Trump, Biden compete in Midwest battlegrounds

A district court judge in Nevada on Monday rejected a Republican lawsuit seeking to stop the count of early votes of mail-in ballots in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. 

Judge James E. Wilson Jr., said in his ruling that the state Republican Party and the Trump's campaign had no standing to bring the case. Nevada is a key battleground state and Clark County is heavily Democratic. 

Republicans filed the lawsuit late last month and alleged that election observers were not able to view the ballot processing and that it's impossible to check signatures in the state’s biggest county. They argued that the software that checks the authenticity of signatures had a "low tolerance" and would therefore lead to most ballots being accepted. 

The judge, however, indicated in his ruling Monday that election officials did nothing to stop members of the general public from observing the counting of ballots. 

"The president's deliberate attempts to undermine Nevada's elections have failed yet again," Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford said in a statement Monday. "Today's ruling makes clear that there is a proper procedure to observe an election that even the president must follow, and it's most certainly a victory for the constitutional rights of all Nevadans."

Trump will be spending election night at the White House, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Monday.

"Yes, we will be together. We'll be there at the White House in D.C.," McEnany said on Fox News Monday morning. 

Trump's campaign began planning an election-night event at the White House after he delivered his convention acceptance speech there and felt the it was a success, sources familiar with the details told NBC News at the time. 

Democrats criticized Trump for using the White House as a backdrop of a purely partisan event, a move he defended by saying logistically it was easier. 

McEnany didn't offer any additional details about where exactly they would be at the White House and who would be attending the event as the results are tallied. 

Trump's campaign told supporters he would hold an event at his hotel in Washington, D.C., but those plans appear to have been abandoned.

Biden leads Trump by 5 to 7 percentage points among likely voters in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, according to a new Monmouth University poll released Monday. 

The poll found that under a high-turnout scenario, Biden is ahead of Trump 51 percent to 44 percent. In a low-turnout scenario, however, that apparent margin shrinks slightly to 50 percent to 45 percent. Four percent said that they were undecided or declined to say which candidate they planned to vote for. 

In a similar poll conducted last month, Biden led Trump by 11 percentage points in a high-turnout scenario and 8 points in a low-turnout scenario. 

Among all registered voters in the state, which Trump carried in 2016, the latest poll found that 50 percent said that they support Biden and 45 percent said that they support Trump. 

The poll surveyed 502 registered voters between Oct. 28 and Nov. 1 and it has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

Twenty-four million people have an outstanding mail ballot that they haven't returned, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a new analysis released Monday morning. 

The organization said that potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of votes may arrive late and won't be counted due to delays through the U.S. Postal Service and a series of court decisions affecting how people can vote. 

Officials began warning voters last week to drop off their ballots in official drop boxes or deliver them in person to the local board of elections because of the USPS delays.

In a Dear Colleague letter, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Democrats to not let up in the last days — and hours — of their campaigns.  

"In these last days, we must not waste any time, underutilize any resource, or have any regrets that we could have done more to win," she said in the letter. 

"We all agreed that we must be calm, confident, and patient — and not be celebrating until every vote is counted," she wrote. "As a Californian, I am especially concerned that we do not declare victory before the polls close in the West. That could harm Senate, House and local races across the country." 

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency both issued advisories Friday warning that Iran is spreading propaganda and targeting U.S. state websites, including election sites, in “an intentional effort to influence and interfere with the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

The FBI sent a FLASH bulletin to various states, saying an Iranian group is “creating fictitious media sites and spoofing legitimate media sites to spread anti-American propaganda and misinformation about voter suppression.” It added, “This group has been linked to efforts to disseminate a propaganda video concerning voter fraud and hacking of U.S. voter information. The FBI advises this video is almost certainly intended to make U.S. voter information and the voting process appear insecure and susceptible to fraud.”

The CISA advisory went further, stating that the Iranian hackers have also “successfully obtained voter registration data in at least one state.” The agency did not disclose which state.

Both the FBI and CISA confirmed that “a review of the records that were copied and obtained reveals the information was used in the propaganda video.”

There is no indication that any voter registration databases have been manipulated or any votes have been changed.

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