The additional flights from the Chicago-based airline are a boon to O’Hare International Airport, a key economic driver for the city where traffic has lagged pre-pandemic levels.

They bring United, one of O’Hare’s two main carriers, to its largest schedule from O’Hare since 2019, the carrier said. That includes an extra 38 flights between O’Hare and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, which serves the District of Columbia. Other additional flights will go to cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Austin, Phoenix, San Diego and Seattle.

All told, the carrier will operate more than 530 flights daily at O’Hare on its busiest days, United said.

The additional flights come as the city prepares for the economic and security impacts of the four-day convention, which is expected to bring a slew of politicians, visitors and protesters in August. The DNC Host Committee estimates the convention could bring about 50,000 visitors, 20,000 media members and 5,500 delegates, alternates and guests to the city.

For its part, United’s preparations at O’Hare bring the amount of scheduled space on flights out of the airport in August to slightly higher than the number of seats scheduled before the pandemic. But overall at O’Hare, airlines have still scheduled fewer flights and fewer seats out of the airport than they did in summer 2019, according to data from aviation firm Cirium.

O’Hare’s other main carrier, American Airlines, hasn’t updated its schedule for the convention, a spokeswoman said. The airline has eight daily flights between Chicago and Reagan National.

Southwest, which is the primary carrier at Midway, also does not plan to add flights for the convention. A spokesman said the airline will have 223 flights a day out of Midway during the convention, including six per day between Midway and Reagan National, and up to six per day between Midway and Baltimore. The airline will also have two daily flights between Baltimore and O’Hare, where the carrier previously announced it was trimming its schedule.

United is also adding 72 flights to and from Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention in July, including from Chicago, the carrier said. The additional flights will increase the carrier’s capacity in Milwaukee by 75%, United said.

“These conventions are steeped in tradition and have now evolved to become a weeklong celebration of our political process,” said Patrick Quayle, United’s senior vice president of global network planning and alliances, in a statement. “We’re proud to give people even more options to visit two great cities, and participate in these historic events and make their voices heard.”

WASHINGTON — The presidential primary calendar has officially come to an end with weekend victories for Democratic President Joe Biden in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Both Biden and Republican Donald Trump already clinched their party nominations in March, setting up a historic general election rematch between the current and former president.

Many Americans did not want a 2020 rematch, according to public opinion polls, and both Biden and Trump are broadly unpopular. But the two lost just three contests total out of more than a hundred, a reflection of how the Democratic and Republican bases stood by Biden and Trump despite both facing significant political challenges — and in Trump’s case, four criminal indictments, one of which led to felony convictions.

Both Biden and Trump did face protest votes. While those votes did not come close to changing the primary results, they offer insight into the November general election rematch and are already shaping both campaigns’ strategies against each other.

Easy wins for the Democratic incumbent

Biden won the Democratic caucuses in Guam and the Virgin Islands on Saturday. He received 467 out of 469 votes cast in the Virgin Islands caucuses, earning him all seven delegates at stake. Self-help author Marianne Williamson and “Uncommitted” each received one vote, according to local Democratic Party officials.

Earlier in the day, the president also swept all seven delegates available in Guam. Voters there did not cast ballots directly for presidential candidates but instead elected individuals to serve as national convention delegates, all of whom are pledged to support Biden.

The contests marked Biden’s 53rd and 54th wins of the primary campaign. His only defeat came at the hands of relatively unknown candidate Jason Palmer in the American Samoa caucuses, where only 91 total votes were cast.

Biden’s journey to reclaiming the Democratic nomination began in 2022, when he proposed bumping Iowa and New Hampshire from their traditional first-in-the-nation voting slots in favor of South Carolina, which played a pivotal role in reviving his 2020 campaign. The Democratic National Committee adopted the new plan, but New Hampshire balked at the demotion and scheduled its primary for 11 days before South Carolina. Biden then opted to skip New Hampshire’s primary, rather than violate the new party rules that he had championed. Instead, his supporters in the state mounted a successful write-in campaign on his behalf, sparing the incumbent president the possible embarrassment of starting the year with a loss in a contest that he had barred himself from competing in.

After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abandoned his short-lived Democratic primary campaign in favor of a third-party run in the general election, Biden did not face major primary challenges from Williamson, Palmer, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips or any of the other handful of Democrats appearing on ballots across the country.

A robust GOP field fails to stop Trump

The Republican presidential primary season concluded on June 4, as the local parties in Guam and the Virgin Islands held their GOP events earlier in the year. Trump prevailed in all but two contests in 2024 – the primaries in Washington, D.C., and Vermont, which both went for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Trump began his campaign to return to the White House in mid-November 2022, when many Republicans blamed him for the party’s poor showing in the midterm elections just days before. Since then, Republican voters largely rallied behind the former president following his indictments in four federal and state criminal investigations, with most of his rivals for the presidential nomination reluctant to criticize him for much of the year.

In January, he scored his first big win in the Iowa caucuses, which remained first in the GOP pecking order, followed by another in the New Hampshire primary, where Haley had hoped moderate Republicans and independents would propel her to an upset victory. Trump also scored a symbolic win in a non-binding “beauty contest” primary in Nevada, where he didn’t appear on the ballot, but his supporters backed the “None of these candidates” ballot option over Haley.

Haley was Trump’s last major primary challenger remaining when she suspended her campaign after a disappointing showing on Super Tuesday. Others who ran against Trump included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Pence, the former vice president.

The meaning of the protest votes

Biden’s chief rival in the primaries came in the form of organized campaigns in several states to vote for “Uncommitted” to protest his support of Israel in the Israel-Hamas War.

Across 24 states and Washington, D.C., variations of “Uncommitted” received more than 793,000 votes. In terms of raw votes, the campaign reached its high-water mark in Michigan with nearly 102,000 voters choosing that option. The highest share of the vote “Uncommitted” received was in Hawaii with 29%, although that amounted to only 463 votes cast. The campaign persisted through end of the calendar, with “Uncommitted” receiving between 8% and 10% of the vote in the final four Democratic presidential primaries of the year where it appeared on the ballot.

After becoming the presumptive nominee, Trump faced a seeming protest vote of his own in the form of votes for Haley. In the 21 contests held since Haley withdrew from the race, she still received more than 1.3 million votes. She received more than 20% of the vote as a non-candidate in Maryland and Indiana and more than 15% of the vote in Washington State, Nebraska, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Kansas. In addition, just shy of 49,000 voters in seven states cast their ballots for some form of “Uncommitted.”

One immediate takeaway from these primary protest votes is that both campaigns have now begun efforts to try to woo voters dissatisfied with the other candidate and bring them into the fold. The Trump campaign, for example, has made appeals to Arab Americans in Michigan, while the Biden campaign is launching an effort to reach out to moderate Republicans.

LAS VEGAS — Former President Donald Trump rallied voters in the scorching heat of Las Vegas, at points telling his supporters to ask for help if needed and appearing irritable with the teleprompters that he said were not working.

The presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign hired extra medics, loading up on fans and water bottles and allowed supporters to carry umbrellas to an outdoor rally Sunday in Las Vegas, where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius).

“I don’t want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don’t care about you. I just want your vote,” he said, adding that he was joking.

Earlier in his speech, he said the campaign would offer help to people who were feeling tired and joked that “everybody,” including the U.S. Secret Service, was worried about the safety of the crowds and not about him.

“They never mentioned me. I’m up here sweating like a dog,” he said. “This is hard work.”

Trump returned to Nevada, one of the top battleground states in the November election, for his second rally since he was found guilty in a hush-money scandal.

The unprecedented conviction of a former president has juiced Trump’s fundraising and galvanized his supporters, but it remains to be seen whether it will sway swing voters. Trump is scheduled to be interviewed by New York probation officials via a video conference Monday, a required step before his July sentencing.

Temperatures in the Southwest have cooled since reaching historic highs late last week but remain above normal for this time of year and topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) at the rally, which took place at a park with little shade next to the airport.

Well into his speech, Trump said it was “not as bad” as he thought it would be, and said he was angrier with the teleprompters not working well, even when he used to mock President Barack Obama for relying on that device.

“I pay all this money to teleprompter people, and I’d say 20% of the time, they don’t work,” he said, adding he would not pay the vendor who provided the prompters. “It’s a mess.”

Campaign organizers handed out water bottles as supporters waited in line to be screened by security officers. Inside the venue, large misting fans, pallets of water and cooling tents were placed around the perimeter. Clouds moved in and a breeze picked up about two hours before Trump was scheduled to take the stage, bringing a semblance of relief from the oppressive sun.

“This is a dry heat. This ain’t nothing for Las Vegas people,” Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald said. “But what it symbolizes for the rest of the United States — we will walk through hell” to elect Donald Trump.

McDonald and five other Republicans have been accused of submitting certificates to Congress falsely declaring Trump the winner of Nevada’s 2020 presidential election and their trial has been pushed to next year.

Trump said the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 were “victims” of a “set up.”

“They were really, more than anything else, they are victims of what happened. All they were doing is protesting a rigged election. That’s what they were doing. And then the police say, go in, go in, go in, go in,” he said. “What a set up that was. A horrible, horrible thing.”

The conspiracy theory that the Jan. 6 rioters were encouraged by law enforcement is widespread on the right but has no basis in fact. Many of those who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6 have said — proudly, publicly, repeatedly — that they did so to help the then-president.

Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the 2020 election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

The campaign paid for additional EMS services to be on site in the case of emergency. The Secret Service made an exception to allow people to bring in personal water bottles and and umbrellas. Food trucks sold shaved ice and oversized cups of lemonade.

“You know what? It’s worth it,” said Camille Lombardi, a 65-year-old retired nurse from Henderson in suburban Las Vegas who was seeing Trump in person for the first time. “Too bad it wasn’t indoors, but that’s OK.”

During a Trump rally in Arizona on Thursday, the Phoenix Police Department said 11 people were transported to hospitals, treated and released for heat exhaustion. Many of Trump’s supporters waited in line for hours and some were unable to get inside before the venue reached capacity. The temperature reached a record 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) that day.

Trump’s Nevada rally, his third in the state this year, came on the tail end of a Western swing that included several high-dollar fundraisers where he was expected to rake in millions of dollars.

Democrat Hillary Clinton won Nevada in 2016 as did President Joe Biden in 2020, but Nevada was the only battleground state where Trump did better against Biden than Clinton. In the 2022 midterms, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, was the only incumbent governor who did not win reelection.

Trump hopes his strength among working-class voters and growing interest from Latinos will push him to victory in the state.

In a play for Nevada’s massive service-sector workforce, Trump said he’d seek to eliminate taxes on tips, a major source of income for food servers, bartenders and others who power glitzy Las Vegas hotels.

His campaign announced a renewed push for Hispanic voters ahead of the event with a Latino Americans for Trump Coalition. Four of the speakers who warmed up the crowd before Trump took the stage were Hispanic immigrants.

Gomez Licon reported from Miami.

Official results were expected any moment after Italian polling stations closed at 11 p.m. local time (2100GMT), officially ending a marathon election spanning four days across 27 bloc member countries.

In France, the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen dominated the polls to such an extent that Macron immediately dissolved the national parliament and called for new elections, a massive political risk since his party could suffer more losses, hobbling the rest of his presidential term that ends in 2027.

In Germany, Scholz suffered such an ignominious fate that his long-established Social Democratic party fell behind the extreme-right Alternative for Germany, which surged into second place.

Adding insult to injury, the National Rally’s lead candidate, Jordan Bardella, all of 28 years old, immediately took on a presidential tone with his victory speech in Paris, opening with “My dear compatriots” and adding “the French people have given their verdict, and it’s final.”

Macron acknowledged the thud of defeat. “I’ve heard your message, your concerns, and I won’t leave them unanswered,” he said, adding that calling a snap election only underscored his democratic credentials.

The four-day polls in the 27 EU countries were the world’s second-biggest exercise in democracy, behind India’s recent election. At the end, the rise of the far right was even more stunning than many analysts predicted. The French National Rally stood at just over 30% or about twice as much as Macron’s pro-European centrist Renew party that is projected to reach around 15%.

In Germany, the most populous nation in the 27-member bloc, projections indicated that the AfD overcame a string of scandals involving its top candidate to rise to 16.5%, up from 11% in 2019. In comparison, the combined result for the three parties in the German governing coalition barely topped 30%.

Overall across the EU, two mainstream and pro-European groups, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, remained the dominant forces. The gains of the far right came at the expense of the Greens, who were expected to lose about 20 seats and fall back to sixth position in the legislature.

For decades, the European Union, which has its roots in the defeat of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, confined the hard right to the political fringes. With its strong showing in these elections, the far right could now become a major player in policies ranging from migration to security and climate.

The Greens were predicted to fall from 20% to 12% in Germany, a traditional bulwark for environmentalists, with more losses expected in France and several other EU nations. Their defeat could well have an impact on the EU’s overall climate change policies, still the most progressive across the globe.

The center-right Christian Democratic bloc of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which already weakened its green credentials ahead of the polls, dominated in Germany with almost 30%, easily beating Scholz’s Social Democrats, who fell to 14%, even behind the AfD.

“What you have already set as a trend is all the better – strongest force, stable, in difficult times and by a distance,” von der Leyen told her German supporters by video link from Brussels.

As well as France, the hard right, which focused its campaign on migration and crime, was expected to make significant gains in Italy, where Premier Giorgia Meloni was tipped to consolidate her power.

Voting will continue in Italy until late in the evening and many of the 27 member states have not yet released any projections. Nonetheless, data already released confirmed earlier predictions: the EU’s massive exercise in democracy is expected to shift the bloc to the right and redirect its future.

With the center losing seats to hard right parties, the EU could find it harder to pass legislation and decision-making could at times be paralyzed in the world’s biggest trading bloc.

EU lawmakers, who serve a five-year term in the 720-seat Parliament, have a say in issues from financial rules to climate and agriculture policy. They approve the EU budget, which bankrolls priorities including infrastructure projects, farm subsidies and aid delivered to Ukraine. And they hold a veto over appointments to the powerful EU commission.

These elections come at a testing time for voter confidence in a bloc of some 450 million people. Over the last five years, the EU has been shaken by the coronavirus pandemic, an economic slump and an energy crisis fueled by the biggest land conflict in Europe since the Second World War. But political campaigning often focuses on issues of concern in individual countries rather than on broader European interests.

The voting marathon began in the Netherlands on Thursday, where an unofficial exit poll suggested that the anti-migrant hard right party of Geert Wilders would make important gains, even though a coalition of pro-European parties has probably pushed it into second place.

Casting his vote in the Flanders region, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency until the end of the month, warned that Europe was “more under pressure than ever.”

Since the last EU election in 2019, populist or far-right parties now lead governments in three nations — Hungary, Slovakia and Italy — and are part of ruling coalitions in others including Sweden, Finland and, soon, the Netherlands. Polls give the populists an advantage in France, Belgium, Austria and Italy.

“Right is good,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who leads a stridently nationalist and anti-migrant government, told reporters after casting his ballot. “To go right is always good. Go right!”

After the election comes a period of horse-trading, as political parties reconsider in their places in the continent-wide alliances that run the European legislature.

The biggest political group — the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) — has moved further right during the present elections on issues like security, climate and migration.

Among the most watched questions is whether the Brothers of Italy — the governing party of populist Meloni, which has neo-fascist roots — stays in the more hard-line European Conservatives and Reformists group or becomes part of a new hard right group that could form the wake of the elections. Meloni also has the option to work with the EPP.

A more worrying scenario for pro-European parties would be if the ECR joins forces with Le Pen’s Identity and Democracy group to consolidate hard-right influence.

The second biggest group — the center-left Socialists and Democrats — and the Greens refuse to align themselves with the ECR.

Questions also remain over what group Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party might join. It was previously part of the EPP but was forced out in 2021 due to conflicts over its interests and values. The far-right Alternative for Germany was kicked out of the Identity and Democracy group following a string of scandals surrounding its two lead candidates for the European Parliament.

The election also ushers in a period of uncertainty as new leaders are chosen for the European institutions. While lawmakers are jostling over places in alliances, governments will be competing to secure top EU jobs for their national officials.

Chief among them is the presidency of the powerful executive branch, the European Commission, which proposes laws and watches to ensure they are respected. The commission also controls the EU’s purse strings, manages trade and is Europe’s competition watchdog.

Other plum posts are those of European Council president, who chairs summits of presidents and prime ministers, and EU foreign policy chief, the bloc’s top diplomat.

Associated Press journalists Sylvain Plazy in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Before returning to the United States, Biden honored America’s war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery about an hour outside Paris. He placed a wreath at the cemetery chapel before an expanse of white headstones marking the final resting place of more than 2,200 U.S. soldiers who fought in World War I.

It was a solemn end to five days in which Trump was an unspoken yet unavoidable presence. On the surface, the trip marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and celebrated the alliance between the United States and France. But during an election year when Trump has called into question fundamental understandings about America’s global role, Biden has embraced his Republican predecessor — and would-be successor — as a latent foil.

Every ode to the transatlantic partnership was a reminder that Trump could upend those relationships. Each reference to democracy stood a counterpoint to his rival’s efforts to overturn a presidential election. The myriad exhortations to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia created a contrast with Trump’s skepticism about providing U.S. assistance.

Biden’s paeans to the struggle between democracy and autocracy drew plaudits in Europe, where the prospect of a return to Trump’s turbulent reign has sparked no shortage of anxiety. But it remains to be seen how the message will resonate with American voters, as Biden’s campaign struggles to connect the dire warnings the Democratic president so often delivers about his rival with people’s daily concerns.

The visit to the cemetery served as a moment to underscore the contrast once more.

“It’s the same story,” Biden said. “America showed up. America showed up to stop the Germans. America showed up to make sure that they did not prevail. And America shows up when we’re needed just like our allies show for us.”

During a 2018 trip to France, Trump skipped plans to go to the cemetery, a decision that the White House blamed on weather at the time. However, subsequent reports said that Trump told aides he didn’t want to go because he viewed the dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.” Trump has denied the comments, although they were later corroborated by his chief of staff at the time, John Kelly.

Trump’s purported insults have become a regular feature of Biden’s campaign speeches, including during an April rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

“These soldiers were heroes, just as every American who has served this nation,” Biden said. “Believing otherwise, that alone is disqualifying for someone to seek this office.”

Biden ignored a direct question about Trump at the cemetery but said it was important to visit the hallowed ground. “The idea that I would come to Normandy and not make the short trip here to pay tribute,” he added, his voice trailing off as if to express disbelief.

Trump, at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, said Sunday after Biden had left France that the president’s performance overseas was “terrible” and embarrassing, though Trump did not cite anything in particular. “This is not a representative for what used to be the greatest country,” he told his supporters, adding that under Biden “we are a nation in major decline and we’re going to stop it immediately.”

Maura Sullivan, a former Marine officer who served on the American Battle Monuments Commission under President Barack Obama, said Biden’s visit would “set the example, and do what a president should do.” Now an official with the New Hampshire Democratic Party, Sullivan said that “voters can draw their own conclusions” from that.

Biden’s trip was full of emotional moments, and the president grew heavy-eyed after meeting with World War II veterans. A 21-gun salute cast eerie smoke over 9,388 white marble headstones at the Normandy American Cemetery.

“This has been the most remarkable trip that I’ve ever made,” Biden said on Saturday night, his last in Paris before returning to the U.S.

At Aisne-Marne, Biden said the trip “surprised me how much it awakened my sense of why it’s so valuable to have these alliances. Why it’s so critical. That’s the way you stop wars, not start wars.”

His remarks over the last few days were also freighted with political overtones.

On Thursday at Normandy anniversary ceremonies, Biden said D-Day served a reminder that alliances make the United States stronger, calling it “a lesson that I pray we Americans never forget.” He also highlighted how the war effort drew on immigrants, women and people of color who were too often overlooked by history.

Then on Friday, he went to Pointe du Hoc, a spot on the coast where Army Rangers scaled cliffs to overcome Nazi defenses on D-Day that was also the site in 1984 of one of President Ronald Reagan’s most memorable speeches about the struggles between the West and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

By following in an iconic Republican’s footsteps, Biden honed his appeal to traditional conservatives who are often frustrated by Trump’s isolationist vision. Biden issued a call for Americans to protect democracy like the Rangers who scaled the cliffs, a message that synced with campaign rhetoric that paints his election opponent as an existential threat to U.S. values.

While Biden was in France, his campaign announced that it had hired the onetime chief of staff to former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger to lead outreach to GOP voters. Kinzinger clashed with Trump’s foreign policy and efforts to overturn the last presidential election.

At Pointe du Hoc, Biden said the Army Rangers “fought to vanquish a hateful ideology in the ’30s and ’40s. Does anyone doubt they wouldn’t move heaven and earth to vanquish hateful ideologies of today?”

Trump has argued that the U.S. needs to devote more attention to its own problems and less to foreign alliances and entanglements. He has also routinely played down the importance of American partnerships, suggesting the U.S. could abandon its treaty commitments to defend European allies if they don’t pay enough for their own defenses.

Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian who wrote a book about Pointe du Hoc and Reagan’s speech, said Biden “had big shoes to step into” by choosing the same location.

Biden’s speech “didn’t equal Reagan’s in grandeur, nor could it,” Brinkley said. Still, he said Biden “said the right words about why democracy matters.”

Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist, said it could help Biden politically “to stand where Reagan stood.”

He noted that Biden is struggling with younger voters but appears to be gaining strength among older ones who may be more receptive to reminders of Reagan’s speech four decades ago.

“He needs a lot of Reagan Republicans to offset his challenges with younger voters,” he said.

Biden’s trip was also punctuated by the pomp of a state visit in Paris.

French President Emmanuel Macron arranged a ceremony at the Arc du Triomphe, where four fighter jets flew overhead, and hosted a banquet at the Elysee presidential palace.

“United we stand, divided we fall,” Macron said in toasting Biden. “Allied we are, and allied we will stay.”

Overall, Biden’s visit had a slower pace than other foreign trips. The 81-year-old president had no public events on his first day in Paris after arriving on an overnight flight, and didn’t hold a press conference with reporters, as is customary. John Kirby, a national security spokesman, said that was necessary to prepare “in advance of the weighty engagements” during subsequent days.

“There’s a lot on the calendar,” he said.

Still, it was a contrast to Macron’s tendency to offer prestigious guests an intense schedule with a mix of official meetings, business talks, cultural events and private dinners at fancy restaurants.

When the 46-year-old French leader hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, the two-day agenda was crammed with activities including a trip to the Pyrenees Mountains near the border with Spain where Macron spent time as a child.

Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Las Vegas and Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report.

But Kennedy cannot count on maintaining his current level of support as the November election nears.

It is pretty common for third-party candidates to look like they have polling momentum in the months before an election, only to come up far short at the ballot box, according to an Associated Press analysis of Gallup data going back to 1980.

That is not a sign that the polls about Kennedy are wrong right now. They just are not predictors of what will happen in the general election.

Studies have shown that people are bad at predicting their future behavior, and voting is months away. And in a year with two highly unpopular candidates in a rematch from 2020, voters may also use their early support for a third-party candidate to express their frustration with the major party choices. In the end, voters may support the candidate for whom they feel their vote can make a difference or they may decide not to vote at all.

AMERICANS WANT A THIRD PARTY, IN THEORY

The concept of a third party has been popular for a long time.

A poll conducted by Gallup in 1999 found two-thirds of U.S. adults said they favored a third political party that would run candidates for president, Congress and state offices against Republicans and Democrats. (The AP analysis used Gallup data, when available, because Gallup has a long history of high-quality polling in the United States.)

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults have said in Gallup polling since 2013 that the Republican and Democratic parties do “such a poor job representing the American people” that a third major party is needed. In the latest Gallup polling, much of that enthusiasm is carried by independents: 75% say a third party is needed. About 6 in 10 Republicans and slightly fewer than half of Democrats (46%) say an alternative is necessary.

Marjorie Hershey, a professor emeritus in the political science department at Indiana University, said Americans generally like the idea of a third party until specifics emerge, such as that party’s policies and nominees.

“It’s a symbolic notion. Do I want more choices? Well, sure. Everybody always wants more choices, more ice cream choices, more fast-food choices,” Hershey said. “But if you start to get down to brass tacks and you talk about, so would it be tacos or burgers, then that’s an entirely different choice, right?”

THIRD-PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES RARELY GET A SUBSTANTIAL SHARE OF THE VOTE

That hypothetical support for third-party candidates often breaks down quickly.

The AP analysis looked at polling for every independent and minor party presidential candidate who received at least 3% of the popular vote nationally going back to the 1980 election.

In multiple elections, including the 1980, 1992, and 2016 presidential races, third-party candidates hit early polling numbers that were much higher than their ultimate vote share. For instance, in polls conducted in May and June 1980, between 21% and 24% of registered voters said they would like to see independent candidate John Anderson, a veteran Republican congressman from Illinois, win when he ran for president against Republican Ronald Reagan and Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter. Anderson went on to earn 7% of the popular vote.

Part of the problem is that early polls often look quite different from the actual general election vote.

Voters “don’t know what’s going to happen between now and the election,” said Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup. “Things are going to come up in the campaign that could change the way they think.”

Decades after Anderson, polls conducted during the 2016 presidential campaign put support for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, at between 5% and 12% in polls of registered voters conducted from May to July. That led some people to predict that he could do better than any third-party candidate in decades. Johnson won about 3% of the vote in that election.

Johnson told the AP that he believes his name should have been included in more polls, though he was in surveys used to determine eligibility for debates.

He also contends that independent candidates struggle to match major party candidates in fundraising.

“It’s money, first and foremost. People don’t donate if they don’t think that you have a possibility of winning,” Johnson said. “I’m not excluding myself from that same equation. Look, am I going to give money to somebody that I know is going to lose? I’d rather go on a vacation in Kauai,” Johnson said in an interview while driving with his family on a trip in Hawaii.

KENNEDY’S SUPPORT MAY DROP OFF AS THE ELECTION NEARS

The American electoral system makes it hard for third parties to thrive. Still, it is possible to have a significant impact without coming close to winning.

Billionaire businessman Ross Perot is among the most successful modern-day examples. He won 19% of the vote when he ran for president in 1992. But that was substantially lower than his support in earlier polling. In polls conducted from May to July of that year, between 30% and 39% of registered voters said they would vote for Perot.

There are already reasons to believe that at least some of Kennedy’s polling support may be a mirage. (The Kennedy campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

A CNN poll conducted last summer when he was running for the Democratic nomination found that 2 in 10 Democrats who would consider supporting him said that their support was related to the Kennedy name or his family connections. An additional 17% said they did not know enough about him and wanted to learn more, while only 12% said it was because of support for his views and policies.

“A variable that is so different from all these other people is the Kennedy name,” said Barbara Perry, an expert in presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “There’s a lot of emotion around him that I would say was not there in the Anderson, Perot, (Ralph) Nader and Johnson cases.”

There also is some evidence that Americans are using support for Kennedy to express frustration with Biden and Trump.

Hershey notes that for many people, presidential elections can feel abstract until a few weeks before it happens, so it is good to take early poll numbers with a grain of salt.

Such polls “don’t necessarily reflect actual political issues,” Hershey said. “They reflect general views about life.”

But after anti-war, pro-Palestinian demonstrations roiled college campuses this spring and led to clashes between protesters and police, the specter of the chaos surrounding that summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago looms as the party returns in August to mark the renomination of President Joe Biden.

To be sure, the landscape is vastly different than it was in the late 1960s, even amid resurgent political violence driven predominantly by the far right. Nevertheless, the influx of potentially tens of thousands of protesters into Chicago during the Aug. 19-22 convention, some of whom have vowed to take to the streets without city permits, raises questions about how prepared Chicago police are for any ensuing unrest.

While similar concerns arose ahead of the last Chicago DNC in 1996, as well as the NATO summit in 2012, divisions among the Democratic coalition are deeper this year, with progressives upset over Biden’s ongoing support for Israel in its war against Hamas as well as his recent order clamping down on migrant crossings at the southern border.

Policing has changed substantially over the past several decades, especially for large gatherings such as national political conventions.

Still, with the whole world watching Chicago once again, avoiding any echoes of 1968 — when blue-helmeted officers beat protesting Yippies and working journalists alike in what a government report later termed a “police riot” — will be an important test for a department that remains under a federal consent decree over its long-running “pattern and practice” of civil rights violations.

In the lead-up to this year’s convention, organizers and police officials have downplayed concerns about possible unrest and sought to dispel any comparisons to the events that culminated in the infamous “Battle of Michigan Avenue.”

“This will not be 1968,” said Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling while acknowledging he understands the comparison given national protests of the Israel-Hamas war. “Our response as a Chicago Police Department will be a lot more deliberate … a lot more controlled because our officers are being trained in the best way possible to respond to any level of civil unrest.”

It’s not just the Police Department that has a lot riding on a peaceful convention.

The political stakes are high, both for Biden as he seeks to again defeat former Republican President Donald Trump and for local Democrats who will play prominent roles at the party gathering and in managing the situation outside.

That’s particularly true for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who was pivotal in bringing the convention to Chicago and will use the event to elevate his national profile as a key Biden surrogate and potential future White House contender, as well as Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has perhaps a greater affinity with those planning to protest than with the police under his command who are charged with keeping order.

“If you’re Biden and the Democratic Party and the mayor of Chicago, you just want peace and calm and stability,” said Andrew Baer, a University of Alabama at Birmingham history professor who studies policing and social movements. “You don’t want the bad optics of either suppressing a protest or the protest embarrassing the coronation of Biden.”

Despite changes in both policing practices and the political environment, “there’s clearly a through line from ’68, through the (Cmdr. Jon) Burge era, into the 2000s and up to the present day,” said Baer, author of “Beyond the Usual Beating: The Jon Burge Police Torture Scandal and Social Movements for Police Accountability in Chicago.”

Today, as then, there is a sense among many police of feeling “misunderstood and kind of unnecessarily tampered with” by outside forces, Baer said.

“That degree of always-simmering resentment felt by police rank and file, and the Fraternal Order of Police and the unions, and the supervisors and administrators of the Police Department always makes for a potentially explosive environment, whether it’s at a street arrest or a public protest or national political convention,” he said.

‘2020 snuck up on us’

One need not look all the way back to 1968 to see what can go wrong when hordes of protesters and lines of cops meet in the streets.

Indeed, the training Snelling’s officers have been undergoing ahead of the DNC was spurred not only by Chicago’s selection as the host city but also by the department’s response to widespread civil unrest in 2020.

Officers in Chicago were unprepared for the simultaneous and unpredictable nature of large protests and chaos that erupted over three days after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in late May of that year. While the department improved its response to other incidents in the weeks that followed, protests over the city’s Christopher Columbus statues and also high-profile police shootings highlighted similar struggles.

“2020 snuck up on us,” Snelling acknowledged in a recent Tribune interview. “Let’s tell the cold, hard truth. We did not have the level of preparedness to deal with something that was that random that popped up on us.”

The department is applying lessons learned from the 2020 response in preparation for the DNC, Snelling said.

While CPD took issue with some of the findings in a recent inspector general report on policy and training updates since the 2020 unrest, Snelling said any use of force or pepper spray during the DNC would be “proportional” to the reality on the ground.

“We’re not just going to walk in and spray a crowd of people. Even if they’re breaking the law, if they’re peaceful, we’re not going to use OC (pepper) spray,” Snelling said. “Now, if we have an all-out fight, where people are attacking police officers, are attacking each other, and we need to use OC spray, that call will be made by a higher authority based on the totality of circumstances and what’s occurring in the field in that time.”

The situation on the ground should be much different in August for a number of reasons, not least of which is the major role the U.S. Secret Service will play in controlling the areas surrounding the major convention venues, the United Center and McCormick Place.

Like every major party convention since 2000, this summer’s DNC — along with the Republican National Convention a month earlier in Milwaukee — is designated a National Special Security Event, making the Secret Service the lead agency for security planning. Each convention host city also received $75 million from Congress to help cover equipment and other security costs.

“We’ve got a tremendous working relationship with Chicago police, as well as a multitude of other agencies, both local and federal, that will be contributing to this whole-of-government approach that we’re taking,” Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told reporters during a visit last week that included tours of the convention venues.

Outside the yet-to-be-finalized security zones around the venues, where most if not all the protests are expected to take place, Chicago police will be running the show, however. The convention will come near the end of what are typically more violent summer months as well as after large-scale events like Lollapalooza and the NASCAR street race.

In an effort to relieve some of the tension building ahead of the DNC, lawyers for the Johnson administration indicated in federal court Thursday they were preparing to offer a deal to protesters who’d sued the city over its alleged efforts to block marches within “sight and sound” of the convention venue.

While private negotiations remain ongoing, the city indicated protesters would be offered a “United Center-adjacent route.”

Regardless of the outcome of those discussions, the city will have to manage the movement of an estimated 50,000 delegates, staff and public officials to and from the convention venues south of downtown and on the West Side, in addition to handling security checkpoints and traffic rerouting to accommodate Biden, who is expected to attend the convention on the final day.

CPD’s task of working with other organizations and maintaining order will come with the city under a national and international spotlight it didn’t have to contend with in 2020 when protests were taking place across the country, said Cara Hendrickson, the former chief of the Illinois attorney general’s public interest division, where she helped negotiate the consent decree.

“The way CPD and other law enforcement agencies respond will be very visible to Chicagoans and the world,” she said. “It’s a very public test of law enforcement’s current ability to keep people safe.”

Trying to assure the public

Despite assurances of readiness from the top brass, one veteran CPD supervisor, speaking on a condition of anonymity for concern of reprisal, gave a blunt assessment of the department’s readiness to tamp down on summer gun violence on top of its DNC responsibilities.

“Our strategy is eight hours ahead, right?” the supervisor told the Tribune in mid-May. “It’s very short-term and there’s no long-term planning to this, but if you ask them then they’ll say there is, but they won’t tell you what.”

In 1968, of course, Mayor Richard J. Daley also sought to assure the public and his fellow Democrats the situation in Chicago would be under control, though he focused more on maintaining order than allowing room for dissenting voices.

That year’s gathering at the International Amphitheatre in the New City neighborhood came amid widespread protests over the Vietnam War, a backlash so strong that President Lyndon Johnson chose not to seek reelection. It also came just months after the assassination of Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy and violent uprisings that April in Chicago and elsewhere in the wake of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination.

“Leading in, Daley was talking about how he was going to uphold law and order in Chicago,” said Heather Hendershot, a Northwestern University communications professor and author of the recent book “When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America.”

While Daley was “Mr. Democrat,” his rhetoric echoed that of GOP nominee Richard Nixon, whose campaign capitalized on the ensuing disorder in Chicago to win in November, Hendershot said.

“(Daley) sent out this message that, ‘We are prepared to do whatever we have to do to maintain order in Chicago. We will keep our city safe,’ this kind of thing,” she said. “And people knew there was going to be a lot of violence, and it really scared a lot of people away.”

The result was a crowd of only about 10,000 predominantly white protesters during the 1968 DNC, Hendershot said, a group that was outnumbered by police and members of the National Guard.

The protests this year could be substantially larger, Hendershot said, pointing to the more than 100,000 people who protested President George W. Bush and the Iraq War during the 2004 RNC in New York.

Somewhat encouraging, though, is that this year Johnson and police officials are “not releasing a bunch of press releases to scare people or to say, ‘We’re going to have law and order,’” she said. “They will occasionally say something like, ‘We will engage in constitutional policing, which, obviously, is what all policing should be.”

‘Whac-A-Mole’

But what policing should be doesn’t always match reality when officers are confronted with large groups of protesters in unpredictable settings.

The George Floyd protests in 2020 created a no-win for cops, protesters and nearby businesses, according to three separate reports — CPD’s own after-action report, a scathing probe by the city’s inspector general, and a 464-page special report covering the summer’s incidents from the independent monitoring team responsible for tracking the city’s progress in the court-ordered consent decree.

Cops were left vulnerable, exhausted and under-resourced, in part because the department had not prepared for that scale of unrest since 2012, when Chicago hosted the NATO summit.

Officers struggled to control disorganized crowds and distinguish between protesters protected under the First Amendment and those responsible for looting, vandalism or assaulting cops. Many cops were deployed without protective gear, radios or bullhorns to communicate dispersal orders. At times, equipment failed in the field during lengthy shifts. Some cops were left without adequate or timely transportation to transfer arrestees or move other cops to a place to rest, use restrooms, eat or drink.

One officer described the department’s strategy during the George Floyd protests as Whac-A-Mole, with self-guided platoons of officers putting out metaphorical fires while still leaving others smoldering.

Accountability measures lapsed as well. Some officers were unfamiliar with the department’s mass arrest policies, resulting in some arrestees suspected of looting, arson or violence being released or having charges dropped. Some officers also covered or removed their name tags or badges, turned off their body-worn cameras, were deployed without them or had the camera batteries die on them in the field.

The independent monitoring team reported hearing from community members that “officers were verbally abusive toward them; pushed and shoved them; tackled them to the ground; pushed them down stairs; pulled their hair; struck them with batons, fists, or other nearby objects; hit them after they were ‘kettled’ with nowhere to go or after being handcuffed; and sprayed them with pepper spray (OC spray) without reason.”

Misconduct settlements stemming from the protests have been costly for taxpayers.

On top of tens of millions spent on overtime and damage to local businesses, a WTTW analysis found the city had paid $5.6 for settlements and attorney fees. As of April, 32 lawsuits related to officer misconduct had been paid out. Thirteen were pending in federal court.

Following 2020, CPD has been “training, working, preparing, revising orders,” and working with parties involved in the consent decree to update mass arrest and use of force policies, Snelling said. The department is also working to ensure officers “get as much time off as possible” in the weeks leading up to the DNC to ensure “we have the maximum manpower that we can have out there” while not pulling officers from the city’s most violent neighborhood beats.

Command staff members have been through “multiple days of training for field force operations” to know how to guide manpower. The department has set aside 1,370 “flex” body cameras across several area offices, purchased 40 passenger vans, and additional radios to distribute to each police district.

Lessons of 2020

Even so, the city’s inspector general recently highlighted shortcomings in those plans, including opaque written policies about the use of pepper spray and kettling, which is the act of corralling crowds into a closed space. The city’s crowd-control policies also contain “outdated” theories that assume bad actors are present and that people in mass gatherings are inclined to act like a mob, the IG said.

Snelling denied the department used kettling tactics but nonetheless said the lessons of 2020 are being applied to this summer’s preparations.

DNC training has already been tested at protests, including at several college campuses across the city, Snelling said, noting that most “ended with no violence.”

“Even in situations where we’ve had to make arrests, we gave these people multiple, multiple opportunities to voluntarily comply and leave,” Snelling said. “Only as a last resort we made arrests.”

CPD on Thursday invited members of the press to McCormick Place to observe about 150 officers take part in training exercises tailored for the expected protests and potential unrest during the DNC. Drills focused on defensive tactics, crowd control and medical aid, as well as officer wellness.

Snelling said the department also will use a “line relief” tactic to provide cops reprieves when needed.

“These are human beings who are standing out here, having insults hurled at them, probably things thrown at them,” Snelling said Thursday. “At some point, the human nature kicks in and the possibility or the likelihood of making a mistake becomes greater. This is why now we have that line relief where we can take those officers off the front line and bring in a fresh batch of officers who can deal with the situation.”

Given the possibility of mass arrests, officers also are receiving training on properly processing suspects taken into custody in potentially volatile situations.

Will there be mass arrests?

But some planning to protest the convention are taking issue with comments Snelling made at a separate media briefing earlier last week.

“First Amendment protection is only there if you’re not committing a crime,” Snelling said. “You can be acting out peacefully and still breaking the law.”

Hatem Abudayyeh, executive director of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, said after a court hearing Thursday that Snelling’s words were “very concerning.”

“This sounds like nothing more than a threat from a police department that has a history of violence against protesters,” said Abudayyeh, whose group is one of the organizations suing the city over its previous plans to keep protesters away from the main convention sites.

Civil liberties advocates also have taken issue with the department’s latest policy on mass arrests. In April, a coalition of the community groups that triggered the consent decree asked the judge overseeing the agreement to block the Police Department from implementing the mass arrest policy drafted earlier this year.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and other groups argue the new proposal is overly broad, fails to make proper accommodations for people with disabilities and non-English speakers, and marks a step back from a First Amendment policy negotiated after the “violent and unconstitutional response” to the 2020 protests, according to the filing.

The groups are asking Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to intervene swiftly because “CPD officers are already being trained on the infirm policy for the DNC.”

Meanwhile, Hendrickson, now the executive director of the public interest group Impact for Equity, notes that police leaders will have the complex task of not only coordinating with other city departments but other law enforcement entities.

CPD “is going to be called upon to make difficult judgment calls rapidly, in real time, over the course of many days or weeks. And understanding who has responsibility for making those decisions, who is the backup to the person who has the responsibility to make those decisions if they’re not available. … I don’t know the answers to those questions at this point,” Hendrickson said.

Snelling said plans are still being worked out for the role outside agencies — the National Guard, the Cook County sheriff’s office, Illinois State Police or other local police departments — would play, but said they would not be charged with managing crowds.

“We want to put them in other areas where they can protect certain venues,” he said. “That frees up Chicago police officers who have been very well trained to go out there and deal with the possibility of civil unrest.”

‘We’re ready’

If the past is precedent, Johnson — an organizer who has said he values demonstrations — would be directly in charge of making major decisions on how to respond to potential unrest.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot made the final call to raise downtown bridges, use pepper spray, enact a citywide curfew, and call in the National Guard during the 2020 protests. Johnson has repeatedly said violence or vandalism would not be tolerated, but has emphasized “the fundamental right of our democracy, the First Amendment, is protected.”

Snelling said he is in “constant contact” about preparations with Johnson and his deputy mayor for community safety, Garien Gatewood. Raising bridges and enacting curfews in 2020 were a response to riot activity, not protected First Amendment protests, he said.

“We will not allow people to come here and destroy our city,” Snelling said. “We’re ready. We’re prepared to deal with whatever comes our way. But we would love for everything to end peacefully. Do we expect that that’s going to happen? No. That’s our wish.”

On the political side, Democrats have been quick to voice their support for Chicago police and the larger security effort — and to shift the focus to the GOP convention in Milwaukee, which could attract some of the same right-wing groups that instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

The Democratic National Convention Committee declined to make convention chair Minyon Moore available for an interview. But in a statement, convention spokeswoman Emily Soong echoed what organizers have been saying for months in response to questions about protests and possible disruptions:

“Peaceful protest has been a fixture of political conventions for decades, and while Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans stoke political violence, we will continue to support the ongoing security coordination at all levels of government to keep the city safe for delegates, visitors, media, and all Chicagoans, including those exercising their right to make their voices heard.”

For Pritzker, who courted the convention before the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel sparked a war that has divided Democrats, the gathering is a chance to show his mettle on the national stage, said Chris Mooney, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

That will be particularly true in the face of possible mass protests, he said.

“Even though he … didn’t expect this, didn’t think of it when he was lobbying for this (convention), he has earned himself the opportunity to show how excellent he is as a public leader,” Mooney said.

Chicago Tribune’s Jake Sheridan contributed. 

In Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes the Democratic-voting city of Atlanta, a group run by members of former President Donald Trump’s administration last month sued so a Republican member of the local elections board could refuse to certify the results of the primary election.

And in Arizona, GOP lawmakers sued to reverse the state’s top Democratic officials’ requirement that local boards automatically validate their election results.

The past four years have been filled with battles over all sorts of election arcana, including one that had long been regarded as an administrative afterthought — little-known state and local boards certifying the results. With the presidential election looming in November, attorneys are gearing up for yet more fights over election certification, especially in the swing states where the victory margins are expected to be tight. Even if those efforts ultimately fail, election officials worry they’ll become a vehicle for promoting bogus election claims.

Trump and his allies have tried to use the tactic to stop election results from being made final if they lose. In 2020, two Republicans on Michigan’s state board of canvassers, which must certify ballot totals before state officials can declare a winner, briefly balked at signing off before one relented and became the decisive vote. Trump had cheered the delay as part of his push to overturn his loss that ultimately culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

During the 2022 midterms, some conservative, rural counties tried to hold up their state election results, citing the same debunked claims of voter fraud that Trump has made.

In New Mexico, rural county supervisors refused to certify the state’s primary vote until they were threatened with prosecution. In Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, two Republican supervisors who refused to certify the local vote totals said they had no doubt their own county’s tally was accurate but were protesting the counts in other counties that gave Democratic candidates for governor, attorney general and secretary of state their victories.

Responding to the certification controversies, Michigan’s Democratic legislature passed a law making clear that state and local canvassing boards must certify election totals. The two Arizona county supervisors are currently facing criminal charges filed by the state’s Democratic attorney general.

Democrats and nonpartisan groups say the thousands of local election oversight boards across the country aren’t the place to contest ballot counts, and that state laws make clear they have no leeway on whether to sign off on their staff’s final tallies.

“Election authorities don’t have the discretion to reject the results of an election because of their vibes,” said Jonathan Diaz of the Campaign Legal Center, adding that lawsuits and recounts are the proper recourse. “They’re there to perform a function. They’re there to certify.”

But some Republicans argue that’s going too far. Kory Langhofer, the attorney suing to overturn the election procedures manual’s directive in Arizona that was issued by the Democratic attorney general and secretary of state, said he didn’t support the effort to block certification in Cochise County in 2022. But, he argued, locally elected boards of supervisors have to have some discretion to police elections.

“It seems to me the system is stronger when you have multiple eyes on it,” Langhofer said. Of the efforts to block certification in 2020 and 2022, he added, “I hope that’s behind us.”

Democrats doubt that’s the case. They note that the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump organization run by former officials from his administration, filed the lawsuit in Georgia to let Fulton County Elections Board member Julie Adams vote against certifying elections. Adams’ four other board members voted to certify last month’s primary but Adams abstained last week, contending she couldn’t accept the results given prior election administration problems in the county.

“This action will re-establish the role of board members as the ultimate parties responsible for ensuring elections in Fulton County are free from fraud, deceit, and abuse,” the institute wrote in its release announcing the lawsuit. The group did not respond to a request for comment.

Fulton County is the heart of the Democratic vote in Georgia, and anything that holds up its totals in November could help make it look like Trump has a large lead in the state.

“Trump and MAGA Republicans have made it clear they are planning to try to block certification of November’s election when they are defeated again, and this is a transparent attempt to set the stage for that fight,” Georgia Democratic Party chair and Rep. Nikema Williams said in a statement.

In Michigan’s Delta County, clerk Nancy Przewrocki, a Republican, said the two GOP canvassers had requested a hand recount of the votes, which is beyond the scope of their position. The canvassers eventually voted to certify the May election after receiving a letter from the State Elections Director Jonathan Brater, which reminded them of their duties and warned them of the consequences of failing to certify.

Still, Przewrocki said she’s concerned about what could happen in November if a similar situation arises.

“I can see this escalating, unfortunately. I’m trying to keep our voters confident in our voting equipment, and this is completely undermining it when there’s really nothing there,” Przewrocki said.

Following the Delta County incident, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel, both Democrats, issued a reminder to local canvassing boards throughout the state warning them of their legal obligation to certify election results based solely on vote returns. If they don’t, there will be “swift action to ensure the legal certification of election results,” along with “possible civil and criminal charges against those members for their actions,” Benson warned.

Michigan is an example of the futility of the tactic. The new state law makes it clear that canvassing boards can’t block certification, but Benson said in an interview that she still worries such an effort, even if legally doomed, would help spread false allegations about the November election.

“Misinformation and talking points emerge that enable others — particularly politicians — to continue to cast doubt on the accuracy of election results,” she said.

Riccardi reported from Denver and Cappelletti from Lansing, Michigan. Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, contributed to this report.

The development was revealed at a hearing Thursday in the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, which is seeking an injunction blocking the city from confining protesters to places far from the convention site in Grant Park.

A lawyer for the city told U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood that city officials have now received enough information from the U.S. Secret Service that the Johnson administration will be able to propose a “United Center-adjacent route to the plaintiffs in this case,” though details were still being worked out behind the scenes.

The route will be usable “by multiple groups” who have applied for permits to protest near the United Center, said Chicago Law Department attorney Andrew Worseck.

One of the main issues has been the Secret Service’s security plan for the United Center, where along with McCormick Place much of the convention activity will occur, and particularly what exactly the security perimeter around the United Center will be, Worseck said. He said the Secret Service is “still in the middle of its planning process,” and further details about the security plan were not revealed in court.

Wood granted additional time for briefing on the motion for a preliminary injunction, given the parties are “engaged in a good faith effort to try and resolve the matter” short of a ruling.

But she also warned that time was of the essence, and offered to help in the negotiations if need be.

“Obviously there is time sensitivity here,” Wood said. “The convention is set in stone — that date is not going to change.”

The lawyer for the plaintiffs, Chris Williams, said his clients welcomed the judge’s input but said both sides could “give it a shot” on their own first.

Wood set a status hearing for June 25.

After the hearing, Williams told reporters in Federal Plaza that he thinks “the city is feeling a lot of pressure to resolve this case” because their Grant Park proposal is a clear violation of free speech rights, which trump any city ordinance and allow for political speech to reach a “target audience.”

“That target audience will be at the United Center, including the president of the United States, the vice president and other dignitaries from the Democratic Party,” Williams said during a news conference that included the plaintiffs and 25th Ward Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez. “They will not be on Columbus Drive four miles away on a tree-lined street.”

Williams also said the Johnson administration is only increasing the potential for unrest by trying to curtail protesters’ First Amendment rights.

“You have a recipe for a clash,” Williams said. “You have the potential for violence. You have the potential for abuse by the police. You have the potential for lawsuits against the city. And if a court later upholds that it was First Amendment speech, guess who’s on the hook? The city and all of the taxpayers of the city.”

After the Tribune asked the mayor’s office for comment, a Law Department spokeswoman responded by email saying the city had “nothing more to add” at this point.

The lawsuit was one of at least two filed in U.S. District Court earlier this year after the city blocked protest permits requested near the United Center, which will serve as the convention hall for the DNC. The denials came despite Johnson’s promises that demonstrators will have a fair platform and security. Instead, the city has so far offered each group the same two-block route through Grant Park — a proposal the groups allege doesn’t fulfill their right to be within “sight and sound” of the convention.

“The tens of thousands of people that are coming — not only from the Midwest, but all across the country — will be marching on the DNC, permit or not,” Hatem Abudayyeh, executive director of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, said at a news conference in April. Abudayyeh also said the group hopes to “make life miserable” for top congressional and White House Democrats.

The plaintiff’s memorandum filed earlier this week specifically mentioned the desire to protest President Joe Biden’s policies regarding the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Those protest plans could not be fulfilled with an off-site march, the plaintiffs argued.

“The plaintiffs seek to direct their political speech through peaceful marches to the president of the United States, the one person who could stop the suffering in Gaza with a single phone call, while he (is) at the DNC,” the filing stated. “(City officials), relying on its parade permit ordinance, have unconstitutionally denied plaintiffs and their members’ (the) right to engage in political speech through peaceful assembly on public forums, thereby violating their First Amendment rights.”

A second federal lawsuit filed by a consortium of activist groups is seeking a similar preliminary injunction against the city for denying a permit to protest on North Michigan Avenue during the convention. U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin is helping both sides attempt to negotiate an agreement behind the scenes.

At the news conference after Thursday’s court hearing, Abudayyeh said he was “optimistic” that a resolution in his case could be reached, but added they will “continue to put pressure on the mayor’s office to make sure we get within sight and sound (of the United Center).”

He expressed alarm over comments earlier this week by Chicago Police Department Superintendent Larry Snelling, who told reporters at a briefing on convention security that thousands of officers were undergoing specialized training to “respond directly to civil unrest and the possibility of riots.”

“First Amendment protection is only there if you’re not committing a crime,” Snelling said. “You can be acting out peacefully and still breaking the law.”

Abudayyeh said Snelling’s words were “very concerning” and signaled a sort of “mass arrest policy” being put in place.

“This sounds like nothing more than a threat from a Police Department that has a history of violence against protesters,” Abudayyeh said.

The lawsuit alleges protest ordinances require the city to offer an alternative protest route with similar visibility, timing and location when it rejects a protest permit application. But city representatives have not met with protesters to negotiate routes and have instead suggested groups seeking permits could face legal penalties for making duplicative applications, according to the suit.

The city has repeatedly argued in administrative court hearings that Chicago does not have enough police to protect the event, keep protesters in check and regulate traffic, records show.

Meanwhile, demonstrators have long signaled their aim to disrupt the convention, chasing after host committee Executive Director Christy George for months.

As George led a first-look United Center tour for media in January, a handful of pro-Palestinian demonstrators rallied outside.

In early February, her talk show appearance at The Hideout was repeatedly interrupted as more pro-Palestinian activists unfurled banners and flags. Weeks later, as she chatted inside the Union League Club, a 100-strong group rallied on the sidewalk to demand Democrats commit to spending federal money to solve Chicago’s homelessness issue.

Sangamon County Circuit Judge Gail Noll said the legislation, quickly passed by the Democratic-led legislature and signed into law May 3 by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker was unconstitutional because it “impermissibly burdens” candidates who had been following the previous law from “their right to vote and to have their names placed on the November ballot.”

Before Democrats moved to change the law, local partisan committees in either political party could fill legislative spots on the general election ballot in races where no candidates from that party had run in the primary. The candidate slated by the political party was still required to obtain candidacy petition signatures in order to appear on the general election ballot.

When he signed the legislation into law, Pritzker said it forced candidates to run in the primary and prevented “backroom deals” where “some small group of people in a smoke-filled room” decided who would run in the general election.

But the attempt to block slating was viewed by many, especially Republicans, as an effort to give the Democrats a boost in the Nov. 5 elections before a vote was even cast. Democrats already hold sizable supermajorities in the House and Senate and the GOP’s inability to slate opponents for late general election challenges would only help Democrats keep their advantage.

“Changing the rules relating to ballot access in the midst of an election cycle removes certainty from the election process and is not necessary to achieve the legislation’s proffered goal,” the judge said, noting that lawmakers could have made the change effective for the 2026 legislative elections.

The court case was brought by the conservative Chicago-based Liberty Justice Center on behalf of Republicans who were circulating candidacy petitions for the November ballot when Pritzker signed the new law, which had an immediate effective date.

Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran of Downers Grove said in a statement that the law was an assault on the constitutional rights of Illinoisans “in the Democrats’ quest for power at all costs.”

“If Gov. Pritzker has any faith in the voters of Illinois, he should immediately call on the Illinois Attorney General to suspend further litigation in this matter, accept the court’s ruling and stop trying to manipulate the upcoming election,” Curran said.

Noll in late May had stayed the law from going into effect pending a final order following a hearing on Monday, which was also the same day as the original deadline for slated candidates to file their candidacy petitions with the Illinois State Board of Elections.

As a result of the stay, 17 Republicans filed to appear on the general election ballot through the slating process from among 50 vacancies where the GOP did not field primary candidates for the House and Senate seats up for election in November.

Noll’s order prevents the use of the now struck-down law from being used to challenge those 17 candidates’ right to appear on the ballot.

“The General Assembly can change the rules for elections, but they can’t do it in the middle of the game to keep challengers off the ballot. We are proud to stand up for these candidates and against yet another scheme to suppress competition in Illinois elections,” Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, said in a statement.

In passing the measure in the legislature, Democrats quickly approved it over a two-day period. Pritzker signed it into law a day after he told reporters he hadn’t seen all the details but considered the legislation to be an “ethics” bill that prevented backroom dealing “to put people on the ballot.”

But the law also represented the weakness of the state GOP in its inability to field candidates for the General Assembly and the ability of majority Democrats to take advantage of it.

If the law had been allowed to proceed, Democrats would have been only two seats shy of keeping their Senate majority and only eight seats away from maintaining their supermajority as a result of races where no GOP candidate filed for the primary.

In the House, where all 118 seats are up for election in the fall, Republicans failed to field a primary candidate against 42 House Democrats. That put Democrats only 18 votes shy of retaining majority status and 29 votes short of supermajority status before the general election was held.

Republicans particularly contended that Democrats rushed the measure to protect one of the few downstate House Democrats, state Rep. Katie Stuart of Edwardsville, from a challenge. But her slated GOP challenger, Jay Keevan, had gathered enough signatures and filed with the State Board of Elections before Pritzker had signed it into law.

Not affected by the judge’s ruling are provisions of the law that also will place three nonbinding advisory proposals on the November ballot — asking voters if they favor insurance coverage protections for in vitro fertilization, if earners of $1 million or more a year should be taxed extra to pay for property tax relief, and if candidates for office should face civil charges for attempting to interfere with election workers.

A maximum of three nonbinding proposals are allowed on the ballot and the move by Democrats was aimed at crowding out attempts by conservatives to try to place their own advisory question asking if parental consent should be required for gender counseling, therapy or modification procedures.