Candidates both hit key state where Democrat retains
an edge
Virginia polling stations see lines as South Dakota
also votes
Joan E
Greve in Washington and Sam Levine in New York
Fri 18 Sep
2020 21.08 BSTLast modified on Fri 18 Sep 2020 21.09 BST
Lines
formed at polling stations in three states on Friday, 46 days out from 3
November, election day itself, as early voting began. Concern about ballot
access under the pandemic has been widespread, particularly as Donald Trump
continues to attack voting by mail with baseless claims of widespread fraud.
In
Minnesota, a state Hillary Clinton won by just 1.5 points in 2016 and which the
Trump campaign is targeting, the president and Joe Biden were both on the campaign
trail.
In
Virginia, the state’s two Democratic US senators were among early voters. At
one site in Richmond, the state capital, dozens lined up before a polling
station opened. CNN reported local officials as saying “they’ve never seen this
many people show up on the first day”.
Virginia
was until recently a swing state but now leans firmly Democratic. Voting also
began on Friday in South Dakota, which is solidly Republican.
Trump has
repeatedly said he wants to flip Minnesota in November, in hopes that it could
offset losses elsewhere. He has visited regularly and has tailored policy moves
to rural parts of the state, including reversing an Obama policy prohibiting
the development of copper-nickel mining and bailing out soya bean, corn and
other farmers hurt by Trump’s trade clashes with China.
More
recently, Trump has embraced a “law and order” message aimed at white voters
concerned by protests against racism and police brutality which have sometimes
turned violent. Minnesota saw unrest after the killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis in May.
However,
polls indicate Biden has a significant edge in the state. According to a
Washington Post-ABC News poll this week, Biden leads by 16 points among likely
voters, 57% to 41%.
On Friday,
Trump was scheduled to speak in Bemidji while Biden traveled to Duluth for a
tour of a union training center. Duluth mayor Emily Larson told the Associated
Press: “One of the things the Trump campaign has been very good about is
visibility in Duluth, but also in areas around Duluth.”
In
Michigan, meanwhile, a judge handed down a key ruling concerning mail-in
voting, writing that the state must accept ballots postmarked the day before
election day, 3 November, which arrive in the weeks following.
The decision
will probably result in thousands more voters having their ballots counted in a
key battleground state.
In 2016,
Trump won Michigan by about 10,000 votes. One of the top reasons mail-in
ballots are rejected is because they arrive past the deadline to be counted:
6,405 ballots were rejected for that reason in Michigan’s August primary.
Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is the state’s top election official, called for
extending the deadline.
The
Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with reports of mail delays, have made that deadline
unrealistic, wrote Judge Cynthia Diane Stevens of the Michigan court of claims.
“Some
flexibility must be built into the deadline in order to account for the
significant inability of mail to arrive on what would typically be a reliable,
predictable schedule,” the judge wrote, ordering ballots counted as long as
they are postmarked by 2 November and arrive within 14 days of election day.
The ruling
was the second in two days extending ballot deadlines in a key state. On
Thursday, the Pennsylvania supreme court blocked the state from enforcing an
election night deadline for absentee ballots, instead ordering it to count them
as long as they are postmarked by election day and arrive by the following
Friday.
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