October 29, 2020 - PBS NewsHour full episode

With Election Day in less than a week, the Trump and Biden campaigns are increasingly holding events in the same battleground states, on the same days. At a Thursday rally in Tampa, Florida, President Trump continued to downplay the national surge in COVID-19 cases, while former Vice President Joe Biden urged residents of the state’s Broward County to vote. Yamiche Alcindor reports.

The last major economic report before Election Day indicates a 7.4 percent growth rate in economic output during the year’s third quarter. It’s a sharp rebound from the record plunge of the previous quarter, and the fastest pace since World War II. But economists point to federal stimulus as a key driver -- and that’s running out. The Washington Post’s David Lynch joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.

In our news wrap Thursday, remnants of Hurricane Zeta raced across the southern U.S., leaving widespread damage, power outages and at least six people dead. The governor of Louisiana, where the storm made landfall Wednesday, urged caution as cleanup efforts begin. Also, the most powerful typhoon to hit Vietnam in 20 years has killed 35 people and left dozens missing amid flooding and landslides.

In the American West, there has been little relief from a record-breaking fire season that has burned more than 5 million acres. Maggie Mullen of the Mountain West News Bureau in Wyoming, Cassandra Profita of Oregon Public Broadcasting and Sharon McNary of Southern California Public Radio join Judy Woodruff to discuss the remarkable destruction they have covered in their states.

As Election Day nears, protecting American voters and election systems from foreign disinformation is a daily struggle. The government and private companies have significantly stepped up their ability to expose disinformation from Russia, China and Iran since 2016, but these nations are still exploiting internal American fissures and vulnerabilities as the election looms. Nick Schifrin reports.

Although most national attention is focused on the races for president and Congress, policies and agendas at the state and local levels are on the ballot as well. Voters across the country are considering ballot measures about racism and election reform, among others -- as well as who should represent them in their own state legislatures. Reid Wilson of The Hill joins Amna Nawaz to discuss.

The Supreme Court is playing a key role in the 2020 election in these final days of the campaign. Just this week, it handed down rulings on absentee ballot deadlines in three crucial battleground states: North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Daniel Bush joins John Yang to discuss what the Pennsylvania decision means for voters, election officials and when we might have the state’s results.

How are state and local governments verifying the accuracy of the vote in this critical election year? One approach designed to simplify a major challenge for election officials as the ballots arrive is the risk-limiting audit, which enables double-checking only a sample of paper ballots to make sure they match electronic results. Miles O’Brien reports.