Category Archives: US elections 2000

Republican election audits have led to voting system breaches, experts say

Posted on by

MyPillow chief gave out election software at South Dakota event derived from Republican challenges in Colorado and Michigan

Republican efforts to question Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020 have led to voting system breaches experts say pose a risk to future elections.

Copies of Dominion Voting Systems softwares used for designing ballots, configuring voting machines and tallying results were distributed at an event this month in South Dakota organized by the MyPillow chief executive, Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who has made unsubstantiated claims about last year’s election.

Continue reading...

Leave military out of it, former defence secretaries tell Trump

Posted on by

Unprecedented letter calls on voted-out president to accept Joe Biden’s election victory amid growing fears over his behaviour

All 10 former US defence secretaries still living, including two who worked for Donald Trump, have called for the president and his supporters to accept he lost the election and warned against attempts to involve the military in his increasingly desperate efforts to overturn the result.

In an unprecedented joint letter published in the Washington Post, the defence secretaries addressed the worst fears of what could happen in 17 days of Trump’s administration remaining before Joe Biden’s inauguration: an attempt by Trump to foment a crises with the aim of triggering a military intervention in his last-ditch struggle to hold on power.

Continue reading...

Anthony Fauci criticises Donald Trump for using his words out of context

Posted on by

Doctor says use of his comments to praise president in Republican campaign ad is misleading

Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s top infectious disease expert, has criticised Donald Trump’s reelection campaign for using his words out of context to make it appear as if he was praising the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate,” Fauci said in a statement to CNN on Sunday. “The comments attributed to me without my permission in the GOP [Republican] campaign ad were taken out of context from a broad statement I made months ago about the efforts of federal public health officials.”

Continue reading...

America is having a code red moment. Which of its enemies is likely to strike first? | Simon Tisdall

Posted on by

With Trump in hospital and the election campaign in chaos, the US has never been more vulnerable to foreign threats

US presidential elections and the uncertain transition periods that follow have traditionally been viewed by military, intelligence and security officials as moments of maximum national vulnerability. They will be especially worried now.

The fact that Donald Trump is ill in hospital, presidential advisers and Republican senators are also unwell, or self-isolating, and the election campaign is in chaos will intensify a sense of dangerous exposure at the Pentagon, CIA and state department.

Continue reading...

Trump’s positive Covid test was a surprise that many saw coming

Posted on by

The president has been cavalier throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Now, a month before the election, this changes everything

It is likely to go down as the biggest “October surprise” in the history of US presidential elections. Yet anyone who was paying attention could have seen it coming.

Donald Trump tested positive for the coronavirus after claiming “it will disappear”, telling the journalist Bob Woodward he was downplaying it deliberately, failing to develop a national testing strategy, refusing to wear a face mask for months, floating the idea of injecting patients with bleach, insisting to one of his many crowded campaign rallies that “it affects virtually nobody” and, at Tuesday’s debate, mocking his rival, Joe Biden: “He could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

Continue reading...

Twitter and Google join Facebook in tightening rules on US election claims

Posted on by

Platforms will target unverified claims of election rigging and premature results declarations

Premature claims of victory will be blocked from Twitter and Google in the run-up to November’s US presidential election, as both companies follow Facebook in trying to fight the prospect of a stolen vote.

Under its new rules, Twitter will treat as harmful misinformation any tweet which makes false claims about election rigging, or prematurely claims to announce the election results.

Continue reading...

When will we know who’s won the US election?: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

Posted on by

This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to the Guardian’s Sam Levine about why election night might turn into election week … or month

This week the question might seem a simple one, but it isn’t. Jonathan asks Sam Levine in New York about how the Covid-19 pandemic will affect the US election on 3 November, and the conversation leads to Jonathan reminiscing about the infamous 2000 presidential election, when George W Bush narrowly (and potentially wrongly) pipped Al Gore to the Oval Office. So, when will we know who’s won this year?

Continue reading...