Monday, November 4, 2024

It’s Monday, November 4, 2024. Election Day is tomorrow. The 2025 Colorado legislative session will convene in 65 days.

These updates are curated from multiple news sources and designed to be a “choose-your-own-adventure.” Please read any coverage of interest and skip anything you deem to be irrelevant. Hyperlinks are provided to add additional context. With the 24/7 news-cycle I hope to keep us all in the loop on items we may want to know about or better understand. Please feel free to share if you think someone outside FGMC needs to be aware of this information.

Disclaimer – The news and articles contained within this update do not represent any political positions or policy opinions of Foster Graham Milstein & Calisher, LLP. This update is designed for informational purposes only.

This is it—the final pre-election update. Here’s everything you need to know as we gear up for the big day.

With Election Day knocking on the door, the presidential race has reached a fever pitch, with candidates showcasing starkly different visions for America as they make their last appeals to voters in key swing states, especially in Pennsylvania.

• The chaotic 2024 campaign has been marked by significant events, including the withdrawal of the sitting Democratic president weeks before his party’s nominating convention and two assassination attempts against the Republican nominee.
• This backdrop has created an atmosphere of profound uncertainty within a deeply divided electorate.
• Vice President Kamala Harris plans to make four campaign stops in Pennsylvania on Monday, starting in the early afternoon and wrapping up in the evening.
• Former President Donald Trump will hold two afternoon rallies in Pennsylvania, following a morning event in North Carolina and concluding with a rally in Michigan.
• With 19 electoral votes at stake, Pennsylvania has been seen as essential for both candidates.
• Both Harris and Trump have heavily focused their campaigns there, inundating the airwaves with advertisements.
• Recent polls indicate the race is neck-and-neck.
• The final New York Times/Siena College poll from Pennsylvania, released Sunday, showed both candidates tied at 48 percent among likely voters.

The end of the race promises to be frenetic. It has been 720 days since Trump announced his candidacy, 106 days since Biden exited the race, and 91 days since Harris secured the Democratic nomination.

All the polls seem to indicate a very, very close race. But could the polls be wrong? Sure, why not.

• In the final days before the 2020 presidential election, polls generally pointed to a clear victory for now-President Joe Biden.
• But when the votes were counted, it turned out the polls had overestimated him — Biden won, but by the skin of his teeth.
• That, of course, was similar to what happened in 2016, when former President Donald Trump significantly outperformed the polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to win a surprise Electoral College victory despite relatively accurate national polls.
• This raises two questions for 2024: First, what would happen if the polls are off again? And second, how likely is it that the polls will be off by as much as they were in 2016 or 2020?
• You can read more about that from 538 here.

Let’s be clear – we will likely NOT know the outcome of the election tomorrow. When the winner will be revealed depends on two things: how close the election is and how quickly states count their ballots.

• There’s no way to know the former in advance; the presidential election looks close right now, but we don’t know for sure if it will end up that way.
• However, we can make an educated guess at how long it will take states to count all their votes.
• The trick is, each state is different: Some count quickly because of laws that speed up the process or a low rate of mail-in voting; others count slowly because they don’t have such laws but do have a lot of mail-in ballots.
• The pace of vote-counting in 2024 should be similar in most places.
• That said, a few states have enacted new laws that could either speed up or slow down the release of results. I won’t bore you with all the details but think Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
• And yes, those are all states that could decide the outcome.
• To get a sense of when to expect election results this year, 538 compiled information from state election officials and Edison Research, which provides live election results to ABC News.

Of course, at the end of the day, no one knows for sure when a winner will be declared.

• The estimates of when to expect results in each state are just that — estimates.
• Unforeseen issues, whether caused by human error or technological glitches, can delay results beyond what’s expected.
• Even in states that count their ballots quickly, it can take days or even weeks to project a winner if an election is close enough.
• Provisional and overseas absentee ballots, which are customarily added to the tallies after election night, can make a difference when the margins are razor thin.
• And of course, candidates locked in a tight race can request a recount, which can add weeks to the timeline.
• Importantly, election results aren’t officially final until they’re certified; that happens on a different schedule in every state, but it’s always several days after Election Day.

What will I be watching? Mostly just a handful of states.

• Keep this in mind: the national popular vote does not determine the winner of the election.
• The crucial factor is reaching 270 electoral votes through the Electoral College.

• This year, if we know the outcomes in five key states—Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—and possibly a sixth, Arizona—we may have a strong indication of which candidate has secured the necessary electoral votes.
• Why is it these five or six states? They all by far have seen the closest polling, and each is worth at least 10 electoral votes.

The lack of surety around when we will know the winner is concerning for one major reason – a new 2022 law around transition teams.

• Congress passed a law in 2022 (Presidential Transition Improvement Act) mandating that transitions begin five days after the election — even if the winner is still unclear.
• According to the Center For Presidential Transition, if a “sole apparent successful candidate” is not determined within the five days after election day, transition assistance is provided “on an equitable basis” to both candidates until a lone successful candidate emerges.
• The change came after Trump refused to concede the 2020 election and delayed the incoming Biden administration’s transition for nearly three weeks.

If neither Trump nor Harris concedes the election by November 11^th, both transitions could commence simultaneously.

• This scenario would create additional work for federal agencies, which would need to manage complex relationships and conduct double briefings, according to POLITICO’s Sophie Gardner.
• A former member of an agency review team for the Biden-Harris 2020 transition—who requested anonymity due to restrictions on speaking publicly—indicated that this situation could present challenges for agency officials, as the Trump and Harris teams may have differing requests.
• Agency officials would need to share sensitive information with both teams, and the FBI would have to vet double the number of individuals for security clearances.
• The process could become even more complicated if Trump refuses to enter into essential agreements with the White House and the General Services Administration, which oversees federal facilities.
• These agreements grant his team access to the necessary materials, agencies, and security clearances for the transition.
• No previous president-elect has ever declined to sign these agreements, but doing so would enable Trump to raise unlimited funds without disclosing donors, while avoiding oversight from federal agencies, whom he and his advisers have historically distrusted, as reported by POLITICO’s Hailey Fuchs and Meridith McGraw.
• The Presidential Transition Improvement Act provides for federal cooperation for both candidates to begin the process of building a team even if legal challenges continue and until they have been “substantially resolved.”
• That could continue until December, when members of the Electoral College from each state meet to certify election results and choose an Electoral College winner. That meeting takes place about a month before the inauguration.

Will control of Congress shift? The results hinge on a handful of states and races.

U.S. House

• While most House races are not competitive, party leaders are closely monitoring about two dozen toss-up districts to see if Democrats or Republicans can secure the crucial 218 votes needed to control the speaker’s gavel, set the legislative agenda, and manage the floor schedule.
• The GOP’s slim majority over the past two years has posed significant challenges for leadership and ultimately led to Kevin McCarthy’s ousting.
• Neither party is expected to achieve a substantial majority in the next Congress, which begins in January.
• In fact, the majority party might have even less flexibility than the current 220-212 split, along with three vacancies.
• Experts caution that the winner of the House may not be clear on election night or for some time after.

1. S. Senate

• Senate leaders are also focused on tightly contested races in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—any of which could determine control of the upper chamber.
• Republicans are expected to make a strong push for the West Virginia seat held by Joe Manchin III, which could help them surpass the critical 50-seat mark if they retain incumbents like Ted Cruz in Texas, Deb Fischer in Nebraska, and Rick Scott in Florida.
• If Democrats maintain 50 seats, control of the Senate would hinge on who holds the vice presidency, making every seat a priority for both parties.

The outcomes in both chambers will have significant implications for the nation’s future, including potential changes to Obamacare, how lawmakers address key elements of the 2017 tax law set to expire soon, and the risk of the country defaulting on its debts for the first time in history.

A couple other election highlights you should be aware of:

• To a striking extent, Americans are not waiting for Election Day to vote.
  • More than 74 million people had already cast their ballots as of Saturday, which is nearly 47 percent the total number cast in the 2020 presidential election. That includes 4 million voters in Georgia — or 80 percent of the total that voted there in 2020. In the battlegrounds of Arizona and North Carolina, roughly half of eligible voters have already shown up. And in three states — Connecticut, Delaware and South Carolina — early voting has surpassed 2020 levels.
• In these final days, voters in swing states are being inundated with advertisements, phone calls, and door-to-door canvassing.
  • Harris’s campaign emphasizes the economy, abortion rights, and, to a lesser extent, Trump’s perceived threats to democracy. Trump’s messaging largely centers on fear, warning voters that their safety is at risk if Harris wins, alongside his opposition to transgender rights.
• Trump is set to hold his last campaign event on Monday evening in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the same city where he concluded his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.
  • This area, in Kent County, is a Republican stronghold that Biden flipped in 2020, and Democrats aim to increase their turnout there this year.
• New York Times/Siena College polls from seven battleground states reveal a close contest, with Harris gaining ground in Georgia and North Carolina but losing traction in traditionally Democratic “blue wall” states and trailing in Arizona.
  • Interestingly, a recent poll by Ann Selzer indicated Harris leading in Iowa, a state typically considered solidly red.
• During three rallies on Sunday, Trump reiterated his unfounded claims of voter fraud from the 2020 election and asserted that this year’s election would be compromised.
  • Speaking to a crowd in Lititz, Pennsylvania, he lamented his departure from the White House in January 2021 and made comments regarding journalists being harmed.

What’s happening in Colorado?

• The state of Colorado is currently witnessing a significant decline in early voting as Election Day is fast approaching, compared to the 2020 election.
  • According to the Colorado Secretary of State, compared to its more than 2 million early votes cast four years ago, only 1.7 million ballots have been returned thus far.   The experts speculate that the long ballot, which some voters may find overwhelming, may be the cause for this decline. Furthermore, some voters may have felt less pressure to cast their ballots early because Colorado is a firmly blue state. Colorado’s results underscore the circumstances influencing voter turnout this year as politicians make a last-ditch effort around the country. Colorado usually has very high turnout – we shall see if that trend continues this year.
• The Colorado Libertarian Party sued Secretary of State Jena Griswold and her chief deputy on Friday in Denver.
  • The suit is asking the court to decommission voting equipment and order a hand count of ballots in counties affected by the recently discovered online disclosure of hundreds of election equipment passwords. Hannah Goodman, the minor party’s state chair, and James Wiley, the Libertarian nominee in the 3rd Congressional District, argue in a lawsuit filed in Denver District Court that Griswold and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Beall breached their public duties with the leak and their responses to it.  Earlier the same day, Griswold and Gov. Jared Polis announced that all of the leaked passwords had been updated by Thursday evening and that state personnel had verified the affected voting machines are secure.
• Throughout the high-stakes, high-anxiety 2024 election, Coloradans who’ve taken the Colorado Newsline Voter Voices survey have been consistent about their top concern: Democracy and good government.
  • That’s the chief takeaway from the more than 7,200 people who weighed in any time from early this spring through last week. Their other top issues? The economy, climate and the environment, immigration, and abortion.

A few stories you also need to know about this week…

• Denver is set to revamp greenhouse gas regulations for buildings.
  • Denver officials are revamping regulations that require owners of large office and apartment buildings in the city to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, proposing changes making the rules easier to meet — especially for landlords struggling with high vacancy rates in their buildings. With changing economic conditions and ongoing workforce and market challenges, the proposed revisions to the city’s requirements aim to provide greater flexibility for building owners so they can achieve their energy saving targets without incurring penalties, officials said. The Energize Denver ordinance, approved in 2021, has a target to eliminate 80% of greenhouse gas emissions emitted by buildings larger than 25,000 square feet by 2030.
• Colorado’s governor proposes a belt-tightening budget.
  • Facing upwards of a $1 billion shortfall, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is proposing an austere budget plan for the next fiscal year that includes widespread spending cuts across state government. The roughly $46 billion spending plan for the 2025-26 fiscal year is handcuffed by economic conditions, recent tax breaks and increased Medicaid costs that contribute to lower state revenue collections. The proposal includes $18 billion in discretionary spending, a 3.8% decrease from the current fiscal year.
• Colorado is still searching for the cause of labor data that shows the state lost 72,700 jobs in Q1.
  • When Denver economist Ryan Gedney looked at a report on first-quarter job growth among Colorado’s private employers, something huge stood out. The state had overcounted the number of jobs at the start of the year. Instead of adding jobs, Colorado lost 72,700. The state had the biggest revision in jobs and rates compared to all 50 states in the benchmark report, coming in at minus 2.5%. If true, the overcount would reverse all job gains this year, as well as hike up the state’s unemployment rate up to 50% higher in recent months. In other words, instead of 4% as reported in August, Colorado’s unemployment rate would have been 6.1%. The last time Colorado felt such pain was during the recessions of the early 2000s and the Great Recession.
• As Colorado Democrats pursue dual legislative supermajorities, Republicans search for a toehold.
  • When ballots are tallied Tuesday night, a handful of House and Senate seats will determine whether the imbalance of partisan power in Colorado reaches a level not seen since World War II. Democrats, who already hold trifecta control of both legislative chambers and the governor’s office, stand one seat shy of a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate to mirror their current supermajority in the House — if Democrats in that chamber can keep the gains they made in 2022. But Republicans also see an opportunity to claw their way out of the political wilderness. They need to flip only three seats that went blue by razor-thin margins to break the supermajority in the House.
• An FCC commissioner claims Harris on ‘SNL’ violates ‘equal time’ rule.
  • A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) commissioner has claimed that Vice President Harris’s recent appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” commonly known as “SNL,” violates the “equal time” rule. “This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” Commissioner Brendan Carr posted on the social platform X on Saturday in response to a post from The Associated Press about Harris being on the show that night.
• ‘Every single American’ a target of election interference, according to a former DHS official.
  • Foreign adversaries aiming to influence next week’s election and sway the outcome of the presidential race are targeting “every single American” in their efforts, a former Department of Homeland Security official warned Thursday. Suzanne Spaulding, who led the predecessor organization under DHS that later became the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that nations including Russia and Iran are ramping up operations because the U.S. election is an existential issue for their position on the world stage. “We are the target, and Americans should not take that lightly,” Spaulding, now a senior homeland security policy adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on an election security panel at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based national security think tank. “[Americans] should be demanding of policymakers that they have a vigorous response to counter this activity.”

And I will leave you with this – no matter what, please take care of yourself this week.

• Despite their ideological divides, both sides share a common concern: they believe democracy is at stake if the other side prevails.
• A recent survey by the American Psychological Association found that nearly 80% of Americans are anxious about the future of the country they cherish.
• As the 2024 election season reaches its climax, 65% of adults surveyed reported feeling drained by political issues, and more than half frequently experience anger related to politics.
• A third of those surveyed indicated that the political divide has become so pronounced within their families that they limit interactions with those who hold opposing views.
• Parents also reported that their children are facing bullying at school over political issues.
• Many young voters express concern about the two-party system, feeling it forces them to choose between two undesirable options.
• More than 40% of adults said they wouldn’t date someone with differing political beliefs, and a similar percentage stated they haven’t felt this excited about an election in years.
• The annual APA survey found that the “future of our nation” was the most common stressor for Americans this year.
• More than seven in 10 adults worried the election results could lead to violence, and 56 percent said they believed the election could be the end of American democracy, according to the poll.

The intersection of the 2024 election and mental health is an important topic, especially given the heightened political tensions and societal issues. Elections can significantly impact mental health for various reasons, so please look after yourself during what will likely be a crazy week. Have a great Monday.

Best,

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