Good morning. President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Vice President Joe Biden will be in Minnesota today to kick off early voting in the general election. Biden plans to visit a union training center in Duluth Friday afternoon, and deliver remarks afterwards. Trump is scheduled to hold an airport hangar rally in Bemidji at 6 p.m.
Early and absentee balloting opens today in Minnesota, one of the first states in the country where voters can show their enthusiasm or just get their role in the election over with.
Patrick Gordon has been on a countdown to the day he’ll cast his 2020 ballot.
Gordon wants to avoid Election Day crowds because of a chronic respiratory condition. And he doesn’t trust that a mailed-in vote would get there without a hitch. So Friday morning, the retired factory worker planned to throw on a mask and head from his house outside the northwestern Minnesota city of Roseau to the county courthouse as early voting begins.
“I feel this is the safest way for me to cast my ballot, and it will be counted,” he said.
Election administrators, political party leaders and campaign officials suspect a lot of voters will cast ballots early this year. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic still has people jittery about standing in lines. And many have their minds made up.
How to: Vote by mail in Minnesota
If you have questions about early and mail-in voting, Secretary of State Steve Simon joins MPR News politics editor Mike Mulcahy on Politics Friday at 11 a.m.
If you want to see the political climate of Bemidji where Trump plans to visit tonight, look no further than Martha Vetter's front yard .
Last Wednesday she strolled through a small forest of homemade political signs along her rural road south of Bemidji. The signs didn’t used to be so numerous. She started out with just two. One for Joe Biden. One for Black Lives Matter.
“The first one that got stolen was the Black Lives Matter sign,” she said. “Then the Biden-Harris got stolen.”
Vetter keeps making them, and they keep getting stolen. The missing signs are a symptom of something deeper. Read more from MPR News reporter John Enger.
Biden's edge Jennifer Rubin writes in the Washington Post, “Biden leads by 11 points" in Minnesota "(30 points among women) on the question of which candidate voters trust to handle crime and safety. ... Biden’s lead among White women with college degrees is even higher than it is for women generally.”
Rep. Colin Peterson on Rep. Ilhan Omar: "I don’t defend her. She doesn’t belong in our party," (NY Post).
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