Comment on A Brief History of Close States

“Nicolle Wallace, who was a White House communications director in George W. Bush’s administration, called on Friday for Mr. Bush to have a late-hour ‘change of heart’ and speak out against former President Donald Trump,” the New York Times reports. “Ms. Wallace said she had appealed directly to Mr. Bush’s office, and had been told that the former president would continue his silence.”

“As early voting came to a close in Nevada, many of the state’s most veteran pollsters, pundits and political operatives — no strangers to close elections and their accompanying jitters — are finding it uniquely difficult to predict what happens next,” the New York Times reports. “Republicans, thrilled with their surprise early voting edge, say they are well on their way to making former President Donald J.

“A federal judge ruled on Friday that Senate Republicans may continue to pump tens of millions of dollars into key swing state races in the final days of the 2024 campaign by employing an unusual advertising strategy that Democrats had claimed was potentially illegal,” the New York Times reports. “By reclassifying campaign ads as fund-raising appeals, Republicans have been able to avoid strict limits Congress has placed on spending by national party committees to aid individual candidates, helping to offset a significant fund-raising deficit they face in states with critical Senate races, such as Arizona and Pennsylvania.”

“A new robocall targeting Maryland voters attacks Larry Hogan for acknowledging Joe Biden won the 2020 election,” Politico reports. “The recording knocks Hogan, the GOP nominee for Senate, for not being MAGA enough and urges support for Libertarian Party candidate Mike Scott, who is ‘pro-pardoning President Trump” and “the only true conservative on the ballot.’”

“The Supreme Court on Friday declined to freeze a decision from Pennsylvania’s highest court that required election officials to count provisional ballots cast by people whose mail ballots are invalid because they lacked mandatory secrecy envelopes,” CBS News reports. “The order from the justices means that election officials in the key battleground state must tally provisional ballots submitted on Election Day by voters who returned defective mail ballots, either because they didn’t include secrecy envelopes or failed to sign or date the outer envelope.”

A video purporting to show recently arrived Haitian immigrants illegally voting in Georgia for Kamala Harris was produced by a Russian government-backed disinformation unit, according to US authorities. Three agencies—the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—said in a joint news release Friday that the video, which circulated widely on Twitter/X, was manufactured by “Russian influence actors.” The same group, they wrote, was also behind “a video falsely accusing an individual associated with the Democratic presidential ticket of taking a bribe from a U.