captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc >> woodruff: good evening, i'm judy woodruff. on the newshour tonight, the final stretch-- candidates campaign hard in the all- important swing states with only five days to go until the end of voting. then, the state of the economy. despite rong jobs numbers, the pandemic recovery slows down as the prident's manufacturing promises fail to materialize. and, the information war-- attems foreign governments to mislead american voters and sow distrust in election results co with new, sophisticated digital techniques. >> the goal is to cause chaos and distrust in the institutions that govern our democracy and frankly, to cause discord between americans themselves. oodruff: all that and mo on tonight's pbs newshour.

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>> woodruff: for the presidential cdidates, the urgency is growing tonight. every minute counts as electiyon looms closer. and, every rally represents a fleeting chance to tip critical states into their columns. white house correspondent yamiche alcindor reports on this day. >> alcindor: five days until the election. and, increasingly, both presidential campaigns are holding dueling rallies in the same battleground states, on the same days. today, it was florida, a state that has backed the winning 29 electoral votes at stake.th president trump held his rally in tampa a continued to ouwnplay the rise in covid-19 cases around thery. >> we're never going to lock down again. we locked down, understood the disease, and now we'refo ope business and that's what it is.

our vaccine will eradicate the virus, and by the way, we have it and whether we have it or not, it's rounding the turn. it's rounding the turn. >> alcindor: to date, the u.s. has reported roughly 8.9 micolln nfirmed infections and some 228,000 deaths. the democratic candidate, former vice president joe biden, has blamed the president's handling of the covid crisis for the extent of the viral spread. florida, he urged people to vote. >> millions of americans are already voting. millions more are going tvote by the end of this week. and i believe when you use your power, the power to vote, you're going to change the course ofr the country nerations to come at home and abroad. you hold the key. if florida goes blue, it's over! it's over! >> alcindor: mr. biden has also pledged to create a force to reunite more than 500 migrant children separated from their families. that comes on the heels of a

lawsuit by the american civilie libeunion which estimated that 545 immigrant children have ommained separated heir parents since 2017. call yesterday, whusegn phone adviser stephen miller was asked if the government could reunite the families. he answered by claiming that the trump ministration "kept families together." as for the runninmates, vice decratically-controlled house judiciary committee released a fi -00 page report on theump administration's family separation policy. the findings concluded the government initiated separations a year before expanding the policy nationwide,nd it did so knowing there was no plan to reunite them. as for the as for the running matesenvice presidmike pence focused his campaign efforts in iowa before heading to nevada. wher kamala harris spent the day attending virtual events.t cord numbers of americans have already made theirsi de, as evidenced by the lines at early voting stations. across the country, voters have

spent hours waiting to cast their ballots. madison myers of atlanta was one of them. >> i'm really surprised at myself that i stayed in the line because when i was at the end of it at the back, i actually wanted to get back in my car. >> alcindor: more than 80 million americans ve already cast their ballots for next week's election. for the pbs newshour, i'm yamiche alcindor. od >> woodruff: provided the last major economic data before the election, and it ge the president some good news. economic output this past quarter grew at the fastest pace on reco sce world war ii: 7.4%. that's a sharp rebound from the record plunge of the previous quarter. but 23 million people are still ceivinunemployment assistance. one more data point: as theid prt and vice president

biden visit midwesrn states in the final days, a new analysis finds private job grth in michigan, wisconsin and ohio was about half the national erage during the past four years. david lynch of the "washingtti post" is rep on all of this and joins me now. david lynch, welcome. so this news about economic very good-- 7.4% in the third previous quarter.ng down 9% e but put it in context. how much of a boun-back is it? >> well, the good news is it was a very strong quarter. but it came aft a terrible quarter, of course, in theon squarter, when the economy was put in a deep freeze as lewe bathe pandemic. in context, we've clawed back about two-thirds of what we lost since the pandemic het.

but this is still a deeply damaged economy that has a lotli more h to do. >> woodruff: and you were talking to us about the effect of a stimulus package. there was ne in the spring. as we know, there has not been ther onet on ano just today the speaker and the white house were trading charges about who's at fault. how much difference might it be making right now if there were another economic aid package? well, is is critical dimension. this is one of the main eines at powered the strong growth in the third quarter, and it's petered out. and you don't have to take my word for it. the chairman of the feder reserve, jerome powell, and other fed officials have been remarkably blunt in their public statements saying the congress and the administration need to do much more to keep the economy going. and since that stimulus is now gone, effectively, and it will

there's a chance to cobbleore together a new package, the avonomy is going toe to fly on its own at the moment, and all engines are not running. >> woodruff: david lynch, can you say in a nutshell what parts of the economy haveback and which are still struggling? >> sure. there's beena major reallocation below the surface of the economy, from services spending to goods. people are out there buying cars, buying homes, buying refrigerators. and they're using all the money, in many cases that they would have spent at restaurants, at hotel, on airplane flights, at theater performances, baseball games-- all th things that people don't feel safe doing with the pandemic still prevalent and, indeed, sprealyng uncontrolln many parts of the country. there's been this shift from that's causing, or coincident

with a reallocaon of labor people who used to work behind the desk at a hotel or a rental car counter at the airporhave been laid off, and nown must d other work. and that's why the labor market is stilluc in soh trouble and will probably lag output as we continue to recover. >> woodruff: and, meantime, there is manufacturing. we were very well president trump early on after h was elected said that he was going to focus on buding up manufacturing in this country. he made promises about keeping jobs from going out of the country. how has that worked out? >> well, it's been something less than a complete success. the presiden did have a good performance in the first couple of years f his administration in terms of bringing back, or at least growing some manufacturing jobs-- almost 500,000 new jobs in the first couple of years. but that growth started to taper off in the middle of 201 and

really was down to ve little by late fall of last year, even before the pandemic hit and threw things into reverse. if you take the longer view, the country is still about five million manufacturing jobs below where it was in the year 2000, before china joined the w .t.o., finstance, and the sort of broad repriation of factory jobs that the president promised and that he continues to promise now, if he has a second term, has yet to materialize. >> woodruff: so, bottom le, what about the jobs that the president promised he was going keep in this untry? and, specifically, companies like the carrier corporation in indiana? >> sure. well, that was really the signature initiativeof his first days as president-elect. you recall he leaned quite hard on the c.e.o. of carriers corporate parent at the time to

try and keep several hundred jobs in indianapolis that the company had earmarked to send to mexico. and the president did have limited succs there. he was able to get the company to agree to keep about 800o jbs there, but another 1300 carrier jobs moved offshore soonfter. more broadly, other companies in indiana, of course, havet continued their own reallocation of labor, sending jo to places like mexico, china, and india. so even if it's nontt uing with the same steady flood that we saw in the firrsst y of the 21st century, it does continue, and it continues because companies are responding to more than just presidential exoritation and the bully pulpit.ak they've got tothe bottom line work, and until factors like worker training and

education and the like are dealt with in a more comprehensivehe way, logic still drives them to other places. >> woruff: complicated picture, and very tough for people who work fothose companies in that sector. david lynch of the "whington post," we thank you very much. >> sure. mb woodruff: in the day's other news, stark new s underscored the worsening covid- 19 pandemic. the world alth organization reported a weekly record of one and a half-million new cases across europe. in berlin, german chancellor angela merkel warned of a hard winter, who claim there's no need for new restrictions. >> ( translated ): we are in a dramaticituation, and it affects us all. the situation is wor bing and canntalked away.

wishful thinng trivializations are not justhf untr, they are >> woodruff: here at home, tallies of new infections hit new records today, in at least seven states. remnants of hurricane "zeta" raceacross the southern u.s. today, leaving widespread damage, power outages and at least six dead. high winds uprooted trees and knocked out electricity to several million customers from new orleans to atlan and beyond. the governor of louisiana, where "zeta" made landfall last night, >> i want to remind everybody that its not the storm principally that causes folks to be hurt or killed. its the immediate aftermath, when the clean up parts, and whple run generators and so forth. really asking everybody to be cautious. t >> woodruf worst damage appeared to be in several towns along the louisianan

mississippi coasts. the most powerful typhoon to hii nam in 20 years has killed 35 people and left dozens missing. it slammed into the central provinces on wednesday, triggering a series of floods and landslides. rescuers have been digging for survivors anusing bulldoers to clear roads. naval vessels are searching for fishermen whose boats sank. there's word that at least 140 migrants drowned last weekend off west africa. the u.n.'s international organization of migration says it was the deadliest such incient this year. the vessel burned and sank off senegal as it was ying to reach spain's canary islands nearly 900 miles away. migrant arrivals in the canarys have risen sharply this year, dbut more than 400 have d in the attet. france is onaximum alert tonight, after a man with a knife killed three people at a church in nice.

police say the attacker wasre a muslim est from tunisia.nd he was woued and captur. president emmanuel macron visited the church later. he announced he is more than doubling the number of soldiers deployed to protect against terrorist incidents. >> ( message of complete strength that i would like to convey today. and it's also a mess unity. and i would like to say to all of our citizens, whatever their religion, if they believe or not, that we have to, in these momes, come together and n give in to the spirit of >> woodruff: france has suffered a series of recent attacks, over cartoons of the ophet muhammad -- offensive to muslims. turkey, in particular, denounced publication of the cartos. turkish president recep tayyip erdogan accused macron islamophobia. back in this country, hospitals may be under threat of so-called ransomware attacks, disrupting patient care as virus cases spike.

the f.b.i. and oth agenci warn that a russian cyber gang is tying up crucial systemsai until money is we'll return to this, later in the program. the u.s. interior department removed gray wolves from the dangered species list toy. the decision could allow wolf nts in the presidential battleground states of michigan, minnesota and wisconsin. conservation groups fought a similar move under the obama administration, and vow to fight this one. and, on wall street, the day's economic reports helped stocks rebound a bit after wednesdayses bill-off. the dow jones industrial average gained 139 points to close at 26,659. the nasdaq rose 180 points, and, the s&p 500 added 39. still to come on the newshour: widespre burn across the western u.s. foreign attempts to mislead american voters and sow distrust in election results continue.

we examine the state the myriad initiatn grabs and ballots nationwide. plus much more. >> woodruff: in a number of states out west, there's been little reliefrom a record breaking fire season that's burned more than five million acres. the latest troubles have included a pair of fires near irvine in southern california that are final being contained d had forced tens of thousands to evacuate until now. in colorado, the east troublesome and cameron peak fires burned more than 600 square miles before snow fell.

we have trio of dispatches from public media reporters on what communities are facing right now. >> i'm maggie nolan, report for the mount west news bureau in wyoming, and i have been covering wildfires in this region for the last four years. so the wildfire season in the mountain west has really been amvaried. for e, idaho has had a fairly average season, whereas somewhere like colorado, and even wyoming, we have seen some historic fires. the molan fire wasone of the biggest wyoming has ever seen, and of course in colorado tn he cameak fire is the biggest colorado has ever seen in its recorded history. talso, the eastoublesome fire. that really took off and is currently 92,000 acres. of course, evacuations are never easy, but they're made even more complicated ring a pandemic. you can't really usthe usual playbook. you can't squeeze people into a gymnasium, so is meant folks

having to shuffle into mohel hotel rooms or stay with family or friends that they know, but not everyoneas families in those areas. recently, snow fell in colorado, which was a huge blessing. it helped really cool dthat fire activity and really give a benefit to these firefighters that are out there. but, you know, where those real hot spots, where there's really dense vegetation, ose hot spots might be smoldering well into the fall. >> i'm sharon mcnary, i'm aes condent for kpcc, southern california public radio. i've been covering fires for decades.en and this has a record year for fires in californloia. of the place where's fires burn in southern california are places where homes have been built right up into the foothills and the mountains. and the mountains want to burn, the homes don'tant to burn, and they're, like, right next to each other. and the firefighters are backyards with hoses and, you

know, chain saws to keep the fire from overrunning e houses. when you have a fire like the bob cat fire that started september 6 in the midst of a, heat wat put so much smoke and ash into the air, the air quality levels were some of the unhealthiest that we've seen is. deca and wearing your mask, glowft for the covid, but to keep the ash out of your lungs. >> my name is cassandra. m a reporter and producer at oregon public broadcasting. this year in oregon, we had the most destructive wildfire season in our state's history. we had morthan a million acres b thatned in 30 different fires that were all burning at the same time. there were thousands of hilomes and ngs that were destroyed. there were entire towns that wereped out. i went down to the towns of mill city and gate to report on what

was happening down there, andi when arrived the sky was just this really ominous dark red, and it was maybe 11:00 in thern g, and it was basically like night time. climate chang everything to do with why these wildfires are burning so long er. why they're burning hott 97% of colorado right now is in severe to exceptional drought. another problem has been the beetle kill. it's been a real problem with the molen fire. they bore into these trees and they feed from them, and most of the time the tree end up dying as you have these huge forests these huge mountainsides that are basically tinderboxes because they're covered in dead trees.so it makes those fires ba lot faster and really a lot hotter. i for a lot of folks, especially scientists, they imagine that what we saw this summer is really just going beto me the new normal. wildfire season is just going to become longer. it's going to become more

intense. >> right now we'reealing with different kinds of problems that are left over from all the destruction. officials are very concerned about the winter weather spreading pollution from burned out buildings, creing landslides in the areas that have burned. we have thousands of people who on't have homes this winter. and many of them are eager to ebuild. oregon really hasn't had this kind of wildfire season before, chwhere there's so destruction, and so we're just beginning to grapplth some of the bigger questions of are there areas where ybe we shouldn't rebuild because there are going btoe wildfire prone in the future. if this kind of wildfire season is gng to be part of our future with climate change, what should we be changing to avoid having so much destruction? >> in the long range, the questions really are how are we going to ensure our homes and what are stat and local us from building into ever-more

perilous placthes. whee's pressure for more home building and pressure for more placeli places to ve like . >> woodruff: with election day , th just five days away efforts to protect american elections and thste s they rely on from foreign interference is a daily struggle. last night, we looked at the impact of domestic misinformation on america's voters. tonight, the battle with foreign interference. in a moment, nick schifrin speaks witthe top u.s. counterintelligence official charged with combating foreignon attackmerica's systems. but first, here's nick with some backgroun, on fore disinformation. >> reporter: in 2017 when

protestors mocked president trump with french revolutionary fervor... >> when the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drum. >> repr: ...they didn't realize they'd been duped by russian trolls. fake russian facebook accounts called on americans to protest in real life, after the election. in fact, russian efforts in then u.s.er stopp. but by 2020, they evolved. >> i think the difference thatm we're seeing fsinformation in 2016 coming from russia and russia's kind of been forced underground. >> reporter: nina jankowicz cis the wilster's disinformation fellow. she says russian tactics have changed, but the strategy remains the same. >> the goal is to cause chaos and distst in the institutions that govern our democracy and frankly, to cause discordee beamericans themselves. >> reporter: in the last month the f.b.i. and social media companies exposed two russian disinformation operations that

posed as news sites: peacedata, which disparaged vice president biden from the left, and the newsroom for american and european based citizens,h whicfueled right-wing outrage. both sites hired real, unwitting americans to try and provide authenticity. and both sites' had photos of supposed "editors"-- which weren't real people, but gerated by artificia intelligence. >> they were trying much harder to be convincing rather an creating lots and lots of very edgy troll accounts. >> reporter: ben nimmo is the investigations editor at grahpika, and worked with social media companies to expose the sites. he says both highlighted the election, and naebc claimed thee tion would be fraudulent. >> lots of claims of hundreds of thousands of ballots going missing or being trashed or people or people getting multiple ballots >> i think that mail in voting is a terrible thing. >> reporter: lt week iran did the same, amplifying president trump. a video sent to democrts falsely claimed voter databases the u.s. governmen iranian

actors used publicly available data to convince americans t election's more vulnerab than it really is. russia h done the same. >> rather than actually getting in our voting systems, they can create the perception that they were in them. that is a way to create an environment of distrust toward the election infrastructure, toward the election certification process. >> reporter: it's important to have perspective. in 2016, the internet research agency located in this st. petersburg building, created posts that were shared in the u.s. 31 million times, liked 39 million times, andre ived 3.5 million comments. today's efforts reach a fraction of that audience thanks in part to early detection by intelligence services, working th social media companies and researchers. >> that change has been one of e most radical shifts to ensure that we're finding these operations earlier and tackling them earli n. >> reportehaniel gleicher is facebook's head of cybersecurity policy. >> these operations are getting

caught sooner. ey're reaching fewer people and they're not having the impact and the effect th'mat sure the actors behind them want. we all need to be aware this is happening, but we also need to recognize that it's not as widespread as many people think. >> it's much harder for the trolls to get aw of thing they tried in 2016. and that means they have to try harder. >> reporter: in europe, russia's tried forgeries. russian tors created a fake senator marco rubio tweet, and fake buzzfeed posts in three languages, to spread the false story britain spied on president trump. there was a fake committee to protect journalists letter, a atke senate on foreign relns committee letter, the fear is, those tactics could come to the u.s. if the election is disputed. >> russia is, you know, nailing our internal fissures, really manipulating them, amplifying whereas the stuff that w see coming from china and iran is a little bit more bumbling. >> reporter: and u.s. intelligence officials tell pbs newshour russian actors successfully hacked government and commerci networks in at election wasn't their main the

target. and that brings us to william evanina, director of th national counterintelligence and security center, and the intelligence cy'mmun coordinator to secure the election, william evanina, welcome to the newshour. just yesterday, the f.b.i. announced an imment cybercrime threat to american hospitals. cybersecurity firms say it's a ransomware attack that's already hobbled at least five medicawal centers anlaunched by russian actors. can you tell us who's behind the attack? and what's the motivatio w t i can tell you and your viewers that we have seen a systematic processing of surveillance and penetrations by nation state threat actors to include russia into our critical infrastructure of the last few years. and that critical infrastructure has also been a hospital tuations in our research and development, particularly with the onset of covid and the amount of research and development to a cover prophylactic to a vaccine. we've seen a lot of our nation

states threat actors, and again, including russia, make attempts to not only steal that vaccine, use chaos in our supply chain to further the vaccine implementation. >> reporter: beyond covid. just last week, we saw theen intell community saying that russian actors have targeted dozens of government n and commerciworks that aren't election related, but they did get access to some voter information. some of these re successful. how successful, were they and how serious were those attacks? >> we've seen for multiple years, foreign adversariesike russia, china and iran have been surveilling and attempting to pene cate otical infrastructure across a wide swath of infrastructurm the economic sector to the ithospital sectors to the al infrastructure and financial systems. two countries, russia and iran, both exfiltrated data from ection infrastructure. however, only one of them, i think, as we get through the infr perspective, some of that might have been by accident, but the fact they took it also drivei

that wedge onterference and sowing discord and confusion of the capability to that. >> reporter: and so just to be clear, how much data have the russians and iranians stolen from voters that wasn't already public? >> we'retill looking at that right now as we speak.we e trying to identify if the data taken by russian and iran was also available publicly. but right now, all we know is both nations took voter data registration information from ples that were election related infrastructure. the russian penetration was part of an overall cyber activity where they're just doing a lot of penetration and surveillance >> reporter: you mentioned 2016. we've gotten independent reports from the justice department, from the senate intelligence committee that idetailed how russian hackers, how russian packer successfully tappr into the vogistration files in two florida counties penetrated ilnois' voter registration database. and there were also reports of

similar attempts in about half a dozen cases our count. why should voters be confident that, as they won't actually ust thatthis time? >> well, i think that confidence is a really important word, and what we're trying to really drive here is voter confidence, knowing that you should vote and you shld vote with confidence. two anecdotes of that, nick, i'll bring back the last week. ha in a matter of 24 hours, we had intelligencewe derived overseas of a foreign actor exfiltrating voter data registration and putting it itio nefarious n. within 24 hours we collected that information, we analyzed it, were able to get on the ground in two separateie cou and drive litigation witthe local authorities to prevent any the election infrastructure, but those voter registration files. as of right now, where we sit today, we're very confident that our adversaries will not be able to manipulate any voteor change any votes at scale. >> reporter: you just mentioned

the words at scale, but some of these states might be very close. are you concerned perhaps about a small attack that could, you know, sway results one way or the other? t american voter will determine who they're going to vote for when they pull thatr. le i think the concern we have is a potential ransomware attack where systems are shut down and we're unable to process votes in a timely fashion. so when i say atmecale, i , literally at scale in the, in the numbers of dozens. i don't think that's c.apab i think our assessments and d.h.s. assessments have been on that point that that not possible. >> reporter: you mentioned the announcement last week by your boss, director of nationa intelligence, john ratcliffe, about an iranian campaign that had a video and emails attached to it. radcliffe announced that it was designed to hurt president trump. you have said you in a statement in the past that iranian actors were trying to hurt president trump.but i was told that nightt radcliffe's prepared remarkst id ke the assessment that

that particular mpaign was designed to hurt president trump. wathere an intelligence community assessment that th campaign was designed to hurt the president?el >> nick, on that question i can only comment to the actual effects and impact of last week withespect to whatappened with iran's intentions. the iranians truly believe that the united government is trying to enact regime change. so logically, they are anti-this administration. i when you go the semantics of whether they're for president trump or for vice president biden, i think we lose a little bit of the solemness of the threat. bso your question is vali i rndest to sow discord and outour really destabili our democracy any way possible. >> reporter: you've releas major statements over the last few months discussing russian, chinese and iraniathreats. isn't it russia that possesses the best capacity and presents the biggest threat for the election itself?

>> i wld i would confirm that, clear about this as a kind ofy intelligence official here in the u.s. that, from an election perspective, russia poses the greatest threat. they're the best tools, cabilities and intent. right-- democracy really scares vladimir putin and the russian establishment that'sknown. but i will also say in my counterintelligence haon, the chinese communist pay poses the greate national security risk to our natorion. >> rr: the cer command with the national security agency have launched offensives against foreign actors in the last few months and years. i know you're not le to speak out the specifics, but how successful have those attacks >> very successful, and they occur on a regular basis. 8 and what we learned in 2is we can be successful defending our democracy and our elecons if we incorporate overseas in the battlespace. >> reporter: are youoncerned that foreign actors could try and sow discord and chaos on

election night and in the days after the election, especially if it's close? >> absolut iy. i think itortant for viewers understand the ultimate goal of russia and iran is to sow discord and to be able to destabilize a democ, rath those regimes. their biggest kryptonite is democracy. so anything they can do in any manner to destabilize the democracy and continue to sow discord and drive wedges in our society is their ultimate goal. d that comes with a million >> reporter: bill evanina. thank you very much. >> thanks, nick, thanks for the opportunity. >> woodruff: much of the focus right now is on the marquee contests on the ballot: the race for president, and thece competitive that could determine control of the u.s. house and senate. but policies and agendas at the state level are on the line as well.

amna nawaz looks at so of the other ballot items that voters across the country are considering. >> nawaz: in a number of states voters are weighing in on ballot measures on a range of topics-- everything from election reform to issues having to do with race and racial equality. and they're also voting on who should represent them in their own state legislatures. here to walk us through theen details and , is reid wilson of "the hill." reid, welcome back to the newshourou good to see and thanks for making the time. let's start with some of the ballot measures, it can be a good way to see how they're resinating at the state and local level. is that making its way on to ballot measures this year? >> absolutely. we've seen election reform start in state atures over the last decade move to the courts in recent years, and now voters are getting to have their say. voters in states like massachusetts and alaska wiln l decidehether to implement

ranked choice voting, which is a pretty ininnovative way of coucting elections withoua runoff. voters in other states are deciding whether or not to create independent redistrinsing commissihich would take the power to draw political lines out of the hands of state legislatures. and voters in other states, the in particular, colorad, alabama, and florida, are going to vote on whether to require only citizens vote in their local elections. now, of course, only citizens can vote in local and national elections. this is sort of one of those efforts to get morerv conive voters out to the polls in just the last few days before election day. >> nawaz: and we should mention something like 14 different states have ballot measureshat could redefine voting practices in some way on the ballot this year. are there other trends, other topics that you're seeing thatch are cg your attention this year that haven't in years past that are new in some way? >> one thing i'm seeing is what i call the antiracist bucket of ballot initiatives.

f ere are a lot ostate constitutions around the country that still contain some prettyan arcaneage that has been sort of overturned by federal .surts or superceded by the u constitution. so voters in alabama this year will be asked whether to tioake segregst language out of their state constitution, which still requires separate schools for whites and nonwhite children. they'll be asked to strip that, even though it hasn't been enforced or implemented for more than half search rue now. in states like nebraska and utah, vtoers will be aske end part of their constitution that stilllo lavery as a punishment for some crimes. now, again, tht hasn'teen enforced for more than a century, but the language is still there. and then in mississippi, we're going to see voters ratify a new flag with the magnolia flower design taking the place of the mississippi will vote on a message that will elect the governor directly rather than requiring the gubernatorial

candidatto win a majority in state hou districts, sortof their version of the electoral college. it was a jim crow era way of making sure no black candidate could ever win the governorship in mississippi. th they're going to vota this year. >> nawaz: we should mention the pandemic has obviously upended the way millions of americans are voting this year. is it having any kind of impact on balt measures and initiatives that you're tracking, too? >> we have seen fewer ballot measures qualify for the ballot when the pandemic hit in march and april, that's prime signature-gathering times. if there are no big fairs or sporting events or areas where a lot of people congregate it will be a lot harder to collect signatures. there were a lot of ballot neasures across the country where the campa said we'll wait until next year when it's safer to collect signatures. >> nawaz: give us a little bit of a landscape what you'r seeing in races across the country. is there anything you're seeingt telling us howo understand some of the national trends? >> and i think we're seeing a lot of tnahe nattrends

playing out in state legislative seats. democrats are still trying to make comebacks from having lost so badly in the 2010 midterm elections. the following cycle,epublicans redistricted a lot of seats around the country, and, therefore,hey've held on to big majorities in state legislaturesabout two-thirds of the state legislatures across the country. this year, if a democratic wave develops and democrats take back a lot lot of those seats, that's going to matter a lot in terms state look what a like for the next 10 years, but what the u.s. congress looks like for the next0 years. the redistricting cycle is going to benn come uary. if democrats have a seat at a like texas, states like north carolina, wisconsin, pennsylvania, they're going to be able to draw some districts that will effectively lock in a democratic u.s. house of representatives for a decade. >> nawaz: those are states we're all going to be watching very closely over te next few days and election day and night. that is reid wilson, correspondent with "the hill"

joining us tonight. thank you so much, reid. >> thank you. >> woodruff: the supremcourt is proving to be a key piece of the 2020 election in these final days. just this week, the court has tended down rulings on abs ballot deadlines in three key battle john yang has more. >> yang: judy, late yesterday, the court said new deadlines for mail-in ballots could take effect in north carolina and pennsylvania: in pennsylvania, friday, the 6th; iorthlate as carolina, it's thursday the 12th. rlier in the week, the court blocked a new deadline in wisconsin. amy coney barrett didn't participate in any of the cases, but that doesn't sigr recusal in future election cases. the newshour's dan bush has beeh

focusing oimportant state of pennsylvania. dan, the way things are shaping up, penylvania could be 55ical. given what the court did yesterday, what does mthan? what does the court's action mean for voters in pennsylvania? >> john, this could have a g impact in a critical battleground state. so what e court did was allowed voters who postmarked thei or mail-inr absentee ballots by 8:00 p.m. on election day, those votes can be counted if they're received by 5:00 p.m. on friday. so three days later. significantly more votes. now, there is a big caveat, though, hn, and that is that the supreme court ruling left the door wide open for a legal challenge after the election. so while the votes will count right now, they could wind up back in court. and, finally, john, this is important because pennsylvania could be a very, very close state.

four years ago, donald trump votes out of more than six legal cast. so for both sides, every vote count count if it's a close race. >> and even before the court acted yay, the secretary of state put out a guidance to board of elections around thate about how to handle those ballots. what was that all about? t t's right. so the secretary of state's office told county election officials, "listen, put these votes aside. these mail-in absentee ballots that come in after election day, and wait to count them." this was in anticipation of potential legal battle. so the thinking is here if you separate those votes out they'll be easier to find. they'll be easier to track eyif o wind up back in ourt. sohat election ofcials are telling me, john, they are going to keep a close watch on those. they're going to collect them, put them to the side, and wait until 5:00 p.m. on the fridayav the election day, at which point they can begin to precanvas

them, process them, and then count the >> and we should point out some of these ballots are overseas alitary ballots as well p that's the ballots that come after 8:00 p.m. on election day and before 6:00 p.m.n friday. what about the ballots that are arrivi now? when will those be processed? >> that's a good question, johnp so undnsylvania state law, mail-in and absentee ballots can't begin to b what-- precanvas, the term is, or taken out of the envelopes, verified, scanned-- until 7:00 a.m. on election da right now, county officials have told me they have been receiving these for a while now. they are stacked up in secure locations. they are rea to be processed an but they can't begin to do that until 7:00 a.m. onlection a, and they say that might make it significantly harder to finish that process and put up results that night because they are dealing with a record numbem l-in and absentee ballots because of the pandemic from voters who did not want to-- you

know, come in and cast a ballot in person on election day. those are the mail-in votes. the in-person votes,sh, thos are folk are folks that are going to go to the polls in pennsylvania, which does not have early in-person voting, on election day, and those officials can begin to count when polls close at 8:00 p.m. >> given that volume of mail-in ballots and absentee ballots from overseas, given what you just said abt cen theyan start to be counted, a little viers' guide for us, what should people at home as they watch the results from pennsylvania election night,nd maybe beyond, what should they be keeping in mind about how those numbers may change? >> so, w know from national yrveys that republicans they're more likely to vote in person. democrats say they're morlie ly to vote by mail. we can expect a significant amount of vrepublicerts, especially in western part of penn blvania, to calots in person.

those early results could be good for prep.dent tr however, as i said, because there are so many mail-in ballots and because the stn'ate begin to count them until 8:00 p.m., officials have been telling me, listen, this could take a long time. it could take into the night. it could take into the next day. so we do expect those results to begin to shift on wednesday when those ballots e ounted. >> dan bush will be in pennsylvania on election night for the newshour.nk dan, thaa lot. >> thanks, john. >> woodruff: finally tonight, governments checking theloca accuracy of the vote? it's obviously an en issue this season. miles o'brn is back tonight with a report on one approach that's designed to help simplify a big challenge awaiting officials next week.

>> we're trying to have minimal waste in the kitchen. this is the carrot tops, carrot greens. the trees in the hills of berkeley california, mathematician phil stark is refining a recipe. >> it's a vegetable soup. it's hemade stock from whatever leftover bones i've accumulated. >> reporter: ...for adding ingredients of trust and verifiability to elections in the united states. he's the originator of a big idea to make post election audits much easier. it's called a risk limiting audit, a technique that reminds him of cooking, and tasng soup, ithe lexicon of mathematics, "ndom sampling." >> so, what is a random sample and why can you learn something about a big group by looking at ju a small sample from the group. >> reporter: after a gd stirring,ab a tspoon is all that he needs for a tasttest. >> i don't need to drink some

fixed percentage of the pot to tell if it's salty enough i need about a tablespoon regardless of how the bipot is if i stir it well. >> reporter: colorado was the first state toandate risk limiting audits in 2017. nevada, rhodisland and h virgine followed suit. in all, 46 states have some sort of auditing regime in place, but most are the traditional types which require reieving a much larger sample of ballots. we wento brunswick, georgia in september to see how a risk limitiit works outside the kitchen. it was a pilot audit of a state senate runoff eltion. monica childers owed the ropes she's with a non-partisan, non- profit called "voting w focused on building secure, open source voting and auditing systems. >> so, whener we go into a state, we try and do a number of the election administrators can

get used to it, get their feet wet and actual get experience with what we're doing. >> reporter: these audits typically begin with volunteer voters rolling ten 10-sided dice to generate a truly random number.o >>y do we use dice? there are several reasons. first of all, we want the audit to be random. we want unpredictability. we want genuine probability so that we can do probability calculations, but then we also want traprparency and ucibility and to the extent possible public participation. >> reporter:he random number fed into stark's formula, or algorithm. so is the number of ballots for each candidate and the desired accuracy. the formula determines how many randomly selected ballots need to be located and double-checked in order to give certainty to the outcome. in an audit like this, the total number of ballots is not what' important-- it's the margin

between the candidates. if the margin is wide, only a very small number of ballots may need to be reviewed. >> at some point it will become convincing evidence that that entity, that person, thatn positione ballot got more votes. you can't say ahead of time how many ballots you're going to have tuslook at and all, beca it depends on what you see. >> reporter: got it, okay. so that is not actlly confirming the margin necessarily, it' wjust confirmi won and lost. >> it is, exactly. >> reporter: i mn that's the important point here. >>hibsolutely. yothe nail on the head. we are not auditing the exact count. were just auditing the political outcome, who won. >> reporter: county's portion of the state senate runoff, 8,814 ballots were cast and the margin between the two candidates was 1,668 votes. they stopped the risk limiting audit after locating and hand counting 119 ballots. it was enough to give them a 99.66% confidence that the outcome was correct.

monica childers is confident the audit would have caught any meaningful discrepancy, no matter the cause. >> it could be that an election was hacked, it couldbe the programming, it co thatug in the the eye of the scanner got some dirt on it and so it wasn't scanning as well as it was at the beginning of the process, it doesn't matter. any of those things can be the cause of tabulation error, if that tabulation error is great enough that it would havech ged the outcome, a risk- limiting audit will catch it. >> reporter: but will it? georgia ismong 14 states using a hybrid between paper and electronic voting maines-- touchscreen computers that print marked ballots. and with a computer between voter and ballot, there is no true record of what choices appeared on the screen, or whether what's in the q.r. or barcode read by the tabulating scanner matches the voter's choices. >> if ballot marking devices were used to mark the bulk of t the ballotn we're never going to know what the right

outcome is, even a full hand count of the paper isn't going to real that necessarily. that said, it's still bettero audit than not to audit. we ought to check whatever piecw of the procecan check. >> reporter: unlike the soup. which looked like a sure thing to me. although after tasting it, i thought of demanding a recot. for the pbs newshour, i'm miles o'brien in berkeley, california. >> woodruff: first time we've seen soup connected to counting the vote. thank you, miles o'brien. rand that's the newshour tonight. i'm judy woodruff. join us online and again here tomorrow evening. for all of us at the pbs newshour, thank you, please stay safe, and see you soon. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been providedy:

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>> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs thank you.om viewe >> there is no parallel for this election in 2020. >> there entioint is to get past the headlines, get past the name call. >> we can go deeper into topics. everything isn't necessarily red or blue. >> we need to understand what's going on. we need to go behind the story and under the story. >> not just to find out wat happened but why it matters. >> 2020 will be a little roller coaster. but viewers can counon pbs to be there every step of the way. captioning sponsored by newshour productions, llc

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