Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial.No, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't, don't, no.I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do, like, four of these.
I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.How are there still people paying two or three times that much?I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim-blaming here.Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready.
$45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month.New customers on first three-month plan only.Taxes and fees extra.Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes.See details.
It's Thursday, October 31st.The scariest thing to these folks is being taken off the voter rolls.We start here. The Supreme Court hands Virginia Republicans a victory.These 1,600 voters are now removed from the voter rolls.
So what does it mean for other potential legal challenges?Meanwhile, some Americans are having trouble even getting to a polling place.
This district was the second largest district.And it closed.
Yes.Across the country, voters are watching their local precincts disappear and millions of jaywalkers get the green light.I lived here for 60 years and I jaywalked.Why political street fights between cars and pedestrians have taken a turn.
From ABC News, this is Start Here.I'm Brad Milkey. Well, we're five days away, a work week with an election hanging in the balance.And at this point, there are so many states expected to be close that each campaign can see several paths to victory.
This is going to be a tight race until the very end.So let's not pay too much attention to the polls.
Later today, both presidential candidates will be in Western states campaigning in Nevada and Arizona.But in several states, arguments are already beginning about the validity of votes.
They're worried about, of course, illegals voting, noncitizens voting.That is against federal law.
In Virginia, a court battle has been brewing for days over whether the state was allowed to remove more than a thousand names from voter rolls.Different judges had said different things, but yesterday, with less than a week to Election Day, the U.S.
Supreme Court let the state government go ahead with this.It's one of several cases courts are being asked to weigh in on in the coming days, so let's start the day with ABC's senior Washington reporter Devin Dwyer.
Devin, what is this ruling in Virginia all about?
Brad, this case was a showdown over whether or not the state of Virginia can remove these people, these alleged non-citizens from the voter roll so close to the election.I mean, we're a week out.
And Virginia, under an executive order by Governor Glenn Youngkin, not an act of the legislature, the order of their Republican governor,
had gone to the state election office and they had compiled a list of people who had checked no when asked whether they were a citizen on a driver's license form, and they removed, want to remove all those people from the voter registration list.
And what the Supreme Court said yesterday in an unexplained order backed by all of the conservative justices was that yes, in fact, Virginia can go forward with this.
Now, the controversy comes because federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, says that there's supposed to be a quiet period before an election, 90 days in fact, in which states are not allowed to conduct what's referred to in the law as a systematic update of their registration list.
So there was debate in this case over whether what Virginia was proposing was in fact systematic. And so there was an outcry that certain people would be disenfranchised.
Two lower federal courts blocked this move by the state of Virginia, but the Supreme Court, as you said, allowing it to go forward.Now, why was this?Well, they didn't explain themselves, but by most accounts, Brad,
These conservative justices, based on other case law that they've weighed in on recently, really bought into the idea that non-citizens aren't eligible to vote in the first place, and therefore they're not covered by that federal law.
They can be removed at any time. This is the speculation.But the bottom line is these 1,600 voters are now removed from the voter rolls now, less than a week to go.
Now, we should say, Brad, any eligible citizen voter who might have been caught up in this purge can still vote.
The state said yesterday that they simply just need to complete a same-day registration, provide those proof of citizenship at the polling place, which isn't that hard, but they would have to do that.
Devin, the non-citizen voting thing, the concept of non-citizen voting, we've talked about it on the show before, this idea that there are people that are not even legal residents or naturalized citizens of this country who go through the trouble of registering, which is extraordinarily legally risky for them, and then voting, we've been told it's vanishingly rare, and yet 1,600 people, that's not nothing.
So how big of a problem is this really?
Yeah, a lot of these conservative states touting these big numbers of alleged non-citizens who have registered, which is a felony, Brad.
As many as 2,500 completed voter registration forms are being researched for potential fraud stemming from two separate drop batches.
It certainly is eye-catching, but when you dig down a little bit, most of these, according to all of the state-level experts I've talked to, say they're administrative errors, clerical errors, people leaving a box unchecked on their driver's license form or checking the wrong box.
And that was, in fact, the case here in Virginia.A number of people on that list
uh... our citizens some of the newly naturalized citizens since they had gotten their driver's license several years ago and she you don't fill out that form uh... and so there we know that there are people who are being removed in the state of virginia who otherwise can legally vote lot of advocates uh... on the left to say that this is part of a highly orchestrated effort on the part of republicans a dangerous game they say to remove eligible voters
all predicated on the myth that there is widespread non-citizen voting.And we do need to underscore we just have not seen actual evidence of widespread non-citizen voting going back decades.
And there have been a number of studies, conservative and liberal, that have poured over the evidence.It does happen. just not in large numbers.
Right.And again, like you said, registration as a noncitizen is a crime, but then voting is a whole extra thing.And that is not necessarily happening either.What other lawsuits?
I mean, because this is really only one of several states where we're already starting to see kind of challenges and concerns.I mean, what other lawsuits could we see in the coming days?
This is already, Brad, been an unprecedented election season of litigation.I mean, there are more lawsuits, most of them brought by Republicans in all the battleground states. than we have ever seen before.
So just at the outset to answer that question, we should all understand that this is a Republican party that is much more litigious than ever before and leaning in on the idea of challenging every single possibly contestable voting rule in these states.
And we saw just overnight a number of those challenges percolating in the state of Pennsylvania.There are two cases that are pending before the Supreme Court.One of those involving provisional ballots cast by people whose mail-in ballots are invalid.
They arrived naked, so to speak, not in that secrecy sheave in the state of Pennsylvania.Those ballots can't be counted.
But the question is, if you get word ahead of next Tuesday that your mail-in ballot was screwed up, can you still vote in person anyways?And the state of Pennsylvania, the highest court there, said, yes, you can.
You can go and file a provisional ballot in person.Republicans want to challenge that. They say if you sent in a faulty mail ballot, then that was your shot and you don't get a second chance.That is now before the Supreme Court.
That's going to be duked out.There's also a number of cases, Brad, one big one from Mississippi that could make its way up on late arriving ballots.Can ballots received from soldiers overseas, U.S.citizens overseas that arrive
after election day, postmarked by election day.The ballot was cast by election day, but they're coming in the mail.Can those be counted?A federal appeals court in Mississippi said they cannot be counted because election day means election day.
So there's a lot of litigation that could still play out.It's still unclear whether any of that could have an actual impact, but that's part of the game plan of Republicans this go-round is to put a lot of balls in the air.
When that kind of leads into my last question, Devin, because we're not just seeing parties and their lawyers talk about this.
We are seeing one of the candidates, former President Donald Trump himself, is claiming he's already seeing active cheating in places like Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Apparently, people were turned away from a line where they were trying to apply on deadline day for mail-in ballots.Officials said,
this line is moving so slowly, like we're going to cut you off here because we don't think you're going to make the deadline.The Trump campaign thought, A, that's unfair.B, this line would probably help us.
And they wanted that deadline extended by a day.But a judge has now extended it by three days.Like he gave them even more than they wanted.And yet Trump is still describing this as suppression of his voters.
I mean, are these like there are sounds like there's legitimate concerns here.But is this also like laying the groundwork so you can say later, hey, we were cheated?
Like it's less about getting things resolved than just claiming there were problems throughout.
I mean, I think no matter what political stripe you are, Brad, you can recognize a pattern by former President Donald Trump.
And that is to start to create doubt and to spin conspiracies before anything has even happened and to play loose with the facts.
They were not supposed to be spending their money on taking in illegal migrants, maybe so they could vote in the election, because that's a lot of people are saying that's why they're doing it.
Everybody recognizes that is what's happening here as Donald Trump is making some of these claims particularly in the state of Pennsylvania.
There are some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught or in the process of being caught.
And most Americans in our new ABC News Ipsos poll say they expect former President Trump not to accept the outcome of this election if he loses.And so we are already headed down that path.
And a lot of the messaging of the past few days is giving us a hint of what's to come.This will not all be decided on Tuesday the 5th.It won't even be decided the end of the week.
We're probably in for a long haul as the former president keeps making these claims and these legal challenges continue.
All right, Devin Dwyer, really helpful stuff.
And of course, Devin touched on this, but if you're wondering if your mail-in ballot made it or something like that, remember, most states allow you to track those ballots, which is often just using your name and your birthdate and some of your identifying information online.
All right, Devin, thank you so much.Thanks, Brad.Next up on Start Here, we're going to continue taking a look at voting access.And it's tough to vote when you can't get to your polling place or heading down to Georgia after the break.
Want a better way to simplify finance operations for your business across expenses, vendor payments, and accounting?If so, RAMP could be a game-changer.
RAMP is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. RAMP gives finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spent.
With RAMP, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month.
RAMP's accounting software automatically collects receipts and categorizes your expenses in real time so you don't have to.You'll never have to chase down a receipt again and your employees will no longer spend hours submitting expense reports.
The time you'll save each month on employee expenses will allow you to close your books 8 times faster.And now, get $250 when you join RAMP.Just go to ramp.com slash start here ramp.com slash start here.That's ramp, R-A-M-P dot com slash start here.
Cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC.Terms and conditions apply.
This podcast is supported by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.For more than 75 years, AU has supported freedom without favor and equality without exception.Learn more at au.org slash podcast.
Much has been made over expanding ways to vote in this country, where we should make it easier to vote.Like if someone has to work on Tuesday, should they be able to vote early?Why not just give everyone a mail-in ballot?
Some voting rights advocates have been making this case for years, and four years ago, the pandemic forced lots of states to adopt more of these measures.
But this dramatic expansion has also kind of clouded another trend, the closure of in-person polling precincts.
And a lot of people feel strongly that this was done on purpose.
To stop black folks from voting.
Yes.And while just about every citizen in this country is supposed to have the right to vote, these closures have raised questions about just how accessible voting is.We are back with the latest installment of our series, Protecting Your Vote.
We've got ABC senior national correspondent Steve Osensame, who's been working with ABC's investigative unit and our own station's data team covering the issue of disappearing polling places.Steve, how widespread is this problem?
more widespread than people might think.So we've taken a deep dive look at the numbers.And again, I wanna give a shout out to our ABC News and own stations data team.They're the ones who took a real hard look at the numbers.
So we found that more than 27,000 American polling places have closed in the last decade.That is one out of every five polling places in America.In Georgia, the state where I live in, for example, in 2024,
400 polling places have closed over that same period of time.And it's not just in the South, it's across the country.We've noticed polling places out West, in the Midwest, in the East.There's no part of this country where this hasn't happened.
And the reasons for the closing of these polling places are many.
But what it means, the hard truth of this, no matter what the reasons are, is it means that voters in many places will have to work harder, do more, to be able to vote this election cycle.
Yeah, I was gonna say, no one's being told you can't vote, that maybe you just gotta drive a little bit further to your polling place, but I feel like it's never that simple, right?So what does one of these closures look like up close?
So we went to Lincoln County, Georgia, where we got to look up close and see exactly what happened.This is a rural county near the South Carolina state line.They've got a beautiful lake out there.And they closed a handful of their poles.
Denise Freeman is a pastor in a deep red county who is essentially fighting her county government for closing polls.
The reason why she's fighting is because
The county had seven polling locations and recently went down to three.
I go out and talk to the people in the community and I feel their pain and they tell me their pain.They're tired of it.
Denise Freeman accuses the county leadership, which is mostly white Republican, of disenfranchising the black vote in her county.
I think it was to disenfranchise the poor. The poor, and the poor comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors.So I think it was mainly done to disenfranchise people of color and poor people.
However, the person who is the director of elections in Lincoln County, Georgia, is a woman named Lilvender Bolton.Were people approaching you in the street?Yes.
And they were all just really mad because, oh, you just don't want black people to vote.And Lilvender Bolton is African-American. All these news agencies, they were calling me and they would say, are you black?
And when I told them that I was, they were surprised.
In fact, she and Reverend Freeman were old friends.When we talked to her, Brad, she was upset at the notion that anyone would think that she was trying to stop black Americans from voting.Did this hurt you?
and David. Yep.Because these were people that, you know, I thought I knew.
From her perspective, it just made sense to consolidate, to close some of these polls.
On a good year, presidential year, we might have 4,000 people to come out, but we had seven polls.Sometimes I would have a staff sitting there all day and one person come to vote. It was just no need for those many polling places.
This struggle is taking place all over the country in different county commission rooms and state houses.And the argument is over some of the reasons for closing these polls, which, you know, on one hand, someone may say it's financial.
It just makes more sense.And on the other side, you'll hear people arguing that there are political reasons why these polls are being closed.And oftentimes that's the case.
It seems like this has become more pronounced over the last few years.Is that just because of, like you said, financial realities or like there are more mail-in ballots?So now you're not able to support all these in-person sites.Is it that simple?
Yes and no.So what we found is when you looked at the West Coast, for example, where mail-in ballots, some of the states out West, where mail-in ballots are definitely on the increase, we saw the consolidating of polls.
And we found in states where mail-in voting increased, you saw, of course, an increase in the closing of polling places and a move to what we call the centralized voting centers, where you would have one large county, for example, in Yuma, Arizona,
where there would be one voting center that covers some 460 square miles, right?And then encourage sort of the move towards more mail-in balloting.But there's something else that we saw in states across the South.
What the Supreme Court did was to put a dagger in the very heart of the voting rights act of 1965.
In 2013, the U.S.Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act from the 1960s.
Polling places were swapped by both Negro and white voters.
that prevented counties primarily in the South from changing election rules and closing polls without questions or interference or approval from federal civil rights offices at the federal government.
Chief Justice John Roberts bluntly declared that times have changed and the law must too.
Well, after 2013, when the Supreme Court took some of the teeth out of that law, counties started to close polls.
In the numbers, it was very clear, like in Missouri, for example, some of the most diverse counties had the highest declines in polling places. In Ohio, counties that had the largest decline in polling places were some of the poorest counties.
And so while the reasons for the closing of these polling places aren't always or can't be proven necessarily to be about color, the impacts sometimes obviously were.
Steve, I can imagine somebody saying, hey, I drive 60 miles to work every day.How hard is it for someone to drive an extra 20 minutes to vote?
You know, it's tough for people who don't have cars or have to get a ride.You know, you're not talking about the wealthiest part of the country.And, you know, and it's funny because I said this to Denise Freeman, the Reverend Freeman.
I said to her, you know, what are we talking about, 500 people?
In New York, that might be a small number.In Atlanta, that may be a small number.But in rural Georgia, that's a large number.
The other thing, Brad, I should point out, you know, in these communities that we're talking about, especially in rural parts of America, they don't have early voting.You know, there's no early voting like we have in the big city.
I was going to say there's like there are other options like mail-in ballots or early voting, but that depends on the state.
It does, but in rural parts of the country, it's either absentee, where you mail it in, or you vote in person on the day of.I live in Atlanta, in DeKalb County, Atlanta.We have at least two weeks of early voting, and I can even vote on Sunday.
In fact, I did. They don't have that in these rural places.And so when you move their poll, when you move the place where they vote, they don't have the same options that many Americans in big cities have.
And so the impact of moving their poll is greater. So this was where you voted before.
Yes.There were four voting machines all placed on this wall.
OK.We went to one county, Brad, in Warren County, Georgia, where they went from several polling places to one soon after, almost immediately after that Supreme Court decision.You were a poll worker here.
Yeah.The people who live in this county have one voting place.And we met a woman.Her name was Wanda Jenkins.
This district was the second largest district.
And she argues that it's absolutely to disenfranchise black voters that this happened.This is a majority black county.
And I will say, you know, for the record, we reached out to county officials who deny all of that and say they aren't trying to stop anyone from voting.You voted at the same precinct for how long?Oh, my God. Probably about 30 years or better.
30 years at that same precinct?
We also met Jesse Lee Hanson in that same county.
Well, I had two strokes and one light heart attack.Wow. and have seizures from time to time.
He's in his late 60s.He's not able to drive.He now has to go get to that one voting location that's much further away from his home.In his case, he's going to ask his pastor to come pick him up on election day.
Me, personally, I don't understand it.You know, I did have a little faith in politics, but I don't have no faith in politics now, no one.Can't be trusted.
When you increase the distance to a voting place, even by a quarter of a mile, one recent study that we looked at shows that up to 5% of voters stopped going to the polls.
And sure enough, in Warren County, Georgia, where Jesse Lee Hansen and Wanda Jenkins live, that's about how much voter turnout fell across the county after all those other polls closed.
Well, so then if you're one of these people in these communities and you feel like, A, it's harder for people around me to get to the polls, and B, this might even be driven by systemic racism, like keeping particularly people of color away from the polls, how are those communities, I guess, resisting this or fighting back against that?
There's a great little story in Lowndes County, Alabama, and I think you're going to see more efforts like this one.It's a woman we met named Perman Hardy, and she is the daughter of a sharecropper.
So I grew up on the cotton field.
Yeah. And you have been driving people to the polls for how long?
About 30, 35, 40 years.35, 40 years.
On election day, because again, they don't have early voting.It's either mail-in vote or you show up on election day.On election day, she's going to, and she's been doing this for a little bit, but she's stepping up her effort.
She's going to be driving people to the polls.All righty.And so she's got her old beat up SUV.
So this, how many miles it got on there?What's that say?It's red F-100.About 375, 380.Thousand miles.
I see that check engine light is on.Oh yeah. She drives that around the county, puts even more miles on it, driving people from farms, from homes, wherever they are, to the polls and then back to their homes and farms.And she does this all day.
Pick them up on their lunch break.You got to stop to eat.So why not come go with me and let's go eat on our way to the poll.I'll bring you back.There's a lot of excuses, but I don't take excuses.
And then there's also the Denise Freemans of the world who are trying to fight this a different way.If you win this election, what's the first thing you're going to do?
So Reverend Freeman, who I was telling you about from Lincoln County, she's running for office as a Democrat, running for the county commission, where if she wins, she would become the boss of her old friend, the election director, another black woman, where she could hope that she would be able to encourage her to open some of the polls that she closed.
I've known her for a while.I just don't believe this is something she came up with at all. And I would say this to her face and have.
And so absent a change in the law, the Voting Rights Act, that would restore some of the oversight that the federal government had over a lot of these counties, especially in the South.I don't know that that much is going to change.
Really interesting, though, to hear about how the Voting Rights Act changing has literally seen these differences at the county level.Steve Osunsami there in Georgia, as always.Thank you so much.You're more than welcome. OK, one more quick break.
When we come back, you ever walk down the sidewalk?Hey, don't hit that skip forward button.I'm talking here.One last thing is next.
This is an ad for BetterHelp online therapy.What's something you've always wanted to learn?An instrument?A new language?How to not burn pasta?Whether it's big or small, imagine how great it would feel to finally do it.
As kids, we were always learning and growing.But as adults, sometimes we lose that curiosity that made life feel so exciting.It's easy to think that we are who we are, and we can't change.
But BetterHelp is here to tell you that it's never too late to be who you want to be. Therapy can help you reconnect with your sense of wonder, because your back-to-school era can come at any age.
BetterHelp makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up.Rediscover possibility with BetterHelp.
Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month.That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com.
And one last thing.If you've ever spent time in New York City, you know it's not just a bit in Midnight Cowboy.Pedestrians really do rule the road. In a busy city, people cross the street when they need to.
If they don't see cars on the way, they're going to take the initiative.But for years, just like much of the country, jaywalking was technically against the law in New York.Until now.
This week, a new law passed by the city council took effect, which legalizes crossing against the light, or crossing in the middle of the street.
I jaywalked my whole life here.I lived here for 60 years and I jaywalked.
Lots of residents already figured this was legal already, but not those who have been ticketed in the past.And this was the whole reason for the law change.
While many New Yorkers have jaywalked right in front of a cop with no fear, the people who are ticketed are overwhelmingly people of color.
Offenders describe being targeted by police as a kind of punishment.We're talking about 92% of those summonses are given to the black and brown communities.Now, you might be thinking,
Why would you want to get rid of the anti-jaywalking laws though, right?Like, don't you want to keep people safer?Well, urban pedestrian advocates will tell you these laws were never really about public safety.
Back in the 1920s, as cars were becoming a thing, streets were dramatically different than they look today.In urban areas, they were really gathering places.
People moseying from one block to another, vendors hawking their wares, no one really looking over their shoulder.
You did have the occasional horse-drawn carriage or even car that would twist and turn between them, but it was those vehicles' jobs not to hit you. But as these newfangled automobiles grew in popularity, pedestrian deaths skyrocketed.
People were outraged.Newspapers blamed the cars as killing machines.Community boards suggested drastic speed limits.This was a fork in the road for the auto industry.
And so in larger cities, auto companies started aggressively pushing laws that would reimagine the city street.It would now be the domain of cars.Pedestrians would be tasked with avoiding them.They could have the sidewalks.
He's in a hurry. The road looks pretty clear.
This could happen to you anytime.Automakers created a campaign shaming careless pedestrians.The word Jay was used at the time as an insult to call someone a hick, a bumpkin.So automobile clubs coined this new term, Jaywalker.
They aren't pedestrians at all.They're Jaywalkers with a capital J. They even encouraged neighbors to whistle and shout at people walking down the street and suggested physically lifting women back onto the sidewalks.
Well, of course, if you want to end up in the casualty ward of the hospital, you go right ahead.
Nowadays, urban experts say the initiatives saving the most lives aren't about limiting pedestrians, but rather cars.Lower speed limits.Narrower streets.Shorter crosswalks.
Those walk signals that allow pedestrians to get into the intersection before the green lights let cars turn on top of them.These are all shown to save lives.New York is actually slightly late to this party.
Cities like Denver and Kansas City re-legalized jaywalking years ago. However, allowing jaywalking does not mean pedestrians will fully have the right of way wherever they go.
If a car has a green light and goes through an intersection, they're not going to get in trouble for hitting a jaywalker.In fact, the pedestrian could conceivably be liable in a civil case for causing the accident.
So, New Yorkers, feel free to ignore that light if you dare, but please, for the love of the horseless carriage, look both ways. I also am so thrown off when I visit other cities, because A, New Yorkers always think they can just walk everywhere.
Like, oh, it's 3 quarters of a mile away.We'll walk.And then you're like, oh, wait.There's not even necessarily like a sidewalk in this place by the airport.Like, what are you doing?
I also get shamed by people when I visit their city and I'm trying to jaywalk.They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.Like, we don't do that here.Like, it truly is a cultural thing.Hey, if you have a great Halloween costume today, please tell us about it.
Or better yet, show and tell.Hit us up on Instagram at StartHereABC.I'm Brad Milkey.I'll see you tomorrow.
Don't talk to me that way!
Sign in
