America's Talking - North Carolina, Delaware First in Nation to Begin Voting

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

North Carolina is the first battleground state to begin the voting process, sending out absentee by mail ballots on Friday. Delaware is also first in the nation with a law of “60 days before Election Day.” The number of days ahead of the election to send out absentee by mail ballots in the other consensus battleground states is 50 in Pennsylvania, 47 in Wisconsin, 45 in Michigan, 25 to 29 in Georgia, and 24 to 27 in Arizona. In Nevada, it is not specified. The seven states represent 93 electoral college votes among them. Pennsylvania has 19, North Carolina and Georgia 16 each, Michigan 15, Arizona 11, Wisconsin 10 and Nevada six. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus. I'm Cole McNeely. As we head deeper into election season, early voting is starting this week. There's a presidential debate coming up next week and it's still a close race to discuss all this and more as the Center Square's executive editor and Franklin News Foundation's chief content officer Dan McAleb. Dan, we have mentioned over and over again. This has been a unique election cycle to say the least. Early voting begins this week, though. We are officially. in voting season. That's correct, Cole, while the election is still 60 days, election day is still 60 days out. Two states, the mail-in absentee ballot process starts today. That would be one of the key swing states of North Carolina. The other state is Delaware. Mail-in ballots are absentee ballots are being mailed out to voters in those two states

today. So the voting is is underway. We do have, and over the coming week, next two weeks, a number of other states are going to start voting, at least the absentee ballot process, the mail-in voting ballot process. So it's been a long summer heading into this campaign. As you mentioned, up front, it's been an unusual campaign season already. Former President Donald Trump, The Republican nominee for president survived an attempt on his life in Pennsylvania at the campaign event there where a bullet grazed his ear by a sniper on a rooftop nearby. And then shortly after that, President Biden was pushed out of the race. President Biden, who was running for a second term, was to be reelected after his disastrous debate with, former President Trump in June. He was pushed aside by key Democrats and donors. Vice President

Kamala Harris became the heir apparent. She is now the Democratic nominee, all kinds of crazy developments this election cycle. And then you've got the first debate coming up between President Trump, former President Trump, excuse me, and Vice President Kamala Harris, Tuesday in Philadelphia. That will be interesting. Yeah, and Dan, you just mentioned, you know, President Biden stepping out of the race. Certainly a primary driver of that was the fact that a lot of his allies were saying you can't win anymore. You can't beat President Trump. The polling is showing that President Trump is gaining lead over you in all the important battleground states.

With Kamala Harris now being the Democratic nominee, this became a much-class. closer race. Much closer. In fact, polling averages from across the country have Kamala Harris with a slight, the slightest of leads over President Trump nationally. And in the key swing states, let's face it, there are essentially seven states who are going to decide this election, the swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, in Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada.

And those polling in those states are very close. With Trump holding a slight lead in some of them, Vice President Harris holding a slight lead in some of the others, who know this race could go either way. And Tuesday's debate could play a key factor. Now, some people argue that no one pays attention to the debates. It's not going to change anybody's mind. But if either or have such a disastrous,

debate performance as President Biden did back in June, that could sway some voters because there's still a significant number of undecided voters in this race. Why don't we talk about the debate here for a minute, Cole? As I said, it will be Tuesday in Philadelphia. The debate rules are very similar to the debate that President Biden held with former President Trump back in June. will be muted when they're not speaking, so there will be no talking over each other. I'm going to admit, I thought that was a disadvantage for Trump the first time around, but I actually enjoyed it and thought it was better without the two candidates, you know, trying to talk over each other, interrupting each other.

I think you can debate whether there was a lot of substance on policy, et cetera, in that first debate. But I thought it was, from a viewer's standpoint, it was much better. better than some of the debates we saw in 2020 back in 2016 in the primaries where they're just talking all over each other. So that's one. There will be no audience, just as there was no audience in that, I say no live audience. There will be no one else in the studio except ABC who is hosting the bait, the candidates themselves and some of their support staff, but there will be no one in the gallery listening to it. I thought heading into that first debate between Trump and Biden, that that was another disadvantage for Trump. He sort of feeds off

of his audiences, et cetera. But, you know, now this was more Biden's shortcomings than Trump's accomplishments. But we saw how that debate went. So I think it'll be a fair debate, depending on the moderators now. You know, ABC is accused of skewing left. We'll see. CNN hosted that first debate between President Biden and former President Trump. They were fair, I thought. They were mostly fair. So let's hope the ABC moderators are fair, too. This might be the only chance voters across the country have a chance to see Trump and Harris square off one-to-one. There are no second scheduled debates. We hope that there will be one that they'll agree to terms to a second one.

But as of now, this is the only scheduled debate. And interestingly enough, Dan, I think kind of going into this matchup, the strategies of each candidate have been interesting. Former President Trump has done a lot of podcasts, has done a lot of, I would actually say, probably targeting of young men in terms of the content he's been on. He's been on comedian Theo Vaughn's podcast. He's been on, I think, one of the Paul Brothers podcast. So that has clearly been the strategy is not as much going for the establishment media, but going more for the, you know, that kind of amateur. I'm not going to call amateur.

That might be the wrong word to use, but that new media, the podcast, the independent media persona. On the flip side, Harris has largely stayed out of the media. in general, be that with podcasters or, you know, mainstream media. Did one, two interviews. You mentioned the lack of impact of this debate, but in reality, this might be one of the very few times that Americans get to see Harris in a non-scripted circumstance. Yes, I'm very much looking forward to this debate, and I hope undecided voters are too, and I hope they tune in.

It'll be an hour and a half long. Hopefully they dig into their policy issues because, you know, Vice President Harris has flip-flopped on a few key issues. She was against the border wall. Of course, as President Joe Biden's borders are, she was put in charge of border security in the Biden-Harris administration.

It's been a wide open border practically under them, more than 12 million, illegal entries into the country since January 21, when this administration took office. She now says she supports partially building the border wall. She says she supports more border security. It'll be interesting to see how former President Trump hits her on that and how Vice President Harris sticks up to that new found stance. Things like energy and electric vehicle mandates, she previously was for it.

She was previously against fracking, which is a key issue in the key state or swing state of Pennsylvania, where fracking provides thousands and thousands of jobs. She now says she will not ban fracking. So I'm sure that topic will come up during a debate. It will be interesting to see what they say about those types of issues. And then beyond that, we have a vice presidential debate coming up October 1st. And then there is another cloud that still remains there, even if it's not in the news cycle, which is President Trump is going to have a sentencing date at some point for the hush money case in New York. Dan, last word. What do you expect from now until election day is more chaos or is this going to be kind of a more normal election cycle as you see?

I expect the unexpected. This has been the most unpredictable election season that I can remember, as you like to say, say I'm a seasoned veteran, been in the media industry for more than 30 years. I've seen nothing like it. So I'm not even going to begin to make a prediction about what's going to happen this time. Well, I think that's probably the fair bet. Dan, thanks for joining me today. And all the listeners, you can keep up with all the election stories at thecentersquare.com.