good to have you on this every day, kristen holmes. day, folks because it's important. if you want to find your polling registration status, get information on early voting, the facts not the claims out there, go to cnn.com/vote. a lot of stuff there can help you out. >>> today the u.s. could reach 8 million confirmed coronavirus infections as more than half the country right now is dealing with this growing surge. ♪ woo! go go go go on a real vacation. visit go rving.com or your nearest rv dealer. >>> very good friday morning to you. it is friday. i'm jim sciutto. >> it's been a week i'm poppy harlow. we're so glad you're here. this morning following new developments in the race for a coronavirus vaccine as the nation grapples with a surge in cases and hospitalizations across the country. drug giant pfizer said it now expects to apply for emergency use authorization for its covid vaccine in the united states as early as late next month. they say we're operating at the speed of scnc

cnn's kristen holmes joins me now. isten, the trump campaign is pushing a lot of these cases with a lot of help from state republican parties. what are the latest big ones we know about? >> well, look, we just had some breaking news overnight regarding new jersey and montana. in new jersey a federal judge actually ruled in opposition to the trump campaign. they were trying to stop new mail-in ballot rulings passed, one being you could count ballots after election day, even if they didn't have a post mark. we also know that republican voters in montana, they went to the courts as well. they are asking the supreme court to stop the governor from allowing counties to send mail-in ballots to anyone in any county that is a registered voter. one thing we need to keep in mind here is litigation is a key part of the trump campaign strategy. as these cases start to work their way through the system, republican officials feel more and more confident. the reason being, the makeup of the court. as we know, president trump, senate r

. >>> let's go over all of these headlines with cnn's kristen holmes. she's in washington. threatening emails are coming from, might have come from, and how many voters have received them? >> jim and poppy, it's not a small number. at the university of florida alone, the spokesperson there said roughly 183 people received that email. we know there are at least dozens more. so in terms of who it came from, to the voter, it appeared to be coming from a far right group known as the proud boys. the chairman of that group denies having anything to do with that, in fact says he's working with the fbi, wants the group to be punished for impersonating the group. we obtained a copy of the email and sent it to an analyst who said they believe it came from a foreign intra net structure. so something we're focusing on is this foreign interference and we're still at the beginning phases of this investigation. >> also, we know it's possible we may not know the winner of the presidential election until a few days after the election or at least not on election night. we just don't know at

kristen holmes joins me now. risten, this is one of the battleground states where we might be waiting for a while 9/11 it's a blowout. a complicated process, the president says i want it counted on election night and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. >> absolutely. we continue to say this. just because we don't have results on election night doesn't mean something bad has happened, it's just the system at work. now, the problem with different systems of counting mail-in ballots, it might cause some confusion on election night. here is why. i want you to see this latest number, 1.84 million early ballots cast. keep in mind pennsylvania is not a case who has a robust, in-person early voting program. most of these are mail-in ballots. that's not something to sneeze at. they will all have to be processed. as you membershintioned philade will start at 7:00 a.m. so when the polls close they will have some information to give to the public. erie, lucerne say they are not going to start counting until after the

. >>> kristen holmes joins us. the net effect here, the biggest of big pictures, kristen, this means that more ballots will be accepted by mail in pennsylvania for longer. >> good morning, john and alisyn. that's right. i don't think we can stress enough just how big of a deal this is on so many levels. let's start with what's in front of us. this could potentially affect thousands of votes in f pennsylvania, a critical swing state, a state that donald trump needs to win and both campaigns are laser focused on. alisyn broke it down a little bit. it essentially says that ballots can be counted up to three days after the election in the is absentee ballots, as long as they are post marked on before the election or if that post mark isn't legible. we've all been there, get a letter in the mail, you can't really see what it says. those ballots still have to be counted. this is a big win for democrats. republicans wanted absentee ballots to stop being counted after election day. here's the secretary of state in pennsylva

our kristen holmes joins us now. good morning. i was listening last night to minnesota senator amy klobuchar explain the urgency here to our chris cuomo, basically telling people this morning in minnesota do not mail your ballots in at this point. >> reporter: good morning, poppy and jim. that's absolutely right. she's not the only one. we have heard from state official after state official who are sounding the alarm, warning people that if you are sitting on an absentee ballot, you are planning on slipping it into the mail, do not do that. it is a risk. it might not be counted. the best thing you can possibly do is drop it off if you are able at a drop off location, those are open until 3:00 p.m. on election day. now, let's talk about this decision. an appeals court ruling that that week-long extension that would allow for the late arrival of those absentee ballots went against state law. here is what the appeals court said, however well intentioned and appropriate from a policy perspective in the context of a pandemic during a p

cnn's kristen holmes joins us now with new details on how votes could be counted in pennsylvania, whichwrinkle, kristen. >> good morning, alisyn. yeah, so we've long said that there will likely not be results on election night given the unprecedented nature of this election, and that's particularly crew in the critical swing state of pennsylvania, because they are not allowed to open, process, count, any of their more than 1 million mail-in ballots until 7:00 a.m. on election day. and it's not an easy process, it's getting through multiple envelopes, scanning, processing. so now we are hearing that there are different ways that different counties will actually count those mail-in ballots. for example, in philadelphia, in some of the larger counties, they're going to start counting those mail-in ballots at 7:00 a.m. that way when the polls close at 8:00 p.m., they have tens of thousands of ballots counted and they will have at least some results before they get to those in-person results and a later wave of mail-in ballots. some of these critical swing counties like erie county, cumberla

cnn's kristen holmes live in washington with the very latest.ay, even more states allow in-person early voting. >> that's right. and this has been really incredible. as you say, we're still two weeks out from the election. and i want to show you some video here of the lines in the battleground state of georgia over the weekend. they have seen 152% increase in turnout compared to this time in 2016. now, as you said, there are six more states starting their early voting today. you've got alaska, colorado, idaho, north dakota, and florida. all eyes are going to be on florida. it's only 52 of the 67 counties that will start today, but john, some of them are the most critical counties we always talk about at the election, broward county, duvall county, at of eyes on that state today. >> kristen, obviously, the president has been trying, i think, inappropriately, to raise questions about the integrity of the election. there have been no reports of mass fraud, everything has run relatively smoothly at this point. but you have some new reporting on the

kristen holmes joins me now. isten, there have been a couple of key rulings over the weekend in some of the big battleground states. >> reporter: that's right. a couple of big losses for republicans and the trump campaign. let's start in minnesota. we saw there a federal judge upholding an absentee ballot extension, so just to give a little bit of context here, traditionally in that state a ballot in order to be counted must be received by 8:00 p.m. on election day. because of the pandemic, the unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots, the secretary of state extended that to seven days beyond election day as long as the ballot was postmarked on election day or before. republicans had tried to bring that to court. a federal judge shot that down and kept that in place. the kicker, john, here is that judge was appointed to the bench by president trump, as was the judge who issued an enormous blow to the campaign and republicans in pennsylvania. now, this is a huge decision because it's going to shape how voters in thi

cnn's kristen holmes joins us now to explain. > john, the bottom line is if you live in minnesota and sit in an absentee ballot that you planned on mailing in, do not put it in the mail. drop it off at a drop-off location. you have until 3 p.m. on november 3rd to do so. an appeals court ruled that this week-long extension that was put in place to allow for late-arriving mail-in ballots went against state law. they said this. in the opinion, they wrote, however well-intentioned and appropriate from a policy perspective in the context of a pandemic during a presidential election, it is not the province of a state executive official to rewrite the state's election code. there is no pandemic exception to the constitution. now, part of that ruling said that any ballots that arrived after 8:00 p.m. on election day needed to be segregated, which might sound familiar as we talk about this in pennsylvania. that means, there could be future litigation, that also means there could be two separate vote counts in minnesota. and one thing you m

kristen holmes joins us again this morning from washington. good morning we made it to friday.been a big week of news but also a huge week of early voting. >> reporter: that's right. it's really incredible here. we are starting to learn more about the landscape. meaning who exactly is voting. so we started to see a pattern of democrats far outpacing republicans when it came to early voting. but now that gap is starting to close. particularly in the critical swing states of florida and north carolina. where we've seen that ramped up early in-person voting. just to give you an example here from last monday to where we are now. in north carolina that margin was cut in half by 50%. so you're sighing republicans eke up here. there's another headline out of north carolina that i want you to pay attention to. this idea you can count ballots of up to nine days after the election, we know a judge ruled in favor of that now republicans are bringing it to the supreme court. the supreme court is generally hesitant to change these rules close to the election. it could disenfranchise thousan

cnn's kristen holmes joins us now life. so kristen, the court weighed in on two of the most important swing states in the country, pennsylvania and north carolina, decisions which allow ballots that arrive after election day to be counted, but their pennsylvania action came with this huge, giant eyebrow-raising asterisk. >> reporter: yeah, that's right, john, it's more like asterisk, siren, red flag, emoji here. so they decided that they would not block this extension. but, alongside of that decision came a statement from three conservative judges in which they said, they were not going to block the extension because it was just too close for the election for them to step in, but left the door open for potential legal action hearing those arguments down the road, after the election. in fact, justice samuel alito, conservative justice, said that pennsylvania officials had agreed segregate ballots that were received after 8:00 p.m. on election night through that new deadline of 5:00 p.m. on november 6th. why does this matter?

. >> kristen holmes, thank you for that. >>> whether we come back, remember that last debate?diden talking about fracking? we will talk about that coming up. pen your heart and your home, check us out. we thought for sure that we were done. and this town said: not today. ♪ that selling carsarvana, 100% online wouldn't work. and this town said: not today. but we went to work. building an experience that lets you shop over 17,000 cars from home. creating a coast to coast network to deliver your car as soon as tomorrow. recruiting an army of customer advocates to make your experience incredible. and putting you in control of the whole thing with powerful technology. that's why we've become the nation's fastest growing retailer. because our customers love it. see for yourself, at carvana.com. >>> as he tries to mount a comeback in pennsylvania, president trump is trying to focus voters on fracking a critical piece of the local economy. remember at the final debate joe biden left the impression the oil industry loses if he wins. it's something team biden now trying to clean up. whi

kristen holmes, thank you so much. >>> if you want to find your polling station, voter registration statusarly voting, go here. all of the information is there, cnn.com/vote. >>> thank you very much for joining us today. we will see you here tomorrow morning. i'm poppy harlow. >> and i'm jim sciutto. "newsroom with john king" starts right now. >>> hello, everybody, i'm john king in washington. thank you for sharing your day with us. >>> today day three of confirmation hearings for judge amy coney barrett. senators get to ask more questions. health care and abortion rights frequent topics again today but judge barrett is well on her way to becoming justice barrett. republicans have the votes. president trump's third supreme court nominee so far holding tightly to tradition, evading specifics on how she would rule on big cases and big issues. we're 20 days until the election. senator kamala harris participating in that critical hearing and therefore off the campaign trail. the democratic nominee joe biden spends the day in delaware. the president p

kristen holmes is keeping track of this. democrats think they have an advantage but it's perhaps narrowing some as we get closer. >> that's right. it's dependent on what kind of voting we're talking about. talking about mail in ballots that's democrats far outpacing republicans but we've seen that trend across all of early voting. it's no longer quite looking like that, as you mentioned. particularly in key states of north carolina and florida where we're seeing the ramped up in-person early voting. north carolina for example the margin from last monday to where we are now it decreased 50%. you can see that catching up. it's likely to continue to rise because of that in-person voting element. i want to point out another headline for you, john. we've been talking about the court cases shaping the election. also out of north carolina this is about counting ballots. an appeals court said they would allow ballots to be counted up to nine days after the election. republicans are now challenging that, they brought it to the suprem

cnn's kristen holmes joins us now with the details. kristen? >> good morning, john.'s start in pennsylvania. this is a huge loss for the trump campaign and it is an enormous ruling, because it is going to shape the way that voters in pennsylvania, this critical swing state, cast their ballot. so what was on the table? well, the trump campaign had sued because of drop boxes, as you said. they wanted to limit the amount of drop boxes. they had also challenged the secretary of state's rule that signatures on absentee ballots did not have to perfectly match what the state had on record. and lastly was about poll watching. they challenged the pennsylvania law that poll watchers have to serve in the same county that they vote in. they cannot serve outside of that. all of this, they said, was unconstitutional and it would lead to widespread fraud. i want to tell you what the judge said when he threw this case out. he said, while the trump campaign may not need to prove actual voter fraud, they must, at least, prove that such fraud is, quote, certainly impending. they haven'

and cnn's kristen holmes is live in washington with more. what have you learned, kristen?od morning, alisyn. the poll watchers are going to serve as the backbone to both the biden and trump campaign legal strategy on and after election day. we've learned that both of these campaigns are doing meticulous training with these poll watchers in the law so they know exactly what to look out for. and they expect the poll watchers to report any anomalies in realtime, by anomalies i mean long lines, broken machines, issue with voter rolls. and poll watchers in some states can watch people counting the mail-in ballots. that's something else they are expected to report back on. both sets have a different strategy for reporting it. one, democrats are launching a new app that will watch them in realtime. now, republicans, they are setting up command centers in person in various key swing states in order to deal with this in realtime. and this is really the largest involvement of poll watchers we've seen in decades. in part because of a 182 decree that severely limited what republicans

cnn's kristen holmes joins us live with details. kristen?> reporter: john, this is the second of these incidents that we've seen. the first one was last week in california. and officials are hoping this doesn't become some sort of trend ahead of election day. but here's what we know about boston. i think we have some pictures we can show you of the actual incident and the man who was wanted in connection with this event. it happened early in the morning on sunday, and election officials say there were 122 ballots inside of that drop box at the time. now, of those, 87 of them were legible and able to be processed. the rest of them, those voters who were identified will get new ballots in the mail, but the elections department says if for some reason they don't re-cast their ballot, their original ballot will be counted by hand. now, a joint statement has been released by this police department and these federal officials, encouraging people to report any sort of suspicious election activity. remember, john, this is an election where every sin

kristen holmes joins us now live with the very latest.lead to many ballots being thrown out, even if they are mailed before november 3rd. >> yeah, that's right. the bottom line here is that thousands of ballots could potentially be affected in a critical swing state. so let's talk about what exactly happened here, because it's the same issue we saw in pennsylvania, but a different outcome in the supreme court. so in wisconsin, democrats had asked for a six-day extension to be allowed to count ballots six days afterwards as long as they were post marked on or before election day. the supreme court in a conservative majority 5-3 rejecting that request. now, of course, in pennsylvania they granted that request. the notable difference here was chief justice john roberts siding with conservatives in this case versus the more liberal leaning justice ntds pennsylvania ca justices in the pennsylvania case. to chief justice roberts there was a huge difference. in pennsylvania there are what had been allowed by state courts and had gone up through

let's go to kristen holmes, who's back to help us break there down. >> good morning, poppy.r viewers are aware what's going on around them. let's talk about new jersey. the trump campaign was trying to stop several of these efforts, new mail-in ballot rules, including one that would allow ballots to be counted up to two days after the election, even without a postmark. a judge has shot that down. big win for democrats, coming on the heels of two big losses for democrats, we talked about that yesterday in georgia and south carolina. in montana, it will be very interesting to watch this. see what the supreme court does here. they gave us a message, and it was clear on south carolina earlier in the week they do not want to have any sweeping federal changes to the election system, to election law this close to november 3rd. so watch that case very closely. i want to note, both of these are efforts here to suppress the vote. that's happening behind the scenes, while we see president trump being more up front, continuing to tweet about the election, calling it rigged and fraud. ta

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cnn's kristen holmes following all of the headlines here. what are you seeing?od morning, john. there certainly does not seem to be a lack of enthusiasm around voting this election cycle. remember, many of these voters are choosing to wait in line for hours rather than just come back another day before the election. they are anxious to make their vote count and make it count as quickly as possible. it started before dawn. >> everybody's come out to vote here. lines around the corner. >> reporter: thousands of people waiting hours for early in-person voting. >> i just came out, i would say, about two and a half hours. >> reporter: and drive-through voting in texas tuesday. in harris county, which includes houston, the highest turnout during early voting ever. and that count came hours before the polls even closed, with lines still out the door. all the enthusiasm after waking up to news of a late-night ruling upholding republican governor greg abbott's directive limiting ballot drop boxes to one per county, a major issue for densely populated counties, where vote

cnn's kristen holmes is live in washington with more. what have you learned, kristen?what we saw here was two very different strategies at play. we have president trump using incendiary language, saying democrats are going to steal the election and encouraging his supporters to just show up on election day to watch the holes, which we should note is not how poll watching works. now we've seen these training videos and it is a very different message from the rnc and from the trump campaign. we should note that they actually need poll watchers to behave because it's part of their legal strategy on election day. take a look at this, these are the do's from colorado, it shows you be courteous to staff, other poll workers, even democrats. ask questions politely, dress professionally. these are the don't's, same place, colorado training, it says don't be confrontational. remember, you can get kicked out, this is an official job, don't interfere with other poll watchers, don't dress in political attire or otherwise campaign, including discussing politics. this is against the

cnn's chris continue holm cnn's kristen holmes is tracking that and other issues. >> reporter: as wenow from our own cnn reporting they drove throughout the count throughout the county to drop off their ballots and some people it will take more than an thundershower get there. these have been a big point of contention. voter groups have said that governor abbott's did ecree severely limited voting. a judge did agree saying this didn't serve the public. but now an appeals court is upholding that rule to have only one box per county. the ruling says under the governor's expanded policy, a voter can deliver the ballot anytime until election day. that effectively gives voters 40 extra days to hand-deliver a marked, mail-in ballot to an early voting clerk and the voter still has the traditional option she has always had forecasting a mail-in ballot, mailing. but a lot of people feel that the mailing system right now is under a lot of pressure. we have heard from president trump saying it's a failure, so people are afraid to cast that ballot via mail in the is detrimental to this community

cnn's kristen holmes joins us now with more. this is a twist. >> yeah, alisyn, this is a really striking escalation in what is likely to be a political showdown ahead of november 3rd. they didn't just say they weren't going to comply, they actually said that they might add more blallot boxes because the program is going so well. just a reminder here, the california republican party started putting up these unofficial ballot boxes in at least four counties. this alarmed election officials, who said it was illegal. they then issued a cease and desist, and we know that the party will not comply, however, they say they will take down any boxes that are labeled as official. and this decision to not comply came after president trump tweeted at the party, saying, stay strong. >> that's very interesting. that's an important note. there was also this major development, kristen, overnight in regards to absentee ballots in north carolina. so what's happening there? >> reporter: so it was a mixed decision. a judge was overseeing three big v

cnn's kristen holmes joins us with more. this is very concerning.at seems to be this overt in terms of voter intimidation, very concerning. what do we know? >> reporter: that's right, john. and there's still a lot of questions here. but here is what we know. the election officials are working with law enforcement in florida and alaska after registered voters there received a threatening email that essentially said, vote for trump or else. now, to the voter, it appeared as though this from the far-right group the proud boys, but the chairman of the group denies this. he says, in fact, he's working with the fbi in hopes that whoever sent this is punished for impersonating the group as well as voter intimidation. cnn obtained a copy of this email sent to an analyst who seems to back that up, saying that this email appears to have come from a foreign internet infrastructure. so still digging into that. and if any viewers have seen this email or gotten this email, they should forward it to the cnn tip line. but regardless of where this came from, voters

cnn's kristen holmes live in washington with more. battle continues. >> reporter: that's right, john. we should note this is a big win for voter advocacy groups and ohio democrats who had been fighting this issue. the secretary of state he has already filed an appeal, but the judge did not issue a stay, means that this will go into effect immediately which is important since early voting has already begun in ohio. john, you mentioned that this was a scathing opinion. i want to read to you in part what this ohio judge said. he wrote, the court holds that the directive significantly burdens the right to vote and ultimately may have the effect of deterring many people from voting or forcing them to risk their health by voting in person. voting began on october 6th and absent injunctive relief registered voters will be deprived of a fair election. one thing the judge also noted was that this directive would directly impact communities of color. i think it's important that we continue to report that out. all of these voter limitations, lim

cnn's kristen holmes joins us with the latest here.important, there are two ways to vote early. by maile and in person. and what's happening is, each of those methods are telling a little bit of a different story and things need to be tighter. >> that's right, john. so the pattern we really have been seeing, when it came to early voting, and this of course included mail-in ballots and that is that democrats were far outpacing republicans in terms of actually casting these early ballots. that is no longer the case, particularly in the swing states of florida and north carolina, where we have really seen that ramped up early, in-person voting. north carolina, for example, just between last monday and today, the margin between democrats and republicans, it has been cut in half. now, we still want to point out that the mail-in ballot system, that is still largely being utilized by democrats. and john, when we talk about early voting, when we talk about what's going on across the country, it's really important to talk about all of the diffe

and cnn's kristen holmes is live with more. wow.tinue to see this flood of voters to the polls. >> that's right, alisyn. these numbers are extraordinary. and i'm talking to election officials across the country who say they've never seen anything like this. so let's get right into the numbers, particularly in these battleground states. take a look at georgia here. more than 918 ballots have already been cast. not a huge surprise. we saw those enormous lines. in some areas, they're posting the wait time online so people can check before they show up. in wisconsin, you see it's been more than 592,000. michigan, more than 1.1 million ballots. and north carolina, as you mentioned, more than 826,000 ballots cast total and florida, already over 2 million ballots cast. in the last two states, democrats are leading in preelection voting, but as we know, this is not indicative of who is going to win. republicans are more likely to show up on election day. and alisyn and john, i want to show you these videos of the lines in north carolina. we

kristen holmes, cnn national correspondent for us is in washington. t could take a lot of twists and turns election night. why? >> yeah, that's right. there is a potential to see a skewed either way result right out of the bat on election night that will eventually shift. here's why. we have this record number of early votes. when you break that down, since the beginning of the pandemic, biden supporters have shown a strong preference for early voting for mail-in voting, where as trump supporters have shown a preference for voting in person on election day. where it gets complicated is that in many of these states, and particularly these states that we're watching so carefully, the swing states, they don't count those ballots altogether. they have different systems, some in which they count early ballots first and release those numbers. others in which they count the day of votes in first and then release mail-in later. you're looking at a situation where you could see what they're calling a red or blue mirage. a blue mirage we're expecting to see in s