8 Hour Wait Times Reported at Georgia Early Voting Site; More Than 10 Million Votes Cast So Far in 41 States.
TAPPER: We have got breaking news for you now out of Gwinnett County, Georgia where early in-person voters are experiencing an insane wait time, frankly, eight hours to cast their votes right now. As CNN's Pamela Brown reports. It's just one of the many problems people across the country are already encountering as they try to cast ballots.</s>PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Another state, another day of hours and long lines and some mishaps as voters go to the polls. This time, Texas.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody has come out to vote here. Lines around the corner.</s>BROWN: Across the Lone Star State, Houston, South Austin, Ft. Hood, all with long lines as voters take advantage of the start of early voting. After waking up to news of a late night ruling upholding Republican Governor Greg Abbott's directive for one ballot drop box per county in the state. A major issue for densely populated counties where voters could spend more than an hour driving just to cast their vote.</s>CHRIS HOLLINS, HARRIS COUNTRY CLERK: More than 50 miles in some cases to drop off their mail ballot. It's unfair. It's prejudicial and it's dangerous.</s>BROWN: It comes a day after a similar start in Georgia where voters waited for hours to vote.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to be out here to be able to share my voice.</s>BROWN: Georgia is setting an early voting record with nearly 127,000 ballots cast. Today, no different. More voters, more long lines.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many people sacrificed before us so it's almost spit in their face if we don't take the time to show our kids, that they have this right and it's best used as early as possible.</s>BROWN: But voting rights advocates say it's not OK to make people wait like this.</s>HAROLD FRANKLIN, BOARD CHAIR, SOUTHEAST REGION, LAWYERS' COMMITTEE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER LAW, ATLANTA: There have been problems with poll pads, with ballot access cards and with, obviously, social distancing and it just taking a lot longer to process through lines.</s>BROWN: Also today, in Virginia the last day of voter registration saw the state's online registration system go down due to a severed cable prompting calls from some state leaders to extend the registration deadline. Meanwhile in California unofficial ballot drop boxes potentially illegal in the state as the state's Democratic Secretary of State and the Department of Justice is sending a cease and desist order to the California Republican Party to remove those ballot boxes in at least three counties.</s>ALEX PADILLA, CALIFORNIA SECRETARY OF STATE: This is wrong no matter who is doing it. It's not just the security of the ballot that's in question here. It is, you know, the transparency, voter confidence.</s>BROWN: The state Republican Party spokesman is telling CNN he believes the unofficial boxes are similar to giving the ballot to a family member to drop off which is legal in California.</s>BROWN: And in Georgia, where there's that eight-hour wait time at one of the polling locations, you noted there, Jake, we're also learning from the Secretary of State in Georgia that there's a 40 percent surge above the previous record of early voting just before the 2016 election. And I should also note in Virginia with the issues today with the deadline and voting registration, the governor there is saying he is trying to do everything he can to extend the deadline but he says he does not have the authority to do so -- Jake.</s>TAPPER: OK, Pamela Brown, thanks so much. Let's talk about this with CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson and Gloria Borger. Nia-Malika at least 10 million votes have already been cast in this race already, vote by mail or early voting, many states may not have a full count to share on election night. We need to have viewers and voters understand this. It might actually take days before states are done counting before we know who won the presidential election. Do you worry that the President has created so much doubt that his supporters will automatically believe that something nefarious is going on with the count even when nothing nefarious is?</s>GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. I mean if you think about Trump supporters, they're incredibly loyal to him, they essentially take on his beliefs whether or not his beliefs are rooted in facts or data or science. They essentially parrot his talking points. So, I do think that will likely happen on election day. There will be some sense that the votes that haven't been counted yet, those mail-in votes in particular are somehow less legitimate because they didn't come in. And we've the President over these last many, many weeks, essentially, say those votes -- and we know what votes he's talking about. Votes who are coming, you know, from Democratic cities and, you know, in blue states, those are votes he sees as illegitimate. It isn't the votes that might be from his own voters. He is, of course, encouraging them to vote by mail even as he cast doubt on mail-in voting more generally. We should be prepared for election week. It could be election weeks before we know the actual outcome. But just because it's delayed certainly doesn't mean that it's illegitimate as the President would have many, particularly his supporters believe.</s>TAPPER: And Gloria, let's be clear about this, I want to make sure voters understand this. Let's take what is shaping up to be the swing state, the battleground state, my home Commonwealth Pennsylvania, most of the people who are voting early are Democrats. They have requested vote by mail and a lot of Republicans, for whatever reason, probably because some of it is because President Trump has suggested that they shouldn't, are not doing it as much. It might be that more Trump supporters vote on election day itself than actually vote in totality. I have no idea what's going to happen. Maybe Trump will win Pennsylvania. Who knows. But there will clearly be an effort by Trump supporters if not by the President himself to say, the only votes that should count are the ones cast on election day and all these vote by mail shouldn't count. And that's not the law and that is disenfranchisement.</s>BORGER: Of course, it is, and here's the irony, of course, you see the lines today? Three weeks before election day. Imagine what the lines will be on election day. And the President has said, you know, only count the people who show up. Well, who knows if those counts are going to be able to be done by that night. I mean it seems to me that we're looking at a huge turnout. And by the way, the President has had a mixed message even on mail-in ballots which he says, well, mail-in ballots are terrible, don't do that, you can't trust them. They could be fraudulent. But on the other hand, if you vote absentee, that's OK. And we all know that there is absolutely no difference.</s>TAPPER: Yes.</s>BORGER: So it's confusing and what the President is doing is stirring the pot. So that anybody can raise a question even if it's crazy and it can be deemed illegitimate. Now why isn't the President out there screaming today about what's going on in California where there were these fake boxes distributed by Republicans?</s>TAPPER: Right.</s>BORGER: And they were caught. I haven't heard anything about President Trump about that, have you?</s>TAPPER: No. And I haven't heard him say anything about the fraud that went on in the North Carolina House race --</s>BORGER: Exactly.</s>TAPPER: -- in 2018 because that was committed by a Republican as well.</s>BORGER: Yes.</s>TAPPER: Nia-Malika, former President Obama we found out today will be stumping, hitting the campaign trail for Joe Biden, his former Vice President. Do you think he could actually help? What's the best way to deploy him theoretically?</s>NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: You know, listen, Biden has a different coalition than Obama does. Biden's coalition is much older, is much whiter. He's going to do much better among those groups than Obama did. I think for Obama, he did very well among Latino voters, younger voters, African-American voters as well. If you think about what happened in 2016, 4 million Obama voters who voted in 2012 stayed home in 2016. So those I think are the voters and many of those folks, about half were African-Americans. So I think that's where Obama can be most useful even though Biden's doing fairly well among African-Americans in terms of the percentage of voters, African-American voters who seem to back him in polls, you need to expand those numbers and really get turn-out to levels that Obama got in 2012.</s>TAPPER: And Gloria, Trump won Florida in 2016. Biden is campaigning there today. We're three weeks out from the election.</s>BORGER: Offense. He's on offense. You know, if you look at the states he is in -- Iowa, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania. You know, these are states that now Biden has been there, and Trump has got to go there. And Florida, of course, you're talking about election night. If you were to know that say, Biden won Florida on election night, then Trump's path really narrows to winning in the electoral college. If Trump were to win on election night, Florida, you would know that you were in for a very long period to sort of try and find out who won. Biden has a shot at Florida. He knows that it was close. He's going to go back. But here's what's also interesting, he is sending his wife to Georgia and to Texas. OK. Because look at suburban women. Those states, believe it or not, I mean they are not betting that Democrats can win them but they think they're in play.</s>TAPPER: Well, and apparently President Trump might also, Nia-Malika, President Trump is going to be holding a rally in Georgia. That's not a state that three weeks out he should be worried about.</s>HENDERSON: That's right. Georgia. He's also going to Iowa. This is troubling for his campaign at this point. And if you're Biden you want to be in these states also because of the down ballot, right? There's some very competitive House races both in Texas and Georgia, some Senate races as well. So, they are trying to cover all of their bases. But I think you would rather be at this point in Biden's position rather than Trump's.</s>TAPPER: All right, Gloria Borger, Nia-Malika Henderson, thanks to both of you, appreciate it. And welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. We begin the second hour with the 2020 LEAD. The U.S. is approaching 8 million coronavirus cases.