The unpresidential non-debate

If you tuned in last night expecting a presidential debate, you were let down on both counts, because it was not a debate, and it surely was not presidential. Sure, moderator Chris Wallace tossed out questions about the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race relations, and whether the election will be free, fair, and peaceful, but very little substantive ground was covered in the 90-minute abomination, during which President Trump repeatedly disregarded the rules, resulting in chaos and frustration. It was so bad that the Commission on Presidential Debates announced this morning that it is considering format changes for the two remaining debates. —NBC News

• — "Stand back and stand by." One of the most egregious moments of the evening came when Trump failed to denounce white supremacists and militia groups. He instead signaled to groups like the far-right Proud Boys, who have been linked to violent attacks across the country, that he has their backs. "Who would you like me to condemn? Who? Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," he said. "Somebody has got to do something about antifa." —ABC News
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• — "I don't know Beau. I know Hunter." When Biden chided Trump for calling veterans "losers" and "suckers," and reflected on his deceased son Beau's service in Iraq, the sitting commander-in-chief quickly changed the subject to Biden's other son, Hunter, whom he falsely accused of being "dishonorably discharged for cocaine use." —Politico
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• — "I can't go along with that." Regarding the upcoming election, Wallace asked Trump whether he would urge his supporters to "stay calm" and avoid any civil unrest, and would pledge not to "declare victory until the election has been independently certified." Continuing to make unfounded claims of mass voter fraud, he responded, "I'm urging supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully." Biden countered, "This is all about trying to dissuade people from voting, because he is trying to scare people into thinking that it's not going to be legitimate. Show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of the election. Vote, vote, vote." Indeed. —CNN

Walkman & Sargent: If Trump contests the election

"While battleground states undertake the long process of counting unprecedented numbers of mail ballots, the Trump campaign will mount legal challenges contesting the count across the country. The president himself will make all manner of insane charges, and be backed up by conservative media. Indeed, as Ben Smith recently suggested, Fox News, a major network, might come under intense pressure to declare Trump the winner prematurely. Meanwhile, on Facebook, untold numbers and varieties of these right-wing groups will have become conduits for misinformation, disinformation, and the stoking of fear and anger, encouraging Trump supporters to reject official results when they arrive." —The Washington Post

MORE: Hendrickson: The Fox News powder keg —The Atlantic

Voting by mail this year? Here's the latest

For three weeks in August, as election officials across the country were preparing to send out mail-in ballots to tens of millions of voters, the U.S. Postal Service stopped fully updating a national change-of-address system that most states use to keep their voter rolls current. A USPS spokesperson acknowledged the failure and said that at least 1.8 million new changes of address had not been registered in the database. The embattled agency says it has fixed the issue and restored the missing data on Sept. 14. —TIME

• — Georgia. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg has ordered Georgia election officials to prepare paper copies of records showing who is registered to vote and whether they've already voted before Nov. 3, either by absentee ballot or during in-person early voting. The paper backups are required at every polling place in the state as a safeguard to allow voters to continue casting ballots if computers fail on Election Day. —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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• — New York. Voters in Brooklyn have reported receiving a mislabeled "official absentee ballot envelope." Normally, a voter would insert their completed ballot into the envelope and sign the outside. But in this case, the ballot envelopes bear the wrong name and address. If a person signs their own name to the faulty envelope, the enclosed ballot would be voided. The New York City Board of Elections will be mailing out new ballots to nearly 100,000 voters. —Gothamist
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• — Pennsylvania. Republicans in the Keystone State have asked the Supreme Court to halt a major state court ruling that extended the due date for mail-in ballots. The Pennsylvania court's decision earlier this month requires election officials to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day, as long as they arrive within three days. —The Hill

DNI becomes mouthpiece for Russian disinfo

Democrats and intelligence officials were aghast yesterday when Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified a Russian intelligence assessment that was previously rejected by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee as having no factual basis. The move effectively put Russian disinformation into the public sphere to boost President Trump's claims about the government's efforts to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

• — The assessment claims that Hillary Clinton personally approved an effort during the 2016 election "to stir up a scandal" against Trump by tying him to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russians' hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
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• — The extraordinary disclosure was released to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, who said the veracity of the Russian intelligence assessment was irrelevant. "I'm not saying whether it's true or not," he told reporters. "I'm asking Democrats, do you give a damn whether the FBI investigated it, or do you just care only about investigating Trump?"
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• — Former senior intelligence officials described Ratcliffe's move as incendiary and irresponsible, given that the election is just 35 days away and the discredited information originated from a foreign adversary. —Politico

MORE: Project Veritas video was a 'coordinated disinformation campaign,' researchers say —The New York Times

Mansour & De Dora: Two years later, the fight for justice goes on

"Trump's remarks were nothing less than an admission that he gave [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman]...a license to kill journalists with impunity. It fits with the broader message he's sent to Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian countries in the wake of [Washington Post journalist Jamal] Khashoggi's murder: Do business with us, and we'll look the other way when you surveil, intimidate, or murder critics of your government—even if they are U.S. residents. The Saudi government has responded, unsurprisingly, by intensifying its domestic crackdown on the press, arresting journalists, and sentencing them to years in prison. Now, as the second anniversary of Khashoggi's murder approaches, U.S. policymakers and elected officials must take steps to send a different message: that the assassination of a journalist will never be tolerated." —World Politics Review

Ed. Note: Sherif Mansour is the program coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa at the Committee to Protect Journalists. Michael De Dora is the Washington advocacy manager at the Committee to Protect Journalists.

MORE: The 10 'most urgent' cases of threats to press freedom around the world —TIME

Focus on the DHS

House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff said yesterday that he will subpoena the Department of Homeland Security after a department whistleblower wasn't allowed access to documents and clearance he needs to testify. Brian Murphy alleged in a complaint earlier this month that he was pressured by more senior officials to suppress facts in intelligence reports about Russian election interference and other matters. Schiff said he will issue two subpoenas to the department for the requested materials to be made available by Oct. 6. —ABC News

• — All in the family. In other DHS news, Berkeley Research Group, a consulting firm where acting Homeland Security Sec. Chad Wolf's wife, Hope, is an executive, has been awarded more than $6 million in contracts from the agency since September 2018. Although the company has a history of federal contracts, it did not do work for DHS until Wolf became the Transportation Security Administration's chief of staff in 2017. —NBC News
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  — A little help from the prez. President Trump reportedly pressured DHS officials to direct more than $1 billion in government contracts to a North Dakota construction firm, despite its work being repeatedly rejected as substandard. Fisher Sand & Gravel had only ever constructed one such wall—a privately-funded project in danger of collapsing into the Rio Grande—but its CEO, Tommy Fisher, caught Trump's attention with a series of Fox News appearances. —Law & Crime
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• — As if all that weren't enough... Following reports that DHS agents conducted electronic surveillance of protesters' cell phones during recent demonstrations in Portland, Ore., Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamici wrote to Wolf last Thursday demanding more information. Stay tuned. —Nextgov

Pitts: Democracy is in danger. This is not normal

"There is something heroic in human adaptability, shaping oneself to a new normal when the old one is destroyed. That which does not bend, after all, breaks. But there is also something to be said for the refusal to adapt when the cause is righteous. And this one is. Trump and his henchmen claim nothing less than the power to reject the will of the people. To accept that is to accept not just the theft of the nation, but the death of the nation—the irrevocability of our collapse. There is a fire in the house of democracy. Let no one adapt to that." —Richmond County Daily Journal

MORE: House in near-unanimous vote affirms peaceful transfer of power —The Hill

Interstellar democracy

Millions of Americans will vote by mail or in person for the next president of the United States. At least one of those votes will be an absentee vote—cast from some 200 miles above the Earth. NASA astronaut and flight engineer Kate Rubins plans to vote from the International Space Station, where she'll be stationed during the voting period.

• — Beginning in October, Rubins will spend six months at the ISS, where she will research the use of laser-cooled atoms for future quantum sensors and conduct cardiovascular experiments.
   
• — But she'll make time to vote, too. She cast her vote from space in 2016 as well, when she became the first person to sequence DNA in space while researching at the space station.
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• — Astronauts registered to vote in Texas got the right to vote from space in 1997, when Texas lawmakers ruled they could electronically cast their ballot off-planet. The space-voting process requires the Harris Co. Clerk's Office to upload a secure electronic ballot to NASA's Johnson Space Center Mission Control Center. Using specific credentials, the astronauts access their ballot and cast their vote by email. Vote, America! —Lee News

Trump's commentary regarding mail-in ballots is intended to give cover to the Republican-controlled state legislatures in several swing states. If some of those states have an issue counting mail-in ballots and cannot reach a conclusion about which ballots are properly cast and which are not, their state legislatures could send electors to the Electoral College to cast their votes for Trump, no matter what the actual vote tally might appear to be. This would be a "peaceful" and constitutional way Trump would be re-elected, but it would almost certainly subvert the actual votes of the people. —Dave S., California

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