An official Republican poll watcher was charged with assault on Friday after shoving an election judge who wouldn’t let him into an early voting center in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Gary Pendleton, a 73-year-old Republican who previously served as a Wake County commissioner and member of the State House of Representatives, tells CNN he intentionally went to the Northern Regional Center early voting location about an hour before the polls opened to observe the set-up.
He told CNN he went to the polling place “to watch for fraud potential.”
Pendleton said he had previously been allowed into other voting locations before the polls officially opened. But when he arrived on Friday, election officials would not allow him inside before the polls opened. He said he tried to get in anyway, but the location’s chief election judge “got in his face” to stop him. A police report filed after the incident, and obtained by CNN, said the victim was 71 years old.
Wake County Elections Director Gary Sims said the election judge didn’t do anything wrong by making Pendleton wait until the polls opened to come inside. The election judge is a Democratic appointee.
“Assaulting one of our officials is wrong. The bottom line is these officials, I consider them part of my family. I feel like one of my family members was assaulted,” Sims said. “We have bipartisan teams out there. There is not a grand conspiracy. They are just out there doing their job. These are members of the community giving up their time to make sure we have fair and free elections.”
Pendleton said he was cited for class three misdemeanor assault.
“We both had on masks, but I wasn’t about to let him sit three feet from my face, so I pushed him back to get him out of my face,” Pendleton said, blaming the scuffle on partisan tensions. “If I had it to do all over again, I would’ve just turned around and walked out the door. But I was really bent out of shape.”
Pendleton was an official poll observer who was appointed and trained by the local Republican Party and authorized to be at the voting location.
The Minnesota Department of Health said it has so far traced 20 cases of Covid-19 back to a rally held by President Trump in Bemidji last month, or to related events.
Of the 20 cases, 16 are among people who attended the rally, including two who are now hospitalized. Four people said they participated in counter-protests that same day, the state department of health told CNN. The state is describing it as an “outbreak.”
The rally took place on Sept. 18 in an airplane hangar. According to a CNN producer who attended the event, at least 2,000 people were in attendance.
The state has traced another eight cases to other campaign events held throughout the state. One case has been linked to a rally for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Sept. 18 in Duluth. Three cases have been linked to a Vice President Mike Pence’s speech in Minneapolis on Sept. 24. Another three cases have been traced to attendants of a Trump rally in Duluth on Sept. 30 and one more case linked to an event featuring a speech by Eric Trump in Becker, Minnesota, on Oct. 1.
The state has a tracked a total of 28 Covid-19 positive cases to various campaign events in the last few weeks.
“We determined this through contact tracing case interviews,” Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director for the Minnesota Department of Health, told CNN previously. Ehresmann noted that it’s not possible to reach everyone who might have been infected because people may not remember or they may not be willing to say where they were.
Vice President Mike Pence slammed the Biden-Harris campaign’s stances on several key issues, including the Supreme Court, health care and taxes, in a campaign speech in Selma, North Carolina.
He criticized Joe Biden's remarks on court-packing at last night's ABC town hall, saying it's time that he "come clean. Give the American people a straight answer."
On the issue, Biden said he is "not a fan" of court-packing, but whether he ultimately seeks to push for more seats on the Supreme Court depends on how Senate Republicans handle the confirmation process of Amy Coney Barrett.
Biden said he would take a clearer position on court-packing before the election, after seeing how the confirmation process plays out.
Pence again defended Barrett and her faith, telling his supporters: “(Trump) nominated a brilliant, principled, conservative woman who loves the Constitution to the Supreme Court of the United States, Judge Amy Coney."
At President Trump's insistence, Hope Hicks, one of the President's top aides, very briefly addressed a Make America Great Again Rally in Ocala, Florida, Friday night.
Trump himself started chanting "we want Hope" to get his adviser to come to the stage.
"We can share a microphone now," she quipped to Trump. Both Hicks and the President tested positive for Covid 19 a little more than two weeks ago.
"Thank you all so much and thank you President Trump. I have stage fright, so..." Hicks said, before leaving the stage.
Election officials in Florida are taking steps to remove ex-felons from the voter rolls if they still owe court debts, according an email sent this week to county elections officials obtained by CNN.
The state’s elections director, Maria Matthews, told local elections supervisors on Tuesday that they would begin to receive files on convicted felons “whose potential ineligibility is based on not having satisfied the legal financial obligations of their sentence.” The email added that if local officials received information about registered voters who are ineligible from sources other than the Florida Department of State, “you should act on it.”
Local officials told CNN that the new directions from the state might not impact voter rolls for the 2020 election.
Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley said Friday that he “wasn’t really surprised that they’re starting up the process of felon review,” but he said the lengthy removal process would prevent his office from actually taking anyone off the rolls by Election Day.
He said the county has seven days to send a letter to the registered voter, and then the voter has 30 days to respond. “And if they don’t respond we have to advertise… so there are various different requirements that would prevent us from taking someone off before November 3rd.”
Though he didn’t think many Florida voters would actually be removed before election day, Earley said it’s possible that if felons with court debts end up voting, their ballots could be challenged after the election.
Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee, a Republican appointee, said in a statement that the federal appeals court rulings makes it clear that, “the law, with respect to legal financial obligations, is now clear, and there is no legal basis for the department to ignore the obligations spelled out in Florida Statutes."
Lee said her department is legally required to review information from a number of sources related to felons whose voting rights have not been restored, and if that information is credible and reliable, that is shared with local supervisors.
A coalition of liberal-leaning voting rights and advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, condemned the state’s efforts to remove people with felony convictions and legal financial obligations.
“Florida’s proposed action is simply an attempt to scare people with felony convictions away from voting and constitutes voter intimidation — par for the course in Florida,” the groups’ statement said.
As more states begin in-person voting this week, there appears to be a trend of eye-popping turnout compared to this point in 2016. This is in addition to the record-shattering interest in vote-by-mail.
Here is a collection of data from some states that show the best available comparisons to 2016:
Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris underwent PCR testing for Covid-19 Friday and Covid-19 was not detected, according to a Harris aide.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden tested negative for coronavirus Friday.
“Vice President Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected," the Biden campaign said.
Biden is touching down in Michigan at this hour for a pair of campaign events in the Detroit area. He is expected to deliver remarks on health care and participate in a voter mobilization event.
Former President Barack Obama will make his first campaign stop for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden next week on Wednesday in Philadelphia, an official tells CNN.
This is a solo campaign stop for Obama, the first of a handful he is poised to make in the final two weeks of the campaign and comes on the eve of the final debate.
Biden is scheduled to be in debate prep that day, the official said, and the two are not expected to campaign together — until possibly the final weekend or days of the race.