Tag Archives: Elections

Keep an eye on elections as some are too close to call

Romans 13:1 says, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Georgia’s Senate race still too close, Dow slips, and history has been made in some American states
  • Stacey Abrams conceded to Republican challenger Brian Kemp in Georgia
  • Gretchen Whitmer defeats Tudor Dixon in Michigan
  • Republican George Santos flipped the 3rd Congressional district in New York
  • 4 Senate seats are still up for grabs: Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. Delay in Arizona’s Maricopa County due to “ballot glitches” and additional results are expected on Wednesday night.
  • Some of the top issues for American voters during this election cycle included inflation, threats to democracy, crime, immigration and border security, and abortion.

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Mali coup leader Goita sworn in as interim president and appoints PM

By Tiemoko Diallo

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Assimi Goita, the Malian colonel who has overthrown two presidents in the past nine months, said he would oversee a transition toward democratic elections as he was sworn in as interim president on Monday.

Goita, a 38-year-old special forces commander, had already been declared president by the constitutional court last month after ousting Bah Ndaw, but was formally sworn in on Monday during a ceremony in the capital Bamako.

Within hours, he appointed opposition leader and former minister Choguel Maiga as prime minister, according to a decree read on state television.

It was not immediately clear to what extent Maiga’s appointment would satisfy calls from Mali’s neighbors and military allies like France and the United States for a civilian-led government.

Those countries, fearful the political upheaval could undermine a fight against Islamist insurgents across the Sahel region, have also been pressing to ensure elections go ahead next February as scheduled. Goita’s advisers have suggested those might be delayed.

“The situation offers us the opportunity to put the process of transition back in the direction desired by the people,” Goita, who had traded his camouflage fatigues for a dark gray officer’s uniform and a yellow sash, said at his inauguration.

He said he was committed to implementing “the actions necessary for the success of the transition, notably the organization of credible, fair and transparent elections that are held as scheduled.”

Goita was one of several colonels who overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita last August.

A transitional government that would oversee an 18-month transition to democratic elections was then put in place with Ndaw as president and Goita as his vice.

Goita last month ordered the arrests of both Ndaw and the prime minister for not informing him about the details of a cabinet reshuffle, which he alleged violated the transitional charter. Both later resigned while in custody.

West African regional bloc ECOWAS and the African Union last week suspended Mali from their organizations, although they declined to impose further sanctions. The World Bank said on Friday it had temporarily paused payments to the country.

Former colonial power France, which maintains more than 5,000 troops in Mali to combat Islamist militants, said it would temporarily suspend joint military operations with Malian troops but would continue to operate in the country separately.

(Reporting by Tiemoko Diallo; Writing by Cooper Inveen and Aaron Ross; Editing by Edmund Blair and Angus MacSwan)

Pompeo voices confidence U.S. vote count will lead to ‘second Trump administration’

By Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday voiced confidence that once every “legal” vote was counted, it would lead to a “second Trump administration,” appearing to reject Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump.

He spoke as world leaders, including Washington’s close allies Britain and France, already have congratulated President-elect Biden. Trump, a Republican, has so far refused to concede and made baseless claims that fraud was marring the results.

“There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Pompeo told a State Department news conference. He later sought to assure the world that America’s post-election transition would be successful.

“We’re going to count all the votes … The world should have every confidence that the transition necessary to make sure that the State Department is … successful today and successful when the president who’s in office on January 20, a minute after noon, will also be successful.”

Biden, due to take office on Jan. 20, 2021, risks a delayed transition as Trump has vowed to push ahead with longshot legal challenges to his election loss. Republican U.S. lawmakers have defended his right to do so.

Asked if Trump’s refusal to concede hampers State Department efforts to promote free and fair elections abroad, Pompeo, a close ally and appointee of Trump’s, said: “This department cares deeply to make sure that elections around the world are safe and secure and free and fair.”

The leading Republican in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has carefully backed Trump, saying that he was “100% within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities,” without citing any evidence.

And U.S. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee who heads the Justice Department, on Monday told federal prosecutors to “pursue substantial allegations” of irregularities of voting and the counting of ballots.

In his first official travel after the Nov. 3 election, Pompeo is due to travel to France, Turkey, Georgia, Israel, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia between Nov. 13-23. The leaders of some of those countries have already congratulated Biden.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk Susan Heavey and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Howard Goller)

Unofficial Hong Kong vote sees new generation take over battle for democracy

By Jessie Pang and Yanni Chow

HONG KONG (Reuters) – A younger, more defiant generation of Hong Kong democrats has secured the most votes in unofficial primary elections in the Chinese-ruled city, setting the stage for a battle with pro-Beijing politicians for control of the city’s legislature.

The success of young contenders in the primaries organized by the pro-democracy camp on the weekend to pick candidates for a Sept. 6 election for a 70-seat city assembly comes amid widespread resentment of a national security law that Beijing imposed last month.

Beijing denounced the vote as illegal and warned it may have violated the new security law, which has raised fears for the freedoms that have underpinned Hong Kong’s open society and success as a financial hub.

Prominent pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong won in his district, but he has been disqualified from previous elections and could face similar hurdles this time.

Wong warned against any sweeping disqualification of candidates when he held a news conference with 15 other young politicians who won in their districts.

“If the government cracks down on us and disqualifies all the candidates who joined the primaries, it will cause more outrage in the international community and encourage more people to vote for the pro-democratic camp in September,” Wong said.

The 16 – all but one under 30 and dressed in black T-shirts – are part of a so-called localist or resistance camp, which outshone the cohort of traditional democrats, which had secured 12 candidate slots as of Wednesday afternoon.

Full results are expected later in the day.

The localists – a term for those who do not see themselves as Chinese and focus on saving the former British colony’s freedoms – tend to be more assertive than traditional democrats.

The localists talk of resistance and saving democracy but they do not all have the same vision for Hong Kong’s future. Some dream of independence – anathema for Beijing – but do not speak of it openly, which would see them fall foul of the new security law and face up to life in prison.

Their performance in the primaries reflects frustration, especially among younger voters, with Hong Kong’s more moderate, traditional pro-democracy politicians.

“Localism has become the mainstream,” said localist candidate Henry Wong. “We will resist against the tyranny.”

The new security law punishes what Beijing broadly defines as secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison and sees Chinese intelligence agents operating officially in the city for the first time.

Critics fear it will crush wide-ranging freedoms promised to Hong Kong when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, while supporters say it will bring stability after a year of often violent anti-government protests.

‘DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND’

The law has already had a chilling effect on many aspects of life.

Earlier on Wednesday, former democracy lawmaker Au Nok-hin said he was pulling out as an organizer of the weekend vote amid accusations from Beijing that it was illegal.

“Withdrawal is the only choice … (to) protect myself and others,” Au said in a Facebook post.

A spokesman for Beijing’s top office in the city, the Hong Kong Liaison Office, said the pro-democracy camp’s bid for a legislative majority was an attempt to carry out a “color revolution,” referring to uprisings in other parts of the world.

In comments that critics said were aimed at instilling fear, the Liaison Office as well as Chinese government’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and the city’s leader, Carrie Lam, have all said the primaries could violate the national security law.

Benny Tai, another organizer of the pro-democracy polls, was defiant.

“For those who do not recognize democracy, or do not agree with democratic values, it is difficult to understand the meaning of the primary election,” Tai said.

Hong Kong police on Wednesday arrested the vice chairman of the city’s Democratic Party, Lo Kin-hei, on charges of unlawful assembly related to a protest in November.

The political tension in Hong Kong has alarmed the business community while the new law has raised concern in countries that support the “one country, two systems” formula of government meant to safeguard its freedoms.

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an end to Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law to punish China for what he called “oppressive actions” against the city.

China said it would impose retaliatory sanctions on U.S. individuals and entities after Trump signed a law penalizing banks doing business with Chinese officials who implement the new law.

In an interview with state agency Xinhua, Chief Executive Lam said U.S. sanctions won’t hurt Hong Kong and in time, concern about the security law would prove unfounded.

In another blow to the city’s standing, the New York Times said it would shift part of its Hong Kong office to Seoul, as worries grow that the security law will curb media and other freedoms.

(Additional reporting by Aleksander Solum; Writing by Farah Master, Anne Marie Roantree and Marius Zaharia; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel)

U.S. states see major challenge in delivering record mail ballots in November

By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With a health crisis expected to drive a surge in mail voting in November, U.S. election officials face a major challenge: Ensure tens of millions of ballots can reach voters in time to be cast, and are returned in time to be counted.

Recent presidential nomination contests and other elections held in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic – a warm-up for the Nov. 3 general election if COVID-19 remains a threat – showed some states have been overwhelmed by the sudden rush to vote by mail.

Nearly half of U.S. states allow voters to request absentee ballots less than a week before their elections. Even under normal circumstances, that often is too little lead time to guarantee voters will receive their ballots and have sufficient time to return them, election experts and state officials say.

In Ohio, for example, whose nearly all-mail election on April 28 was marred by ballot delivery delays, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose has asked state lawmakers to change the deadline for voters to request a mail ballot to one week before an election, up from three days currently.

“It is not logistically possible” for all voters asking for ballots at the last minute to get them in time to return them by mail, LaRose told Reuters. “That relies on a lot of luck.”

At stake is the integrity of the general election, and possibly its outcome. Voters who follow their state’s rules but can’t get their ballots back in time due to no fault of their own could be effectively disenfranchised. That could spark legal challenges in states where the race between President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden will be decided by slim margins. Tight contests could also decide control of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

“Citizens could respond to all this and say our democracy is broken,” said Paul Gronke, a political scientist who expects about half of all ballots to be cast by mail in November, compared to a fifth delivered that way in 2016.

“Election officials need to move now” to make preparations to expeditiously move election mail and to avoid widespread disenfranchisement, said Gronke, who heads the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Portland.

FILE PHOTO: Mail-in ballots for the upcoming congressional election in Orange County wait to be inspected by election workers at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana, California, U.S. October 30, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

Some are taking action. Wisconsin’s bipartisan election commission is working on adding new barcodes to ballot envelopes for tracking them in the mail, a move experts say would help the United States Postal Service process them more quickly. The commission also plans to mail absentee ballot applications to 2.7 million registered voters who are not already on absentee voter rolls, a move that should help reduce 11th-hour requests.

Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State likewise plans to mail absentee ballot applications to every voter ahead of November’s election, as Republican secretaries of state in Georgia and Iowa did for their June primaries.

Trump has criticized Michigan’s plan, and some Republican state lawmakers called it an unnecessary expense. The president and his allies nationwide have repeatedly said mail voting is prone to fraud, even as numerous independent studies have found little evidence of that.

Experts are most worried about battleground states that have little history of large-scale voting by mail, including Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. They are among the 24 states in which mail-in ballots comprised no more than 8% of ballots counted in 2018 midterm elections, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Failure by these states to prepare could lead to messy legal fights in the event of a close contest in November, said Edward Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University.

“If you have 10,000 voters that never got their ballots, or their ballots didn’t get returned by the post office and the statewide margin is 3,000, well now you have got litigation over the results,” Foley said.

The Postal Service has internally set delivery targets for election mail ranging between one and three days, according to an audit of election mail service by the USPS Inspector General published in November. But in the 2018 elections, about one in 20 political and election mailings took longer than targeted, the audit found.

In a statement to Reuters, the Postal Service said it is holding discussions with state and local election officials nationwide on how to design their mailings for efficient processing and delivery.

Some voting rights advocates worry these efforts don’t go far enough. Setting an earlier deadline for requesting a ballot could also make it harder for people to vote if they contract the coronavirus or have other problems just before the election, said Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

Miller is advocating that Ohio send ballot applications to all registered voters and set up more drop boxes so that concerned voters can deposit ballots there.

“I think it’s reasonable for an Ohioan to be worried about putting their ballot in the mail,” Miller said.

(For a graphic on the share of U.S. voters who cast mail ballots, see: https://tmsnrt.rs/2XvVajc)

‘TERRIFIC CHALLENGES’

April elections in Wisconsin and Ohio, which included presidential nomination contests, offered a preview of what could happen if the coronavirus is raging in November and in-person voting is severely restricted.

After Ohio sharply curtailed in-person voting, election officials were inundated with roughly 2 million applications for mail-in ballots – more than six times the number of mail ballots cast in the 2016 primary. But as they scrambled to process the requests, they discovered that some ballots mailed out to voters took as long as nine days to reach them.

What was not known to them at the time, and which Reuters has exclusively learned, was that a coronavirus outbreak was ravaging a mail sorting facility in neighboring Michigan called the Michigan Metroplex, delaying election mail bound for northwestern Ohio.

At least two workers at the Detroit-area plant died after testing positive for COVID-19, and hundreds of its roughly 700 union workers were out sick or in quarantine on many days between mid-March and mid-April, according to Roscoe Woods, the head of the local branch of the American Postal Workers Union.

Letters were shipped to Ohio unsorted, forcing local post offices there to organize mail manually for delivery, Woods told Reuters.

“I don’t think anyone was prepared for the level of infection,” Woods said.

The Postal Service told Reuters it was investigating the matter, but would not confirm a coronavirus outbreak at the Metroplex. A spokesman for the office of LaRose, the Ohio Secretary of State, said the Postal Service confirmed the Metroplex was the problem facility.

LaRose said the experience left him with big concerns about November. He anticipates as many as 60% of Ohio’s ballots will be cast by mail, triple the percentage from 2016.

“I hope we never have to have an all vote-by-mail election again,” he said.

In Wisconsin, an important battleground state that was decided in Trump’s favor by less than a percentage point in 2016, about 1.3 million voters applied for absentee ballots for its April 7 primary, overloading officials accustomed to issuing only a fraction of that number.

In a May 15 report, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said 2,659 ballots were tossed out because they arrived after April 13, the last day ballots postmarked by Election Day could be counted. The commission does not know how many of these were postmarked in time, spokesman Reid Magney said.

The commission said it expects “terrific challenges” in November. It estimates more than half the state’s 3.4 million registered voters could request mail ballots. In November 2016, just under 150,000 – or about 5% of three million votes – were cast by mail.

In North Carolina, another competitive state, the state election board expects 30% to 40% of ballots to be cast by mail and is working to implement new barcodes on all ballot envelopes, said Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the board.

Mail ballots that arrive at North Carolina election offices up to three days after the election are counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.

But Jason Roberts, a Democratic member of the board of elections for Orange County, North Carolina, said he saw scores of ballots in the state’s March primary that were postmarked in time but arrived four or five days after the election.

“I would be hesitant to vote by mail in North Carolina on Election Day given what I’ve seen,” Roberts said.

(Reporting by Jason Lange in Washington; Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Detroit; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Marla Dickerson)

Long lines, face masks in Wisconsin as voters head to polls despite coronavirus

By John Whitesides and Joseph Ax

(Reuters) – Wisconsin voters faced long lines at limited polling locations on Tuesday, as the state’s presidential primary and local elections moved ahead despite mounting fears about the coronavirus outbreak.

Outside Riverside High School in Milwaukee – where officials were forced to close 175 of 180 normal voting sites due to a lack of poll workers – masked voters stood several feet apart in a line that stretched for several blocks early on Tuesday, according to video taken by onlookers and local news media.

More than half of Wisconsin’s municipalities reported shortages of poll workers, prompting the Midwestern state to call up 2,400 National Guard troops to assist.

The election took place even though Wisconsin, like most U.S. states, has imposed a stay-at-home order on its residents. More than a dozen other states have postponed their elections in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has transformed Americans’ daily lives and plunged the economy into an apparent recession.

A flurry of 11th-hour legal wrangling failed to stop the balloting, as two late court rulings on Monday put the election, which will include Democratic and Republican presidential primaries and voting for thousands of state and local offices, back on track after days of uncertainty.

In deciding separate lawsuits brought by Republicans, the state Supreme Court blocked Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ order to delay the election until June and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal judge’s decision extending absentee voting, instead ruling ballots must be postmarked by Tuesday to be counted.

“Now voters will be forced to choose between their health and their right to vote, an untenable choice that responsible public officials tried to avoid,” said Satya Rhodes-Conway, the Democratic mayor of Madison, Wisconsin.

The legal maneuvering overshadowed the Democratic presidential primary in Wisconsin, the first nominating contest held since March 17 in the race to pick a challenger to Republican President Donald Trump for the Nov. 3 election. The outbreak has pushed front-runner Joe Biden and rival Bernie Sanders off the campaign trail.

Former Vice President Biden has built a nearly insurmountable lead over Senator Sanders in the delegates who will pick the nominee at the national convention this summer. The convention, scheduled to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has been postponed to August from July by the pandemic.

After a late-night meeting on Monday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said no results of Tuesday’s voting would be released until April 13, the deadline for absentee ballots postmarked by Tuesday to be received.

In Milwaukee, the health commissioner in Wisconsin’s biggest city, Jeanette Kowalik, asked voters to wear masks, avoid reusing pens and stand at least six feet apart.

“I’m sorry, I wish I had the authority to protect us from this,” she wrote on Twitter.

(Reporting by John Whitesides and Joseph Ax; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Jonathan Oatis)

Israeli challenger Gantz plays character card against Netanyahu

By Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Former military chief Benny Gantz portrays himself as a straight-shooter who will restore simple values to Israel if he wins power in the country’s third election in less than a year.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man Gantz wants to oust in Monday’s election, once praised him as “an officer and a gentleman” when his government appointed him Chief of Staff of the armed forces eight years ago.

The tone is very different now.

Gantz, who leads the centrist Blue and White party, has been attacking Netanyahu’s character, mainly over corruption charges facing Israel’s longest-serving leader, and the prime minister’s right-wing Likud party has branded Gantz a weak leftist.

Netanyahu’s trial is set to begin on March 17, just two weeks after the election. Netanyahu, who at 70 is a decade older than Gantz, denies any wrongdoing, calling the investigation a witch-hunt.

“The man charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust has nothing to sell other than disseminated lies and slung mud,” Gantz tweeted about Netanyahu a week before the election. “Israel needs a full-time prime minister.”

But while Blue and White has talked up Gantz’s military background, Likud has sought to portray their opponent as soft on Iran and too conciliatory toward the Palestinians.

Gayil Talshir, a Hebrew University political scientist, said Israel still appeared to be split, reflecting the inconclusive outcome of elections in April and September last year in which neither party could form a ruling coalition.

Blue and White led Likud in opinion polls for weeks during this campaign but recent surveys have shown Likud pulling slightly ahead.

“The trial is super-important… the center and left in Israel is going against Netanyahu,” Talshir said. “But his (Netanyahu’s) own base is rallying around Netanyahu.”

‘PROPER CONDUCT’

Tall and athletic, with a fondness for folk singing and motorcycle riding, Gantz was a consensus figure for Israelis when chief of the conscript military between 2011 and 2015.

But what he would do in power is not entirely clear, as he has sent mixed messages.

He casts himself as more diplomatically accommodating than Netanyahu, urging redoubled efforts to restart peace talks.

But while Palestinians may prefer Gantz to Netanyahu, there is little fondness for him after two wars in the Gaza Strip, a self-governing Palestinian enclave, while Gantz was in charge of the Israeli military. About 2,300 Palestinians were killed in the fighting.

He has also publicly embraced U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan, which was rejected outright by the Palestinians for what they see as pro-Israel bias.

While Netanyahu holds rallies around the country exhorting his right-wing supporters to turn out, Gantz’s party believes some may be persuaded to peel away by a cross-partisan appeal to “proper conduct.”

“Our polls indicate that a considerable number of Likud supporters are unhappy with the situation and are wavering,” Yoaz Hendel, one of the party’s lawmakers, told Reuters. “They are part of our focus.”

Gantz’s “Mr Clean” image took a knock last week when police announced an investigation into the conduct of a now-defunct security consultancy that he chaired after he left the military.

Gantz is not a suspect in the case, but Netanyahu seized on it to try to undermine his less experienced opponent.

Gantz has also made occasional stumbles in campaign interviews, getting an interviewer’s name wrong and stammering slightly while collecting his thoughts.

Netanyahu has used these stumbles as ammunition to accuse Gantz as lacking the capacity for quick thinking.

“So I don’t speak like you. Big deal,” Gantz responded brusquely during a televised speech on Wednesday. “While you were taking acting classes in New York, I was defending this country.”

 

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

‘From bad to worse’ – Dashed hopes may deter many Iranians from polls

By Babak Dehghanpisheh

DUBAI (Reuters) – Confrontation with America, economic hardship and an airline tragedy have battered Iranians’ confidence in their leaders, posing a potential problem for the authorities in a parliamentary election this week.

As the Feb. 21 vote nears, Iranians are in a gloomy mood, exhausted by a succession of crises that have helped to shred the hopes for a better life they harbored only four years ago.

That does not bode well for leaders seeking a big turnout at the ballot box: In their view, crowded polling stations would signal to arch-foe Washington that Iran is unbowed by sanctions and the killing of a prominent general in a U.S. strike.

Allies of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have ensured hardliners dominate the field — meaning that, whatever the turnout, security hawks seeking a more confrontational approach with Washington may tighten their control of the legislature.

But a meager showing would still rattle Iran’s leaders and embolden critics both in the country and outside who argue the Islamic Republic needs to change domestic and foreign policy.

“I’m a person who has voted before. My hope was that things would get a little better when I voted in the past. Now, all the red lines have been crossed,” said a doctor in Tehran whose clinic is struggling to source specialized medicine.

“This time, I have no hope and I will definitely not vote,” she said by phone, asking not to be identified discussing political matters.

Four years ago, things looked very different. Rouhani and his allies won big gains in parliamentary elections, and many hoped a nuclear deal agreed with world powers in 2015 would pull Iran out of political isolation and boost the economy.

“WE HAVEN’T SEEN ANY PROGRESS”

Those aspirations crumbled after President Donald Trump quit the pact in 2018 and reimposed sanctions in an effort to put stricter limits on Iran’s nuclear work, curb its ballistic missile program and end its involvement in regional proxy wars.

“The main root of everything is the economy,” Ali, a mobile phone shop employee in the central city of Isfahan, said by telephone, asking not to reveal his surname.

“If an individual doesn’t have the money to take home bread to his wife and family then he’ll stop praying and even lose his beliefs,” said Ali, who works more hours since his boss kept the store open in traditional afternoon resting periods in the hope customers could wander in. Ali does not plan to vote next week.

“I voted for several years and it didn’t make any difference. We haven’t seen any progress to say we want this or that candidate to come forward,” he said.

The authorities have been under pressure since last year when protests over a fuel price hike were met with the bloodiest crackdown since the 1979 Islamic revolution, killing hundreds.

A U.S. drone strike that felled top commander Qassem Soleimani in January in Iraq rallied Iranians around a common cause. But the show of support was quickly replaced by angry protests over efforts to cover up the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner that killed all 176 aboard.

The elite Revolutionary Guards apologized for the calamity, but that did not appease thousands protesting in several cities.

“This year, things are going from bad to worse,” said a Tehran resident and homemaker, who does not plan to vote and also asked not to be named.

“After the plane crash, the government has lost a lot of their supporters,” said the resident, who added that the establishment needed the election to show the world “how many supporters they have” after the string of crises.

Even before the latest troubles, sanctions that cut Iran’s crude oil exports by more than 80 percent were placing a painful squeeze on living standards.

The rial has slumped, trading on the free market at about 140,000 against the dollar against its official rate of 42,000, according to foreign exchange website Bonbast.com

VOTING FOR “HARD REVENGE”

The currency plunge has disrupted Iran’s foreign trade and boosted inflation, which the IMF expects at 31% this year.

In the eastern city of Birjand, Hamed said he has no time for elections as he frets about his business filming and photographing weddings, with only one in 10 customers asking for albums after the cost of photo paper rose six-fold since 2018.

“We’re focused on prices and having to call customers and asking them to pay,” Hamed told Reuters by phone, also declining to give his surname due to sensitivities. “We have nothing to do with politicians and politics.”

Analysts expect a lower turnout than the 62% in the 2016 parliamentary elections, with smaller, more conservative cities where families pressure kin to vote seeing a larger showing.

But Khamenei, Iran’s highest authority, has tried to drum up nationalistic sentiment to secure a strong turnout.

“It’s possible that someone doesn’t like me but if they like Iran they must come to the ballot box,” he said in a speech.

Supporters echoed the call on social media.

“A better election can also be another #hard_revenge,” a Twitter user named Teiaaraa posted two weeks ago, referring to a phrase used by state media for the Iranian strikes on Iraq bases that left over 100 U.S. soldiers with traumatic brain injuries.

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; additional reporting by Davide Barbuscia; Editing by Ghaida Ghantous, William Maclean)

China rattles saber – and offers friendship – days before Taiwan’s elections

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – With just days to go before Taiwan’s elections, its giant neighbor is trying a push-and-pull strategy on the island Beijing claims as Chinese territory, rattling its saber while trying to coax electors with outwardly friendlier policies.

Taiwan, which says it is an independent country, has long been wary of Chinese attempts to sway its elections in favor of candidates who may look more kindly upon Beijing.

Fear of China has become a major element in the campaign, boosted not only by the anti-government protests in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong but also by a speech Chinese President Xi Jinping gave in January outlining China’s “reunification” agenda, including threats of force.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and her team are pressing home a message that people need to “protect” Taiwan from China when they vote in the Jan. 11 presidential and parliamentary election.

On Thursday, Taiwan’s Defence Ministry said China had sailed another carrier group through the Taiwan Strait just weeks after the last mission.

Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu quickly took to Twitter to denounce it.

“There it goes again!” he wrote. “Military threats like this only toughen Taiwan’s determination to defend itself and preserve regional peace and stability.”

A few days before that, retired but influential Chinese General Wang Hongguang outlined at a state-media organized forum in Beijing how China could bring Taiwan to its knees by invading its outlying islands and “terrifying” Taipei into submission.

At the same time, China has rolled out policies promising better treatment for the Taiwanese business community, which has invested billions in China, and on Saturday revised a law to give those promises a firmer legal basis.

China has also encouraged Taiwanese abroad, even in places where Taiwan has its own representative offices, to seek consular help from Chinese embassies.

Taiwan says China has sinister intentions, and it must defend its freedoms.

Taiwan only enjoys democracy now after decades of struggle, Tsai’s running mate, William Lai, told supporters on Saturday.

“How can we go backwards, and become a second Hong Kong or Tibet?” he said.

China has ramped up pressure on Tsai since she won office in 2016, cutting off talks and flying bombers around Taiwan, believing she wants to push for the island’s formal independence.

Tsai says Taiwan is already an independent country: the Republic of China, its official name.

China may have overreached recently, said one senior foreign envoy in Taipei, describing Xi’s January speech as effectively “Xi campaigning for Tsai” because of how badly it was received in Taiwan.

‘WE WOULD WIN’

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Beijing doesn’t see it that way.

Jin Canrong, Deputy Dean of the School of International Studies at Beijing’s elite Renmin University and a government adviser, said Xi’s speech marked a shift in policy away from preventing independence to actively promoting “reunification”.

China is confident that it could successfully use force against Taiwan, he added.

“China really does have the military ability, which is the say the armed ability, to resolve the Taiwan issue,” Jin said. “Although we would pay a price, in the end we would win.”

Any invasion would be bloody and difficult, as Taiwan’s military is well-armed, though the island could probably not hold out for long unless U.S. forces came quickly to their aid, military experts have said.

Opposition presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu of the Kuomintang (KMT) party, which favors close ties with China and who is trailing in the polls, says the best way to deal with China is to talk to Beijing and stop demonizing the Chinese for electoral gain.

Han adviser Su Chi, a former general secretary of Taiwan’s National Security Council, said he believed Xi was actually a “dove among the hawks” when it came to Taiwan and wanted a peaceful solution.

“There are loud voices in the mainland for using force to reunify Taiwan, especially in the People’s Liberation Army. I think he (Xi) doesn’t really want this,” Su said.

But Tsai’s returning to office would not necessarily mean relations with China would continue to worsen, as Beijing may realize it must talk to her, said senior legislator Lo Chih-cheng of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

“If our party or our president continues to be in power, eventually China has to come to terms with the incumbent government. They refuse to talk to the DPP because they believe the KMT had a chance to come back,” he told Reuters at his campaign office in a Taipei suburb.

“After seeing the probable defeat of the KMT, leaders in Beijing may believe that in the foreseeable future the KMT may not come back to power again,” he added. “So it might be reasonable or sensible for them to come to terms with the DPP government.”

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Yimou Lee in Taipei and Gao Liangping in Beijing. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Gaza rocket sends Netanyahu to shelter during campaign rally: TV

ASHKELON, Israel (Reuters) – A rocket launched from the Gaza Strip at a southern Israeli city on Wednesday as it hosted a campaign rally by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prompted him to take shelter briefly before resuming the event, Israeli TV stations reported.

The Israeli military confirmed the launch against Ashkelon, which is 12 km (7.5 miles) from the coastal Palestinian enclave, and said the rocket was shot down by an Iron Dome air defense interceptor.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility in Gaza, which is under the control of Hamas Islamists and where a smaller armed faction, Islamic Jihad, exchanged fire with Israel during a two-day surge of violence last month.

Israeli TV stations showed Netanyahu, who is campaigning to keep the helm of the conservative Likud party in an internal election on Thursday, being escorted off a stage by bodyguards. The reports said he was taken to a shelter after sirens sounded.

It was the second such incident after a September appearance by Netanyahu in the nearby town of Ashdod was briefly disrupted by a rocket siren.

Israel sparked the November fighting in Gaza by assassinating Baha Abu Al-Atta, an Islamic Jihad commander it accused of ordering the launch against Ashdod.

“He (Al-Atta) is no longer around,” a video circulated on social media showed a smiling Netanyahu saying after he retook the stage in Ashkelon, to cheers from onlookers.

In a veiled threat to retaliate for Wednesday’s attack, he added: “Whoever tried to make an impression just now should pack his bags.”

While Netanyahu is widely expected to retain Likud’s leadership, he faces a tough battle ahead of a March general election in Israel – its third in a year, after he and his centrist rival Benny Gantz failed to secure majorities in two previous ballots. Netanyahu’s standing has been dented by an indictment on corruption charges that he denies.

Netanyahu’s failure to stem attacks from Gaza has been invoked by his political rivals.

“The situation in which Israeli citizens live at the mercy of terrorists and the prime minister of Israel is unable to tour parts of his country is a badge of shame on the security policy in the south – and a loss of deterrence that no sovereign country can accept,” Gantz, a former military chief, said in a statement on Wednesday.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Dan Grebler)