- With Tuesday marking two weeks until the November 3 election, the campaigns have entered the final stretch of the race.
- President Donald Trump campaigns in key battleground Pennsylvania, while opponent Joe Biden has no scheduled events before Thursday’s debate in Nashville.
- Trump’s campaign says he will participate in the debate, despite protest over topics and muted mics.
- Early voting begins in closely watched Wisconsin, as well as Hawaii, Louisiana and Utah.
- More than 31.6 million US voters have already cast ballots, according to the United States Elections Project tracker.
Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the United States elections. This is Joseph Stepansky.
Tuesday, October 20:
12:00 ET – Supreme Court allows extension of mail-in voting in Pennsylvania
The Supreme Court late Monday allowed an extension of the deadline for mail-in absentee ballots in Pennsylvania for the November 3 elections, declining a Republican request to block a lower court’s ruling that gave voters more time.
The justices, divided 4-4, left in place a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling in favor of state Democrats that had extended the deadline for state election officials to receive mail-in ballots postmarked by the evening of Election Day until three days later.
The brief court order noted that four of the court’s five conservative justices would have granted the request. There are currently only eight justices on the usually nine-member court following the death last month of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which left the court with a 5-3 conservative majority.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices in denying the request, with five votes needed for it to be granted.
11:30 ET – Trump continues to lash out at debate organisers
Trump has continued to lash out at plans of the debates commission to mute candidates’ microphones during portions of the final presidential debate.
The Commission on Presidential Debates announced late on Monday that Trump Biden will each have two minutes of uninterrupted time to initially answer the moderator’s questions when they face off on Thursday.
Organisers hope the rule change will prevent the debate from descending into chaos and frequent interruptions, as the first debate did last month.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Trump said the “whole thing is crazy”.
“These people are not good people,” he said of the organisers. He also attacked moderator Kristen Welker, accusing her of favouring Biden and saying there was “nothing fair” about the upcoming debate.
Trump gestures during a campaign rally at Tucson International Airport in Tucson, Arizona [Carlos Barria/Reuters]11:00 ET – Biden gets nod from prominent conservatives
Two prominent officials, the retired admiral who oversaw the killing of Osama bin Laden and the former chair of the Republican national convention, have supported Biden.
Retired Admiral William McRaven wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that he had cast his ballot for Biden.
“Truth be told, I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative,” he wrote. “But, I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy.”
Meanwhile, Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee explained why he is supporting Biden in an op-ed for NBC News. He is the second former RNC chair to endorse Biden, following Marc Racicot. Steele wrote: “Rather than seeking to build on the legacy of the Republican Party’s founders, of which Trump is surely ignorant, Trump has posited a single purpose for the GOP – the celebration of him.”
Retired Navy Admiral William McRaven has said he voted for Biden [File: Evan Vucci/The Associated Press]10:30 ET – With lid on Tuesday events, Biden continues to lay low before debate
Biden’s campaign put a lid on public events early Tuesday, the second day in a row the candidate has stayed off the campaign trail before Thursday’s debate in Nashville, Tennessee.
The 77-year-old also was off the campaign trail Monday, only leaving his Delaware home to conduct a television interview.
Biden last held two events in battleground North Carolina on Sunday. The campaign has not announced any events for the former vice president on Wednesday, either, although the schedule had still not been made public.
However, former Pesident Barack Obama is set to campaign for Biden in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
10:00 ET – Trump has said he will participate in debate with Biden, but thinks it is unfair
Trump said on Monday that he will participate in a debate with former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday despite conditions that he considers unfair, including the candidates’ microphones being muted during segments of the face-off.
“I’ll participate, I just think it’s very unfair,” Trump told reporters. “I will participate but it’s very unfair that they changed the topics and it’s very unfair that again we have an anchor who’s totally biased.”
Trump’s campaign has written a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates challenging the list of topics selected by the moderator, NBC television host Kristen Welker.
The October 22 debate was supposed to focus on foreign policy, the Trump campaign alleged. But Welker’s announced topics are fighting COVID-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security and leadership. The lettered urged the commission to “rethink and reissue a set of topics … with an emphasis on foreign policy”.
Trump and Biden have participated in only one debate this election season, after a second debate scheduled for last week was cancelled when Trump refused a digital format [File: Morry Gash/EPA]09:30 ET – Republicans see bright spot in voter registration push
The Republican Party has cut into Democrats’ advantage in voter registration tallies across some critical presidential battleground states, a fact they point to as evidence of steady — and overlooked — enthusiasm for Trump and his party, according to the Associated Press.
Even though Trump trails in national polls and struggles with fundraising with just weeks before Election Day, Republicans see their progress in signing up voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona and other states as a rare bright spot.
In Florida, Republicans netted 146,644 voters over Democrats since the pandemic hit in March, leaving Democrats with their smallest overall lead in party registrations since the state began tracking them in 1972, according to the news agency. In Pennsylvania, which Trump won with 44,000 votes in 2016, the GOP added 103,171 more voters since November than Democrats did.
Democrats have argued that Republican gains are partly illusory: Some of the GOP registrants are former Democratic voters who have been voting for Republicans, but who have not updated their registrations until now. They also note that young voters, who lean heavily Democratic, increasingly register as unaffiliated with either party, which helps pad the GOP’s advantage on paper but which might not help on Election Day.
Read more about not being fooled by high early voting numbers here.
09:00 ET – Trump campaigns in Pennsylvania
Trump will campaign in Erie, Pennsylvania Monday night.
Trump narrowly won the battleground state’s 20 electoral votes in the 2016 election, but polls have shown Biden leading in the state. However, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday indicated that lead may be tightening.
Biden is originally from the state, a fact he has often referenced on the campaign trail.
Read more about the battle for Pennsylvania here.
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Read all the updates from Monday, (October 19) here.
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