The unsealed federal indictment on corruption charges Thursday against Eric Adams, New York City’s embattled Democratic mayor, has sent shock waves across the political universe – terrible optics for his party just weeks before the November elections. 

But whether the five-count indictment of Mayor Adams will affect the presidential race remains to be seen. Nationally, the epic smackdown between former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who emerged as Democratic nominee just weeks ago, has dominated discussion. 

So it may be that the unprecedented drama in New York – the first-ever indictment of a sitting mayor in the Big Apple, America’s largest city – remains a largely regional issue. 

But even there, a local impact could have national implications. The race for control of the U.S. House, with Republicans currently holding a narrow majority, will hinge on just a few races. One of them happens to be on Long Island.

“Voters across the country are not usually surprised by corruption in big-city politics,” says veteran New York Democratic strategist Alex Navarro-McKay. But, he adds, news out of Manhattan could have “very modest effects on the congressional races in the New York City media market.” 

Mr. Navarro-McKay is referring to the closely contested 4th Congressional District race in Long Island, where GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito is under investigation for ethics violations. 

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Anthony D'Esposito, a Republican member of Congress from Long Island, speaks at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, Sept. 18, 2024. He is in a tight race that will help determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The strategist says that while Republicans don’t seem bothered by former President Trump’s business fraud and sexual misconduct convictions in New York City, the legal troubles have made a dent with independent voters and some Democrats. But as for New York City’s mayor, he adds, “I don’t think voters in Michigan care about Eric Adams,” referring to a key presidential battleground state.

Corruption charges, and calls for Adams to resign

Republican strategists, too, aren’t sure how the Adams indictment will play out nationally. “We’re in uncharted territory,” says Doug Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee.

But in New York City, the news was clearly devastating for Mr. Adams, a veteran of the New York Police Department and state Senate who took office Jan. 1, 2022. His mayoral campaign in 2021 surfaced questions about his ethics, including whether he even lived in New York City. But he won the race as a tough-on-crime former NYPD captain, though he was a longtime opponent of the police force’s stop-and-frisk practices. 

By late 2023, Mr. Adams and his reelection campaign were under federal investigation for corrupt practices, including alleged illegal campaign donations from the Turkish government. In November of last year, the FBI seized the mayor’s electronic devices as part of its investigation. 

Earlier this year, the walls began closing in on Mr. Adams, as the mayor himself, campaign officials, and New York City administration officials faced investigation and, in some cases, resigned. Others not under investigation stepped down, too, in a sign that the ship was sinking. 

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams speaks at a news conference detailing an indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Sept. 26, 2024, in New York.

On Thursday, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, alleged in a press conference that Mr. Adams and his campaign had accepted more than $100,000 in illegal travel perks from the government of Turkey. The 57-page indictment described charges of bribery, wire fraud, and a conspiracy to receive illegal foreign campaign contributions. 

Mr. Adams, in his own press conference outside the New York City mayoral residence, Gracie Mansion – which had been searched hours earlier by federal authorities – refused to step down. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has the power to remove Mr. Adams from office, but held off on taking action Thursday, telling reporters that she was reviewing the charges.

Other prominent New York Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, called on Mr. Adams to step down. 

“I do not see how Mayor Adams can continue governing New York City,” Representative Ocasio-Cortez wrote on the social platform X. “The flood of resignations and vacancies are threatening gov function. Nonstop investigations will make it impossible to recruit and retain a qualified administration.”

“For the good of the city, he should resign,” she said. 

Yuki Iwamura/AP

Federal agents exit Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, amid reports that he was being charged with federal crimes, Sept. 26, 2024.

Who would take over if Adams departs?

Questions swirled Thursday over who would take over for Mr. Adams if he were to resign. Normally, the city’s public advocate would replace a mayor who left office prematurely, but it is uncertain whether current the current public advocate, Jumaane Williams, would do so. 

Mr. Williams, a progressive Democrat who has been critical of the mayor’s comparatively moderate stances on some issues, was elected public advocate for New York City in 2019 and reelected in 2021. He ran unsuccessfully for New York governor in 2022. 

On Wednesday evening, before Mr. Adams was officially charged, Mr. Williams’ spokesperson posted on X that the news of the indictment was serious, and that the public advocate would say more as facts emerged. But Mr. Williams’ public appearances for Thursday were canceled. Neither Mr. Williams’ office nor Governor Hochul’s office responded to emails requesting comment. 

Regarding the broader implications, one prominent Democratic New York strategist surmised that the impact of the Adams scandal would not go beyond the city’s metro area. Though even that could be impactful.

“It’s likely to be an issue in the suburban New York districts that could help determine the House majority,” said Lis Smith in a text. But other than that, she didn’t see the scandal having much of a national effect. “It’s a New York scandal through and through – not the first and definitely not the last!”

“And I would add that it’s gonna be tough for NY Republicans to weaponize it too much when they are all standing by Trump who was convicted of crimes,” she added. “It’s all very New York, very tawdry.”

Bernabé Abraham Gaspar’s son disappeared 10 years ago.

So as he has done on the 26th of nearly every month since, he adjusts his huarache sandals and finds his place on the main thoroughfare of Mexico City. In the shadow of the capital’s golden Angel of Independence, ominous gray clouds above Mr. Abraham split apart, letting the sun peek out as he and dozens of parents begin their long march, clutching pictures of their beloved sons, their faces frozen in time.

On Sept. 26, 2014, a group of 43 young, aspiring teachers was attacked and vanished in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. In a country well known for its “disappeared,” whose numbers have grown along with record-high violence, this crime was so brazen it made the name of the remote, rural locale of Ayotzinapa, where the young men had been studying, globally recognizable.

But as Mexico marks the 10th anniversary of a tragedy many hoped could change the nation – in how justice is meted out, how the government treats victims of violence, and how far violence is tolerated – the families of the students have little certainty about what unfolded that night and who, specifically, should be held responsible. 

Whitney Eulich

Bernabé Abraham Gaspar holds up an image of his son Adán at Centro Prodh, a human rights organization, in Mexico City, Aug. 26, 2024. Adán was 24 years old when he and 42 other students from his rural teachers college vanished at the hands of the state. Ten years later, Mr. Abraham is still searching for answers.

The Mexican state has doubled down to protect the armed forces and to sideline victims and their families, experts say, showing an unwillingness to get to the truth. But the tireless march of parents like Mr. Abraham has helped fuel a growing social movement powered not by political opposition, but by grief that has captured a society’s attention. 

There have been “more expressions [of resistance] not only by the families of these students, but others whose loved ones have disappeared in this country,” says María Luisa Aguilar Rodríguez, a coordinator at the Center for Human Rights Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez A.C. (Centro Prodh), a human rights organization in the capital that helps the families of the 43. “They’re making clear to the world the failures of our institutions.”

As Mr. Abraham, whose son Adán was 24 years old when he disappeared, puts it, “If we stop coming [to protest], the government will say, ‘This doesn’t matter to us.’” 

So he marches forward.

Establishing facts

The Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, where the young men were studying, is part of a network of teacher-training colleges that expanded after the Mexican Revolution in the early 1900s to bring education to rural areas. Over time, the schools became deeply involved with social issues such as land rights that have given them a reputation for radical activism. 

One annual tradition at the Ayotzinapa teachers college was to commandeer buses to transport the students about 250 miles to Mexico City for an annual march commemorating a massacre of college students by the military in 1968. 

Felix Marquez/AP

The Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, made global headlines 10 years ago after 43 students disappeared on their way to a protest in Mexico City.

But en route, police forced dozens of students off the buses they were riding. Six people, including three students, were killed in a confrontation that night, and 43 students vanished.

Soon after, the government of then-President Enrique Peña Nieto announced that the case had been solved and declared what it called the “historic truth.” It concluded that the men had been handed off by the police to local gang members who had taken them to a nearby trash dump, where their bodies were incinerated. 

The parents never accepted that this was the truth, however, and began a four-year search for more answers, says Humberto Guerrero Rosales, the human rights program coordinator at Fundar, a Mexico City think tank that focuses on transparency. 

And then, unexpectedly, came a ray of hope. 

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected in 2018, riding to power on his folksy, leftist rhetoric that for the first time in modern memory seemed to speak directly to Mexico’s long-ignored poor population. Early on, he set up a truth and justice commission for Ayotzinapa and appointed a special prosecutor for the case. 

“My promise is not to fail the mothers [and] the fathers of the young people of Ayotzinapa, the people of Mexico,” said Mr. López Obrador in September 2018. 

In 2022, the truth commission concluded what the families had believed from the start: The Ayotzinapa tragedy was a “crime of the state” involving police officers, government officials, and the military, along with a local drug trafficking gang. It debunked the story that the students’ bodies had been burned at a dump.

Felix Marquez/AP

The mother of one of the 43 Ayotzinapa students who went missing 10 years ago in Guerrero state shows a necklace with the number 43 as she arrives at the National Palace to meet with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico City, Aug. 27, 2024.

But by 2023, that sense of hope for the truth dimmed.

“The moment responsibility started to be assigned to the army, that’s where things started to fall apart,” says Mr. Guerrero, the human rights activist. The armed forces have played a central role in Mr. López Obrador’s administration, often carrying out traditionally civilian tasks such as building infrastructure, controlling migration, and even working in tourism. 

“We have a president who basically denounced the work carried out by his close collaborators and closed ranks to defend the army and deny its participation,” Mr. Guerrero says. “The version of the narrative the government is now pushing has similarities to that initial ‘historic truth.’ The disappearances of the students was part of a local problem, specific to the state of Guerrero.”

Changing course

The government reverted to the previous administration’s attitude to the parents. They found themselves lumped into a broad group of actors President López Obrador felt were undermining his transformation of the country: the opposition. 

The president “gave us hope that he would dedicate resources to this. That our pain wasn’t nothing. But then he did nothing,” says Calixta Valerio, whose son Mauricio Ortega Valerio was 18 years old when he disappeared alongside his classmates. He had grown up playing make-believe with his younger sisters, always taking the role of teacher, his mother recalls.

Henry Romero/Reuters

Demonstrators and relatives of the students from Ayotzinapa who disappeared 10 years ago hold a protest ahead of the 10th anniversary of their disappearance in Mexico City.

In December 2023, Mr. López Obrador changed the way in which the country’s disappeared were counted, reducing the number by 90% in one fell swoop, from 110,964 to 12,377. This was a slap in the face for those tirelessly searching for their missing loved ones, made worse when government agencies involved in the search for disappeared people saw their budgets cut.

“Disappearances” are not just a matter of widespread violence in certain parts of Mexico, says Ms. Aguilar from Centro Prodh. They happen “because none of those areas have installed the capabilities to carry out an investigation or criminal prosecution,” she says.   “As long as no one investigates it, it continues.”

And the government has forgotten that the families of disappeared people in Mexico are not just another social movement, but victims, too, she adds.

“If the government understood them as victims, they would understand that for them it is impossible not to fight the state,” she says. “So, unlike other social movements, small steps or concessions won’t necessarily satisfy them. They aren’t the opposition; they are demanding support to find a loved one.” 

Whitney Eulich

Young women in traditional dress purchase tacos near Mexico City's Angel of Independence in August during the monthly demonstration calling for answers in the now 10-year-old case of 43 students from Ayotzinapa who disappeared on their way to a protest in the capital.

Joining forces

Between 2007 and April 2023, the government identified more than 5,500 clandestine graves in Mexico, some of them holding multiple bodies. More than half of these mass burial sites are in just three states, including Guerrero.

The disappeared in Mexico tend to be young and poor, the same demographic around which Mr. López Obrador has centered his policies to end historic economic inequality.

Over the past 10 years, while the Ayotzinapa case has been drawn out on the public stage, families of other disappeared people have prominently organized in states across Mexico to take justice into their own hands. Groups like the “Searching Mothers of Sonora” and “The Network of Disappeared Persons in Tamaulipas” are proliferating, acting on anonymous tips and facing threats from criminal organizations in their hunt for answers that the authorities have not made a priority. 

“I find hope in how victims and families are organizing,” says Mr. Guerrero. “Even victims from 50 years ago, victims of state terrorism in the 1970s, they still have the energy and imagination to create waves, to organize.”

Ayotzinapa family members met President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo in late July, but they have mixed feelings about what to expect from her once she takes office Oct. 1. Some say they worry her administration will offer more of the same, while others hold out hope she will recognize that Ayotzinapa created a clear “before and after” for disappearances in Mexico, and take concrete action.

Felix Marquez/AP

Classmates of the 43 Ayotzinapa university students who went missing ten years ago march as they continue to seek justice for their disappeared colleagues in Mexico City, Aug. 26, 2024.

It’s a pivot point that’s clearly marked on the streets. At the recent monthly Mexico City protest, the last before the 10th anniversary, scores of current students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college marched in tight rows, screaming so loudly their words were indecipherable.

Behind them followed a wave of teachers groups, Indigenous collectives, and a trio of drummers. Another group of demonstrators counted solemnly to 43 as they walked the route.

The parents and their supporters wove their way down the street through a roundabout dedicated to the nation’s disappeared, printouts of hundreds of faces glued to a temporary barricade. A half-mile later, they passed a roundabout dedicated to missing and murdered women. 

“We first said we’ll go and march for eight days. Then 15 days, we’d protest,” says Macedonia Torres Romero, whose 18-year-old son José Luis Luna Torres was among the disappeared. “Now it’s 10 years we’ve been marching,” she says, holding up a banner with the boyish face of José Luis, who would be in his late 20s now. 

“We’ll fight until the end. That’s what it means to be a parent,” she says, her T-shirt underlining the point: “Son, I’ll search until I find you.”

Despite heightened partisan tensions heading into a consequential election, Congress has put aside its usual divisive rhetoric to investigate the dual Trump assassination attempts in a serious, bipartisan way. 

“We must be united in our belief as Americans – not as Republicans or Democrats – that political disagreement is settled through rigorous debate, not violence,” said Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a retired Army Ranger and the top Democrat on a bipartisan House panel that held its first hearing Thursday. “This task force has a solemn, urgent responsibility to uncover the failures and help stop them from being repeated.”

At the hearing, members of local law enforcement who were working at the Butler, Pennsylvania, site when former President Donald Trump was shot and nearly killed on July 13 helped lawmakers piece together a series of failures in planning, coordination, and communications. The overall thrust of their testimony corroborated an interim Senate report released Wednesday that found “foreseeable, preventable” failures. 

Both the House and Senate investigations have expanded to include a second apparent assassination attempt on Mr. Trump in Florida earlier this month, underscoring the urgency as he and Vice President Kamala Harris step up their appearances in the final weeks of the campaign. 

These congressional investigations aim to uncover not only what went wrong but also any systemic reasons for such mistakes, including an apparent lack of accountability and responsibility. Untangling such systemic problems, some due to chronic understaffing as well as increased operational demands on the Secret Service, will take time. But both the agency and lawmakers recognize the need to act immediately to address the risk of violence close to Election Day.

“In this next phase we will be seeking answers about the Secret Service’s questionable decisions regarding planning, resources, and the apparent lack of leadership that led to complacency and vulnerability on July 13,” said House task force Chair Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican who grew up in Butler.

Evan Vucci/AP

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is covered by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Among the more stunning failures identified by the Senate report, which is based on 2,800 pages of documents and a dozen transcribed interviews with U.S. Secret Service personnel: 

• A Pennsylvania State Police lieutenant involved in a planning meeting on site five days before the rally said the U.S. Secret Service couldn’t answer basic questions, including where the stage would be.
• Countersnipers, which had not previously been used for presidential candidates who were not yet official nominees of their party, were added to the security plan due to credible intelligence of a threat, relayed by Mr. Trump’s detail, but the Secret Service’s special agent in charge of the rally was never notified of that threat.
• Not only were the Secret Service and local law enforcement communicating on separate radio frequencies, but their communications teams were operating out of separate locations more than 100 yards apart. That is an unusual departure from the norm of a single unified command center, and hampered quick sharing of information. 
• The Secret Service agent running a system for countering drones, which the shooter used to surveil the area, only had about three months of experience using that equipment. When technical problems arose, he had to call a toll-free 888 hotline, delaying deployment of the system.

Mr. Trump, who is scheduled to return to the same Butler site for another rally next weekend, was warned earlier this week in a briefing with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that Iran is behind real and specific threats to assassinate him “to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”

Some members of the House task force suggested a connection between the July 13 shooting and the July 12 arrest of Asif Merchant, a Pakistani with ties to Iran who had made $5,000 payments to individuals who would carry out an assassination. 

Two weeks ago, the Department of Justice indicted Mr. Merchant “with attempting to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and murder-for-hire as part of a scheme to assassinate a politician or U.S. government official on U.S. soil” – a move FBI Director Christopher Wray said was “straight out of the Iranian regime’s playbook.” However, the FBI told the Senate committee that Mr. Merchant had no connection to the July 13 Trump assassination attempt. 

Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters

Edward Lenz of Butler County Emergency Services Unit and Drew Blasko of Butler Township Police Department attend a House task force on the assassination attempt of Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 26, 2024.

Crucial communication breakdown

Representative Crow framed perhaps the most crucial issue going forward: the need for better coordination and clearer lines of communication between Secret Service agents and their partners at protective events.

The agency, which is responsible for protecting the family – including grandchildren – of presidents and former presidents, has been increasingly stretched thin, due in part to the multigenerational Biden and Trump families. Therefore, the agency is increasingly dependent on local, state, and federal partners.  

A summary of the Secret Service’s initial “mission assurance” report, released to answer questions about its performance on July 13, noted an uptick in operational demands and an increasingly stretched staff as one of several potential contributing factors to mission failure. 

“A central tenet of law enforcement operations is effective communications,” the report said, noting breakdowns in those communications at the rally. It noted that Mr. Trump’s protective detail “were not apprised of how focused state and local law enforcement were in the minutes leading up to the attack on locating the suspicious subject.”

The interim Senate report released this week noted that while the Secret Service had acknowledged its failure as an agency, no one individual had taken responsibility. It revealed that many of the mistakes that enabled Thomas Matthew Crooks to get up on a roof with a clear line of sight to Mr. Trump were due to a lack of clarity about the lines of responsibility between the Secret Service and its partners.  

Mr. Crooks, who had been roaming the grounds for hours before the shooting, fired eight shots toward the stage at 6:11 p.m., killing a rallygoer and coming within less than an inch of a fatal shot to the former president’s head. 

Why the now-infamous roof was not better protected

The most significant failure involved a lack of planning and coordination between the Secret Service and local law enforcement over the American Glass Research building, from whose roof the shooter targeted Mr. Trump. 

According to the Senate report, Secret Service agents did not review local law enforcement’s plans for covering the building from which a gunman shot Mr. Trump at the rally, and did not sweep it before the rally. 

Ben Curti/AP

Rep. Mike Kelly, a Republican from Pennsylvania, speaks in front of a map at the first public hearing of a bipartisan congressional task force investigating the assassination attempts against Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 26, 2024.

While the acting director of the Secret Service told the Senate Homeland Security committee in a July 30 hearing that local snipers positioned inside the building could have seen the shooter, one of those snipers said he would have had to have been “hanging out the window” to do so. No agents were posted on the roof. 

Some of the Secret Service countersnipers assigned to monitor the roof of that building, including the one who fired at the shooter, had a partially obscured view of the roof – a point that the lead of their team said he “didn’t really make a mental note of” when he previewed the area, and did not mention to the countersnipers. 

Another countersniper team had a clear line of sight, but spent most of the rally facing a different direction. So while Mr. Crooks was spotted by local police and even by some rally attendees, none of the Secret Service countersnipers interviewed so far were aware of his presence until seconds before shots were fired.  

That said, at least eight other Secret Service agents were aware of Mr. Crooks 19 minutes before the shooting, but they failed to communicate and take action before he shot Mr. Trump.

Majority of documents heavily redacted

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security said that many of its requests to the Secret Service for documents have not been completed, and that the majority of documents handed over have been heavily redacted. 

In a letter to the Secret Service’s acting Director Ronald Rowe on Sept. 11, four members of the committee expressed concern to the agency over its lack of cooperation, adding that the agency would sometimes delay producing the necessary documents until just minutes before a scheduled interview. 

The FBI, for its part, has provided 27 pages of documents so far.

Carlos Osorio/AP

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at an election forum in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Sept. 19, 2024.

Georgia’s Republican secretary of state is sounding the alarm that last-minute election rule changes implemented by his state’s election board are creating unnecessary confusion and undermining voter trust in one of the United States’ most hotly contested presidential battlegrounds.

Republican Brad Raffensperger famously declined to grant then-President Donald Trump’s demand that he “find 11,780 votes” to reverse his 2020 loss in the state, facing death threats as he refused to succumb to pressure from the president. He’s since backed controversial voting law changes decried by Democrats, defeated a Trump-backed primary challenger in 2022, and crisscrossed the state trying to convince Georgia voters that his state’s elections will be safer and more secure than ever before, while implementing changes he says should ensure a smooth vote count this fall.

But a hard-right majority gained control of Georgia’s State Election Board in May. In recent weeks that board, led by that trio of Republican-appointed officials, has passed a bevy of controversial rule changes. They include rules that would seemingly give local election board members wide leeway to conduct “reasonable inquiry” into any perceived problems with the voting process, and potentially toss out votes. Just days ago, they approved a new rule requiring all ballots be counted by hand to make sure they match machine counts, a time-consuming and error-prone process that could delay the tabulation of votes on election night. Mr. Trump praised the trio in a speech in Georgia last month, calling them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”

The Monitor sat down with Secretary of State Raffensperger in his office in the Georgia state Capitol in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon to talk about his work and his concerns about the board.

Here’s what he had to say about the looming elections. The transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

Do you feel like the members who make up the majority governing Georgia’s State Election Board understand how elections work?

No, I don’t think they do. And the only way to understand how elections work is to volunteer to be a poll worker. It’s as easy as that. Once you’ve worked one election, you start understanding, “Oh, they’ve got this procedure to close that gate [to potential voting fraud].” 

These people don’t know what to look for. So any great conspiracy theory they hear, they buy into it.

Do you think these election board members are operating in bad faith? 

(Mr. Raffensperger pauses for nine seconds.)

That’s a long pause. 

I think they’re living in the past. They’re fighting the wrong battle, because we’ve already [responded to] many of these concerns that everyone had. The ballot storage boxes now are defined where they’ll be and how many there’ll be per county. You got one for every 100,000 voters. We also now have voter ID.

All the early voting [now] has to be reported no later than one hour after polls close, so 8 p.m.

So all you’re waiting for now is the 30% to 35% that could have been cast on Election Day. And we want to make sure we have constant updates from the counties.

Everything that they’ve done with their rules and regulations slows down the process. We’re serious when we say “free, fair, and fast.” And what they’re doing is just throwing a wrench into the works.

How big a wrench do you think this is? What sort of delay might we be looking at for reporting results? 

The counties have already expressed how long they think it’ll take. It could be 1 o’clock to 4 o’clock [a.m.]. But once one starts getting to 3 or 4 o’clock, that’s the triple witching hour. “Oh, is this the same thing that happened in Philadelphia in 2020, in Detroit in 2020?” Everything we’ve done is to shore up voters’ confidence – and everything that they’re doing is destroying voter confidence. 

It’s just a breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

Some of the new rules the State Election Board just passed would seemingly give local officials wide leeway to toss ballots if they claim errors occurred in voting or tabulation. And counties can conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results. What impact could that have if these rules stand? 

At the end of the day, state law is very clear, and that cannot be violated. All elections must be certified the Monday after the election. Because [this year] Monday is Veterans Day, they get till Tuesday, they get that extra day. But that’s it. That’s black-letter law, and everyone has to follow state law. You have to follow the state constitution.

What if some counties meet the certification deadline but also, say, decide to throw out an entire precinct’s votes because they have questions about it?

That’s when other people will be involved. I’m sure the candidates will be filing suits along with other nonprofits and other nonpartisan groups to make sure that they do follow the law. 

Which of the new rules are you most concerned about? 

Every one of them oversteps what is already in state law. We think that a court will find that they’re null and void. 

The [Republican] attorney general, in a six-page letter of advisement, laid it all out. We had a two-page letter. But they’re bound and determined to do what they want to do.

You spent the past four years working to try and make sure that this post-election period would not look like what we saw in 2020. How much will the election board’s new rules undermine that effort? 

What they’re doing is actually very detrimental. Because [a winning candidate will say] “I won in spite of all the stuff that you guys were doing to us,” and if the candidate loses, “Well, you know, the rules disfavored me.” And so it’s not helpful for the republic.

People need to understand, and particularly conservatives need to understand: Georgia is ranked by The Heritage Foundation, a hard-right think tank, No. 2 for election integrity. Can I say that again? We are ranked No. 2 by The Heritage Foundation. I’m sure they probably got blowback from a lot of people, saying, “How is that possible?” Because they did their work. 

They looked at all our processes and our procedures and our laws. I was the first secretary of state, over 1 1/2 years ago, doing a citizenship verification of our voter rolls before anyone was even talking about it. 

I was the first one that jumped on that, because I saw with our open borders that voters were going to be concerned about that. Rightly so. So, we did a check. We found [1,634 people] who attempted to register but were not put on the voter list because they couldn’t verify their citizenship. Once they show that they’ve been naturalized, they show that documentation, they will go back on [the registered voter list] – but they haven’t [yet]. And they haven’t voted because they’re not on the list. And I think that should give voters great comfort.

We know that these are lawful Georgian voters voting in our elections.

You backed Senate Bill 202, which gave the election board some new powers and put in place a litany of other controversial voting changes backed by Republicans in 2021. Do you regret supporting that law?

Well, I didn’t support removing me as chair of the State Election Board. 

Fair, but you supported the bill overall.

Overall, I thought it was great, because I wanted to make sure that we could identify our absentee voters. When I ran, back in 2018, I said, as an engineer, that signature match looks awfully subjective. Guess who else thought it was subjective? Democrats and Republicans. We actually got sued by both of them. Now we use driver’s licenses, just like Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska. 

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly called you out. You faced death threats after the 2020 election. Are you still getting threats? 

Not recently. It’s been a while.

Are you worried about threats of violence in the run-up to and after this election, and what are you doing to lower those risks?  

I believe we’ll have secure elections during Election Day. We’ve been doing regional tabletops with law enforcement, security game-planning, scenario, strategies. We also have given local precinct managers a texting tool, “See Something, Say Something,” so they can alert. It comes to us, goes with the local county sheriff and also the election director. We also have lanyards with a press-button [to call] 911. We also want to have the local deputy sheriffs with their vehicles at the precincts. That’s 2,400 precincts – that’s a lot of cars, but it lets you know, “Hey folks, you know, let’s keep it quiet.”

Will you vote for former President Trump this election?

I don’t endorse anyone, and the reason I don’t is I’m the chief election official here in the state of Georgia. We don’t want any county election official spouting out who they support. Do your job.  

Do you think we’ll see the level of post-election chaos after this election we saw after 2020? 

There’s no way to predict, but our job is to be prepared for any kind of outcome at the end of the day.

AP

Migrants from Senegal wait to disembark from a crowded boat after a 13-day voyage to Spain's Canary Islands, Aug. 26.

A courtroom exchange on Tuesday in the West African nation of Senegal drew out what may be a key to resolving one of the most pernicious aspects of mass migration. Under vigorous questioning from the judge, a defendant acknowledged his role in transporting people illegally. Then he asked for “everyone’s forgiveness.”

The scale of human smuggling around the world is hard to quantify. The global population of migrants nears 300 million, according to the United Nations. Much of that movement crosses the Mediterranean Sea. At one point, as many as 90% of people reaching Europe irregularly from Africa moved through criminal networks, generating billions of dollars in illicit commerce. 

Europe has tried a range of strategies to curb the flow. In its latest move, the European Union launched a new network Wednesday to coordinate efforts among its 27 member states to counter drug trafficking, money laundering, and people smuggling.

The last issue has become a focal point of cooperation among governments in North Africa. The region is a key point of departure for people fleeing poverty, conflict, and the effects of climate change. So far this year, the U.N. reports, roughly 47,000 people have reached Italy alone by sea.

In Senegal, a succession of tragedies off the coast involving capsized vessels overcrowded with migrants has prompted a new government to crack down on criminal operations. Arrests have soared, resulting in the prosecution of 210 smugglers so far this year, Le Monde reported.

For countries on the receiving end of mass migration, addressing the root causes for why people leave their homes may be out of reach. Tunisia, for example, has little ability to shape events in Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo, where wars are displacing millions.

In South Africa, the police force in Johannesburg has found that compassion is an essential tool in countering migrant smuggling. A “victim-centered approach” that involves society in caring for targets of such crimes, “builds a relationship of trust that would be critical ... in the investigation meant to bring the criminals to justice,” a U.N. report observed last year.

The trial in Senegal’s seaside port of Mbour may have given that approach a new dimension. When the defendant Cheikh Sow sought forgiveness based on contrition, he evoked a distinctly African concept of justice rooted in redemption.

“A remorseful apology can contribute to a vocabulary of forgiveness in the context of evil,” wrote Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychology professor at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Her research on post-apartheid healing underscores the enabling effect of empathy. “Genuine remorse humanizes perpetrators and transforms their evil from the unforgivable into something that can be forgiven.”

Mr. Sow’s case has yet to be decided. Yet his remorse may encourage a view of justice in Senegal that finds a solution to migration and the criminality that exploits it in the recognition and restoration of individual integrity.