16:05 ET – Early voters in Minneapolis cite urgency, concerns about mail
Early voters in Minnesota said they were anxious to get a jump on the process and avoid potential crowds on Election Day.
“I just wanted to come get it done,” said Jason Miller, 33, a painter who was in line in Minneapolis to cast a vote for Biden. He said he could not wait to cast a vote against Trump, the Reuters news agency reported.
“I was a little inspired to come here the first day,” he said. “In fact, probably three-and-a-half years ago I thought I would be here the first day I could.”
Steve O’Rourke, 65, who came with a son who has to leave the country on a work trip, said he decided to vote early in person rather than by mail partly out of concern whether a mail-in vote would be counted.
15:15 ET – Trump announces $13 bn US grant to rebuild Puerto Rico
“Today my administration is making the largest emergency relief award in history to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical grid and educational system,” President Donald Trump said at a White House news conference.
“We’re awarding $13 bn to permanently repair, replace thousands of miles of transmission and distribution lines that should have been done many years ago,” said Trump who sought to blame his Democratic rival Joe Biden for the decline in Puerto Rico’s economy.
“I am the best thing that has ever happened to Puerto Rico. Biden was a disaster. It’s not even close,” he said.
Biden has criticised Trump in Florida, a battleground state in the presidential election, for failing to help Puerto Rico rebuild after the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017. An estimated 40,000 Puerto Ricans settled in Florida after the storm adding to the state’s population of 1.1 million Puerto Ricans.
14:45 ET – Democrat in South Carolina Senate race scores fundraising gain
South Carolina Democratic senatorial candidate Jaime Harrison’s campaign has marked two back-to-back fundraising days of $1 mn apiece, bringing his total fundraising to over $30 mn.
It’s a staggering sum, unheard of for a Democrat competing in this conservative state, and matches what the Republican incumbent, Senator Lindsey Graham, has raised in his pursuit of a fourth term. It dwarfs the $10 million figure Harrison previously told The Associated Press he thought necessary to win.
The influx of cash for Harrison — a Democratic National Committee associate chair and former state party chair – followed a Quinnipiac University poll that showed him tied with Graham.
The money is providing a rare opportunity to blanket the airwaves in a place where Democrats have not won a statewide contest in 15 years, bolstering the party in its fight to win back a US Senate majority.
14:30 ET – Kamala Harris gets super-hero treatment in comic book
Kamala Harris is getting her own comic book, chronicling her path from childhood to her historic nomination as US vice president.
“Female Force: Kamala Harris,” part of Tidalwave Productions’ Political Power series, is set for release on October 21, a day after she turns 56, less than two weeks before the November 3 election, the Reuters news service reported.
The publisher on its website describes Harris as “full of grit and determination,” and says that her “no-nonsense approach and bi-racial heritage have made her a popular member of the Democratic party.”
13:45 ET – House Democrats demand emergency probe into whether AG Barr is trying to influence the election
Democrat committee chairs in the House of Representatives have asked the Department of Justice Inspector General to open an emergency investigation into whether Attorney General Bill Barr is improperly pushing political prosecutions to help President Trump get re-elected.
“Under longstanding DOJ policy, the Attorney General is expected to refrain from commenting on an ongoing investigation,” House committee chairs Jerrold Nadler, Adam Schiff, Carolyn Maloney and Zoe Lofgren said in a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
“Attorney General Barr has signaled repeatedly that he is likely to allow DOJ to take prosecutorial actions, make public disclosures, and even issue reports before the presidential election in November,” the letter said.
A majority of President Donald Trump’s supporters plan to cast their ballot on Election Day, while about half of Joe Biden’s backers plan to vote by mail, a sign of a growing partisan divide over how best to conduct elections in the United States.
Fifty-four percent of voters say they will vote before polls open on Election Day. In 2016, roughly 42 percent of voters did so, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Overall, 39 percent of registered voters say they will vote by mail this election, well above the 21 percent who normally do so.
The rise is skewed toward backers of the former vice president, 53 percent of whom plan to vote by mail. Fifty-seven percent of Trump’s supporters say they’ll vote in person on November 3.
12:00 ET – Pro-Trump super PAC announces new $25 mn ad buy attacking Biden on foreign policy
Preserve America, a political advocacy group backing President Trump, has announced plans to spend $25 mn on television advertisements in seven battleground states featuring military veterans criticising Democratic presidential nominee on foreign policy.
The group already spent $30 mn on ads in the past two weeks against Biden in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Iowa and Georgia. Preserve America is headed by Republican strategist Chris LaCivita who was behind the damaging ‘Swift Boat’ attack ads that helped defeat 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
11:30 ET – Early voting starts in Minnesota, Virginia, South Dakota and Wyoming
Lines of people formed at county registrar offices in Northern Virginia as early voting began in four states including Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2016, tweeted a picture of himself voting in person.
I just voted early for @JoeBiden, @KamalaHarris, and Democrats all the way down the ticket here in Virginia—what a great day! I hope you'll join me—it's easy, convenient, and boy does it feel good to vote for competence, character, and compassion: https://t.co/B21QKpeiSj pic.twitter.com/tTS4ysyDUj
— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) September 18, 2020
10:30 ET – Trump and Biden head to Minnesota
Minnesota has not voted for a Republican president since Richard Nixon in 1972, yet Trump surprisingly came within 1.5 percent of beating Hillary Clinton there in 2016.
Trump and his campaign believe they have a chance to flip that reliably Democratic state this year and he is travelling to Bemidji in the less-Democratic northern part of the state for a campaign rally today. For his part, Biden will also head to northern Minnesota today for a campaign event in Duluth.
Another reason they are in Minnesota: Today is the first day of in-person early voting in there and in three other states – the first states to start in-person voting in advance of the November 3 election. Even though mail-in voting is getting most of the focus during the pandemic, in-person early voting has been an increasingly popular voting method in recent years.
10:00 ET – Trump highlights UAE-Bahrain-Israel deals in new advertisement
Donald Trump’s campaign released a new TV advertisement declaring the president accomplished the impossible: The UAE-Bahrain-Israel normalisation deals.
“They said it couldn’t be done. But President Trump did it,” the advertisement says before mentioning his Nobel Peace Prize nomination (he is one of 318 total nominations in 2020).
Clearly Trump sees the deals he helped broker as a major selling point to voters. Al Jazeera Online’s Political Editor Steve Chaggaris writes that it is probably wishful thinking.
09:30 ET – Biden advertisement slams Trump’s alleged military vets comments
Trump’s opponents have been making a big deal about a report that the president allegedly referred to those who died in war as “losers” and “suckers”. Now, Joe Biden’s campaign is running an advertisement about those comments.
The TV advertisement features an Air Force veteran who notified families when loved ones died during military service. “These military families suffer,” he says. “And those spouses are not suckers. And those children are not losers.”
Trump has vociferously denied the specific allegations in the report, however, he has made widely-covered public comments in recent years denigrating veterans.
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