It's the Sunday before Election Day

Half of all Wisconsin registered voters have cast early ballots, new data released by the state Elections Commission on Sunday showed, as the state’s largest cities hold their last day of in-person early voting.

As of Sunday morning, 1,873,403 voters had cast early ballots in Wisconsin. That’s 62.4% of the 2016 general election turnout, and 50.8% of the state’s total registered voters. In addition, the state released new data Sunday on registered voters, showing that an additional 100,922 Wisconsinites registered to vote in October – and those who haven’t can still do same-day registration at the polls on Election Day. 

Slightly more than a third of the early votes, 636,697, were cast in person, while the rest were cast by mail. There are still 179,828 absentee ballots in the state that have yet to be returned, although some of those voters may have decided to cancel their mailed ballots and vote early in person instead. 

Today is the last day that in-person early voting is allowed anywhere in the state, although many smaller municipalities ended it on Friday. The state’s two biggest cities, Milwaukee and Madison, are still opening in-person voting sites today. All absentee ballots have to be delivered by 8 p.m. local time on Election Day. 

Wisconsin doesn’t have partisan voter registration so no party breakdown is available. 

White House communications director Alyssa Farah says President Trump still has faith in Dr. Anthony Fauci, despite the White House offering blistering criticism towards the country’s leading infections disease expert on Saturday. 

Asked by CNN if Trump still has faith in Fauci, Farah said Sunday, “Yes we do."

What is this about: The White House unloaded on Fauci Saturday, following his comments to the Washington Post that criticized the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, including Dr. Scott Atlas, who the President has relied on for advice on handling the coronavirus.

Trump campaign senior adviser Corey Lewandowski sought to minimize remarks from President Trump that front line medical workers are profiteering off of coronavirus during an interview on Fox News.

"We have seen on multiple occasions instances where people have claimed that they have been, died from Covid-19 and that wasn't the case," Lewandowski said.

When asked specifically about the President’s claim doctors are lining their pockets, Lewandowski said, “I haven't spoken to the president about this directly so I couldn’t answer that,” and adding, “Look, we have enormous respect for doctors who are serving front-line patients and they do an amazing job by and large.”

Joe Biden senior advisor Anita Dunn cast an optimistic outlook on the race two days before the election, telling CNN that the campaign feels "confident" about their pathways to victory.  

When asked about the Democratic nominee’s different campaigning style from that of President Trump, who has held big in-person rallies, Dunn said, “What Vice President Biden has done is basically why he's gotten in this race. He showed people what a responsible president does and how a responsible president acts.”  

She said that while normally at this point in a race the number of competitive and pathways to victories shrink, the campaign has actually expanded the number of states where it believes it has a chance and where it is investing resources and time campaigning, listing Texas and Georgia as two examples.  

Dunn said, the thing that keeps her up at night is making sure they have done everything to get people to the polls.

More than 8.7 million people (8,700,645) have voted in Florida so far, state data shows.

Registered Democrats’ lead over registered Republicans has dwindled since early in-person voting began in the state almost two weeks ago. 

Data from Oct. 20 showed how almost half a million more Democrats (481,892) than Republicans had voted at that point. Today, Democrats lead Republicans by less than 100,000 total votes (94,905). 

Separately, nearly 1.9 million people (1,854,160) with no party affiliation have voted already.

With just three days until Election Day, pre-election voting has now surpassed two-thirds of all ballots cast during the 2016 presidential election.

More than 91.6 million Americans have voted so far, as a majority of states are reporting record early voting turnout in the 2020 election. While it's too soon to know how that record turnout will translate to Election Day, the massive early voting numbers suggest a high level of enthusiasm for voting this year, despite the obstacles of a pandemic.

These votes represent about 43% of registered voters nationwide, according to a survey of election officials in all 50 states and Washington, DC, by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist.

Sixteen states have already seen more than half of their registered voters cast ballots ahead of November 3.

Nationwide, the more than 91.6 million ballots already cast represent about 67% of the more than 136.5 million ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election.

More context: Pre-Election Day voting is surging nationwide — with many states seeing record turnout in early voting in-person and an influx in mail-in ballots compared to last cycle — with voters wanting to avoid crowding at the polls because of the pandemic.

As of Friday, Texas and Hawaii surpassed their total turnouts from the 2016 general election.

In the final days before the presidential election, the Supreme Court has been pelted with requests from parties in battleground states seeking last minute approval to change election rules, especially regarding whether mail-in votes can arrive after Election Day and still be counted.

The court, issuing some of the orders after hours, has navigated a minefield with justices seeking consensus and coherence where possible, hindered without the benefit of a full briefing schedule. The situation was complicated by the fact that emergency requests came in before and just after Justice Amy Coney Barrett took the bench.

On the face of it sometimes the orders seemed contradictory. In North Carolina, ballots can arrive up to nine days after Election Day. In Pennsylvania, ballots can arrive up to three days late — for now. And in Wisconsin, the court said ballots must be in by election night.

Some themes have emerged. It is now clear that four conservative justices are ready to take a sharp right turn when it comes to the power of state legislatures to set the rules for elections.

In addition, Chief Justice John Roberts served as swing vote at times, but still worked to preserve the court's institutional legitimacy, and the liberals on the bench again expressed their fear that the pandemic could disenfranchise voters in some states.

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