32 2GM Monday July 27 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
With 99 days to go until the US presi-
dential election, half of American
voters have already decided that they
will not be backing President Trump,
giving him a mountain to climb in his
push for re-election.
Many national surveys are giving Joe
Biden, the Democratic challenger, a
double-digit lead, with barely 13 per
cent of voters remaining undecided,
according to polling for The Wall Street
Journal and NBC News.
Mr Trump’s polarising presidency
seems to have squeezed the pool of
voters who can be persuaded to switch
to his camp during the intense final
three months of a campaign that is
expected to be the most expensive and
one of the most aggressive in American
history.
He won in 2016 by targeting voters in
Rust Belt areas that have suffered sig-
nificant industrial decline in recent
years, promising jobs and curbs on
immigration and globalisation. He was
able to grab five states that had backed
Barack Obama four years earlier but
local polling suggests that he now lags
behind by large margins in Michigan
and Pennsylvania, mirroring a shift in
other battleground states.
Registered voters nationally were
backing Mr Biden over Mr Trump by
51 per cent to 40 per cent, the WSJ/NBC
poll found, in line with several other
recent surveys.
Mr Trump, 74, and his campaign
team dismiss the research carried out
for mainstream media outlets as “sup-
pression polling” designed to demoral-
ise his support base. They insist that
there is a “silent majority” who will not
disclose their pro-Trump intentions to
pollsters but will vote for the incumbent
on the day.
Jeff Horwitt, a Democratic pollster
who compiled the latest figures with a
Republican colleague, was sceptical. He
told The Wall Street Journal: “Right now
Trump’s down 11 points. This is a group
he’s got to run the table with. He’s got to
win all of them.”
The poll ratings did not go down well
with the president, who, as is usual,
quickly fired off a response on Twitter.
“The Trump Campaign has more
ENTHUSIASM, according to many,
than any campaign in the history of our
great Country — Even more than
2016,” he wrote. “Biden has NONE! The
Silent Majority will speak on NOVEM-
BER THIRD!!! Fake Suppression Polls
& Fake News will not save the Radical
Left.”
The polling identified the crucial
undecided voter as predominantly
male, conservative-leaning and young-
er; one reason why Mr Trump may
have chosen the laddish Barstool Sports
website for an interview released late
on Friday. He told the outlet: “The best
day in my life in terms of business and
life and everything, was the day before
I announced I’m running for president.
Now I’m really glad I did but I was treat-
ed very unfairly.”
The Trump campaign is aiming to
repeat what it did in 2016 and pull off an
The solemn final crossing of a historic
bridge in Alabama by the horse-drawn
funeral carriage of John Lewis marked
a stark contrast to the violent protests
in several US cities yesterday.
The civil rights leader, who was 80,
was beaten by police and suffered a
fractured skull after leading a march
across the Edmund Pettus bridge in
Selma in 1965, on a day that became
known as Bloody Sunday.
There are two petitions to rename
the bridge after Mr Lewis, replacing the
name of Pettus who was an Alabama
senator, a Confederate army officer and
grand dragon in the Ku Klux Klan.
Yesterday Mr Lewis’s coffin, draped
in the American flag, was watched in
respectful silence as it was pulled by a
pair of horses through the city where
police violence 55 years ago led toFines scheme
a slam-dunk
Half of Americans
‘won’t back Trump’
using the late president’s name and
likeness. That was in response to a
fundraising email seeking a $45 dona-
tion for limited-edition coins, sent to
supporters from “Donald J Trump”
with the subject line “Ronald Reagan
and Yours Truly”.
The commemorative set featured
two gold-colour coins, one with an
image of Mr Reagan and the other of
Mr Trump, mounted with a 1987 photo-
graph of a handshake at the White
House.
“WOW, these coins are beautiful — I
took one look and immediately knew
that I wanted YOU to have a set,” the
email declared.
The offer was for “my TOP SUP-
PORTERS ONLY”. It continued:
“These aren’t any ordinary coins. They
symbolise an important time in our
Nation. I’ve authorised a very limited
production of these iconic coins.”
Michael Ahrens, communications
director for the Republican National
Committee, which had backed the pro-
motion, said: “Given that the Reagan
Foundation just recently hosted the
Trump family to raise money for its
organisation and has not objected to us
using President Reagan’s likeness
before, their objection came as a sur-
prise. Even though we believe our use of
the image was appropriate, we will stop
emailing this fundraising solicitation as
a courtesy.”
Mr Trump is locked in battle with
some Republicans on Capitol Hill over
the latest coronavirus relief legislation.
He has backed down over demands for
a payroll tax cut but arguments con-
tinue to rage over what should be in the
bill, with the $600-a-week support pay-
ments for laid-off workers due to expire
this week.
Mr Biden, 77, had his own problems in
Florida at the weekend, with 94 field
organisers sending a letter of complaint
to the state Democratic Party claiming
that his campaign was “suppressing the
Hispanic vote” and mistreating staff.
The letter, leaked to the Miami Her-
ald, alleged that the campaign arbitrari-
ly relocated staff members after several
Puerto Rican organisers were allegedly
moved from a heavily Puerto Rican
part of Florida to north Florida
against their wishes.
The team “failed to confront a
system of white-dominated
politics we are supposed to
be working against as
organisers of a pro-
gressive party”, the
letter stated.
The Biden cam-
paign said negoti-
ations were
under way to try
to resolve the
issues raised.
Mr Biden
tweeted a simple
message yesterday: “100
days.”
The Trump War
Room Twitter account
responded in the usual
style of Mr Trump and
his supporters, firing
back: “Until you lose.”United States
David Charter Washington
A group co-founded by the
basketball star LeBron James is
helping to pay off fines and jail
fees owed by hundreds of
thousands of Florida voters that
would otherwise prevent them
taking part in the presidential
election in November (David
Charter writes).
More Than A Vote aims to
“combat systemic racist voter
suppression” by supporting the
Florida Rights Restoration
Coalition, which wants to pay the
fees for all former convicts in the
state other than murderers and
sex offenders.
Florida voted in a referendum in
2018 to scrap its lifetime voting
ban for felony convicts, allowing
them to participate once they had
served their sentence. However, it
adopted a law last year requiring
the settlement of all court fines
and fees before the restoration of
voting rights; a law upheld by the
US Supreme Court last week.
In 2016 a study found that more
than six million Americans were
barred from voting because of a
criminal conviction, accounting
for one in 40 adults, but one in 13
black voters. Voting is prohibited
for prisoners still in jail in all but
Maine and Vermont.
An estimated 775,000 of the
1.4 million Florida residents who
have completed jail sentences and
probation still owe fines or fees for
services in prison such as training
or medical treatment. At least one
in five is black, a higher rate than
the general population.
“This is a fight about their
constitutional right to vote being
denied,” said James, below, a
former Miami Heat star who now
plays for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Udonis Haslem, 40, a Miami
Heat player who is also a member
of More Than A Vote, added: “We
believe that your right to vote
shouldn’t depend upon whether
you can pay to exercise it.”
Four other US states
require payment of all
fines and fees before
restoring voting rights:
Alabama, Arizona,
Arkansas and
Tennessee.unlikely
victory by
luring
Americans
who do not
usually vote.
The campaign was embar-
rassed at the weekend by a de-
mand from the Ronald Reagan
Presidential Foundation and
Institute that it stop raising cash byLast journey of civil
David CharterJohn Lewis’s funeral carriage passed members of his family on the bridge whereground-breaking civil rights legislation.
Elsewhere, however, the weekend
was marred by protests arising from
this summer’s disturbances after the
police killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis at the end of May.
In Portland protesters again laid
siege to a court building defended by
federal officers ordered in by President
Trump. “These are tactics we expect
from an authoritarian regime, not our
democracy,” a letter from the mayors of
several major cities to the Trump
administration said.
A riot was declared in Seattle as a
demonstration in solidarity with Port-
land boiled over into running battles
with police, who arrested 45 activists.
A man said to have been holding a
rifle was shot dead in Austin, Texas.
Witnesses told the Austin Statesman
newspaper that a vehicle drove into a
group of protesters. The victim was