Tag Archives: Presidential Election

California moves presidential primary for bigger say in candidate choice

FILE PHOTO - A poll worker places a mail-in ballot into a voting box as voters drop off their ballot in the U.S. presidential primary election in San Diego, California, United States, June 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

By Sharon Bernstein

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) – California will move its presidential primary from June to March under a bill signed on Wednesday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, a change aimed at giving the liberal-leaning state more influence in choosing candidates from either national party.

The most populous U.S. state, which voted heavily for Democrat Hillary Clinton in November’s presidential election, has traditionally held its primary so late that Democratic and Republican voters in other states had essentially already chosen their parties’ candidates.

“The Golden State will no longer be relegated to last place in the presidential nominating process,” said Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat who backed the change, in a statement. “Candidates will not be able to ignore the largest, most diverse state in the nation as they seek our country’s highest office.”

The bill was passed mostly along party lines in the majority-Democrat legislature.

The new date will leave the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in place as the first and second contests of the presidential election cycle, during which voters in each state choose the candidate they would like their party to nominate for president.

Because California’s primary has been in June while others were held earlier, candidates have largely ignored the state, spending less on outreach than elsewhere, making fewer visits, and failing to prioritize California voters’ concerns in their campaigns, supporters said.

In 2016, California Democrats chose Clinton and Republicans opted for Donald Trump, the populist businessman who ultimately won the presidency.

Backers in the legislature said the early primary would lead to less divisive choices by members of both major parties in the 2020 election cycle, and establish California as a leading voice in the choice of candidates.

Progressive Democrats also believe that moving the primary up could result in their party’s selection of more liberal candidates.

“California is the beating heart of the national resistance to Trump, and California Democrats are defining the progressive agenda for America,” state Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman said in a press release. “When it comes to deciding the Democratic nominee, our voices need to be heard early in the process.”

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Richard Chang)

U.S. state election officials still in the dark on Russian hacking

FILE PHOTO: Voters cast their votes during the U.S. presidential election in Elyria, Ohio, U.S. November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk/File Photo

By Dustin Volz

ANAHEIM, Calif. (Reuters) – The federal government has not notified U.S. state election officials if their voting systems were targeted by suspected Russian hackers during the 2016 presidential campaign, and the information will likely never be made public, a top state election chief told Reuters.

“You’re absolutely never going to learn it, because we don’t even know it,” Judd Choate, state election director for Colorado and president of the National Association of State Election Directors, said in an interview on Thursday during the group’s summer conference.

Nearly 10 months after Republican Donald Trump’s upset presidential victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Choate said he had not spoken to a single state election director who had been told by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security if their state was among those attacked.

The lack of information-sharing on the election breaches reflects the difficulty state and federal officials have had in working together to protect U.S. voting from cyber threats. All U.S. elections are run by state and local governments, which have varying degrees of technical competence.

DHS told Congress in June that 21 states were targeted during the 2016 presidential race, and that while a small number were breached, there was no evidence any votes were manipulated.

Other reports have said 39 states were targeted. Choate said he had heard both numbers mentioned.

Several lawmakers, including Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, have expressed frustration at DHS’ refusal to identify which states had been targeted. Arizona and Illinois confirmed last year that hackers had targeted their voter registration systems.

In a statement, the DHS did not refute that states had not been notified if they were targeted, adding the agency informed the owners or operators of systems potentially victimized “who may not necessarily” be state election officials.

DHS was working with senior state election officials “to determine how best to share this information while protecting the integrity of investigations and the confidentiality of system owners,” the agency said.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin orchestrated an operation that included hacking and online propaganda intended to tilt the November election in Trump’s favor.

Several congressional committees are investigating and Special Counsel Robert Mueller is leading a separate probe into the Russia matter, including whether Moscow colluded with the Trump campaign. Russia has denied election meddling and Trump has denied any collusion.

‘LEARN FROM THE MISSTEPS’

The four-day conference of election directors was originally supposed to be about issues like voter registration, but took a sharp turn following the election hacking.

“After the 2000 election, we all had to be lawyers,” Choate said. “And now after the 2016 election, we all have to be cyber security experts.”

DHS representatives at the event fended off questions about whether the federal government would be prepared to mobilize sufficient support for the states in the event of a catastrophic cyber attack near or during the 2018 elections.

“We want to make sure we learn from the missteps that may have happened in 2016 and we want to make sure we continue building on the things we did that were right,” Robert Gatlin, a DHS cyber official, said during a panel discussion.

Gatlin said the agency was working with U.S. intelligence agencies to “downgrade” more classified information so it could be shared with the states. Information about cyber attacks is typically guarded by a high classification because it may involve nation-state involvement or contain sensitive sources and methods, he said.

Legislation recently approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee would require the director of national intelligence to sponsor top-secret security clearance for eligible election officials in each state, something the National Association of Secretaries of State has advocated.

The bill would also require DHS to submit a report to Congress detailing cyber attacks and attempted cyber attacks by foreign governments on U.S. election infrastructure during the 2016 election.

Choate said communication about cyber threats had improved with federal agencies since the election and the decision by the outgoing Obama administration in January to elevate voting systems to a “critical infrastructure designation.”

Prior to the election, some state officials worried that closer oversight of election systems represented a dangerous federal intrusion into local affairs.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Peter Cooney)

Charismatic Tehran mayor defies establishment to stay in presidential race

Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf gestures in this undated handout photo provided by Tasnim News Agency on May 9, 2017. Tasnim News Agency/Handout via REUTERS

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – The charismatic 55-year-old mayor of Tehran seems a long-shot contender for Iran’s presidency, but could emerge as the main threat to President Hassan Rouhani if he beats other hardliners to emerge as the sole challenger in a second round.

A chisel-jawed former Revolutionary Guards commander with an action man persona, an airline pilot’s license and a populist economic message, Baqer Qalibaf has so far defied the clerical establishment by refusing to drop out before the May 19 vote.

In the last election four years ago, Qalibaf very nearly made it to the run-off, despite placing a distant second to Rouhani with just 16.5 percent of the vote. Rouhani, who promised to reduce Iran’s international isolation and grant more freedoms at home, averted a second round by winning just over 50 percent.

This time around, establishment hardliners who want to unseat Rouhani are mainly placing their trust in Ebrahim Raisi, a jurist and cleric who studied at the feet of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

They are not happy that the maverick Tehran mayor is standing again and splitting the anti-Rouhani vote.

“Qalibaf’s decision to remain in the race represents is a risk for him and the establishment,” said an official in Tehran, who asked not to be identified. “It will divide hardliners’ votes but it will also endanger his future career, as Qalibaf has ignored influential hardliners’ call to step down.”

Still, with his own record of drawing millions of voters, Qalibaf may be hoping he can beat Raisi in the first round to face Rouhani in the run-off a week later, which would force conservatives to rally behind him.

A similar path carried a previous populist Tehran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the presidency in 2005, despite never quite dispelling the discomfort of the establishment.

From Qalibaf’s perspective, that could have been him: in 2005, he resigned his military posts to run for president and was seen as a strong contender, only to lose the crucial battle for second place in the final days when hardliners switched their allegiance to Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad won 19.5 percent in the first round, good enough for second place, on his way to a surprising triumph against former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the run-off. Qalibaf went on to win Ahamdinejad’s job as mayor of the capital, a post he has held ever since.

Qalibaf promotes his record as a pragmatic problem-solver, tackling the capital’s acute infrastructure problems and improving public transportation.

But Tehran’s chaotic and chronically snarled traffic, a corruption investigation in 2016 and the deaths of 50 firefighters in the collapse of a 17-storey building in January in Tehran have dented his popularity.

To civil rights activists and reformers he is also known for his previous role as a police chief who boasted of crushing protests and personally beating demonstrators.

He joined the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) at 19 and served as the commander of its air force from 1996. He still has a license to fly big airliners. He was appointed by Khamenei as Iran’s police chief after a bloody crackdown on students in Tehran ignited nationwide unrest in 1999.

In a two-hour audio recording, released by opposition websites and the U.S.-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Qalibaf is heard describing how he personally beat up protesters with batons.

He was among a group of IRGC commanders who in June 2003 sent a letter to then-president Mohammad Khatami, now seen as the father of Iran’s reform movement, effectively threatening a coup unless the president took firm control of protests.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Peter Graff)

Overseas voters kick off crucial French presidential election

A municipal employee prepares ballot boxes on the eve of the first round of the French presidential election at a polling station in Tulle, France, April 22, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

By Bate Felix and Daniel Pardon

PARIS/PAPEETE, French Polynesia (Reuters) – French overseas territories and residents in some U.S. states such as Hawaii began voting on Saturday in the French presidential election, a day ahead of a main first-round vote that could change the global political landscape.

Of 47 million registered French voters, there are fewer than a million resident in far-flung places like French Polynesia in the South Pacific and Guadeloupe, French Guiana and Martinique in the Caribbean. They vote early so as not to be influenced by the mainland results due on Sunday evening at around 1800 GMT.

The first round will send two of 11 candidates into a run-off vote in two weeks time to pick a new president for France, a core member of the European Union and the NATO alliance, a permanent member of the United Nations Security council, and the world’s fifth largest economy.

With two anti-globalisation candidates whose policies could break up the European Union among the four frontrunners, the vote is of major significance to the international political status quo and to investment markets.

Coming after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and after the ‘Brexit’ decision of British voters to quit the EU, few experts dare rule out a shock, and all of the likely outcomes will usher in a period of political uncertainty in France.

Polls make centrist and pro-European Emmanuel Macron the favorite, but he has no established party of his own and is a relatively unknown political quantity.

His three close rivals, according to voting surveys, are the anti-EU, anti-immigration National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who would dump the euro currency and return to national ones, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who wants France to rip up international trade treaties and quit NATO, and the conservative Francois Fillon, whose reputation has been sullied by a nepotism scandal.

“The election of either Le Pen or Melenchon would put Paris on a fast-track collision course with (EU officials in) Brussels),” said James Shields, professor of French politics at Aston University in Britain.

“The election of Marine Le Pen would make Brexit look trivial by comparison.”

Although Le Pen is in second place behind Macron in the first round, she is seen by pollsters as unlikely to win in the second. Melenchon, by contrast, can win the presidency according to some scenarios.

Polls in the dying days of the campaign put all the candidates roughly on between a fifth and a quarter of the vote, with around five percentage points or less separating them – threatening the margin of error for polling companies.

High levels of abstention and indecision are also a key factor.

Voters in the tiny French island of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, south of Canada’s Newfoundland in the north Atlantic, were first to start voting on Saturday morning.

Results from ballots cast in the territories will, however, remain sealed until Sunday evening after polls have closed in mainland France.

France will be voting under tight security with over 50,000 police and other security branches fully mobilized for special election duty.

Security was thrust to the fore of the already acrimonious campaign after a policeman was killed by a suspected Islamist militant in Paris on Thursday.

Le Parisien newspaper said French government security authority the DCSP had circulated a note saying the threat during the elections of a militant attack like the ones that have killed more than 230 people in the past two years in France was a “constant and pregnant” one.

Legislative elections are due to follow in June.

(This story has been refiled to fix paragraph 10 to say first round.)

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau; Editing and additional reporting by Andrew Callus)

Iran’s Ahmadinejad defies supreme leader to attempt comeback

Ex-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gestures as he submits his name for registration as a candidate in Iran's presidential election, in Tehran, Iran April 12, 2017.

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – Hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surprised Iran’s clerical establishment by registering for the May 19 presidential election, defying the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader’s warning not to enter the race.

Vilified in the West for his barbs against America and Israel and questioning of the Holocaust, the blacksmith’s son Ahmadinejad has upset predictions before by stealing the show in 2005 when he defeated powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a run-off vote.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei revealed last year that he had recommended to Ahmadinejad not to enter the contest. But after his registration on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad told journalists that Khamenei’s recommendation was “just advice”, Iranian media reported.

Khamenei praised Ahmadinejad as “courageous, wise and hard-working” after his re-election in 2009, which ignited an eight-month firestorm of street protests. His pro-reform rivals said that vote was rigged.

But throughout Ahmadinejad’s presidency, Khamenei was wary of him, and his insubordination and relentless self-aggrandisement rankled the hardline clergy.

Ahmadjinejad was required to step down because of term limit rules in 2013, when President Hassan Rouhani won in a landslide on a promise to reduce Iran’s international isolation.

After a term out of office, Ahmadinejad is now permitted to stand again under Iran’s constitution, but he still needs the approval of the 12-member Guardian Council which vets candidates, six members of which are appointed by Khamenei.

“His disqualification by the Guardian Council would show that the council is not independent and follows the orders of the supreme leader,” said political analyst Saeed Leylaz.

Khamenei’s backers accuse Ahmadinejad’s camp of pursuing an “Iranian” school of Islam, viewed as an inappropriate mix of religion and nationalism. Ahmadinejad may pay the price for disobeying Khamenei by running for president, analysts said.

“Khamenei will not forget this move, which was aimed to harm his image,” said political analyst Hamid Farahvashian.

In 2011, Khamenei was so annoyed by Ahmadinejad’s hunger for more power that he floated a proposal to change Iran’s constitution to do away with a directly elected presidency altogether, an idea Ahmadinejad briskly dismissed as “academic”.

“AN AFFRONT TO KHAMENEI”

Khamenei ultimately calls the shots in Iran, where the president can only influence policy, not decide it.

A former officer of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Ahmadinejad relies on Iran’s devout poor, who felt neglected by past governments and helped sweep him to power in 2005. However, his popularity in Iran remains in question.

“Ahmadinejad’s faction is still alive. He enjoys the support of the poor and lower-income in the cities,” said Leylaz.

Rouhani and his allies have criticized Ahmadinejad’s free-spending policies for fueling inflation and accuse him of wasting Iran’s oil revenues.

Ahmadinejad’s critics say his fiery anti-Western talk helped isolate Iran diplomatically. During his term, the U.N. Security Council imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

Rouhani, who engineered Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that secured a removal of international financial and trade sanctions against Tehran, is expected to seek re-election.

Although Rouhani won in a single round with more than 50 percent of the vote four years ago when no other candidate won more than 17 percent, he could face a more difficult campaign this time if hardliners unite against him. Many Iranians have grown impatient with the slow rate of improvement in their economic fortunes since the lifting of sanctions last year.

In a move to widen Ahmadinejad’s support, his senior aide Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie in May sent a conciliatory letter to Ahmadinejad’s predecessor as president, Mohammad Khatami, seen as the father of Iran’s reform movement.

Insiders said if disqualified, Ahmadinejad is likely to call on his supporters to back Rouhani, whose main rival is likely to be influential hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi, who declared his candidacy on Sunday.

“The irony is that by spoiling the conservatives’ game and taking away from Raisi’s voter-base, Ahmadinejad is in fact aiding Rouhani’s re-election,” said senior Iran analyst Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group.

Raisi, 57, heads Astan Qods Razavi, an organization in charge of a multibillion-dollar religious foundation that manages donations to Iran’s holiest Shi’ite Muslim shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

“Ahmadinejad knows full well that his candidacy is an affront to Khamenei who had publicly barred him from running,” said Vaez. “Disqualifying Ahmadinejad is hard, but not impossible.”

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Peter Graff)

U.S. makes limited exceptions to sanctions on Russian spy agency

cars drive past headquarters

By Joel Schectman and Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday adjusted sanctions on Russian intelligence agency FSB, making limited exceptions to the measures put in place by former President Barack Obama over accusations Moscow tried to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election with cyber attacks on political organizations.

The department said in a statement it would allow U.S. companies to make limited transactions with FSB that are needed to gain approval to import information technology products into Russia.

At the White House, President Donald Trump responded to a reporter’s question about whether he was easing sanctions on Russia, saying, “I’m not easing anything.”

Sanctions experts and former Obama administration officials stressed the exceptions to the sanctions imposed in December do not signal a broader shift in Russia policy.

In a conference call with reporters, a senior Treasury Department official said the exceptions were “a very technical fix” made in response to “direct complaints” from companies that were unable to import many consumer technology products without a permit from the FSB. The action had been in the making for weeks before Trump took office on Jan. 20, the official said.

Beyond its intelligence function, the FSB also regulates the importation of software and hardware that contains cryptography. Companies need FSB approval even to import broadly available commercial products such as cell phones and printers if they contain encryption.

Peter Harrell, a sanctions expert and former senior U.S. State Department official, said Treasury officials likely had not considered the issue in December.

“I don’t think when they sanctioned FSB they were intending to complicate the sale of cell phones and tablets,” Harrell said.

David Mortlock, a former National Security Council advisor for Obama said that before granting such exceptions, the administration would ask who a sanction was hurting and who it was benefiting.

Mortlock, now an attorney, said “here it’s a pretty easy calculus” because it was clear tech companies were the ones harmed by not being able to import software into Russia, not the spy agencies.

U.S. intelligence agencies accused the FSB of involvement in hacking of Democratic Party organizations during the election to discredit Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Republican Trump.

The agencies and private cyber security experts concluded the FSB first broke into the Democratic National Committee’s computer system in the summer of 2015 and began monitoring email and chat conversations.

They said FSB was one of two Russian spy agencies involved in a broad operation approved by top-ranking people in the Russian government. In December, Obama expelled 35 suspected Russian spies and sanctioned two spy agencies. He also sanctioned four Russian intelligence officers and three companies that he said provided support to the cyber operations.

(Reporting by Joel Schectman and Dustin Volz; additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Jason Lange; Editing by Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)

Democrats want 9/11-style special commission to probe Russia

rainy day at Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic members of the U.S. Congress called on Monday for the creation of an independent commission to investigate Russia’s attempts to intervene in the 2016 election, similar to the Sept. 11 panel that probed the 2001 attacks on the United States.

Their “Protecting our Democracy Act” would create a 12-member, bipartisan independent panel to interview witnesses, obtain documents, issue subpoenas and receive public testimony to examine attempts by Moscow and any other entities to influence the election.

The panel members would not be members of Congress.

The legislation is one of many calls by lawmakers to look into Russian involvement in the contest, in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the White House race, confounding opinion polls. Republicans also kept control of the Senate and House of Representatives by larger-than-expected margins.

U.S. intelligence agencies on Friday released a report saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to help Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting Clinton.

Russia has denied the hacking allegations. A Kremlin spokesman said Monday they were “reminiscent of a witch-hunt.”

“There is no question that Russia attacked us,” Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told a news conference.

Versions of the bill were introduced in both the Senate and House. In the Senate it has 10 sponsors. In the House it is backed by every member of the Democratic caucus, said Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

However, no Republicans currently back the bill, so its prospects are dim, given Republican control of both houses of Congress.

While a few Republicans, notably Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, have supported calls for an independent probe, party leaders have resisted the idea, saying that investigations by Republican-led congressional committees are sufficient.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, who just returned from a trip to the Baltic states, Ukraine and Georgia with Graham and McCain, said Russia’s actions justified a probe by an independent panel of national experts.

“This is not just about one political party. It’s not even about one election. It’s not even about one country, our country. It is a repeated attempt… around the world, to influence elections,” Klobuchar said.

After Sept 11, 2001, Congress established an independent commission to look into the attacks and make recommendations about how to prevent similar actions in the future. Many of the recommendations were adopted into law.

“The American people felt good about what they did,” Cummings said.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Grant McCool)

Congress begins Russia hacking probe, Trump still skeptical of U.S. intelligence

Donald Trump

By Dustin Volz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senior U.S. intelligence officials will testify in Congress on Thursday on Russia’s alleged cyber attacks during the 2016 election campaign, even as President-elect Donald Trump casts doubt on intelligence agencies’ findings that Moscow orchestrated the hacks.

The hearings come a day before Trump is due to be briefed by intelligence agency chiefs on hacks that targeted the Democratic Party.

Trump is heading for a conflict over the issue with Democrats and fellow Republicans in Congress, many of whom are wary of Moscow and distrust the New York businessman’s praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and efforts to heal the rift between the United States and Russia.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre are expected to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is chaired by Republican John McCain, a vocal critic of Putin.

Their testimony on cyber threats facing the United States will come a week after President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian suspected spies and imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies over their alleged involvement in hacking U.S. political groups in the 2016 election.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia was behind hacks into Democratic Party organizations and operatives before the presidential election, a conclusion supported by several private cybersecurity firms. Moscow denies the hacking allegations.

U.S. intelligence officials have also said the Russian cyber attacks aimed to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election. Several Republicans acknowledge Russian hacking during the election but have not linked it to an effort to help Trump win.

Documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager, were leaked to the media in advance of the election, embarrassing the Clinton campaign.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump said: “(WikiLeaks founder) Julian Assange said ‘a 14 year old could have hacked Podesta’ – why was DNC so careless? Also said the Russians did not give him the info!”

Trump also quoted Assange as telling Fox News that U.S. media coverage of the matter was “very dishonest.”

He and top advisers believe Democrats are trying to delegitimize his election victory by accusing Russian authorities of helping him.

FIRMER RESPONSE URGED

Some lawmakers, including McCain, said a firmer response was needed to check Russian aggression in cyberspace and elsewhere. He is among a handful of Republicans to join Democrats in pushing for a special committee to investigate Russia’s political hacking, although that effort has lost traction in the face of opposition from Republican leaders in Congress.

Obama instructed U.S. intelligence agencies last month to conduct a full review of the election hacks. That review could be completed and delivered to Obama as soon as Thursday, said sources familiar with the matter.

Five Democratic senators introduced legislation on Wednesday calling for the creation of an independent, nonpartisan commission to investigate Russian interference in the election.

Trump has also nominated people seen as friendly toward Moscow to senior administration posts, including secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, who while Exxon Mobil chief executive, was awarded the Order of Friendship, a Russian state honor, by Putin in 2013.

Rogers, the NSA chief, visited the president-elect in New York in November and is among a handful of people being considered by Trump to succeed the retiring Clapper as U.S. spy chief, in addition to former Republican Senator Dan Coats, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will also hold a closed-door hearing on Thursday to examine Russia’s alleged hacking and harassment of U.S. diplomats.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Peter Cooney)

Haiti awaits results of re-run vote, shattered by hurricane

Electoral workers are seen during vote counting at a polling station as Haiti holds a long-delayed presidential election after a devastating hurricane and more than a year of political instability, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti,

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Haiti waited overnight for the results of a re-run presidential election held on Sunday in the impoverished Caribbean country, which has been in political limbo for over a year and is still reeling from a devastating hurricane.

Early reports suggested that Jovenel Moise, backed by Haiti’s last president Michel Martelly, had taken a lead in early voting tallies. However, the party of another former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, said its nominee, Maryse Narcisse, was headed for victory.

Electoral authorities said they do not expect to have preliminary results until Monday.

The vote was first held in October 2015, but then annulled over complaints of fraud in the first round after Moise, the candidate of Martelly’s Bald Heads Party, finished ahead of Jude Celestin, the former boss of a state construction company.

Further disputes ensued and a rescheduled vote due last month was postponed when Hurricane Matthew struck, killing up to 1,000 people and leaving 1.4 million needing aid.

Voters in the poorest country in the western hemisphere hope the next president will boost the economy and repair the damage.

“We need aid, aid for the country,” said Clauzette Fortine, a 41-year-old voter in Port-a-Piment, a town in southwestern Haiti pummeled by Matthew last month. “Aid after the hurricane, because everything was lost,” she added.

Men wait in line for roofing material during the eviction of residents from a shelter for people displaced by Hurricane Matthew in Lycee Jean Claude Museau, which will be used as a voting centre, before the election in Les Cayes, Haiti,

Men wait in line for roofing material during the eviction of residents from a shelter for people displaced by Hurricane Matthew in Lycee Jean Claude Museau, which will be used as a voting centre, before the election in Les Cayes, Haiti, November 19, 2016. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

Moise, an entrepreneur who was tipped to prevail by one recent opinion poll, was leading the count according to some radio stations broadcasting from polling stations. Calvin Cadet, a former director of the communications ministry under Martelly, said Moise was on track to win 64 percent of the vote.

However, Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party said the vote had given a majority to Narcisse, a doctor.

And Celestin, who placed second in last year’s vote, is also in the running, as is former senator Moise Jean-Charles. All told, more than two dozen candidates are competing.

Martelly left office in February, and since then Haiti has been in the hands of a caretaker government. To win outright in the first round, the top candidate must secure more than 50 percent of the vote or a lead of at least 25 percentage points.

Failing that, a Jan. 29 second round run-off is likely for the top two finishers. The victor is due to take office in February, and faces a formidable task rebuilding the country after Matthew.

The deadly storm battered homes, farms and schools across southern Haiti, piling fresh misery onto the nation of more than 10 million people on the western half of the island of Hispaniola that is still recovering from a major earthquake in 2010.

There were a number of reports of voting fraud on Sunday, although election observers made a broadly positive assessment, suggesting it had gone more smoothly than last year.

Some Haitians complained they could not cast a ballot because their names did not appear on lists at the polling stations, while others said that when they tried, they were told somebody had already voted for them.

Electoral council president Leopold Berlanger said the vote had been a success overall. Still, he also noted there had been several arrests and an attempt made to burn a polling station in southeastern Haiti. National police said 43 people had been arrested for interference in the election.

(Additional reporting by Makini Brice in Les Cayes; Editing by Dave Graham and Christian Schmollinger)

U.S. protesters march against Trump presidency for fifth day

Protests on Las Vegas Strip

By Alexander Besant

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Demonstrators in major U.S. cities took to the streets on Sunday for a fifth straight day to protest President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign manager said President Barack Obama and Democrat Hillary Clinton should do more to support a peaceful transition.

Following several nights of unrest, crowds of people marched in parks in New York City, San Francisco and Oakland, California, according to social media.

A few thousand joined a march at the south end of Manhattan’s Central Park, beginning at a Trump property on Columbus Circle and walking toward the real estate mogul’s skyscraper headquarters less than a mile (1.6 km) away.

They chanted: “Say it loud, say it clear, immigrants are welcomed here,” and held signs such as “White silence = violence” and “Don’t mourn, organize.”

One protester said demonstrators were reclaiming what the American flag he was holding stood for.

“The flag means freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal protection under the law and other values like diversity, respecting differences, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press,” said Daniel Hayman, 31, of Seattle, who was in New York for work. “We’re trying to reclaim the flag and push forward those values.”

Thousands in several cities have demonstrated since the results from Tuesday’s election showed Trump, a Republican, lost the popular tally but secured enough votes in the 538-member Electoral College to win the presidency, surprising the world.

Largely peaceful demonstrators in urban areas have said Trump threatens their civil and human rights. They have decried Trump’s often inflammatory campaign rhetoric about illegal immigrants, Muslims and women, as well as allegations, which he denies, that the former reality TV star sexually abused women.

Dozens have been arrested, including 71 in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday night, according to police, and a handful of police injured.

‘LET’S MAKE WAVES’

In San Francisco on Sunday, about 1,000 people marched through Golden Gate Park toward a beach where they chanted: “Let’s make waves.” They held signs such as “I resist racism” and “Down with the Trumps.”

Across the bay in Oakland, thousands of protesters joined a festival-like atmosphere, holding peace signs and blowing soap bubbles in the sunshine. Many had brought their children, aiming to hold hands around the 3.4-mile (5.5-km) circumference of Lake Merritt in a popular urban park.

Civil rights groups have monitored violence against U.S. minorities since Trump’s win, citing reports of attacks on women in Islamic head scarves, of racist graffiti and of bullying of immigrant children. They have called on Trump to denounce the attacks.

Trump said he was ‘so saddened’ to hear of instances of violence by some of his supporters against minorities, according to a transcript released on Sunday of an interview with the CBS program ’60 Minutes.’

‘THIS MAN IS OUR PRESIDENT’

Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, said on Fox News on Sunday that she was sure many of the protesters were paid professionals, although she offered no proof.

Suggesting a double standard, Conway said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that if Clinton had won the election and Trump supporters had protested, “people would be freaking out that his supporters were not accepting election results.”

“It’s time really for President Obama and Secretary Clinton to say to these protesters: ‘This man is our president,'” she said.

Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told CNN on Sunday that protests were protected by the First Amendment as long as they were peaceful.

Neither Obama nor Clinton has called for an end to the protests. Obama told Trump at the White House on Thursday that he was going to help Trump succeed, “because if you succeed, then the country succeeds.”

Clinton told supporters at a New York hotel on Wednesday: “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”

Trump on Sunday attacked the New York Times for coverage he said was “very poor and highly inaccurate.”

“The @nytimes sent a letter to their subscribers apologizing for their BAD coverage of me. I wonder if it will change – doubt it?” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The newspaper published a letter in Sunday’s editions from publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Dean Baquet, not apologizing, but thanking readers for their loyalty and asking how news outlets underestimated Trump’s support.

The Times plans to “hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly” during the Trump presidency, they wrote.

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise in Washington, Beck Diefenbach in San Francisco and Noah Berger in Oakland, Calif.; Writing by David Ingram; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)