Elections officials who had braced for death threats and unrest ahead of the midterms said extensive preparations assured a mostly peaceful and orderly vote even in fiercely contested battlegrounds – inspiring some confidence about conducting a smooth 2024 presidential contest.

In Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, officials took a variety of measures to secure the voting process. Some said they moved ballot-processing operations to safer locations; some deployed additional police; others adopted measures to speed counting and to respond to election misinformation in real time to defuse potential threats.

The officials often introduced the changes after staff were subjected to threats and harassment, most of them based on election conspiracy theories promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

After the vote, officials in these battleground states said the relatively smooth midterms were a step towards preparing for the presidential contest in 2024 – but that they still faced challenges.

“It’s going to take a couple cycles to work through this,” Cisco Aguilar, Nevada’s newly elected secretary of state, told Reuters.

Although prominent election deniers in critical battleground states lost at the polls, their movement has had far-reaching impact. In last week’s midterms so far, 14 election deniers were elected governor, attorney general or secretary of state in 10 states, according to States United Action, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

As a former president, Trump’s outbursts when the candidates he backed lost carried less weight than they did in the 2020 elections when he excoriated officials in several states as he tried to overturn his loss.

In Pennsylvania, concessions from losing Trump-endorsed candidates in hard-fought U.S. Senate and governor races also defused tensions.

Even so, officials said they changed the way they held elections to better prepare for potential unrest.

“Election administration used to be pretty much like wedding planning,” said Philadelphia’s Democratic Commissioner Lisa Deeley, who faced threats from Trump supporters after the 2020 election. “Now, you’re either a superhero or a supervillain.”

Philadelphia’s election commissioners anticipated legal challenges and protests, especially if Republican Trump-backed candidates for U.S. Senate and governor lost.

Philadelphia moved its ballot processing operations from the downtown convention center to a warehouse 15 miles (24 km) away that sits along a busy road, making it less accessible to the public, and set up a “First Amendment Zone” on a grassy area outside the building for protesters. None showed up.

On Election Day, police guarded the parking lot and patrolled inside the building. Metal detectors were set up at the entrance to the ballot processing area. Cameras monitored movements in the warehouse as workers sorted and scanned ballots.

Inside the counting center, officials moved to speed up the count, raising payments to temporary election workers to help recruit enough staff, according to interviews with the city’s three election commissioners.

The commissioners said they moved swiftly to counter conspiracy theories. When Twitter users falsely miscaptioned a video of an election inspector in Wisconsin marking ballots as required by state law as an election worker “rigging” ballots in Philadelphia, Republican commissioner Seth Bluestein drove to a polling station and posted videos from the location to show that it was not the same place.

“I personally visited the East Passyunk Community Center polling place today,” he tweeted. “This is another example of dangerous misinformation.”

By midnight on Election Day, Bluestein had already been up for 20 hours. “Elections are intense,” he said. “It definitely takes a lot out of you.”

Some commissioners adopted contingency plans for their personal security.

Democratic Commissioner Omar Sabir said he and his wife developed a plan for the safety of their seven young children, including code words and a designated location where the family would meet in the event of an emergency.

In 2020, he spent several days at a hotel after receiving threats.

Trump-backed candidates who were defeated in Pennsylvania’s midterms didn’t challenge the results. A concession from Oz the morning after the election and Mastriano’s concession a week later helped to ease tensions, the officials said.

Still, Sabir said in an interview, the anxiety lingers “every time I walk out the door.”

Other battleground jurisdictions altered how they run elections.

In Nevada’s Washoe County, which includes Reno and is the second-most populous in the state, election administrators doubled the number of live-streaming cameras in the ballot-processing room to four, produced informational material on the vote-counting process and installed a glass spectator booth for observers to watch votes being tallied.

“I’m hoping that by pulling back the curtain a little bit – showing people what we do, how we do it, why we do it – that it will help people understand things,” Jamie Rodriguez, the interim registrar of voters, said in an interview.

She joined the office in the spring after her predecessor took a leave of absence due to death threats and harassment.

Still, Rodriguez’s office faced a crisis as votes were being counted in the tight Nevada Senate race when live-stream cameras in the ballot-counting room suddenly went dark.

Social media users accused the county of shutting down the cameras to rig ballots for Democrats. In reality, the livestream app suffered a glitch that caused the cameras to stop working, county officials said in a statement after investigating the blackout.

The area had remained locked and security cameras had filmed all entrances to the room, they added. Rodriguez said her staff checked employee badges to make sure no one had slipped in during the pre-dawn hours.

Even as she explained what happened, protesters demonstrated outside the election building. They waved miniature American flags and signs that read, “Stop stealing our elections.”

Rodriguez said she wasn’t rattled by the commotion and believed by addressing the skeptics, eventually tempers would cool.

“People are very upset and we need to make sure that we get them as much information as possible,” she said.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, election officials strengthened doors, added shatterproof film on windows and stationed a security guard in the ballot-counting room.

Still, the secretary of state’s office forwarded 21 possible cases of voter intimidation to law enforcement during Arizona’s nearly month-long early voting period.

And a few hours into Election Day, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer told reporters that about 20% of electronic vote tabulation machines in the state’s most populous county were malfunctioning. Officials later said some printers lacked toner “strong enough” to produce adequate marks on ballots, which meant some tabulators couldn’t read them.

Kari Lake, a Trump-backed Republican candidate for governor, seized on the problems, issuing a “voter alert” on Twitter and echoing Trump’s false stolen-election claims. On Monday, Democrat Katie Hobbs was declared the winner but Lake hasn’t conceded.

In a video released on social media on Thursday, Lake said she was “exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week.” A day earlier, she said malfunctions in Maricopa amounted to voter disenfranchisement. Officials, however, say alternative measures ensured voters could cast ballots.

In Georgia’s Gwinnett County, which includes part of the greater Atlanta area, election officials held planning meetings with local law enforcement to beef up security, Elections Supervisor Zach Manifold told Reuters.

The plan included keeping sheriff’s officers on site for longer to ensure election staff felt safe, he said.

In 2020, a voting-systems technician in the county received death threats after social media users falsely accused him of stealing votes.

“It used to be they were only here during the voting, now we keep them around to make sure the staff feels safe at the end of the night,” Manifold said. “Everyone has been more proactive than ever before making sure we are prepared from a security standpoint.”

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The White House announced through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday $13 billion in new financing for the expansion and modernization of the country’s electric grid.

President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $10.5 billion to improve power systems against growing threats like extreme weather and climate change, the DOE said, and a further $2.5 billion to help build new transmission lines.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, whose spectacular rise and fall made her an object of fascination in Silicon Valley and beyond, is expected to be sentenced on Friday in a California federal court for defrauding investors in her now-defunct blood testing startup.

A jury in San Jose convicted Holmes, 38, on three counts of investor fraud and one count of conspiracy in January.

Prosecutors, who are seeking a 15-year prison sentence, called Holmes’ fraud “among the most substantial white collar offenses Silicon Valley or any other district has seen.”

But Holmes’ attorneys have asked that she receive a more lenient sentence of 18 months of home confinement, followed by community service, urging the judge not to make her a “martyr to public passion.”

Prosecutors said Holmes misrepresented Theranos’ technology and finances, including by claiming that its miniaturized blood testing machine was able to run an array of tests from a few drops of blood. The company secretly relied on conventional machines from other companies to run patients’ tests, prosecutors said.

Once valued at $9 billion, Theranos Inc promised to revolutionize how patients receive diagnoses by replacing traditional labs with small machines envisioned for use in homes, drugstores and even on the battlefield.

Forbes dubbed Holmes the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire in 2014, when she was 30 and her stake in Theranos was worth $4.5 billion.

But the startup collapsed after a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal in 2015 questioned its technology.

At trial, prosecutors said Holmes engaged in fraud by lying to investors about Theranos’ technology and finances rather than allowing the company to fail.

Holmes testified in her own defense, saying she believed her statements were accurate at the time.

Though she was convicted on three counts, Holmes was acquitted on four other counts alleging she defrauded patients who paid for Theranos tests.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, Calif. has denied Holmes’ requests to overturn her convictions, saying they were supported by the evidence at trial.

After the sentence has been imposed, Holmes can challenge those rulings at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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Встреча с директором Фонда развития промышленности Романом Петруцей • Президент России kremlin.ru/events/preside…

This week Elon Musk gave Twitter employees an ultimatum: commit to a new, “hardcore” workplace culture of “long hours at high intensity,” or get out. Jon Schwarz talks with Bloomberg reporter Mike Leonard about how Musk is trying to squeeze profit out of the company and whether he’s likely to succeed. Then, Jon and fellow Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein discuss how Twitter has enriched their journalistic lives.

Transcript coming soon.

The post Bonfire of the Twitterverse appeared first on The Intercept.

ATLANTA — It’s been a rough few months for the New Georgia Project.

The nonprofit founded by Stacey Abrams and once helmed by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) dismissed most of its leadership over the summer. A former executive told the Washington Free Beacon that the group’s top accountant was fired after saying he couldn’t do his job without violating the law. Now the group missed a crucial IRS filing deadline, an error that puts it on the wrong side of federal law.

Such chaos is now commonplace at the New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded in 2013 to register non-white voters in the Peach State. The group, and its affiliate New Georgia Project Action Fund, appear to have fallen into dire financial straits since the June dismissal of chief financial officer Randall Frazier. Although the groups raised a combined $37 million in 2020, their human resource director claimed in an October video call terminating three top employees that the New Georgia Project could no longer afford to pay their salaries.

The New Georgia Project’s Form 990 financial disclosure, which was due to the IRS on Tuesday, would shed light into what the two groups did with their millions in 2021. The forms offer a detailed picture of a nonprofit’s finances, including how much was paid to top officials and contractors. But New Georgia Project Legal Affairs Director Tangi Bush told the Free Beacon on Wednesday that the group’s “finance department” was still preparing the disclosures. Nonprofits and charities must provide their 990s to the public within 24 hours of an in-person request.

The former executive who spoke to the Free Beacon says that the New Georgia Project’s lack of staff and culture of secrecy are to blame for the groups’ missed IRS filing. Bush could not even say who works in NGP’s finance department when asked by the Free Beacon, citing a “personnel issue.”

According to National Legal and Policy Center counsel Paul Kamenar, the groups’ failure to file the Form 990 on time suggests “serious financial irregularities that should be audited.” With no known leadership in its accounting division, the New Georgia Project seems unable to comply with federal laws governing nonprofits, and faces potential fines or other penalties.

The New Georgia Project could also face sanctions from state authorities for failing to disclose its finances. Black Lives Matter group was temporarily barred from raising charitable funds in California and Washington in February after it failed to report its 2020 finances on time.

Abrams and Warnock are no longer affiliated with the New Georgia Project and the New Georgia Project Action Fund, although they both maintain ties with the groups’ leaders, including board chairman Francys Johnson. Warnock, who led the group from 2017 to 2019, appointed Johnson to his “Federal Nominations Advisory Commission” in March 2021. In September, he co-hosted a rally for Abrams.

The New Georgia Project worked to get both Abrams and Warnock elected this cycle, with mixed results. Abrams lost her second gubernatorial bid by nearly eight points. Warnock will face Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a December run-off after failing to earn 50 percent of the vote on Election Day.

The post Amid Financial Chaos, Stacey Abrams’s Nonprofit Flouts Federal Law appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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The post Ukraine Must Recognize, Join Belarus’s Tsikhanouskaya – Kyiv Post appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

According to Belarusian opposition activist Vitali Shkliarov, “Of European leaders, only Lukashenko, Putin and Zelensky haven’t met with Tsikhanouskaya, yet.”

In this second part of an interview with Vitali Shkliarov, a Belarusian opposition activist and political engineer, Kyiv Post asked why Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the winner in the 2020 presidential election in Belarus, is still not in contact with the Ukrainian leadership and why cooperation with her is also important for the Ukrainian president’s office.

In the first part of the interview Mr. Shkliarov told Kyiv Post about prospects for Belarus under Lukashenko and the probability of Belarusian troops attacking Ukraine.

In your article for Ukrainska Pravda you criticized the Ukrainian leadership for its uncertain position in regard to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Would you please explain why it is necessary to establish contacts with her and how Kyiv could cooperate with her?

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and her cabinet are Ukraine’s allies. She represents millions of Belarusians under occupation and thousands of political prisoners who reach out for Volodymyr Zelensky. I think it’s time to formalize this alliance and provide support for a free Belarus, so that our forces confronted by the Russian threat grow tenfold. This is a matter of both Ukraine’s national security and the future of nine million Belarusians.

The official recognition of Free Belarus and its president Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya by Ukraine would launch the mechanism of such recognition throughout Europe and the rest of the world. It would be a powerful move toward mercy and reconciliation, mutual help and cultural reintegration of Belarusians inside and beyond their country. We need your Ukrainian support and experience as never before.

By far, of all European leaders, only Lukashenko, Putin and Zelensky haven’t met with Tsikhanouskaya, yet, and haven’t recognized her election. I know that to you Ukrainians and us Belarusians, this kind of relationship is unacceptable and insulting. So is the fact that the Ukrainian foreign ministry hasn’t severed diplomatic relations with Lukashenko.

You know, the slogan on the banners of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army read “Freedom for Nations – Freedom for One.” It’s symbolic. The insurgents who fought for Ukraine’s independence against both the Nazi and Soviet invaders believed that the freedom of an individual is impossible without the freedom of nations – all nations! So, I believe Mr. Zelensky and his administration could do a lot for a free Belarus to become a partner of the free Ukraine and for Lukashenko’s Belarus to disappear at last.

How would you explain such a questionable attitude to Tsikhanouskaya on the part of Zelensky and other Ukrainian politicians?

It’s a difficult question. I hope the Zelensky administration still doesn’t prioritize this issue exclusively for preposterous reasons. I could name ten runaround explanations that I’ve heard at all levels of your leadership.

Some explanations appear to be reasonable and others look really weird. Take this one, for instance: “Relations with Belarus could worsen.” But they couldn’t be worse after February 24! Some explain that there could be reprisals against Belarusian opposition activists or terrorist acts in Ukraine. But what could be worse than missile strikes on peaceful civilians?

Possibly, someone doesn’t want to close the channel of communication with Putin through Lukashenko, but has it ever worked? As I heard in the first weeks of the war, some spare parts or fuel for the Ukrainian army could be imported from Belarus, but that’s impossible!

Many argue that Tsikhanouskaya hasn’t recognized Crimea as part of Ukraine or that she hasn’t been explicit enough on Russia’s war against Ukraine. In Ukrainska Pravda I gave two dozen examples of her clear position statements.

I see no reason not to cooperate with Tsikhanouskaya. Such communication with her cabinet is very important for the Belarusians. Belarus is the last post-Soviet nation remaining in Russia’s orbit and it’s necessary to break away from it. That would be the last nail driven into the coffin of Soviet imperialism.

While Russia is trying to reinforce its army at the expense of criminal mobilization by recruiting a million thugs, Ukraine should mobilize nine million Belarusians in its support. Together with Ukraine, Tsikhanouskaya could organize a legitimate referendum in occupied Belarus and create a fair, viable state – a new Belarus that would become Ukraine’s most reliable ally. And the main weapon we need now is your word of support for a free Belarus.

For example, the first embassy of Free Belarus could open on 3 Kotsyubyns’koho Street in Kyiv, in the building vacated by the Belarusian collaborators who fled Ukraine. It could bury the Lukashenko regime diplomatically and issue new Belarusian passports. Then every Belarusian holder of this passport could vote for a democratic future of Belarus and Ukraine and against the Putin and Lukashenko regimes.

That would be our national referendum with undeniable results and another step in enlisting support in the West and East.

Ukraine is actively cooperating with the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment. As far as I understand, they are not in touch with Tsikhanouskaya. Are they competitors?

They are not competitors. They are both fighting for the right cause. The Seim [elected leadership] of the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment and everyone in the regiment are certainly worthy people who are respected by both Belarusians and Ukrainians. They are real heroes, the pride of my country. If the Ukrainian leadership opted for Tsikhanouskaya as the legitimate president, it wouldn’t undermine the regiment’s authority, wouldn’t prevent it from fighting for Ukraine’s freedom and wouldn’t cast any doubt on the Seim’s political future. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is not a competitor and not a dictator. Moreover, she built her election campaign on a pledge to hold, once elected, a new presidential election.

But first it’s necessary to defeat Russia and get rid of Lukashenko. Ukraine’s bet on Tsikhanouskaya could help achieve these goals because it would consolidate the Belarusian opposition and give an impetus to a more active struggle inside the occupied country.

Why don’t the regiment and Tsikhanouskaya join forces? Why are they acting separately?

They are not acting separately. Their efforts are the same. They have the same goals and the same enemy. The Kalinouski regiment is fighting at the front. Tsikhanouskaya is fighting diplomatically.

Tsikhanouskaya has said many times that the Belarusians are not Lukashenko and we have heard many times from Russia that the Russians are not Putin. But the Russians don’t do anything to stop the war and don’t even hide their hatred of Ukrainians. It’s practically the same with the Belarusians: They don’t support this war but are passive. So Tsikhanouskaya’s utterances don’t quite sound agreeable to the Ukrainians. After all, until 2020 the Belarusians had voted for Lukashenko, so it would be wrong to regard them separately from his regime.

Firstly, I wouldn’t say that the Belarusians are passive. They are not. Some are fighting in Ukraine and others are fighting as partisans, stopping trains with Russian tanks near the Belarusian border, or protesting abroad.

The efforts and sacrifices during the protests in Minsk in 2020 helped to create a new reality and a point of consolidation of a new Belarusian nation. We are different now. We have our own, genuine president instead of that balloon inflated with Russian gas. We have the choice of a different future, a free European future. And most importantly, we have us – Belarusians who are ready to fight together. Today we are all new citizens of a new and fair Belarus!

Secondly, the Belarusian people didn’t elect Lukashenko in 2020. The winner was Tsikhanouskaya. In 2015, they didn’t elect him either. In fact, none of the presidential elections since the first one in 1994 were legitimate. All of them were rigged. Opposition forces were left out of the race. That’s why I say that the Belarusians have never elected Lukashenko and are not Lukashenko.

We Belarusians have been silent for too long and haven’t called a spade a spade. But now it’s time to end this. Lukashenko and Putin are digging a grave for the old, crippled Soviet world. Their actions are convincing those who doubt and motivating those who hesitate. They are doing everything for this to never happen again. They are making us stronger.

Who should be president after Belarus is freed: Tsikhanouskaya who won the election or her husband who was Lukashenko’s main rival?

Excuse me, but this question is incorrect. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, as the legitimately elected president, holds the mandate that expires in 2025. After that, a new fair election must be held. Until then, she will be the legitimate president of New Belarus.

Belarus and Ukraine will be free, and it’s inevitable. Long live Belarus! Glory for Ukraine! Forever!

The post Ukraine Must Recognize, Join Belarus’s Tsikhanouskaya appeared first on Kyiv Post.

Fifteen people were killed in a gas cylinder explosion in a residential area in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya, the civil defence said on Friday.

A rescue operation lasting 17 hours had now ended, the civil defence added.

Earlier on Friday, Haval Abubaker, the governor of Sulaimaniya province, announced three days of mourning.

Civil defence firefighters managed to contain the fire that broke out in a residential area after the gas cylinder exploded on Thursday. The fire damaged several houses and destroyed at least five vehicles, police said.

Police officers said at least three houses were completely destroyed by the explosion of a cooking gas cylinder that was installed on the rooftop of one of the homes.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden have no plans to meet for the time being, the Kremlin said on Friday after Russia’s deputy foreign minister said Moscow was not ruling out high-level meetings between the two countries.

“A summit is out of the question at the moment,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said earlier that Russia was not ruling out further high-level meetings with the United States on “strategic stability” as an upcoming meeting between the two powers in Cairo on nuclear proliferation nears.

However, Ryabkov indicated there was nothing to talk about with the United States on the subject of Ukraine. The two sides had radically opposing positions, he said.

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