Candidates Back In Campaign Mode; Waiting For Absentee Ballots
MALVEAUX: Superstorm Sandy disrupted a campaigns of both the President and Mitt Romney, but the election just five days away. The candidates, they are shifting back now into campaign mode. President Obama, he held a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. That was just a short time ago. Now he is headed to Vegas and on to Denver. Mitt Romney, he's rallying with supporters in Roanoke, Virginia, and he's got two other stops in that crucial battleground state today. Both the president and Romney express concern for the people who are now struggling from that storm, but they also renewed their attacks. Take a listen.</s>MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A lot of people lost their lives. A lot of families have been devastated. A lot of homes have been lost and property lost and our hearts go out to the people who are suffering. I know the Obama folks are chanting four more years, four more years, but our chant is this. Five more days. Five more days it's our turn.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's no Democrats or Republicans during a storm. There are just fellow Americans. Leaders of different parties working to fix what's broken. Neighbors helping neighbors cope with tragedy. Communities rallying to rebuild. A spirit that says, in the end, we're all in this together. That we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Governor Romney has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up these very same policies that failed our country so badly. The very same policies we've been cleaning up after for the past four years.</s>MALVEAUX: Want to bring in Candy Crowley, host of CNN's "State of the Union." So, Candy, we're watching this, right? There are five more days. We're counting them down. It's the president's first day back in the fray. Tell us about this balancing act that he has to do here as role as comforter in chief and, at the same time, he's reapplying for his job, and he's running out of time.</s>CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. And I think you -- there are a couple of things going on here. You saw with both of them, they both mentioned the storm victims. Certainly there is still people suffering. There are still all these electrical outages all across the East Coast. People without their homes, people without their lively hoods, et cetera. So they both mention that, and then they go right into campaign mode. I think they are helped, in general, by the fact that the last five days tend to kind of ease voters to the polls. They tend to be when mostly the speeches, as we got closer and closer to that day, become more and more positive, more and more about the vision for America and that kind of thing. So that will help. But I don't think either one of them have had too much of a problem. As we saw in both those -- in all those clips, kind of balancing the disaster of the storm against what's necessary in campaigning.</s>MALVEAUX: I want to talk a little bit about the optics here, what things look like. You see the president today. He doesn't often wear the leather bomber jacket with -- emblazoned with Air Force One there. It does kind of give a sense, maybe even a look, of somebody who's on the ground, who's getting stuff done, who is dealing with this emergency situation. And then you've got the pictures of him and Governor Christie together as buds almost going through, touring the worst of Jersey shore and some of the other damage there. What do you make of it, Candy? How do you think these images play to voters?</s>CROWLEY: It always helps with voters being able to imagine somebody in the Oval Office. And clearly you don't have to do that with President Obama. He's been there almost four years. So the imagery around the presidency is awesome. We know that. We also know that when disasters happen, as both these men said, America comes together. I know that in New Jersey, in New York, in Connecticut, down the East Coast, there will be some problems with voting. They will figure it out. They have known for a couple of days this was coming. I find it hard to believe that on the basis of a president doing his job, essentially, that suddenly it's going to sway huge numbers of votes elsewhere. So while I see this storm affecting the voting in terms of like actual places people can go, actual voting places with electricity along the East Coast, I don't see the overall presidential picture changing because of the storm and because of the president doing his job.</s>MALVEAUX: OK. Thank you, Candy. Great segue for what we're going to talk about next because it's just five days before the election and we've got a new report that finds that dozens of people in Palm Beach County, Florida, who requested absentee ballots, they're still waiting for them. And Joe Johns, he's in Washington, he's keeping an eye on voter irregularities. Joe, you're looking at voter irregularities. Candy brought up a good point, too, which is whether or not people are actually going to be able to get to the polls in time to vote because of all the mess from this storm. What are you actually seeing when you take a look state by state or even big picture how this is shaking out?</s>JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, let's start with Palm Beach County, Florida, because, you know, some people will remember, Suzanne, it was one of the flash points in the 2000 election leading up to the Supreme Court decision essentially deciding the election in Bush versus Gore. As you know, we're rolling out the CNN vote watch for 2012 right now, putting a spotlight on the voting controversies and election issues. And we wanted to get on the record with our very latest reporting about Palm Beach. There have been some issues there with absentee ballots, including ballot printing errors, forcing officials there to order the recopying, by hand, of something like 27,000 absentee ballots. This issue's been going on a long time. We're told it's almost resolved. But now, as you mentioned, there's a new problem. A handful of voters, we don't know exactly how many, have reported that they never received absentee ballots that they requested. A Democratic source on the ground in Palm Beach told us on the phone today that this issue has actually been resolved, that those people who requested the absentee ballots have still gotten them. You know, we've reached out to the Palm Beach officials who have been cooperative with us in the past, I have to say that, to try to get a comment on this. So, yes, so we're looking into that. But state by state, Suzanne, you know, it's a very mixed bag and everybody's trying to figure out what they're going to be able to do as we move closer to Election Day, especially because of the storm.</s>MALVEAUX: And, Joe, a lot of us have been keeping a close eye on the early vote process. A lot of people voting before Election Day. Can you explain to us actually how that is count and whether or not that count comes -- the official count comes after everybody has voted. How does hat work?</s>JOHNS: Right. Well, you know, just about everything, when you talk about these big election days, happens state to state and sometimes county to county. So it's kind of a mixed bag. You talk to, you know, one state, they'll say one thing. Another state will say something else. Bottom line is, they have to get those votes out at least by the end of election night. And they'll do that by downloading whether it's an electronic device or it's a punch ballot device. They'll get those votes and tabulate them by Election Day. We talked to the folks in North Carolina. We've been using them a lot because they seem kind of cross-sectional and organized with their information. They say their state generally counts votes on election night. They use both punch ballot and electronic voting, and they download from the machines on the close of business then. Suzanne.</s>MALVEAUX: All right, sounds a little messy, but it's probably going to be a messy process to get all the votes in and counted. Thank you, Joe. Good to see you. We want you to weigh in on how the storm has actually affected your opinion of the candidates, if at all. CNN has partnered with FaceBook to create a new app called "I'm Voting." So first it asks you to commit to voting this election. We want you to vote. Second, shows you how your friends, your neighbors feel about a whole host of things. Just go to my FaceBook page, facebook.com/suzannecnn. Click on the "I'm Voting" app. Today you're going to see this question. Is it too soon to be campaigning after Superstorm Sandy? You can click "yes, they should focus on helping storm victims," or, "no, the election is just a few days away." We're going to share your responses later in the hour. Superstorm Sandy's impact on politics just a small hiccup compared to the tragedies that many people are now trying to overcome.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's rough. It's -- you know, emotionally it's devastating.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm sorry.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's OK.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm so sorry.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going through bouts of --</s>MALVEAUX: Just take a look at all the damage.