Bermuda News Updates

The opening of early voting locations in Florida, Texas and elsewhere has piled millions of new votes on top of the mail ballots arriving at election offices as voters try to avoid crowded places on Nov 3 during the coronavirus pandemic.

The result is a total of 58.6 million ballots cast so far, more than the 58 million that The Associated Press logged as being cast through the mail or at in-person early voting sites in 2016.

On October 15, Democrats registrants cast 51% of all ballots reported, compared with 25% from Republicans. On Sunday, Democrats had a slightly smaller lead, 51% to 31%.

The early vote totals, reported by state and local election officials and tracked by the AP, are an imperfect indicator of which party may be leading. The data only shows party registration, not which candidate voters support. Most GOP voters are expected to vote on Election Day.

Analysts said the still sizable Democratic turnout puts extra pressure on the Republican Party to push its voters out in the final week and on Nov 3. That’s especially clear in closely contested states such as Florida, Nevada and North Carolina.

“This is a glass half-full, glass half-empty situation,” said John Couvillon, a Republican pollster who tracks early voting closely. “They’re showing up more,” he added, but “Republicans need to rapidly narrow that gap.”

In Florida, for example, Democrats have outvoted Republicans by a 596,000 margin by mail, while Republicans only have a 230,000 edge in person. In Nevada, where Democrats usually dominate in-person early voting but the state decided to send a mail ballot to every voter this year, the GOP has a 42,600 voter edge in-person while Democrats have an 97,500 advantage in mail ballots.

“At some point, Republicans have to vote,” said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who tracks early voting on ElectProject.org. “You can’t force everyone through a vote center on Election Day. Are you going to expect all those Republicans to stand in line for eight hours?”

Trump’s campaign has been pushing its voters to cast ballots early, but with limited success, delighting Democrats. “We see the Trump campaign, the RNC (Republican National Committee) and their state parties urging Trump’s supporters to vote by mail while the president’s Twitter account says it’s a fraud,” Tom Bonier, a Democratic data analyst, said on a recent call with reporters. “The Twitter account is going to win every time.”

But Bonier warned that he does not expect a one-sided election. “There are signs of Republicans being engaged,” he said. “We do expect them to come out in very high numbers on Election Day.”

That split in voting behavior — Democrats voting early, Republicans on Election Day — has led some Democrats to worry about Trump declaring victory because early votes are counted last in Rust Belt battlegrounds. But they’re counted swiftly in swing states such as Arizona, Florida and North Carolina, which may balance out which party seems ahead on election night.

Some of the record-setting turnout has led to long lines at early-vote locations, and there have been occasional examples of voters receiving mail ballots that are incorrectly formatted. But on a whole, voting has gone relatively smoothly. With more than one-third of the 150 million ballots that experts predict will be cast in the election, there have been no armed confrontations at polling places or massive disenfranchisement that have worried election experts for months.

One sign of enthusiasm is the large number of new or infrequent voters who have already voted — 25% of the total cast, according to an AP analysis of data from the political data firm L2. Those voters are younger than a typical voter and less likely to be white. So far similar shares of them are registering Democratic and Republican.

They have helped contribute to enormous turnouts in states such as Georgia, where 26.3% of the people who’ve voted are new or infrequent voters, and Texas, which is expected to set turnout record and where 30.5% are new or infrequent voters.

The strong share of new and infrequent voters in the early vote is part of what leads analysts to predict more than 150 million total votes will be cast and possibly the highest turnout in a U.S. presidential election since 1908.

“There’s a huge chunk of voters who didn’t cast ballots in 2016,” Bonier said. “They’re the best sign of intensity at this point.”

• Top Feature Photo: Voters line up in front of the Yonkers Public Library in Yonkers, NY, on Saturday, Oct 24, 2020 as the first day of early voting in the presidential election begins across New York state – Mark Vergari/The Journal News via AP

In a surprise announcement from his studio window to faithful standing below in St Peter’s Square, Francis said the churchmen would be elevated to a cardinal’s rank in a ceremony on November 28.

Francis asked for prayers so the new cardinals “may help me in my ministry as bishop of Rome for the good of all God’s faithful holy people.”

The selection of Gregory won praise from LGBTQ advocates in the United States, days after Pope Francis grabbed headlines for voicing support for civil unions for gay couples.

Other new cardinals include an Italian who is the long-time papal preacher at the Vatican, the Rev Raniero Cantalamessa, who is a Franciscan friar; the Kigali, Rwanda, Archbishop Antoine Kambanda; the Capiz, Philippines, Archbishop Jose Feurte Advincula, and the Santiago, Chile, Archbishop Celestino Aos Braco.

Another Franciscan who was tapped is Friar Mauro Gambetti, in charge of the Sacred Convent in Assisi. The pope, when elected in 2013, chose St Francis of Assisi as his namesake saint. Earlier this month, the pontiff

journeyed to that hill town in Umbria to sign an encyclical, or important church teaching document, about brotherhood.

Gambetti was so surprised, at first he thought the pope was joking when he heard he was named, convent spokesperson the Rev Enzo Fortunato said. Gambetti quickly pledged to “put himself at the service of humanity at a time so difficult to us all,” including offering compassion to the needy, Fortunato said in reference to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a reflection of the pope’s stress on helping those in need, Francis also named the former director of the Rome Catholic charity, Caritas, the Rev Enrico Feroci, to be a cardinal.

The prestigious Washington archdiocese traditionally brings elevation to cardinal’s rank, so the appointment of Gregory, 73, last year by the pope had positioned him to be tapped for the honor.

Still, the timing of his rise to cardinal is noteworthy, coming in the thick of increased US attention on racial injustice following the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minnesota this year. Gregory was publicly critical of US President Donald Trump’s visit to the St John Paul II National Shrine in Washington a day after civil rights demonstrators were forcibly cleared from a square to facilitate the president’s visit to an Episcopal church in the US capital.

Gregory has had his pulse on factions in the US Catholic Church, which has both strong conservative and liberal veins since he served three times as the head of the US Conference of Bishops.

Conservative prelates in the United States have openly lambasted Francis for his more liberal stands, including his support for same-sex civil unions that came out in a new documentary this week.

Gregory said in a statement that becoming a cardinal would allow him to work more closely with the pontiff in caring for the Catholic Church.

While Gregory headed the Atlanta diocese earlier in his career, he wrote positively in a column about his conversations with Catholic parents of LGBTQ children. An advocate for LGBTQ Catholics, Francis DeBernardo, told The Associated Press that choosing Gregory for a cardinal’s post signals Francis wants “LGBTQ people to be part of the church, and he wants church people to respect them.”

DeBernardo linked the appointment to Francis’ recently reported comments supporting civil unions for same-sex couples.

He also praised the elevation to cardinal’s rank of a Vatican bishop who comes from Malta, a tiny, traditionally Catholic nation which has made significant progress in LGBTQ civil rights and protections in recent years.

DeBernardo was referring to Mario Grech, 63, who serves at the Vatican as secretary general of the Synod of Bishops office and who formerly headed the diocese on the Maltese island of Gozo.

“Since naming cardinals also affects who the next pontiff will be, the pope also shows that he is planning for the future of the church to continue in this affirming posture on issues of sexual orientation and gender identity,” the U.S.-based DeBernardo said in a written statement.

Not all of the pope’s picks might stir positive recollections.

In 2010, while preaching at a Good Friday service attended by the then-pope, Benedict XVI, Cantalamessa upset both Jewish and sex abuse survivors’ groups when he likened allegations that the pontiff had covered up sex abuse cases against clerics to the “more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” The Vatican quickly distanced Benedict from Cantalamessa’s remarks.

Nine of the new cardinals are younger than 80, and thus eligible to elect the next pontiff in a secret conclave. Some cardinals head powerful Vatican offices, and pontiffs frequently turn to cardinals for advice.

No details were immediately given by the Vatican about the formal ceremony to make the churchmen cardinals, especially in view of travel restrictions involving many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As he has in other groups of cardinals he tapped in his papacy, Francis in this selection reflected the global nature of the Catholic Church and his flock of 1.2 billion Catholics.

Others receiving the honor include Monsignor Marcello Semeraro, an Italian serving as prefect of the Vatican office which runs the saint-making process; Bishop Cornelius Sim, a Brunei native who serves as apostolic vicar of Brunei; the Italian archbishop of Siena and nearby towns in Tuscany, Augusto Lojudice; the retired bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, Monsignor Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel; and an Italian former Vatican diplomat, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi.

Churchmen over 80 who are named cardinals are chosen to honor their life of service to the church. Those in this batch too old to vote in a conclave are Cantalamessa, Tomasi, Feroci and Arizmendi Esquivel.

• Top Feature Photo: In this Sunday Oct 6, 2019, file photo, Washington DC Archbishop Wilton Gregory greets churchgoers at St Mathews Cathedral after the annual Red Mass in Washington. Pope Francis on Sunday, Oct 25, 2020, named 13 new cardinals, including Washington DC Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who would become the first Black US prelate to earn the coveted red hat. In a surprise announcement from his studio window to faithful standing below in St Peter’s Square, Francis said the churchmen would be elevated to a cardinal’s rank in a ceremony on Nov 28 – AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File