Kanye West Ruled Off Virginia, Arizona Ballots: Campaign Update
President Donald Trump is now suing in five states in attempts to restrict voting options in November.
(Bloomberg) -- Courts ordered Kanye West removed from the ballot in Virginia and Arizona. Democratic nominee Joe Biden remains narrowly ahead in Florida after the conventions. And the presidential race in North Carolina, a new battleground state, remains extremely close.
There are 61 days until the election.
Other Developments:
Kanye West Ordered Off Ballot in Virginia, Arizona
Kanye West won’t be on the Nov. 3 ballot in Virginia and Arizona after courts ruled that he couldn’t run as an independent presidential candidate.
The Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County granted a request to keep the hip hop star off the ballot because he’s a registered Republican in Wyoming, and the Virginia Circuit Court for Richmond City ruled that sufficient evidence was presented that West’s campaign fraudulently obtained oaths from electors that they would support his candidacy as required under Virginia law.
His campaign is suing to overturn decisions disqualifying him in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator, told reporters Thursday that the process of printing ballots for the state’s Nov. 3 election without West’s name has already started because of upcoming deadlines to distribute ballots.
West, who announced his quixotic candidacy in July, has qualified for the ballot in at least 10 states: Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont. -- Andrew Ballard, Stephen Joyce, Brenna Goth and Mark Niquette
Biden Narrowly Ahead in Florida After Conventions (3:23 p.m.)
Biden retains a slight edge in the battleground state of Florida after the Republican and Democratic conventions, a poll released Thursday showed.
In the Quinnpiac University poll, 48% of likely voters backed Biden, while 45% backed Trump.
The poll was conducted Aug. 28 to Sept. 1, starting one day after the end of the GOP convention, which Trump had briefly planned to partly hold in Jacksonville, Florida, highlighting the key role of the swing state in the election.
The 3 point margin for Biden was just slightly outside the 2.8 point margin of error for the survey of 1,235 likely voters, and the findings were roughly in line with polls taken in late July and August in Florida. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Biden ahead by 3.3 percentage points in the Sunshine State.
A Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania conducted over the same period also showed the dynamic unchanged after the conventions, with Biden ahead by 8 percentage points.
The Pennsylvania poll of 1,107 likely voters had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Biden Holds Slim Lead Over Trump in Key State (11:33 a.m.)
Biden and Trump are essentially tied in the most recent poll of the battleground state of North Carolina.
In a Monmouth University Poll released Thursday morning, Biden received 47% support, while Trump received 45%, well within the margin of error of 4.9 percentage points. Another 3% said they backed Libertarian Jo Jorgenson and 3% were undecided.
Pollsters also modeled high-turnout and low-turnout elections, both of which showed Biden with 48% and Trump with 46% -- an identical two-point margin.
In recent years, North Carolina has been on a knife’s edge, with the last three presidential elections decided by less than 4 percentage points. Trump won the state in 2016.
“North Carolina has been in play for each of the last three presidential elections and it is going to be that way again this year,” said Monmouth University Polling Institute Director Patrick Murray.
The survey of 401 registered voters in North Carolina was conducted Aug. 29-Sept. 1, just after the Republican National Convention ended.
Nearly 100 Republican and Independent Leaders Back Biden (10:43 a.m.)
Almost 100 Republican and independent politicians will endorse Biden on Thursday.
Biden has been getting frequent nods from Republicans, featuring a half-dozen of them at the Democratic National Convention as he tries to persuade conservatives who are disappointed in Trump to vote for him. Other crossover groups for Biden include Republican Voters Against Trump and 43 Alumni for Biden, made up of officials from George W. Bush’s administration.
The current list of GOP and independent officials for Biden is affiliated with the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans who are running frequent ads against the president.
That list includes former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and former Michigan Representatives Joe Schwarz and Dave Trott, according to a Reuters report.
The two Michigan former lawmakers could be helpful in a tight race in the crucial battleground state. Trott represented a swing district in the suburbs of Detroit until 2018, when he declined to run for re-election; while Schwarz represented a swing district in the southeastern part of the state.
Snyder served two terms as governor, but he left office in 2019 as one of the most unpopular governors in the country.
Trump Campaign Adds Montana to List of States It’s Suing (7 a.m.)
The Trump campaign is suing Democratic Governor Steve Bullock in federal court over his decision to allow Montana counties to conduct all-mail elections.
The lawsuit, the campaign’s latest attempt to restrict voting through legal means, was filed Wednesday and argues that Bullock’s decision is tied to his run for the U.S. Senate.
“The Election Directive is less about protecting the health of Montanans and more about enhancing the governor’s electoral prospects, along with those of his political party,” Trump lawyers wrote in a court filing.
Montana joins three other states and parts of Iowa also facing lawsuits from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee attempting to restrict voting options in a state.
The Trump campaign is also suing Pennsylvania in an effort to restrict drop boxes used to return mail-in ballots and seeking to stop all-mail elections in New Jersey and Nevada. And it’s suing three counties in Iowa for pre-filling vote-by-mail applications and sending them to voters.
The Republican National Committee previously sued California over its expansion of vote-by-mail.
Biden Calls for Live Fact-Check of Debates
Biden is urging television networks to fact-check the upcoming presidential debates in real time.
Speaking at a news conference in Delaware, Biden suggested adding a stock-ticker-like crawl at the bottom of the screen to note when he or Trump gets something wrong.
“What I’d love to have is a crawler at the bottom of the screen, a fact-checker,” he said. “If we really wanted to do something, I think that would make a great, great debate if everything both of us said was instantly fact-checked.”
Biden said that he was preparing for the debate by going over the “multiple lies” Trump has told.
During his first presidential debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump was dinged by fact-checkers for misstating which president signed NAFTA, overstating the amount of the trade deficit, and understating how much his father loaned him and how many times he declared bankruptcy, among other things.
The first presidential debate will be held Sept. 29, in Cleveland.
Coming Up:
Biden will visit Kenosha, Wisconsin, Thursday to meet with the family of Jacob Blake, a Black man shot seven times by police. Trump will deliver remarks from Pennsylvania Thursday evening.
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