Updates and analysis from Day 4 of the Republican National Convention

At Barack Obama Elementary Magnet School of Technology in Georgia, Cheetara Alexander, a professional violence interrupter in Atlanta, was the last person to cast a vote.

The polling site remained open until 7:45 p.m. due to problems this morning with the tablets which maintain the precinct’s voter roll. Due to Covid-19, this site also severed as polling place for two precincts.

Alexander, 34, said she usually votes early, but this year wanted the “full day of experience.”

But Alexander got off from work late and arrived at her assigned polling place at 7:01 p.m. Poll workers there sent her to Obama Elementary, which was the last polling site open in the county. She was able to cast a provisional ballot, the last of the night.

A poll worker snapped a photo of Alexander after she exited the polling site wearing Georgia’s peach-embellished ‘I Voted’ sticker. Hovering in the background: a portrait of Obama which hangs in the school’s office.

President Trump accepted the Republican nomination for a second term Thursday on a White House lawn packed with supporters, many of whom weren’t wearing masks as he pledged to "defeat the virus" and "again build the greatest economy in history."

It was a largely standard speech from Trump — a defense of his record, optimistic predictions of a COVID-19 vaccine "this year," and a fiery indictment of Democratic nominee Joe Biden that included myriad exaggerations or falsehoods. Trump portrayed Biden, a moderate Democrat, as "a Trojan horse for socialism" who would grant "free rein to violent anarchists, agitators, and criminals" if he were president.

The speech was delivered in a more subdued tone before a smaller crowd than he had hoped for when the year began, marking the end of a four-day convention that kicks off the final stretch of the 2020 campaign.

Here are four takeaways from the event.

President Trump covered a lot of ground in his lengthy speech accepting the GOP nomination Thursday, but Joe Biden's campaign said the one thing it lacked was a plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

"Since the beginning of the Republican convention, at least 3,525 Americans have lost their lives to the coronavirus," Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement.

"Instead of a strategy to overcome the pandemic, or any concern for the unbearable suffering in our country right now as a result of his ongoing failures, what we heard was a delusional vision completely divorced from the crushing reality that ordinary Americans face," she added.

Trump spoke to over 1,000 guests on the South Lawn of the White House, where chairs were arranged close together and few wore masks. Biden's press secretary, TJ Ducklo, quipped on Twitter that it was, the "lowest energy superspreader event I've ever seen."

Read more here.

"Flat," "didn't have the bite he usually has," and "too long."

Those were just a few of the reactions from the Fox News panel that provided immediate analysis of President Trump's speech.

With fireworks and opera in the background, Chris Wallace, moderator of "Fox News Sunday," said he was "surprised by the lack of fireworks" in the speech. Brit Hume, Fox's senior political analyst, said it was too long and agreed with Wallace that it felt flat. Dana Perino, a Fox anchor, gave the president points for hitting Biden hard but agreed it was on the long side.

Fox host Juan Williams and former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile, who bring a liberal perspective to the panel, didn't offer anything more positive, with Williams saying he was "disappointed" in the speech.

Karl Rove, a political contributor for Fox, was less critical but did not offer a ringing endorsement, instead breaking down how much time Trump spent on each topic. 

The panel's end led into the start of Laura Ingraham's show, where the host offered a quick change of perspective, calling it an "incredible and electric speech" while noting that, yes, some people thought it was too long.

President Trump vowed Thursday that he “will protect Medicare and Social Security” — a promise akin to one he made as a candidate in 2016. 

But throughout his first term, he repeatedly tried to cut these programs in his proposed budgets.

His fiscal-year 2018 budget (proposed in 2017) did not include proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security, but would have made cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance, which would have affected nearly 10 million people. 

His fiscal-year 2019 budget (proposed in 2018) proposed massive cuts to Medicare, while his fiscal-year 2020 budget (proposed in 2019) proposed cutting more than $1 trillion from Medicare over a decade, and $26 billion from Social Security programs.

His fiscal-year 2021 budget (proposed earlier this year) would cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare over 10 years.

The reason none of the changes went into effect is that Congress controls U.S. spending, not the president. And the budgets for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are essentially  renewed annually, even without congressional approval. A president’s budget proposals are more akin to a picture of the administration’s priorities. 

Additionally, the holiday on the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare, that Trump implemented via executive order earlier this summer in an attempt to stimulate a struggling economy contributes to the depletion of the accounts that fund those entitlement programs.

And Trump has said that he would make “permanent cuts” to the payroll tax — action that would require congressional approval — if he wins in November. Some experts have said that move could, in theory, totally deplete Social Security by 2023.

On the last night of his party’s convention, President Trump bragged about “record” job gains in recent months, but the 9.1 million jobs he touts come with some qualifiers.

"Over the past three months, we have gained over nine million jobs, and that’s a record in the history of our country," Trump said Thursday.

The recent job gains are still less than half the number of jobs the economy shed in March and April at the height of pandemic-ordered lockdowns. From March through July, the economy lost a net 12.9 million jobs, the most in American history.

The nearly 2 million jobs added in July also represent a sharp slowdown from the almost 5 million jobs added in June. 

And several major groups of workers are at greater risk of falling behind. Black unemployment, at 14.6 percent in July, registered less than a percentage point of improvement. Among Hispanics, the rate of unemployment also remained elevated at nearly 13 percent, compared to just nearly 9 percent for white workers.

Declaring victory is premature, especially as COVID-19 continues to inflict staggering damage to the economy, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

“It still has a long way to go, and risks falling back in as the pandemic continues to rage and causes more layoffs and curtails hiring,” he said.