(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump touted vote-by-mail in his home state of Florida. Democratic nominee Joe Biden is up by 39 points in California. And the Republican Party promises a nightly surprise at a largely virtual convention.
There are 91 days until the election.
Other Developments:
- Trump Ally Kobach Has Washington Republicans Worried for Senate
- Absentee Ballot Versus Vote-by-Mail? A Guide to Voting Terms
- Biden Promises to Spend, Shrugs Off His History as Deficit Hawk
- Trump Says He May Act to Stop Evictions Amid Virus-Aid Talks
Trump Touts Vote-by-Mail in Florida
After weeks of criticizing vote-by-mail, Trump took to Twitter Tuesday to promote it in his home state of Florida.
“Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True,” wrote Trump, who voted absentee in the state's March primary and plans to do so again in November.
Republican confidence in mail-in voting has been dropping in polls amid Trump's attacks, and Republican leaders in states like Florida have worried the skepticism could hamper long-running programs to turn out early votes.
Before now, Trump has also sought to make a distinction between “absentee voting” and “vote by mail.” Elections officials use the terms interchangeably. Florida dropped the term “absentee” from state statutes in 2016.
Absentee Ballot Versus Vote-by-Mail? A Guide to Election Terms
Biden Up by 39 Points in California (12:18 p.m.)
If Biden's margin in a California poll holds steady in November, it would tie a record set there by Franklin Roosevelt in 1936.
In a poll from the University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies, Biden received 67% support, while Trump picked up just 28%.
That 39-point margin is 9 points higher than Hillary Clinton's in 2016, and would tie FDR's landslide first re-election, when he beat Republican Alf Landon 37-26 in the Golden State amid the Great Depression.
California has long been assumed to be in Biden's column in November, but a strong showing there could boost his popular vote tally.
The poll of 6,756 likely voters was conducted online in English and Spanish from July 21-27. It has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
GOP Convention Will Feature a Nightly Surprise (9:54 a.m.)
The Republican National Convention will include a mix of virtual and live appearances as well as a surprise on each of its four nights later this month.
Scheduled for Aug. 24-27, the convention will focus on Trump's objectives for a second term and include daily themes like “land of heroes,” on Monday, “land of promise” on Tuesday, “land of opportunity” on Wednesday and “land of greatness” on Thursday.
The details were first reported by Axios and confirmed by Trump's campaign.
As yet unnamed, high-profile convention speakers will appear between 10 and 11 p.m. each evening. The convention has been in flux due to a resurgence of coronavirus cases, which led to the president canceling a separate convention site in Jacksonville, Florida, last month. -- Mario Parker
Trump: ‘I Don't Know John Lewis' (9:24 a.m.)
Trump downplayed Lewis's civil-rights legacy to explain why he didn't attend the longtime representative's memorial services.
In an interview with “Axios on HBO,” the president said he “never met” the Georgia Democrat, who died in July. “I don't know John Lewis.”
“He didn't come to my inauguration,” he said. “He didn't come to my State of the Union speeches. And that's OK. That's his right. And again, nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have.”
Pressed on whether he found Lewis' life story -- leading the historic march over the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, being beaten and imprisoned as a civil rights protester -- impressive, Trump declined.
“I can't say one way or the other,” he said. “I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive.”
Trump did not visit the Capitol when Lewis was lying in state last week.
Trump Says Coronavirus Is ‘Under Control' in Interview (7:28 a.m.)
Trump says the coronavirus pandemic is “under control as much as you can control it” in the U.S.
In an interview with “Axios on HBO” taped last week, the president said that “right now it's under control,” when pressed about the fact that 1,000 Americans are dying each day.
“They are dying, that's true. And you have -- it is what it is,” he said. “But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague.”
Trump then said that his administration sent the states equipment they needed to fight the pandemic, but many governors “didn't do their job.”
Biden Urges No-Excuse Absentee Voting in All 50 States (6:29 a.m.)
The Biden campaign says no-excuse absentee voting should be available in every election.
By law, 34 states and the District of Columbia allow any voter to cast their ballot by mail without an excuse. But other states have loosened or suspended that requirement during the coronavirus.
In two new ads on Facebook, Biden says that mail-in voting should be “an option for all voters, for all elections,” and questions Trump's criticism of it.
“Why is he so afraid of making voting more accessible?” the ad says. “Because he knows expanding access to the vote would get him pushed right out of office by the will of the people.”
A short video contrasts Trump's tweets against mail-in voting with members of his administration who have voted by mail, including Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
A July poll from the Pew Research Center showed nearly two-thirds of Americans support allowing absentee voting without an excuse.
Nearly 2% of Mail-In Ballots Rejected in Two Key 2020 States
In the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania primaries held during the pandemic, nearly 2% of mail-in ballots were rejected, a new report says.
The research by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab and CBS News found that 1.9% of returned mail ballots in Wisconsin were rejected. That's 22,401 ballots -- just a few hundred votes less than the margin of victory for Trump in 2016.
In Pennsylvania, 1.8% of returned mail ballots were rejected, or 26,594.
By comparison, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that in 2016, just under 1% of returned ballots were rejected, most commonly for failing to sign the ballot envelope, for a signature that didn't match the one on file or for arriving after a deadline.
Trump Highlights Family at Upcoming Fundraisers
For the Trump campaign, fundraising is all in the family.
On Thursday, the president will hold a roundtable discussion as part of a fundraiser in the Hamptons, a swanky part of Long Island, with his son Donald Jr. and his son's girlfriend, former Fox News journalist Kimberly Guilfoyle.
The two will also join Trump on Monday, along with the pesident's daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, for a roundtable at a fundraiser in Jackson, Wyoming.
Coming Up:
Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington state are holding primaries today.
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