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As it happened: Donald Trump and Joe Biden chase late voters in Florida as nation surpasses nine million COVID-19 cases amid new surge in infections

Updated October 30, 2020 — 2:59pm,first published October 30, 2020 — 6:30am

2.59pm on Oct 30, 2020

That's all for today!

By Roy Ward

That's all we have for today but I'll be back early tomorrow morning with another election live blog as we speed towards Election Day.

Before I go, here is a quick look at some of the major developments today:

Thanks to everyone who followed along today and please have a lovely afternoon, I'll see you all back here early tomorrow morning. Bye for now.

2.51pm on Oct 30, 2020

Two months of the US election campaign in 16 minutes

By Tom Compagnoni

It's been a presidential election like no other, set against the backdrop of civil unrest, wildfires, hurricanes and a pandemic that has killed over 220,000 Americans.

The Campaign, produced exclusively for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, presents a quick-fire montage of sound bites, speeches, tweets, controversies and trivialities that defined the US media coverage of the 2020 US election campaign.

Edited down from over 200 news bulletins and live streams pulled from over 30 TV networks over eight weeks, The Campaign trails the daily TV and social media appearances of the two septuagenarian candidates, President Donald Trump and former vice-president Joe Biden, in their battle to be the man Americans call the leader of the free world.

With record numbers of ballots already cast, it’s clear the media has played its part in getting out the vote. But exactly what influence the heavily partisan media coverage will have on the election outcome won’t be clear until after election day. If you can't keep track of the last two months of high drama, shady accusations and bombshell reports, now’s your chance to catch up in 16 super-saturated minutes.

1.35pm on Oct 30, 2020

Take Biden and Trump down!': Moscow prefers neither US candidate

By Tom Balmforth and Andrew Osborn

Moscow: Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a staunch ally of President Vladimir Putin, threw a champagne party in Russia's parliament in 2016 to toast Donald Trump's presidential election victory.

But this weekend, the veteran lawmaker says his youth activists will be outside the US embassy in Moscow chanting "Take Biden and Trump Down!" ahead of Tuesday's election.

"He (Trump) has done nothing good for us," Zhirinovsky, head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, told Reuters.

Russian lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky.AP

"But we're acting according to the Russian saying that you choose the lesser of two evils. Biden is too great an evil."

Zhirinovsky often indulges in clownish showmanship and firebrand nationalist rhetoric. But the 74-year-old veteran lawmaker's comments are also seen as sometimes capturing the zeitgeist in the Kremlin - which concerning the US election appears to be a tepid preference for Trump.

Click here to read the story.

1.16pm on Oct 30, 2020

Here, there, everywhere: The frantic last dash for the White House

By Matthew Knott

Atlanta, Georgia: On the second-last day of early voting in Georgia, a line is snaking around the entry to the Cobb County Board of Elections office.

As a reward for casting their ballots, voters are being served complimentary "democracy tortillas" filled with their choice of scrambled eggs, bacon, shrimp and sausage.

Next to the buffet, a food truck is handing out complimentary coffee, smoothies and donuts.

Free breakfast being served at a polling place in Cobb County, Georgia.Matthew Knott

Adidas workers are offering goodie bags with face masks, rain ponchos and bottles of hand sanitiser.

It would be unpatriotic to say it's better than an election day sausage sizzle. But it's pretty damn good.

Andre Williams showed up at 6.30am so he could vote as soon as the early voting centre opened its doors at 7 o'clock.

But there were delays: a tropical hurricane blew through overnight with 80 kilometre an hour winds, causing mass power outages in the area.

Three-and-a-bit hours after showing up, Williams emerges from the polling place proudly wearing his "I secured my vote" sticker.

"I brought a stool with me because I was prepared to wait for eight hours," the 31-year old says. Williams, who moved to the US from Jamaica in 2008, voted for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

"I was born in one of the shithole countries the president talks about," he says.

"Biden is not perfect. I'm voting for someone who believes in equality and can admit mistakes."

Click here to read the story.

12.53pm on Oct 30, 2020

Even NYC’s mayor caught out by long voting lines

By Megan Levy

New York: The line of people waiting to vote on Manhattan's Upper West Side this week was so long it crossed two intersections and snaked around three blocks before a poll worker stood with a sign declaring: “End of line”.

Here in President Donald Trump's former hometown, however, there were remarkably few complaints from New Yorkers who appeared to be taking it in their stride.

Voters wait in line for a Houston Street polling site on the first day of early voting.John Minchillo

They stood with laptops and books, while some bought their own chairs, knowing they were in for an hours-long wait.

One woman said she had waited for 2.5 hours to vote, only to conclude: "People are really fired up. It's a good sign."

This is the first year that New York has offered early voting for a presidential election, and the city's Board of Elections appears to have been caught off guard by the extraordinary demand.

Polling hours have now been extended to try to ease the snarling queues, which even caught out New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

He waited in line for 3.5 hours on Tuesday to cast his vote in Park Slope in Brooklyn, even ordering takeaway pizza as he neared the front of the line. He ate a slice before, wearing gloves and a mask, he began passing out slices to fellow voters.

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It was a similar scene across the city at Madison Square Garden, usually home to the New York Rangers and New York Knicks but which, for now, has temporarily turned into a polling site.

The voting line circled the block, as poll workers distributed hot chocolate and coffee.New York overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, by almost four to one.

In the final weeks of the presidential race, Trump has repeatedly referred to the "death" of the city that was hit so hard by the coronavirus pandemic earlier in the year.

"Look at what’s happened to New York, it's a ghost town. It's a ghost town," Trump said at the final presidential debate last week.

"For so many years I loved it, it was vibrant. It's dying, everyone is leaving New York."

As hundreds queued to vote at Madison Square Garden this week, someone had scrawled on the footpath in chalk: “This ghost town votes”.

12.35pm on Oct 30, 2020

Glenn Greenwald resigns from the Intercept following dispute over Biden story

By Jeremy Barr and Elahe Izadi

Washington: Iconoclastic journalist Glenn Greenwald resigned from The Intercept, signalling an abrupt and acrimonious end to his time at the publication he co-founded in 2014 with journalists Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras.

Greenwald, who shared the 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Public Service for his reporting on National Security Agency domestic surveillance that was uncovered by contractor Edward Snowden, said his departure was related to a piece that he planned to write about former vice-president Joe Biden.

Glenn Greenwald helped create The Intercept.AP

In a lengthy note published on Substack on Thursday afternoon, local time, Greenwald said the publication refused to publish the piece, "in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom," unless he removed "all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression."

The Intercept strongly countered those claims, with editor-in-chief Betsy Reed telling The Washington Post in an email "it is absolutely not true that Glenn Greenwald was asked to remove all sections critical of Joe Biden from his article. He was asked to support his claims and innuendo about corrupt actions by Joe Biden with evidence."

The Washington Post

Click here to read the story.

12.16pm on Oct 30, 2020

US stocks face 20 per cent slide with contested election

By Felice Maranz

Markets want to see a clear victory for either President Donald Trump or Democratic nominee Joe Biden within a week of the November 3 contest. If there's a contested election, stocks could slide as much as 20 per cent.

That's according to a team of Bank of America economists and strategists led by US economist Michelle Meyer and equity and quant strategist Savita Subramanian. A "landslide victory for either Trump or Biden and rapid election conclusion would likely be welcomed by markets while a severely contested election could see risk-off and drive 10-year rates materially lower," they wrote in a research note.

A rocky transfer of power or limbo until December, or even until the Jan. 20 inauguration would make for a worst-case scenario for markets.

"If Trump leads on Election Day with a large backlog of absentee and mail-in ballots, stocks could see more volatility until more results come in," they said. If the count is close, with ballots in question and state recounts, investors may respond as they did during 2000, when the S&P 500 sold off 5 per cent before the Supreme Court called the election for George W. Bush on December 12.

Declines will be sharper if either side refuses to accept the results, with the economy set for an "uncertainty shock" as confidence stumbles -- with businesses delaying hiring and investments, while households turn to precautionary saving -- and as doubts about fiscal stimulus mount.

Here's what BofA expects for stocks within two election outcomes:

A Republican sweep would initially be positive (with little change to a gain of 5 per cent), with beneficiaries including real estate, dividend yield, restaurants and services firms; multinationals would lag.
A Democratic sweep would be initially neutral (with a drop of as much as 5 per cent to a gain of as much as 5 per cent), and longer positive, with cyclicals and small caps benefiting while energy and luxury goods may be hurt.

Bloomberg

11.53am on Oct 30, 2020

Newsom declines to possible replacement for Harris if Biden wins

By Roy Ward

California Governor Gavin Newsom has declined to comment on whether he has selected a replacement for Senator Kamala Harris should she be elected vice president.

Newsom was speaking a the Golden 1 Centre in Sacramento, home stadium of the NBA's Sacramento Kings, and he joked that Kings forward Harrison Barnes was pushing him hard to take on the role should Harris vacate it for higher office.

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11.30am on Oct 30, 2020

Biden pledges task force to reunite children separated at US-Mexico border

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Thursday vowed to create a task force to reunite more than 500 children who were separated from their families at the US-Mexico border by the Trump administration and whose parents have not been located.

Under Republican President Donald Trump thousands of children were separated from their parents at the border, mostly in 2017 and 2018, because their parents were being prosecuted for illegal entry or over concerns about their identities or criminal histories.

Separations happened both before and after Trump unveiled a "zero tolerance" policy to prosecute all illegal border crossers in May 2018, only to quickly reverse it after an international outcry.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued over the matter in 2018 and US District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego, California, ordered the families be reunited.

There are around 4000 children who could fall under the reunification order, but as of October 20 parents of 545 children could not be reached by attorneys and non-profits searching for them, according to a court filing in the San Diego case.

"On his first day as President, Joe Biden will issue an Executive Order creating a federal task force to reunite these children with their parents," the Biden campaign said.

Trump and Biden clashed over the issue during their final debate on October 22, ahead of the November 3 election (US time).

Asked at the debate whether he had a plan to reunite families, Trump said his administration was "working on it."

On Thursday, Trump campaign spokeswoman Courtney Parella said the president's administration was trying to strengthen border security and "is actively working to undo the mistakes of the previous administrations, identify these separated families, and reunite children with their parents."

According to the ACLU, approximately 1400 additional children were separated by the Trump administration but are not currently covered by Sabraw's reunification order.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said there are hundreds of parents who have been located in Central America but have not been allowed to return to the United States to reunite with their children.

11.11am on Oct 30, 2020

Democrats expose taxpayer-funded plan to 'help the President’ defeat coronavirus despair

By Noah Weiland and Sharon LaFraniere

Washington: A $265 million ($377 million) public campaign to "defeat despair" around the coronavirus was planned partly around the politically tinged theme that "helping the president will help the country," according to documents released on Thursday, local time, by House investigators.

Michael R. Caputo, the assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, and others involved envisioned a star-studded campaign to lift American spirits, but the lawmakers said they sought to exclude celebrities who had supported gay rights or same-sex marriage or who had publicly disparaged President Donald Trump.

Actor Zach Galifianakis, for instance, was apparently passed over because he had declined to have Trump on his talk show Between Two Ferns.

Ultimately, the campaign collapsed amid recriminations and investigation.

Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee and the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis released the records, declaring that "these documents include extremely troubling revelations." They accused Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, of "a cover-up to conceal the Trump administration's misuse of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for partisan political purposes ahead of the upcoming election."

The New York Times

Click here to read the story.

As it happened: Donald Trump and Joe Biden chase late voters in Florida as nation surpasses nine million COVID-19 cases amid new surge in infections

That's all for today!

Two months of the US election campaign in 16 minutes

Take Biden and Trump down!': Moscow prefers neither US candidate

Here, there, everywhere: The frantic last dash for the White House

Even NYC’s mayor caught out by long voting lines

Glenn Greenwald resigns from the Intercept following dispute over Biden story

US stocks face 20 per cent slide with contested election

Newsom declines to possible replacement for Harris if Biden wins

Biden pledges task force to reunite children separated at US-Mexico border

Democrats expose taxpayer-funded plan to 'help the President’ defeat coronavirus despair

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