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Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Midterm Ballot With Another Dan Sullivan

Operatives aligned with Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee for Senate, spent months recruiting candidates to peel votes from Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican.

© Haven Daley/Associated Press

A sample ballot showing candidates for next week’s U.S. Senate race in Alaska lists two Dan Sullivans (highlight added here to both), along with Mary Peltola, the Democrat, and a fourth candidate named Gerald Heikes.
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One Race in Texas Has Become a Referendum on Bigotry in the G.O.P.

Bo French said the presence of Indian American students at a football game was a “problem.” His campaign for Railroad Commission tests whether these biased views are now mainstream.

© Dominic Gwinn/ZUMA Press Wire, via rReuters

Bo French, a candidate for the Texas Railroad Commission, drew criticism for his social media posts.
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Texas Senate Rivals Converge on Lubbock, With Trump in the Mix

It was a showdown of sorts in western Texas as James Talarico and Ken Paxton appeared at dueling rallies on either side of a prairie-dog-filled city park.

© Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump with Ken Paxton during a campaign visit in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Tuesday.
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Judge Questions Trump Administration’s Need to Target Noncitizen Voters

In the legal tangle between the Justice Department and California, a federal judge on Tuesday deferred a ruling but said the government already had a remedy it could use after the election.

© Philip Cheung for The New York Times

The Trump administration has pressed an effort to disqualify people it says are noncitizens from voting on Nov. 3.
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Tennessee Race Is Rattled by a Republican’s Acknowledgment of a ‘Past Indiscretion’

State Senator Brent Taylor, the Republican nominee for a U.S. House seat, responded to a Nashville outlet’s report that he had sent “an unsolicited nude picture.”

© George Walker IV/Associated Press

State Senator Brent Taylor, Republican of Memphis, is favored to flip Tennessee’s Ninth Congressional District.
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Political Satire Is an American Tradition. Deceptive A.I. Ads Are Not.

Despite how cringeworthy they are, political campaigns have spent $137 million on A.I.-generated ads for the midterms. And the lack of regulation on these ads is warping our sense of what’s real. The Opinion writer Rotimi Adeoye argues that while this kind of political satire falls under First Amendment protection, “you should be free to fake a politician, but you shouldn’t be free to hide the fact that you did.”
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Justice Dept. Steps Up Moves on Comey and Others as Midterm Elections Near

In some cases, court paperwork bears unmistakable signs of urgency — typos, unorthodox tactics and the signatures of the department’s senior political leadership.

© Steve Helber/Associated Press

Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing the indictment of L. Louise Lucas, a prominent Virginia Democrat, on drug-trafficking charges last week in Norfolk, Va.
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