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Canadian News
PBO says gender-based pay equity scheme to cost $621M, as Liberals withhold spending plans
OTTAWA — A new report offers the first-ever cost estimate for a Liberal policy that aims to ensure men and women receive equal pay, after Ottawa declined to provide details on the legislation in 2018.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that the Liberal government’s equal pay policy will cost taxpayers $621 million per year, covering about 390,000 public servants in Canada. That estimate does not include the additional 900,000 workers who fall under federally-regulated industries like airlines, telecoms, banking, and broadcasting, among other things.
Crown corporations including Canada Post, Bank of Canada and the newly-formed Trans Mountain Corporation will also fall under the new equal pay provisions. The $621-million hike amounts to a roughly one per cent increase on the $45 billion Ottawa spends every year on wages and pensions for public employees.
Yves Giroux, the PBO, said his office pulled together the estimates without the help of Treasury Board officials, who declined to provide any internal data for the program, citing Cabinet confidence.
He said he was unsure of the merit of those claims, but warned that the Liberal government should avoid using cabinet confidence as a catch-all to withhold information that would useful to the public.
“If the data exists, and it’s been used internally or in other formats, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it should remain a secret just because it was discussed at cabinet,” Giroux said in an interview.
A spokesperson for Treasury minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Ottawa will eventually release cost estimates for the program, but said negotiations with agencies and federally regulated industries are still ongoing. The person said that making cost projections public now would “compromise future negotiations with bargaining agents.”
“It’s probably bureaucrats being overly risk averse,” Giroux said. “But there’s no way for me to be sure of that, because we haven’t seen the data.”
His comments come as the PBO on Wednesday issued a second report that lamented a broader lack of transparency by the federal government on its immense COVID-19 emergency spending measures.
It pointed out that the government has yet to lay out detailed accounts of the spending measures thus far for COVID-19, unlike past federal stimulus spending efforts, and with little excuse for the secrecy. The government’s latest spending request to Parliament, for $79 billion, has likewise been “lacking” in detail, the budget officer said.
“This lack of data is not a result of it not being available,” the PBO report said. “The Department of Finance had been providing biweekly updates to the standing committee on finance, but stopped when Parliament was prorogued in August.”
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has repeatedly called for better transparency in government spending during the pandemic, as policymakers in Ottawa rush hundreds of billions out the door in an effort to provide a lifeline to Canadian businesses and workers hit by economic lockdowns.
A lack of detail around the gender parity program is the latest example of these shortcomings, the budget watchdog said Wednesday.
The Pay Equity Act was ultimately tucked inside the Liberal government’s 2018 omnibus budget bill, which passed the House of Commons on a 163-113 vote in late December, with most opposition parties voting against. It received royal assent without associated costs ever being supplied by government.
The changes under the act seek to achieve pay equity by “redressing the systemic gender-based discrimination” faced by women, the legislation says. Employers under the new regime must “calculate the compensation, expressed in dollars per hour, associated with each job class,” and pay employees a set amount according to the value ascribed to those classes.
The new legislation also calls for the appointment of a “pay equity commissioner” to audit public sector pay, resolve pay disputes, and impose financial penalties on agencies and corporations that fail to meet the new guidelines.
Various studies have claimed that women tend to receive only a portion of the wages of men occupying the same roles, prompting calls from advocacy groups for regulations that would enforce gender parity.
Of the $621 million in higher pay associated with the changes, the PBO estimates that by 2023-24, $477 million more would go toward wages while the remaining $144 million would go toward public pensions.
Ongoing costs for regulatory oversight of the program is expected to be $5 million per year. Administrative costs will be $9 million annually, according to the PBO report.
Categories: Canadian News
While youth voters turned out in record numbers — mostly for Biden — a seniors surge didn't happen
The youth vote in the 2020 US presidential election swung heavily in favour of 77-year-old Joe Biden over Donald Trump, age 74, a trend that, as the votes continued to be counted on Wednesday, may have made a difference in some key battlegrounds.
The voter turnout in 2020 was unprecedented across the entire United States, according to the United States Election Project, which tracks information about the electoral system. Estimates come from exit polls — official data on turnout won’t be available until the census bureau releases it in a few months’ time. According to the Project’s data, only five states — Hawaii, Oklahoma and Arkansas, Tennessee and West Virginia saw less than 60 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot, while Minnesota and New Hampshire had voter turnout in excess of 80 per cent.
In every single state for which there is data, analyzed by Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), a youth-focused research centre at Tufts University, young voters — defined as those between 18 and 29 years old — took up a double-digit share of the total ballots cast. CIRCLE uses AP VoteCast data from The Associated Press,
“Nearly half of all eligible young people cast ballots in the most critical election races in the country,” says CIRCLE’s analysis.
Young voters preferred Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate over Trump, the Republican candidate and current president, in 34 of 38 states for which CIRCLE had vote data.
Overall, 62 per cent of those voters cast their ballot for Biden compared to 33 per cent for Trump. These are, CIRCLE notes, figures that outpace even the votes received from younger voters by Hillary Clinton in 2016 (although the data, because of sources and year, aren’t entirely comparable.)
Peter Loewen, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, said there’s little doubt Biden benefitted from a high share of the youth vote and higher youth turnout. But that doesn’t mean they “delivered” the election for him or the Democrats, he said.
“It’s always hard to figure out how much differences in political behaviour due to age are because of something generational … or whether it is something that is really a life cycle thing,” said Loewen.
In Virginia, youth voters cast 21 per cent of all ballots; in Georgia, it was 20 per cent. Georgia remained a battleground state, as of Wednesday morning, while Virginia had been called for Biden, according to Reuters.
Youth were the lowest proportion in Kentucky (10 per cent) and Louisiana (12 per cent.) Both states were projected by Reuters to be Republican victories.
William Frey, a researcher with the Brookings Institution, said there are some states where the youth vote turnout helped Biden, but it’s still too early to make those determinations for certain.
“It’s clearly the case that … the younger population is more likely to vote for Biden than they were for Clinton vis-à-vis Trump,” Frey said.
“Certainly going forward in the U.S., it’s the younger generation … is going to be the main driver for Democratic support, probably everywhere.”
Further breaking down the data, every single ethnic group in CIRCLE’s youth cohort voted in a majority for Biden: 88 per cent of Black youth voted Biden; 83 per cent of Asian youth; 75 per cent of Latino youth; and 53 per cent of white youth.
Support for Trump, meanwhile, clustered in older voters. The highest proportion of voters who cast ballots for Trump landed in the 30-to-44 age cluster, with 57 per cent of voters voting Republican. From age 45 and up, 51 per cent of voters voted for Trump.
Frey said far more seniors were expected to abandon Trump for Biden, according to polling data leading to the election. That didn’t materialize.
“I don’t think the senior surge was as big as some of the polls said,” Frey said.
However it all turns out, Loewen said, it’s a testament to how serious the competition is in the United States and the effort parties put forward to winning votes.
“It’s just an amazingly dynamic and competitive system,” he said.
• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson
Categories: Canadian News
U.S. election 2020 recap: Biden on brink of victory on Day 2, but Trump hasn't given up
American voters went to the polls on Tuesday to choose between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden and cast votes in U.S. House and Senate races and state and local elections. As of Wednesday Nov. 4 at 4:30 p.m., there was no declared winner as of yet because of millions of uncounted ballots that were cast in early voting.
After Biden won Wisconsin, he had a total of 248 electoral votes to Trump’s 214, leaving both shy of the 270 needed to secure immediate victories. While Biden delivered a speech saying he is “confident” of a win, Trump wasn’t ready to give up. His campaign said it would demand a recount of the state since the margin was less than 1 percentage point.
- Get the latest news on the election result at nationalpost.com
Trump’s campaign also said it is suing in Pennsylvania and Michigan to halt vote counts that have been trending toward Biden. In both states, the Trump campaign claims it hasn’t been given meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the process for opening and tabulating ballots as guaranteed under state law. Neither filing could be immediately confirmed.
Trump holds a lead in Pennsylvania but hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots remain to be counted which are expected to push the race to Biden’s advantage. The president’s lead in Michigan evaporated earlier on Wednesday to give Biden a narrow edge. It will be almost impossible for Trump to win the election if he does not win Pennsylvania.
Trump needs at least four of the following states to pass 270 electoral votes: Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He won them all in 2016. If Biden wins any two of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, he’ll win.
This liveblog has now ended, but you can relive how election night — and much of Day 2 — unfolded below. If it isn’t displaying, click this link to access it on the National Post website.
— National Post, with files from Bloomberg, Reuters and The Canadian Press
You might also be interested in …- What happens if the U.S. election is contested and Donald Trump won’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power?
- What is the U.S. electoral college and how does it work?
- U.S. election exit polls: Just two in 10 national voters say COVID-19 was their biggest issue
Categories: Canadian News
Watch: 'Trump may go, but his ideology will remain'
National Post columnists John Ivison and Kevin Carmichael discuss the divide U.S. electorate with Larysa Harapyn, and its long-lasting impacts on the Canadian economy. Watch the video below.
Categories: Canadian News
'Outrageous': Biden campaign slams Trump's claims to premature victory as election results remain unclear
Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s campaign has dismissed President Donald Trump’s remarks as “outrageous” and “incorrect,” after the U.S. president claimed a premature victory to the 2020 election, despite millions of votes still left uncounted.
In a middle of the night speech from the White House, Trump falsely claimed that he won the U.S. election and threatened to ask the Supreme Court to intervene to stop what he called the disenfranchisement of Republican voters, without offering evidence that any wrongdoing had occurred.
“Frankly, we did win this election,” he said, noting that he held a lead in a number of states whose results were still uncertain. “So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what Trump meant, as states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and others are counting legally cast votes. It is also routine for states to continue counting votes after Election Day.
The unusually large number of absentee ballots cast due to the coronavirus pandemic meant counting wasn’t complete. The unresolved outcome risks stoking tensions further in the U.S., beset by an economic downturn and the raging virus.
As of 6 a.m. New York time Wednesday, Biden holds a narrow lead with 224 electoral votes while Trump had 213, leaving both shy of the 270 needed to secure immediate victories.
Trump’s comments immediately drew criticism from Biden’s campaign and at least one of the president’s allies. Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, said in a statement that Trump’s remarks were “outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect” and “a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a close Trump ally, told ABC News he disagreed with Trump’s remarks about the election results and said, “There’s just no basis to make that argument tonight. There just isn’t.”
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, speaking at 12:30 in the morning Eastern Time on Wednesday, said it was going to take time to figure out the winner of the presidential race, but that the Democrats are feeling good about Tuesday night’s results.
“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won the election, that’s the decision of the American people,” he said.
The former vice-president, coming out to cheers and honking car horns, made his remarks as the race for president remained tight, with multiple networks and newswires holding off on declaring several key battleground states for either candidate.
In the lead-up to election day, there was much speculation that Trump would prematurely declare victory. The president remained quiet online for much of Tuesday, until coming to life just after Biden spoke, saying he, too, would soon speak.
Trump tweeted, without providing any evidence, that, “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” Twitter subsequently curtailed the spread of his tweet, telling readers that it contained disputed information.
We placed a warning on a Tweet from @realDonaldTrump for making a potentially misleading claim about an election. This action is in line with our Civic Integrity Policy. More here: https://t.co/k6OkjNXEAm
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) November 4, 2020The road to victory for Biden, as of early Wednesday, remained unclear. Ditto for Trump, although there were very few surprises when compared to results from 2016. No states, as of the time Biden took to the mic, had switched hands from 2016.
Both men still have paths to victory, though it appears that Biden has more options than Trump does. Trump needs at least four of the following states to pass 270 electoral votes: Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He won them all in 2016.
If Biden wins any two of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, he’ll win.
There were few surprises among states where the AP announced winners, with Republican and Democratic states generally falling in line, despite expectations for several upsets. The only other Electoral College vote to flip so far, besides in Arizona, came from a congressional district in Nebraska that backed Biden after favoring Trump in 2016.
Trump won Florida, a crucial prize in the race to the White House that closed off Biden’s hopes for an early knockout in the election. The president also won Texas, which Democrats had hoped might turn blue and entirely reshape the electoral map.
Trump significantly outperformed in one of Florida’s most populous counties, Miami-Dade. After losing the county four years ago by 29 points, he lost by less than 8 to Biden.
The county is diverse, with large Cuban and Venezuelan populations Trump has courted by raising diplomatic and economic pressure on the socialist regimes in those countries. He accused Biden of sharing the regimes’ politics.
Trump won Ohio and Biden won Minnesota, states that each candidate had sought to take from the other but wound up politically unchanged from 2016.
Ohio was the first of several battleground states decided in the race.
Biden carried Minnesota even though Trump held multiple campaign rallies in a state he narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Biden’s strength in the urban parts of the state kept it in the Democratic column.
Trump holds small leads in North Carolina and Georgia, though there are votes outstanding in each. Trump won both states in 2016.
In addition, Biden won Nebraska’s second congressional district, Minnesota, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New York, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Delaware, District of Columbia and New Hampshire, according to the AP.
Trump won Nebraska’s other four Electoral College votes, Ohio, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri.
Nebraska is one of only two states, with Maine, that award an Electoral College vote to the winner of each congressional district. Trump won two districts and Biden won one. Trump won the state overall, giving him Nebraska’s two remaining Electoral College votes.
Maine’s second congressional district remained too close to call.
Even if Democrats yet claim the White House, a “blue wave” they hoped would also give them control of both chambers of Congress may fall short.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was re-elected, the AP said. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, was re-elected despite a Democratic challenger who badly out-raised him, and Senator Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat, was defeated by Republican Tommy Tuberville.
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, defeated Senator Cory Gardner, giving his party one pickup. Other contested Senate seats remain undecided.
Biden is winning over Latino and African-American voters in numbers similar to Clinton four years ago, and is narrowing Trump’s margin among White voters, early exit polls from the AP show.
Trump had a 12-point lead among White voters in Tuesday’s election. Network exit polls four years ago showed him with a 20-point advantage among those voters. Biden led among Latino voters 30 points, Black voters by 82 points, and women by 12 points.
In several key states, waits to process mail-in ballots — which are expected to lean Democrat — will mean delays in knowing the true winners, and could perhaps see victories materialize for Democrats in unexpected states.
“It ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted,” Biden told supporters in Delaware. “Keep the faith guys, we’re gonna win this.”
Categories: Canadian News
Could Trump and Biden still tie in the Electoral College? Unlikely. Here's why
Election Day has come and gone, putting an end to what has been one of the most divisive U.S. presidential election campaigns in the nation’s history. The messy part however, isn’t over yet — it’ll be a few days before poll clerks around the country will finish counting out the remaining votes that could make or break an election for either candidate.
In order to decisively win the election, a candidate would need to secure 270 electoral college votes. However, Joe Biden and Donald Trump continue to run neck-and-neck for majority of votes in several states, prompting many to question the likelihood of an election tie.
A tie is rare, but theoretically not impossible. The total number of electoral college votes is 538, which means each candidate could hypothetically receive 269 votes.
It has also happened before. In the 1800 presidential election — the third in U.S. history — Democratic candidate Thomas Jefferson and Republican candidate Aaron Burr each received 73 votes. Incumbent John Adams was booted off the presidential ticket after only accumulating 35 votes.
Subsequently, in keeping with a provision within the Constitution mandating that the House of Representatives shall vote for the final winner, each candidate presented themselves to the House and after 36 consecutive votes — almost causing a second civil war — Jefferson was picked as the third president.
More than 200 years later, the same provision would apply to Biden and Trump, if a tie were to happen. Each state delegation would be allotted one vote and a majority of 26 states would be needed to win the presidency. Senators would, in turn, elect the vice-president, with a majority of 51 votes required to win the vice-presidency.
Experts debating the possibility of a tie last night believed the situation might favour Trump. “If that were to happen, I think the conventional wisdom is that Republicans would probably be favored,” Alexander Burns, a veteran political correspondent for the New York Times, said during The Daily podcast.
Burns said a tie would be highly unlikely and “literally the messiest scenario possible.”
However, as of Wednesday morning, voters will no longer have to worry about an election tie after Biden secured an electoral vote in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, making a 269-269 outcome mathematically impossible.
No matter the results, the outcome of the election will still be messy. Biden and Trump have already prepared a legal team in the event that either candidate demands a recount, or the election results are taken to the Supreme Court. Trump has intimated several times that he would contest an election loss and has a long history of making falsely claims that the voting system is rigged.
Categories: Canadian News
With U.S. election 2020 still up in the air, Canadian politicians (mostly) stay out of the fight
OTTAWA – With the U.S. election result still very much up in the air Canadian politicians were staying out of the fight Wednesday morning.
Despite a false claim of victory by U.S. president Donald Trump early Wednesday morning, the race was still too close to call, with many key swing states still unable to report results.
The race was tightening in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania and more ballots remained to be counted.
Former vice-president spoke briefly to his supporters as well early Wednesday. He didn’t declare victory, but told his supporters to “keep the faith, we’re going to win.”
Television network TVA caught Prime Minister Justin Trudeau headed into parliament this morning and he said only that they were watching closely.
“As everyone knows there is an electoral process underway in the United States. We are of course following it carefully as the day and the days unfold,“ he said.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole was headed into his caucus meeting this morning and admitted it was a long night watching the results. He said we will simply have to wait for results.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been the only leader to weigh in on the U.S. campaign. On Tuesday, he said he hopes Trump is defeated.
“It is a moral imperative that we have to speak out and say that what he has done in his presidency is wrong,” he said. “I think it would be better for the world if Trump loses and I hope he loses.”
Twitter: RyanTumilty
Email: rtumilty@postmedia.com
Categories: Canadian News
No clear winner yet, but Trump has a path to victory and a second term
A momentous U.S. presidential election headed to a nail-biting conclusion Wednesday, as President Donald Trump once again defied opinion polls and put up a fierce fight to keep the White House.
Well after midnight, it was unclear who would win the race, the outcome likely to be decided by one or two states, or even a single congressional district.
It was one of the most bitterly contested U.S. political campaigns in the post-war era and ultimately came down to a relatively few key votes — after record turnout by Americans in the middle of a pandemic.
Any possibility of a landslide for either side evaporated as the night wore on, the votes were slowly counted and the numbers lined up in surprising ways.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden seemed on the way to stealing Arizona and its 11 Electoral College votes, but Trump captured the key prize of Florida and was leading in the three former “blue wall” northern states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. If he won those states and others where he led, the election would be his.
But as Tuesday turned to Wednesday, large chunks of the vote in those states, including in heavily Democratic areas, remained to be counted, offering a sliver of hope for Biden.
The former vice president made an early morning appearance to claim that, despite trailing in key areas, he would eventually prevail.
“I believe we’re on track to win the election,” he told supporters shortly before 1 a.m. “It ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted. But we’re feeling good about where we are.”
Trump Tweeted at about the same time, insisting that he would triumph.
“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election,” he posted, without explaining how or by whom the election was being stolen. “We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!”
U.S. TV networks reporting on the returns had to contend with a whole new pattern in how the vote came in, making races harder to read. The vast numbers of ballots cast in advance — believed to favour the Democrats — were counted first in some places, later in others.
But just before 12:30 p.m., Biden led the Electoral College vote by 205-139, the score representing expected results for each candidate in safe states. A total of at least 270 votes captures the White House.
Returns streamed in as a deeply divided nation waited on tenterhooks for the extraordinary election’s outcome.
But the final result could take days to come after a remarkable surge of advance voting, likely delays in counting ballots and a legal campaign by Trump and his allies against various pandemic-related voting protocols.
As results arrived surprisingly quickly from Florida, the lead bounced back and forth between Trump and Biden, typical of the kind of tight race for which the state is famous. Then the Republican steadily pulled ahead.
For Trump it was considered a must-win, its 29 Electoral College votes considered essential to his returning for another four years as president.
In other swing states, Trump won Ohio, and clung to a lead in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin. He also had a solid advantage in Georgia, which Biden had hoped to snatch away.
With the prospect of the two all but tying, it was possible the race could come down to one segment of a lightly populated state. Unlike almost all other states, Maine allots its Electoral College votes by congressional district, meaning a split favouring one or other candidate could seal a tight race.
More than 100 million Americans had cast their ballots before polling places opened on the actual election day Tuesday, with citizens voting by mail in unprecedented numbers or in person at advanced polls.
More streamed to the polls Tuesday amid fears of unrest and violence that did not seem to come to fruition, but will continue to be a spectre hanging over the election’s aftermath.
Some experts predicted 160 million overall could exercise their franchise, about 67 per cent of the U.S. electorate and the highest in a century.
But the integrity of America’s democratic system came under question as never before, with court rulings on the process even on Tuesday. For months, Trump has insisted there would be fraud because of the widespread use of mail-in ballots and counting that could continue for days after Nov. 3.
The size of turnout on election day was itself being closely watched as an indicator of where the vote could head, with Republicans traditionally less likely to vote in advance.
Opinion surveys suggested a comfortable lead nationally for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, and a tighter advantage in several of the battleground states. Those are key to winning 270 or more Electoral College votes, the majority that decides who enters the White House under the American system.
Polls put Biden an average of about eight percentage points ahead.
But while Democratic candidates have won the popular vote in six of the last seven elections, they lost the White House in two of those contests — 2016 and 2000. And Trump captured narrow victories in a number of swing states last election, defying polls that suggested Hillary Clinton was ahead in those races.
The campaign pitted two starkly opposing visions for the United States and how to tackle the COVID-19 crisis, which became a central theme of the election.
Trump presided over a first term that was marked by chaos and conflict, his inflammatory style blamed for fanning the flames of white supremacy, threatening longstanding international alliances and encouraging an angry, polarized political conversation.
He was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives — but found not guilty by the Republican-led U.S. Senate — after pressuring Ukraine’s president to help him dig up dirt on alleged corruption by Biden’s son Hunter.
Trump touted his success in fuelling a robust economy before the pandemic hit earlier this year, cutting taxes and putting America first in foreign relations. In blunt and often insulting terms, he warned that a vote for Biden would usher in socialist policies and an administration content to let violent, leftist protesters run rampant.
Biden hit hard and often at Trump’s allegedly cavalier approach to the pandemic. The president failed to encourage lockdowns and mask-wearing that have helped curb COVID-19’s spread in countries like Canada, while actively denigrating scientific experts and their advice, the former vice president stressed repeatedly.
Biden painted the election as not only a referendum on Trump’s tumultuous first term, but a fight for which values define the United States.
He claimed he would strive to unite the country, standing up for both blue and red states if he took over the White House.
The candidates — Trump, 74, and Biden, 77 — also marked a historically elderly choice for American voters. Their running mates, Vice President Mike Pence, 61, and Kamala Harris, 56, brought the tickets’ average age down somewhat.
Meanwhile, polls suggested that the number of states whose Electoral College votes were up for grabs had expanded.
They included the one-time “blue-wall” northern states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan that Trump flipped from the Democrats last time and Florida, a perpetual toss-up in recent history. But Georgia, Arizona, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa and even Texas were also considered competitive this time.
The remainder of states are typically sure things for each camp, meaning the toss-ups determine who is president.
• Email: tblackwell@postmedia.com | Twitter: tomblackwellNP
Categories: Canadian News
John Ivison: Trudeau makes sudden course correction on freedom of speech
Justin Trudeau was asked by a reporter on Tuesday whether he condemns the publication of cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad.
“No,” he said, definitively in French. “I think it is important to continue to defend freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Our artists help us to reflect and challenge our views, and they contribute to our society.”
Lest there was any room for confusion about the prime minister’s free speech credentials, he reinforced the point in English. “Our journalists, our artists have an important challenge function in our society and we need to leave them free to do their work. I have always believed that and I’ve always said it.”
At least he had the decency to look sheepish.
Because, of course, that’s not what he has always said.
Those with prodigious memories will recall it was last Friday that the prime minister said something quite different.
When he was asked at last week’s press conference whether we should be able to laugh at religion or make fun of the Muslim prophet, Trudeau defended freedom of expression but said there are limits on those freedoms. “We do not have the right to shout ‘fire!’ in a movie theatre crowded with people,” he said. In a pluralistic, diverse society, people have to be aware of the impact of their words and actions, particularly on groups that experience discrimination, he added.
In the aftermath of the beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty for showing his class some Charlie Hebdo cartoons that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, it was a response that discounted the barbarity of the assault on Western values such as freedom of thought.
It smacked of Trudeau’s rather academic reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing seven years ago, when, after the new Liberal leader had mused about the “root causes” behind the attack, prime minister, Stephen Harper, accused him of “committing sociology.”
On Monday, Quebec Premier Francois Legault made it known he “totally disagreed” with Trudeau’s equivocation on freedom of expression, despite his own government’s stance on the wearing of religious symbols by teachers and civil servants in its own secularism law.
Instead, Legault backed French President Emmanuel Macron, who has vocally supported the right to make fun of religion.
On his Facebook page on Tuesday, the Quebec premier revealed that he received a call from Macron, thanking him for his support in defending freedom of expression, a posting all the more delicious because it is clear that Trudeau did not get one.
It appears the prime minister’s sociological musings did not resonate with Canadian voters either, given the course correction on Tuesday.
No wonder. A cornerstone of liberal democracies for the past 160 years has been the English philosopher John Stuart Mill’s “harm principle” – that individual freedom should only be infringed to prevent harm to others.
In the struggle between liberty and authority, Mill said that if the state is to err, it should do so on the side of liberty.
Some Muslims might find the Charlie Hebdo cartoons distasteful, even outrageous, but the cartoonists should not be silenced, far less killed, simply for causing offence.
More recently, it has been pointed out that demagogues and conspiracy theorists have used language as a vehicle for emotion, rather than meaning.
Critics of Mill on the left think those trying to sow fear or promote prejudice should somehow be muzzled.
But Mill argued that silencing an opinion is wrong, even if the opinion is wrong, because a marketplace of ideas will see truth triumph over falsehood.
A real-life test of that theory, involving 239 million American voters as arbiters, is currently underway.
In another chapter of his book On Liberty, Mill was concerned about the tyranny of the majority, forcing its will on the minority.
Quebec’s Bill 21 arguably violates the harm principle by making Muslims and Sikhs target for bigotry.
But religious adherents across Canada are free to worship and are at liberty to protest anything they consider an abomination.
They have the right to be offended but not the right to impose their religious feelings on others.
Trudeau got it wrong. Imagine if Canada had been attacked and the French president had tempered his sympathies for the atrocity with musings on possible justifications or root causes.
It seems the prime minister is a belated convert to the harm principle. But in this case the main principle is that nothing should be done that harms his prospects of re-election.
• Email: jivison@postmedia.com | Twitter: IvisonJ
Categories: Canadian News
'It ain’t over,' Biden tells supporters as Trump launches early-morning Twitter tirade
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, speaking at 12:30 in the morning Eastern Time on Wednesday, said it was going to take time to figure out the winner of the presidential race, but that the Democrats are feeling good about Tuesday night’s results.
“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won the election, that’s the decision of the American people,” he said.
The former vice-president, coming out to cheers and honking car horns, made his remarks as the race for president remained tight, with multiple networks and newswires holding off on declaring several key battleground states for either candidate.
In the lead-up to election day, there was much speculation that Trump would prematurely declare victory. The president remained quiet online for much of Tuesday, until coming to life just after Biden spoke, saying he, too, would soon speak.
Trump tweeted, without providing any evidence, that, “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” Twitter subsequently curtailed the spread of his tweet, telling readers that it contained disputed information.
We placed a warning on a Tweet from @realDonaldTrump for making a potentially misleading claim about an election. This action is in line with our Civic Integrity Policy. More here: https://t.co/k6OkjNXEAm
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) November 4, 2020Then early Wednesday, Trump falsely claimed that he had won the U.S. election — with millions of votes still uncounted.
“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said. “This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what Trump meant, as states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and others are counting legally cast votes. It is routine for states to continue counting votes after Election Day.
The road to victory for Biden, as of early Wednesday, remained unclear. Ditto for Trump, although there were very few surprises when compared to results from 2016. No states, as of the time Biden took to the mic, had switched hands from 2016.
Biden, as Tuesday became Wednesday, held some 205 electoral college votes to Trump’s 136, though Texas and Florida — both heavily leaning towards Trump — and Pennsylvania — a toss-up — have a combined 87 electoral votes up for grabs. A candidate needs 270 of the 538 electoral college votes to take the presidency.
In several key states, waits to process mail-in ballots — which are expected to lean Democrat — will mean delays in knowing the true winners, and could perhaps see victories materialize for Democrats in unexpected states.
“It ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted,” Biden told supporters in Delaware. “Keep the faith guys, we’re gonna win this.”
Categories: Canadian News
Who will be the next U.S. president? A divided America braces for violence as it waits for election results
As Tuesday’s presidential election day dawned in Washington, D.C., a new “non-scalable” fence had been erected around the perimeter of the White House during the night, in anticipation of civil unrest before the day was done.
In parts of the U.S. capital, storefronts were boarded over and federal buildings, such as the Treasury Department, were fenced in. D.C. Police rallied officers and equipment and acknowledged unrest is expected, “regardless of who wins,” said the chief. George Washington University warned students to stock up on a week’s worth of food and medicine, as if a hurricane is heading to town.
Perhaps there is.
Plenty of scenes have been playing out in the United States to stoke fears of the improbability of a peaceful post-election America, no matter who wins the presidential vote.
If Trump loses, will he refuse to accept the result and try to remain in office? Will he rally zealous supporters, some of whom are better armed than many nations, to protect him?
If Trump wins, will his zealous detractors take to the streets in protests that inevitably will bring violence and destruction?
Or will all the angst and fear of unrest, or outright insurrection, turn out to be this year’s pre-result fantasy, akin to 2016’s certainty of Hillary Clinton’s victory?
Is America really a nation of well-armed sore losers?
Things — alarming things — are being thought and said out loud about the prospect for a smooth acceptance of the election results, things that sound as if the scene is a fragile, war-torn country rather than the world’s oldest continuous democracy.
“We are increasingly anxious that this country is headed toward the worst post-election crisis in a century and a half,” says an article penned by five academics, led by Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a conservative policy think tank, drawing from research tracking public opinion trends.
“Our biggest concern is that a disputed presidential election — especially if there are close contests in a few swing states, or if one candidate denounces the legitimacy of the process — could generate violence and bloodshed,” Diamond and colleagues wrote in Politico.
“We do not pull this alarm lightly.”
The International Crisis Group, an independent organization that monitors global violence, often focusing on failing states, issued a report on the United States in the campaign’s closing days.
“The ingredients for unrest are present,” the report warns.
The United States faces risks that have doomed other countries: stark political polarization bound to issues of race and identity; the rise of armed groups built around political agendas; and the unusually high chance of a contested election outcome.
“And most importantly,” the report says, “President Donald Trump, whose toxic rhetoric and willingness to court conflict to advance his personal interests have no precedent in modern U.S. history.”
It is an odd place for the United States to be. The Crisis Group understands the apparent cognitive dissonance.
“The country faces an unfamiliar danger. While Americans have grown used to a certain level of rancour in these quadrennial campaigns, they have not in living memory faced the realistic prospect that the incumbent may reject the outcome or that armed violence may result.”
In its final pre-election poll, Gallup found a record high 64 per cent of voters afraid of what will happen if their candidate loses, almost equally by supporters of both Trump and Joe Biden; 77 per cent said stakes are higher in 2020 than in previous elections.
Pew Research Center, in its end-of-campaign polling, found that only half of Trump supporters thought the election would be properly run.
Previous Pew studies found the level of animosity in the United States between Republicans and Democrats was deeper and more personal. It was described as mutual “loathing”; 55 per cent of Republicans said Democrats are “more immoral” than other Americans and 47 per cent of Democrats said the same about Republicans.
These results suggest that even if this election passes without the nightmare scenarios being conjured, governing the country will be more difficult, jaded and partisan.
Political and social unrest this year was pushed along by a deadly and ruinous pandemic, racial injustice and broad public protests amplified by rallying cries on social media. These events exacerbate the dangerous divide, yet none of them will just evaporate after the election results are tabulated.
“Civil war is here, right now,” declared the leader of a far right-wing militia group after a Trump supporter was killed in Portland, Oregon, calling others to rally to his side.
An antifa activist tweeted Tuesday: “The best way to stop a racist with a gun is an anti-racist with a gun. Because they’re not gonna stop having guns.”
The unnerving possibilities were laid bare last month when members of a Michigan militia group were arrested and accused of a plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, overthrow the state government and start a civil war.
Is this really all so new?
There was a similar vibe in America during the 1968 Presidential election, when Republican candidate Richard Nixon beat incumbent Democratic vice president Hubert Humphrey. There was a third candidate in the race, Alabama governor George Wallace, who championed racial segregation, a measure of the temperature of America at the time.
Civil unrest, protests, riots, polarization and outrageous violence preceded that vote. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that April, sparking protests and riots; U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated that June, while he was a strong candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, large-scale street fighting broke out between anti-Vietnam War protesters and police and the National Guard. Some of the visuals from it look like low-resolution pictures from 2020.
In the wake of that election, a domestic terrorist group formed in Michigan. The Weather Underground started attacking government buildings to protest imperialism and racism. The first thing they blew up was a statue.
It all sounds too familiar.
America survived. It has survived 44 peaceful transitions from one president to the next through 58 presidential elections.
Has America become significantly more fractured?
Has the last four years changed the country that much?
• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys
Categories: Canadian News
U.S. election exit polls: Trump showing new strength with Latinos, losing some older voters
Nov 3 (Reuters) — As voting sites closed throughout the United States on Tuesday, exit polls conducted by Edison Research provided some insight on major issues driving the presidential vote and an early read on voter support.
Here are some highlights from the poll, which is based on in-person interviews with voters on Tuesday, in-person interviews at early voting centers before Election Day and telephone interviews with people who voted by mail.
NEW STRENGTH WITH LATINOS
In an emerging story on election night, Republican President Donald Trump was showing some surprising strength with Latino voters in key states such as Florida and Texas.
In Florida, according to exit polls, Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden were splitting the Latino vote. In 2016, Trump only won four out of 10 Latino voters in his race against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Overall, he was winning three of 10 nonwhite voters versus winning just two of 10 four years ago.
Trump maintained his advantage among white voters. According to Edison Research exit polls, six in 10 white voters said they cast ballots for Trump, unchanged from 2016.
The Trump campaign made winning over Cuban-American voters in populous South Florida a top priority by emphasizing the administration’s hardline policy toward Cuba and Venezuela.
In Texas, four in 10 Hispanics voted for Trump, up from three in 10 in 2016, according to exit polls in that state.
Edison’s national exit poll showed that while Biden led Trump among nonwhite voters, Trump had received a slightly higher proportion of the nonwhite vote than he did in 2016. The poll showed that about 11% of African Americans, 31% of Hispanics and 30% of Asian Americans voted for Trump, up 3 percentage points from 2016 among all three groups.
OLD TRUMP BASE ERODING
Trump may need his improved performance with nonwhite voters to offset losses within his traditional political base. He appears to have lost support among white men and older people in Georgia and Virginia, key parts of the Republican’s voter base, according to Edison polls.
While Trump is still winning the majority of those voters, some of them switched to supporting Biden, the exit polls showed.
Edison’s polls showed Trump winning seven in 10 white men in Georgia, down from an eight-in-10 advantage over Clinton in 2016. While Trump is winning six in 10 voters who are at least 65 years old in Georgia, that is down from seven in 10 four years ago.
Final election results from both states have yet to be tallied, but Biden has been projected to win Virginia. Clinton also won the state in 2016.
In Virginia, Trump was winning six in 10 whites without college degrees, down from seven in 10 in 2016. Trump was also winning six in 10 white men in Virginia, down from seven in 10 in 2016.
In more encouraging news for the president, Trump was winning six in 10 voters in Virginia who have an income of $100,000 or more.
COVID CONCERNS
The national Edison Research poll results revealed deep concern about the coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 9.4 million people in the United States this year and killed more than 230,000.
While only two of 10 voters nationally said COVID-19 was the issue that mattered most in their choice for president, half of U.S. voters believe it is more important to contain the coronavirus even if it hurts the economy.
Trump has made the full opening of the U.S. economy a centerpiece of his re-election campaign, even as infections continue to rise. Biden has claimed Trump is undeserving of a second term because of his handling of the pandemic.
In the national exit poll, four out of 10 voters said they thought the effort to contain the virus was going “very badly.” In the battleground states of Florida and North Carolina, five of 10 voters said the national response to the pandemic was going “somewhat or very badly.”
Six of 10 said the pandemic had created at least a moderate financial hardship. Seven in 10 said wearing a face mask in public was a “public health responsibility” versus three in 10 who saw it as a personal choice.
The poll found that nine out of 10 voters had already decided whom to vote for before October, and nine out of 10 voters said they were confident that their state would accurately count votes.
Other issues that were top of mind for voters included the economy, racial inequality, crime and safety, and healthcare policy.
Edison compiles exit polls and live election results for the National Election Pool media consortium.
(Reporting by Chris Kahn and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Dan Burns and Tiffany Wu; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Lincoln Feast and Peter Cooney)
Reuters, 11/03/20 22:48
Categories: Canadian News
A divided America braces for violence as it waits for presidential election results
As Tuesday’s presidential election day dawned in Washington, D.C., a new “non-scalable” fence had been erected around the perimeter of the White House during the night, in anticipation of civil unrest before the day was done.
In parts of the U.S. capital, storefronts were boarded over and federal buildings, such as the Treasury Department, were fenced in. D.C. Police rallied officers and equipment and acknowledged unrest is expected, “regardless of who wins,” said the chief. George Washington University warned students to stock up on a week’s worth of food and medicine, as if a hurricane is heading to town.
Perhaps there is.
Plenty of scenes have been playing out in the United States to stoke fears of the improbability of a peaceful post-election America, no matter who wins the presidential vote.
If Trump loses, will he refuse to accept the result and try to remain in office? Will he rally zealous supporters, some of whom are better armed than many nations, to protect him?
If Trump wins, will his zealous detractors take to the streets in protests that inevitably will bring violence and destruction?
Or will all the angst and fear of unrest, or outright insurrection, turn out to be this year’s pre-result fantasy, akin to 2016’s certainty of Hillary Clinton’s victory?
Is America really a nation of well-armed sore losers?
Things — alarming things — are being thought and said out loud about the prospect for a smooth acceptance of the election results, things that sound as if the scene is a fragile, war-torn country rather than the world’s oldest continuous democracy.
“We are increasingly anxious that this country is headed toward the worst post-election crisis in a century and a half,” says an article penned by five academics, led by Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a conservative policy think tank, drawing from research tracking public opinion trends.
“Our biggest concern is that a disputed presidential election — especially if there are close contests in a few swing states, or if one candidate denounces the legitimacy of the process — could generate violence and bloodshed,” Diamond and colleagues wrote in Politico.
“We do not pull this alarm lightly.”
The International Crisis Group, an independent organization that monitors global violence, often focusing on failing states, issued a report on the United States in the campaign’s closing days.
“The ingredients for unrest are present,” the report warns.
The United States faces risks that have doomed other countries: stark political polarization bound to issues of race and identity; the rise of armed groups built around political agendas; and the unusually high chance of a contested election outcome.
“And most importantly,” the report says, “President Donald Trump, whose toxic rhetoric and willingness to court conflict to advance his personal interests have no precedent in modern U.S. history.”
It is an odd place for the United States to be. The Crisis Group understands the apparent cognitive dissonance.
“The country faces an unfamiliar danger. While Americans have grown used to a certain level of rancour in these quadrennial campaigns, they have not in living memory faced the realistic prospect that the incumbent may reject the outcome or that armed violence may result.”
In its final pre-election poll, Gallup found a record high 64 per cent of voters afraid of what will happen if their candidate loses, almost equally by supporters of both Trump and Joe Biden; 77 per cent said stakes are higher in 2020 than in previous elections.
Pew Research Center, in its end-of-campaign polling, found that only half of Trump supporters thought the election would be properly run.
Previous Pew studies found the level of animosity in the United States between Republicans and Democrats was deeper and more personal. It was described as mutual “loathing”; 55 per cent of Republicans said Democrats are “more immoral” than other Americans and 47 per cent of Democrats said the same about Republicans.
These results suggest that even if this election passes without the nightmare scenarios being conjured, governing the country will be more difficult, jaded and partisan.
Political and social unrest this year was pushed along by a deadly and ruinous pandemic, racial injustice and broad public protests amplified by rallying cries on social media. These events exacerbate the dangerous divide, yet none of them will just evaporate after the election results are tabulated.
“Civil war is here, right now,” declared the leader of a far right-wing militia group after a Trump supporter was killed in Portland, Oregon, calling others to rally to his side.
An antifa activist tweeted Tuesday: “The best way to stop a racist with a gun is an anti-racist with a gun. Because they’re not gonna stop having guns.”
The unnerving possibilities were laid bare last month when members of a Michigan militia group were arrested and accused of a plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, overthrow the state government and start a civil war.
Is this really all so new?
There was a similar vibe in America during the 1968 Presidential election, when Republican candidate Richard Nixon beat incumbent Democratic vice president Hubert Humphrey. There was a third candidate in the race, Alabama governor George Wallace, who championed racial segregation, a measure of the temperature of America at the time.
Civil unrest, protests, riots, polarization and outrageous violence preceded that vote. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that April, sparking protests and riots; U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated that June, while he was a strong candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, large-scale street fighting broke out between anti-Vietnam War protesters and police and the National Guard. Some of the visuals from it look like low-resolution pictures from 2020.
In the wake of that election, a domestic terrorist group formed in Michigan. The Weather Underground started attacking government buildings to protest imperialism and racism. The first thing they blew up was a statue.
It all sounds too familiar.
America survived. It has survived 44 peaceful transitions from one president to the next through 58 presidential elections.
Has America become significantly more fractured?
Has the last four years changed the country that much?
• Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys
Categories: Canadian News
Trump gains commanding advantage in the key prize of Florida with most votes counted
Largely counted out by opinion polls, President Donald Trump put up a fierce fight Tuesday to keep the White House, closing in on the key prize of Florida and mounting a stiff defence in other battleground states.
One of the most bitterly contested, momentous elections in U.S. history wound toward a suspenseful finish as votes cast in a variety of different ways were slowly but steadily counted.
Any possibility of a landslide for either side seemed more and more unlikely as the night wore on, and the numbers lined up in surprising ways.
Biden seemed on the way to stealing Arizona and its 11 Electoral College votes by 10:30 p.m., but Trump was leading in the three former “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Those are considered crucial to deciding the race, and opinion polls had showed the Democrats ahead in each.
U.S. TV networks reporting on the returns had to contend with a whole new pattern in how the vote came in, making races harder to read. The vast numbers of ballots cast in advance — believed to favour the Democrats — were counted first in some places, later in others.
The former vice president had a slim advantage in the Electoral College vote by 10:30 of 98-95, the score representing expected results for each candidate in safe states. A total of at least 270 votes captures the White House.
Returns streamed in as a deeply divided nation waited on tenterhooks for the extraordinary election’s outcome.
But the final result could take days to come after a remarkable surge of advance voting, likely delays in counting ballots and a legal campaign by Trump and his allies against various pandemic-related voting protocols.
As results streamed in surprisingly quickly from Florida, the lead bounced back and forth between Trump and Biden, typical of the kind of tight race for which the state is famous. Then the Republican steadily pulled ahead.
For Trump it was considered a must-win, its 29 Electoral College votes considered essential to his returning for another four years as president.
In other swing states by mid-evening, Trump was on top in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan and Virginia, the latter two considered likely wins for the Democrats.
Trump also had a solid advantage in Georgia, which Biden had hoped to snatch away.
More than 100 million Americans had cast their ballots before polling places opened on the actual election day Tuesday, with citizens voting by mail in unprecedented numbers or in person at advanced polls.
More streamed to the polls Tuesday amid fears of unrest and violence that did not seem to come to fruition, but will continue to be a spectre hanging over the election’s aftermath.
Some experts predicted 160 million overall could exercise their franchise, about 67 per cent of the U.S. electorate and the highest in a century.
But the integrity of America’s democratic system came under question as never before, with court rulings on the process even on Tuesday. For months, Trump has insisted there would be fraud because of the widespread use of mail-in ballots and counting that could continue for days after Nov. 3.
The size of turnout on election day was itself being closely watched as an indicator of where the vote could head, with Republicans traditionally less likely to vote in advance.
Opinion surveys suggested a comfortable lead nationally for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, and a tighter advantage in several of the battleground states. Those are key to winning 270 or more Electoral College votes, the majority that decides who enters the White House under the American system.
Polls put Biden an average of about eight percentage points ahead.
But while Democratic candidates have won the popular vote in six of the last seven elections, they lost the White House in two of those contests — 2016 and 2000. And Trump captured narrow victories in a number of swing states last election, defying polls that suggested Hillary Clinton was ahead in those races.
The campaign pitted two starkly opposing visions for the United States and how to tackle the COVID-19 crisis, which became a central theme of the election.
President Trump presided over a first term that was marked by chaos and conflict, his inflammatory style blamed for fanning the flames of white supremacy, threatening longstanding international alliances and encouraging an angry, polarized political conversation.
He was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives — but found not guilty by the Republican-led U.S. Senate — after pressuring Ukraine’s president to help him dig up dirt on alleged corruption by Biden’s son Hunter.
Trump touted his success in fuelling a robust economy before the pandemic hit earlier this year, cutting taxes and putting America first in foreign relations. In blunt and often insulting terms, he warned that a vote for Biden would usher in socialist policies and an administration content to let violent, leftist protesters run rampant.
Biden hit hard and often at Trump’s allegedly cavalier approach to the pandemic. The president failed to encourage lockdowns and mask-wearing that have helped curb COVID-19’s spread in countries like Canada, while actively denigrating scientific experts and their advice, the former vice president stressed repeatedly.
Biden painted the election as not only a referendum on Trump’s tumultuous first term, but a fight for which values define the United States.
He claimed he would strive to unite the country, standing up for both blue and red states if he took over the White House.
The candidates — Trump, 74, and Biden, 77 — also marked a historically elderly choice for American voters. Their running mates, Vice President Mike Pence, 61, and Kamala Harris, 56, brought the tickets’ average age down somewhat.
Meanwhile, polls suggested that the number of states whose Electoral College votes were up for grabs had expanded.
They included the one-time “blue-wall” northern states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan that Trump flipped from the Democrats last time and Florida, a perpetual toss-up in recent history. But Georgia, Arizona, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa and even Texas were also considered competitive this time.
The remainder of states are typically sure things for each camp, meaning the toss-ups determine who is president.
• Email: tblackwell@postmedia.com | Twitter: tomblackwellNP
Categories: Canadian News
Fake news? Media outlets grapple with what to do if Trump starts declaring victory early
Newsrooms are considering how they’re going to handle any attempt by Donald Trump to declare victory in the U.S. election, even if votes from key states haven’t been counted, The Guardian reports .
It presents a bit of an issue: When the president speaks, it’s news. If the president is declaring victory when he might not have a victory … well that’s also newsworthy.
It’s not altogether clear what Trump will actually do. He’s hinted in recent days that lawyers will be rushing in Tuesday night to secure the election results and he’s prevaricated when asked flat-out by reporters whether or not he would concede the election. But there have also been news reports that he will just go right ahead and declare he’s won if he pulls some critical states. Which, when the press finds out he’s going to speak, presents them with a problem.
As always with Trump — doubly so on election night — it’s just not clear what he might say once he’s behind the lectern. Some, such as Vivian Schiller, a former president and CEO of National Public Radio, told the Guardian that one way to tackle the issue would be to take the president live, but cut away if he starts lying and take it to commentators.
“Explain why such a premature declaration of victory is both wrong and dangerous,” she told the Guardian.
Social media outlets, the Guardian reports, have also stepped up their strategies:
Twitter has a label that will say official sources haven’t called things the same way; Facebook will say: “votes are being counted. The winner … has not been projected.”
The issue is doubly important because it’s not a certainty the results of the election will be known by the end of Tuesday night — or by print deadlines in the case of many newspapers. The number of mail-in ballots, especially in key states, mean there could be several days worth of delays before official results are known.
Categories: Canadian News
If 2016 was about the electoral college, in 2020 it is about the early vote
In 2016, the electoral college delivered a surprising outcome to the U.S. presidential election. In 2020, it could be the early vote.
By U.S. election day on Tuesday, roughly 100 million ballots had already been cast at advance polls or by mail-in voting, breaking all previous advance voting records and a likely factor delaying a clear winner in the high-stakes contest between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
More broadly, analysts expected voter turnout to be around 65 per cent, higher even than in 2016, and the highest voter turnout in a century.
Unlike in Canada, where Elections Canada manages federal elections, in the United States, every state operates its own voting system. This means, quite simply, there are numerous rules, varying by state, that determine when advance votes can be cast and counted.
“There are some places where we think there will be some potential several-day delays in the bulk of the counting,” said John Fortier, director of governmental studies at the Washngton, D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center and author of Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises and Peril .
This is particularly an issue in the swing states, key to either a Trump or Biden victory. The reason for delays is fairly simple: Some states say mail-in ballots must be in by election day; others accept them for days or weeks afterwards, if they’re postmarked prior to election day. Some states prepare to count in advance, others only begin on election day. Some states count more centrally, others leave it to municipal election authorities.
Already, there have been several lawsuits over advance voting, seemingly driven, at least in part, by the fact that this time around, it appeared Democrats were voting in advance more heavily than Republicans, with 48 per cent of advance votes from Democrats and 42 per cent from Republicans, according to a Vox analysis. Republicans, meanwhile, were more likely to vote in person on Tuesday.
In Texas, for example, there were lawsuits attempting to have drive-through votes disallowed. In Pennsylvania — perhaps the most important swing state — state Republicans attempted last month to stop votes from being counted after election day. The state Supreme Court allowed the votes to be counted; the Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States to issue a stay. They declined.
There were a number of factors driving advance turnout in 2020. The first and most obvious was the COVID-19 pandemic, which expanded accessibility to advance voting across the country. Another is that the stakes were so high, with Trump supporters determined to keep him in office, and his opponents eager to deliver a crushing victory to Joe Biden.
Data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, based out of Tufts University, point to significantly larger numbers of young voters in 2020 than in 2016, and they appear, at least in some states, to be taking up a larger share of the advance vote. In Texas, for example, voters aged 18 to 29 represented 13 per cent of the early vote, up from six per cent in 2016. Other states tracked similarly: In Florida, young voters cast 7.3 per cent of early ballots in 2016, and 9.6 per cent this year; in Michigan, where young voters cast just 2.5 per cent of early votes in 2016, they cast 9.4 per cent of all early votes in 2020.
Voters wait to cast their ballots at the Cranberry-Highlands Golf Club on November 3, 2020 in Butler County, Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania. After a record-breaking early voting turnout, Americans head to the polls on the last day to cast their vote for incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
All of it makes for high drama in 2020 for a process that’s existed for some 150 years. Hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots were cast during the American Civil War, when both Union and Confederate soldiers were able to cast ballots from the battlefields. The same happened during the Second World War for soldiers stationed overseas. More than three million absentee ballots were cast during the war.
While the late 1800s saw some civilians allowed to cast absentee ballots — mainly those who were too sick to go in person to the polling station — it wasn’t until 1978 that California became the first state to allow for mail-in voting for any reason at all.
Through the 1980s, some states also began to add advance polls. By 2016, 27 states allowed advance voting without an excuse; three states mailed out all ballots and the rest had a variety of required excuses.
What’s different about 2020 is that even in some states that did not allow in-person advance voting — say Missouri — exceptions have been made for the pandemic.
“There have been a lot of changes,” said Fortier.
• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson
Categories: Canadian News
From duelling electors to hanging chads: A history of contested U.S. elections
The combination of the coronavirus pandemic and President Donald Trump’s accusations of mass voter fraud by Democrats has legal experts warning of the possibility of a contested presidential election.
Americans have selected a president 58 times. Four times, an inconclusive or disputed result tested the legal underpinnings of U.S. democracy.
1800: House votes 36 times to break a tie
The fourth U.S. presidential election ended in a tie, with Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each receiving 73 electoral votes.
In that case, the U.S. Constitution leaves it to the House of Representatives to select the next president. Each state delegation gets a single vote in the so-called “contingent election.”
But when legislators began voting in February, 1801, neither Jefferson nor Burr was able to win the support of more than eight of the 16 states that existed at the time.
House members voted 35 times over a week, and each time Jefferson came up with eight votes, failing to win the needed majority. On the 36th try, Jefferson won 10 states and the House awarded him the presidency.
Burr, as the runner-up, became his vice president, under the rules at the time.
1824: Contingent election
Andrew Jackson won both the popular vote and the most votes in the Electoral College among four presidential candidates, but did not receive the majority of 131 electoral votes required to win. The outcome led to a vote in the House of Representatives, which elected John Quincy Adams as president.
1876: Duelling electors
The most contentious and controversial presidential election in American history was arguably the 1876 contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden.
In Southern states, the voting was marred by threats of violence from Democrats who aimed to keep black voters away from the polls. The Democrats also created ballots that carried pictures of famous Republican Abraham Lincoln to try to trick illiterate voters into choosing Tilden.
At the end of the tumultuous campaign, competing political camps in three states each sent two different slates of electors – one for Tilden, the other for Hayes – to Congress.
The dueling slates from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina arrived with varying degrees of authority; the Republican slate from Louisiana supporting Hayes was sent by the state’s governor while the Democratic slate backing Tilden was sent by that party’s gubernatorial candidate.
The election hinged on the disputed states. If their Republican electoral votes were counted, Hayes would be president. If the Democratic slates were counted, Tilden would be elected.
Since Congress then had no existing procedures to decide which of the disputed returns should be counted, it created a 15-member commission to settle the dispute, with five members each drawn from the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. That commission ultimately voted 8-7 along partisan lines to award each of the disputed electoral votes to Hayes, giving him the presidency.
Democrats accepted the result only after Republicans agreed to withdraw U.S. troops left over from the Civil War from Southern states. The compromise helped usher in the so-called “Jim Crow” era of legalized racial segregation and discrimination that would last another century.
A decade later, Congress enacted the Electoral Count Act that was meant to establish a roadmap for resolving disputed elections in the future, though exactly how it would work remains unclear because of ambiguities in the language, election scholars say. The law has never been tested or interpreted by the courts.
2000: The Florida recount
The most recent contested presidential election was the race between Republican George W. Bush and then-Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat. By the end of Election Day, it was clear that contest would be decided by Florida’s 25 electoral votes.
As the polls closed in Florida, television networks declared that Gore had won the state handily. But as vote-counting went on into the night, they reversed themselves as Bush’s tally increased. By morning, the state’s count had Bush leading Gore by only a few thousand votes.
Gore’s campaign asked officials in four of Florida’s biggest counties to recount their ballots by hand, kicking off a weeks-long process of inspecting punch-card ballots. Three weeks after the election, Florida declared that Bush had won by 537 votes.
Gore contested that count, and the state’s highest court ordered a recount of thousands of ballots that had been rejected by counting machines because they were incompletely punched – leaving “hanging chads,” little pieces of paper clinging to the ballot.
The U.S. Supreme Court effectively halted that count on Dec. 12, six days before the Electoral College was to meet, ruling that the constitution had been violated by different counting standards being used in different counties.
Republican lawmakers in the Florida legislature were on the verge of selecting a slate of electors that would back Bush over Gore when the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recount. The court decision prompted Gore to concede the election, saying he wanted to spare the country further partisan infighting.
Categories: Canadian News
COVID-19: Liberals' limited retroactive pay for small businesses 'unfair,' industry says
OTTAWA — Small business owners already hurting from COVID-19 shutdowns could struggle to stay afloat under the Liberal government’s new rent relief program, industry representatives say, as companies grapple with months of deferred rental payments.
Leading lobby groups including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce (CCC) and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) have been calling on Ottawa to retroactively cover rental costs for business owners, arguing that a failure to cover previous months’ losses would kneecap hard-hit industries such as retail, hotels and food services. Many business owners were unable to access the Liberal government’s previous rent subsidy, even as some faced months of government-imposed pandemic lockdowns.
In new legislation tabled by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday, federal coffers will retroactively cover small business rent for the month of October.
But industry groups say the single month in back pay doesn’t make up for the structural failure of the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance (CECRA), the government’s previous rental relief program that went vastly underused ever since it was unveiled by former Finance minister Bill Morneau in April.
Bill C-9, tabled by Freeland on Monday, would introduce the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS) to replace the older program.
“CECRA was problematic from the start, and a large number of small businesses have struggled without access to any rent support for months,” said Alla Drigola, director of parliamentary affairs for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. “We would have liked to see this CERS retroactive to the start of the CECRA program to ensure support is provided to the businesses that need it most.”
Lobby groups on Tuesday said they would press Ottawa for longer retroactive payments as rising cases of COVID-19 trigger a new round of lockdowns in major urban centres in Ontario and Quebec.
Restaurants Canada, which represents 30,000 firms, warned this summer that over half of Canadian eateries could go out of business between September and December as patios close down and as new lockdowns temporarily choke off cash flows.
“Not retroactively fixing rent relief’s original design flaw feels unfair and arbitrary and we will continue to advocate that this be fixed,” said Laura Jones, executive vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
She said the new rent program is “much better” than the previous program, but said it was a “disappointment to business owners” that retroactive payments would be limited to one month.
In a news release on Tuesday, the CFIB warned that new lockdowns are already starting to take hold on businesses. Just 66 per cent of companies that it recently surveyed are completely open, compared with 72 per cent two weeks ago. Just 42 per cent of the companies surveyed are currently fully staffed, compared with 48 per cent two weeks earlier.
Rent, along with labour, is among the biggest costs facing most small businesses, and lobby groups have been in regular negotiations with federal officials on the new rent relief program. Ottawa had to extend the CECRA program in September in order to provide supports to shut-down businesses — a move that was applauded by industry, but that only helped entrepreneurs who had already tapped into the program.
Many were unable to access the benefit, as it required landlords to apply for the income supports rather than business owners themselves. Landlords often opted not to apply for the rental benefits.
The replacement CERS program would instead be accessible directly to business owners, covering up to 65 per cent of rent costs. An additional 25 per cent coverage will be available to businesses that have been forced into full shutdowns, for a total of 90 per cent coverage.
The new legislation will also extend the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) by six months to June 2021.
It expands a separate program for small businesses, the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA), to $60,000 per business from $40,000. Under the program, businesses apply for government-backed loans that, if paid back under a certain time frame, allow companies to retain one-third of the value of the borrowed money.
Conservative leader Erin O’Toole on Tuesday called for “additional flexibility” in both the rent subsidy program and wage subsidy program, saying small businesses make up the “backbone” of the broader economy.
He targeted the older structure of the rent subsidy in particular, saying the requirement for landlords to apply for the program left thousands of businesses without support.
“Today there are tens of thousands of businesses in Canada that aren’t getting the help they need – at a time when Canada already has the highest unemployment in the G7,” O’Toole said.
Categories: Canadian News
Randall Denley: Doug Ford has finally realized Ontario’s COVID shutdown sprees need to be reined in
Finally, the Ontario government has produced rational guidelines to replace its regime of poorly explained pandemic restrictions. Premier Doug Ford’s announcement Tuesday will provide welcome clarity for all Ontarians, but especially those whose jobs or businesses have been affected by the province’s 28-day shutdown of restaurants, gyms and cinemas.
The premier has been under increasing pressure from frustrated business owners who have complied with the province’s safe operating rules, have had no outbreaks, and yet were shut down nearly a month ago. As justification, the province offered mostly lame arguments, such as that gyms were implicated in two per cent of outbreaks, or when people gathered without masks, something bad could happen.
As the premier himself has observed, if you are going to take away someone’s living, you’d better have a good reason for it. Exactly. But the province fell far short of that, imposing restrictions without explaining exactly what factors and thresholds were considered.
The new plan sets the rules for living with the pandemic, rather than focusing all our energy on fighting it. It’s something we are going to have to do until there is a vaccine.
Instead of three stages, the province will offer five levels of pandemic response. The lowest, or green category still imposes restrictions on gatherings and behaviours, but they are modest. Most areas of Ontario fall into this category. Restrictions become slightly more substantial in the yellow category, which currently includes four public health units.
Next is the orange level, which includes Toronto, Peel, Ottawa and York. Eastern Ontario is a new addition to this group. Under the new rules, those areas will see restaurants, gyms and cinemas open Saturday, except for Toronto, which has asked for an additional week. Beyond that, there is a restrictive red category, but no part of the province is in that now. The final category is lockdown.
Schools will remain open in every category except lockdown. The theory is that COVID cases in schools are the result of community transmission and they can be managed at the individual school level.
For each category the province has spelled out epidemiological, public health and health-system capacity measures. Included are things like the weekly case level per 100,000 population, positivity rate, transmission rate, hospital bed capacity and contact tracing capability. These are the factors restrictions should be based on, but without specific numbers that indicate the need for more restrictions, the province’s moves looked like voodoo, with perhaps a hint of astrology.
While the new rules set thresholds for moving from one stage to another, that is a decision that will still rely on the judgment of provincial and local public health doctors, who will weigh multiple factors, not just one number.
The new approach is the Ford government’s best expression of the oft-mentioned balance among the physical, emotional and economic concerns the pandemic has created. More than eight months into the pandemic, it’s the only rational way to approach the situation. That point was made Monday by Ottawa’s medical officer of health, Dr. Vera Etches. She said people need to “get back to living” and learn to co-exist with COVID-19 because it’s going to be with us for quite a while yet.
That’s inarguably true and would have been a sensible thing to say any time in the last several months, but Etches’s comments drew gasps of horror from those who still believe that COVID-19 numbers can, and must, be kept as low as humanly possible, regardless of the effect on other types of health care or the economy. That group will not be at all pleased with Ford’s announcement, especially as it came on a day when the province announced 1,050 new cases, another record.
None of this is to say that people don’t need to act sensibly, wear masks, wash their hands, and avoid big groups as much as possible. These are the safety measures that the new pandemic plan relies on for success.
Ford’s move shows that the government’s thinking has evolved considerably in the four weeks since he imposed new restrictions based on much lower case numbers. The new plan raises the threshold at which government will impose job-destroying economic restrictions. It also clarifies what factors and numbers will compel the government to impose restrictions in the future. Those are two big steps forward, and long overdue.
Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and author. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com
Categories: Canadian News
Omar Khadr's sister takes feds to court, wants name taken off no-fly list that bans her from Canada
Zaynab Khadr, the older sister of former Canadian Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr, is asking the Federal Court to force the government to take her name off Canada’s no fly list.
She claims the effect is to unfairly ban her from Canada.
She filed documents seeking a judge’s order that her Charter rights were violated when she was denied boarding a flight from Europe last February.
That decision was in accordance with her status as a listed person under the Secure Air Travel Act. Under the legislation, this means Canada has reasonable grounds to suspect she will try to threaten transportation security or travel to commit a terrorism offence, such as participation, funding or recruitment for terrorist activities.
Zaynab Khadr, 41, is the oldest child of the late Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian-Canadian top al Qaida financier who was killed by Pakistani near the Afghan border in 2003. More than a year previously, his son Omar, then 15, was captured in a firefight with American troops in Afghanistan, held in Guantanamo Bay, transferred to Canada, released on bail, and eventually settled a lawsuit against the government of Canada for $10.5-million.
Zaynab has always been the most outspoken and overtly extremist of the children. She was born in Ottawa but moved to Pakistan as a child, where her father associated with the highest leadership of al Qaeda. She openly endorsed the 9/11 terrorism of al Qaeda as just desserts to its victims, and she was closely investigated by police, even to the point of having her laptop confiscated. She was never charged.
Her new lawsuit alleges the air travel ban was motivated only by her political views and what she has said, which allegedly violates her Charter freedoms. It also claims this ban effectively denies her the freedom to return to Canada and reunite with her children.
She was living in Sudan with her husband and children in 2017, according to documents filed by her brother Omar Khadr, as part of a request to have his own bail conditions modified to allow visits with her. She is reported to have been living in Georgia in 2018.
In September, the government denied her request to be removed from the list under the Secure Air Travel Act.
The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness gave “no reasonable basis to suspect she would engage or attempt to engage in an act that would threaten public transportation or to suspect she was travelling by air to commit certain terrorism offences,” the documents read.
The suit also names the Attorney General of Canada. It alleges Khadr has been deprived of the right to meet the case against her, violating the government’s duty of procedural fairness. The case, filed by Khadr’s lawyer Barbara Jackman, asks for a declaration that parts of the legislation are unconstitutional, or otherwise a remedy for Khadr, such as sending her case back for reconsideration. Khadr asks for no money other than the costs of the appeal, and asks to see the documentation behind her no fly listing. The government has not yet filed a response.“The allegations against the Appellant are based on her history of speech and association,” the appeal says. “The Appellant has never engaged in or threatened acts of violence, and her words have never had the effect of compelling or encouraging acts of violence.”
In 2009, Zaynab Khadr was married to Joshua Boyle, a supporter of the family who connected with her through mutual editing of a Wikipedia page about her. That marriage lasted only several months, and Boyle later married Caitlan Coleman, with whom he was abducted and held hostage in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were freed by the Pakistani military. Back in Canada, Boyle was later charged with many offences against her, including sexual assault, but cleared last year after a trial.
Categories: Canadian News
