events for Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, one of a handful of down-ballot races the first lady has highlighted in the last several weeks. 

On Monday, Biden will motorcade to Ashburn, Virginia, for remarks on behalf of Rep. Jennifer Wexton. In the evening, she will join President Joe Biden for the Democratic National Committee rally in Columbia, Maryland. 

The East Wing has not released the first lady's schedule for election day, however, CNN is told she will not alter her teaching schedule. She has classes on Tuesday and it is expected she will be there.