Election

Political Wire  -  “The Georgia State Election Board is set to vote on Friday on a package of nearly a dozen rules that would change the way elections are conducted amid growing pressure from almost every level of Georgia state government advising the board that it is operating outside of its legal authority,” the New York Times reports.

Washington Post: “The flurry of rulemaking is the work of a new right-wing majority that took control of the board in May with an avowed mission of preventing fraud and other irregularities from tainting the presidential result this year. All three are supporters of former president Donald Trump, and the rules they are pushing have been promoted by the state’s leading proponents of the false claim that President Joe Biden stole the Georgia election in 2020.” 

AP News -  About 4 in 10 registered voters say Republican Trump would do a better job handling the economy, while a similar number say that about the Democratic vice president, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About 1 in 10 voters don’t trust either candidate, and a similar share has equal faith in them.  

Axios - From bulletproof glass to panic buttons, election officials across the U.S. are taking unprecedented steps to protect poll workers and ballots...The moves are stark reminders of how Donald Trump's allegations of rigged elections have undermined trust and made election officials — many of them volunteers — the focus of suspicion and threats.

This week, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service launched an investigation after officials in 16 states reported receiving suspicious packages. Several secretaries of state reported being mailed letters containing white powder.

Election officials in Durham County, N.C., soon will move into a new building equipped with bulletproof glass at the front desk, panic buttons to summon help in any emergencies, a network of security cameras and a separate exhaust system where mail-in ballots will be processed. More

National Memo - A bombshell report about North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the state’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, was published Thursday by CNN. Robinson reportedly posted numerous disturbing statements on the message board of pornographic website Nude Africa between 2008 and 2012. “I’m a black NAZI!” Robinson reportedly wrote in October 2010. He followed this up with another post the same month, saying, “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.”The man whom Donald Trump called “better than Martin Luther King” also had some thoughts for the porn forums about the civil rights leader, calling King a “commie bastard,” “worse than a maggot,” a “phony,” and a “huckster.”

NPR - Another big concern for election officials is if the U.S. Postal system can handle the influx of mail-in votes. They're urging voters to turn in their ballots early in case of delays.