The Midterms: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

There is so much in this tweet that is squarely in the good category.  

1. It's a speech conceding that a Democrat won
2. It's a a gracious concession speech 
3. It's a gracious concession speech from a woman to a woman opponent
4. THAT DOG!!!!!!!!!!  O.M.G. The dog! 

 

I.love.that.dog.

That is all.

[fraurosena]

Judge orders review of provisional ballots in Georgia election

Quote

A federal judge on Monday ordered election officials to review thousands of provisional ballots that haven’t been counted in Georgia’s close election for governor.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg’s order calls for a hotline for voters to check if their provisional ballots were counted, a review of voter registrations, and updated reports from the state government about why many voters were required to use provisional ballots.

The court decision comes as votes are still being counted in the race for governor between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp. Abrams trails Kemp and would need to gain more than 20,000 additional votes to force a runoff election.

Totenberg said she’s providing “limited, modest” relief to help protect voters. The order preserves Tuesday’s deadline for county election offices to certify results and the Nov. 20 deadline for Secretary of State Robyn Crittenden to certify the election. The ruling enjoins Crittenden from certifying the election before Friday at 5 p.m.

Her ruling applies to provisional ballots, which were issued to as many as 27,000 Georgia voters because their registration or identification couldn’t be verified. Provisional ballots are usually only counted if voters prove their eligibility within three days of the election, a deadline that passed Friday.

The decision doesn’t say whether additional provisional ballots could be counted after election results are certified at the county level Tuesday. 

“This ruling is a victory for the voters of Georgia because we are all stronger when every eligible voter is allowed to participate in our elections,” said Sara Henderson, executive director for Common Cause Georgia, which filed the lawsuit.

The Secretary of State’s Office is reviewing the judge’s order and considering its options, said spokeswoman Candice Broce.

Several voters told the judge in sworn statements that they thought they were registered but were turned away when they tried to vote. Only after repeated efforts were they given provisional ballots, and they said they still don’t know if their votes were counted.

The court order said there were more provisional ballots cast this election than normal, and that the voter registration system could be vulnerable to inaccuracies.

“The right to vote is fundamental, and no one should lose that right because of mistakes in the voter registration database,” said Myrna Perez of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

 

[Cartmann99]

‘Public hanging’ remark puts spotlight on Miss. Senate race

Quote

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A video of a white U.S. senator from Mississippi making a flip reference to a “public hanging” is incensing voters in a special election runoff, drawing attention to the state’s history of lynching and boosting Democrats’ hope of pulling off a stunner in the Deep South.

Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith is facing former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy, a black Democrat, in a runoff Nov. 27. She was captured on video praising a supporter by declaring, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”

After the video was made public Sunday, Hyde-Smith said her remark Nov. 2 at a campaign event in Tupelo was “an exaggerated expression of regard” for a friend who invited her to speak. “Any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous,” she said.

Espy on Monday called the remark “disappointing and harmful.”

“It reinforces stereotypes that we’ve been trying to get away from for decades, stereotypes that continue to harm our economy and cost us jobs,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

At a news conference Monday with Republican Gov. Phil Bryant by her side, a stone-faced Hyde-Smith refused to answer questions about the hanging remark.

“I put out a statement yesterday, and that’s all I’m going to say about it,” she said.

Republicans have been counting on a Hyde-Smith victory over Espy as they try to expand their Senate majority. Her remark may not slow her down in the deeply conservative state, but it has highlighted a battle between Mississippi’s past and future and put a painful coda to an election season marked by a resurgence of racism in Southern politics.

“It really rocked folks,” said Democrat Rukia Lumumba, co-director of The Electoral Justice Project and a native Mississippian whose family has deep roots in the state’s politics and civil rights activism. “The fact that she has yet to apologize, to recognize the impact of her comments or that people have suffered ... I hope it makes us feel the urgency.”

The words undoubtedly raised the profile of a race that has largely flown under the national radar. Hyde-Smith was appointed to fill the seat vacated by longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran when he retired in April, and she ran this fall to hold the seat for the remaining two years of Cochran’s term.

She and Espy each received about 41 percent of the vote in a four-person race to advance to the runoff. Another Republican won 16 percent.

The results suggest Espy has an uphill battle, but some in the state see him as a rare Mississippi Democrat who could pull off an upset. Buoyed by Democrat Doug Jones’ victory in the U.S. Senate race in Alabama last year, Democrats have been organizing in Mississippi for months. Black voters in particular have powered the effort, seeing it as a moment for generational change.

“This race matters because voters are deciding: Are we going to move forward or are we going to move backward?” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, a voter turnout group that was a key organizer behind Jones’ victory.

According to the NAACP, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States between 1882 and 1968, and nearly 73 percent of the victims were black. Mississippi had 581 during that time — more than any other state.

Bryant, who appointed Hyde-Smith, defended her Monday, saying, “There was nothing in her heart of ill will.”

“All of us in public life have said things on occasion that could have been phrased better,” he said. “She meant no offense by that statement.”

Mississippi has long struggled with race and racism in its politics.

The state still uses a state flag adopted in 1894 that includes the Confederate battle emblem, though all the state’s public universities and several cities and counties have stopped flying it.

Another Republican from Mississippi, Trent Lott, lost his position as Senate majority leader in 2002 after saying at the 100th birthday party of South Carolina U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond that Mississippi had proudly voted for Thurmond when he ran a segregationist campaign for president in 1948.

A Republican member of the Mississippi House, Rep. Karl Oliver, was criticized in May 2017 after he posted on Facebook that people should be lynched for removing Confederate monuments.

Espy in 1986 became the first African-American since Reconstruction to win a U.S. House seat in Mississippi. If he defeats Hyde-Smith, he would be the first African-American since Reconstruction to represent the state in the U.S. Senate.

Hyde-Smith, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump, is the first woman to represent Mississippi in either chamber of Congress and is trying to become the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the state.

AP VoteCast, a survey of the electorate, showed significant differences in voting behavior by age and race in Mississippi’s special election. Hyde-Smith leaned heavily on the support of white voters, older ones in particular.

Overall, 57 percent of white voters supported Hyde-Smith, 21 percent voted for Espy and 18 percent supported Republican Chris McDaniel, who placed third last week. Black voters overwhelming broke for Espy: 83 percent supported the Democrat, according to AP VoteCast.

On Monday, local groups held a conference call to discuss their turnout strategy and response to Hyde-Smith’s remarks. A protest is scheduled for Friday in front of Hyde-Smith’s office.

Brown said Black Voters Matter, which has an office in the state, will hunker down there in the two weeks leading up to the runoff.

“This race is going to be won by folks from Mississippi,” Brown said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Something to think about McSally's concession is that she can afford to be gracious on video because it is likely Ducey is going to appoint her to replace Jon Kyl, who was appointed to temporarily fill John McCain's seat. So, she is probably going to the senate for at least two years and in 2020, she'll be an incumbent, meaning it will be harder to oust her. Now, hopefully I am wrong and she was just being gracious, but some of her campaigning was nasty, so I'm not sure.

[keen23]

18 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Something to think about McSally's concession is that she can afford to be gracious on video because it is likely Ducey is going to appoint her to replace Jon Kyl, who was appointed to temporarily fill John McCain's seat. So, she is probably going to the senate for at least two years and in 2020, she'll be an incumbent, meaning it will be harder to oust her. Now, hopefully I am wrong and she was just being gracious, but some of her campaigning was nasty, so I'm not sure.

This, exactly. McSally can afford to be gracious. She knows she's going to the Senate no matter what.

[AnywhereButHere]

And in the whiny baby, sore (possible) loser category - we have this gem. Maine has instituted ranked choice voting for some races. Poliquin, faced with the chance he could possible lose to his democrat opponent, is now calling the process unfair and illegal. I'm sure that if he felt confident in winning, this ranked choice voting would be seen as revolutionary and the best way to cast a ballot. Gotta love hypocrisy!

Quote

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/667435326/facing-defeat-maine-republican-sues-to-block-states-ranked-choice-voting-law

Spoiler

U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, has a filed a lawsuit in federal court that seeks to block state election officials from conducting the nation's first ranked-choice voting tabulation in a federal race.

The lawsuit asserts that Maine's ranked-choice voting law violates the U.S. Constitution in multiple ways. Among the claims: It does not award winners who obtain a plurality — or the most votes — but rather a majority by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference.

"What bothers is me is that we do not know if this vote-counting process is legal under the United States Constitution," Poliquin told reporters at the State House in Augusta. "My job is to make sure I uphold and defend the Constitution."

Politics

Maine Voters To Decide On Whether They'll Rank Candidates In Future Elections

Maine voters approved the use of ranked-choice voting in 2016. Voters rank candidates in order of preference. If one of the candidates obtains a majority after the first count, they win. If there's no majority winner, the candidate with the fewest first-place rankings is eliminated and each of their voters' second choices are added to the tallies of the remaining candidates. The process continues this way until the ranking tabulation produces a winner or all of the ballots are exhausted.

Elections

2018 Maine Midterm Election Results

Poliquin's lawsuit also asserts that ranked-choice voting violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment because voters who pick just one candidate in a race have less say in the outcome than those who rank multiple candidates.

Politics

It's Not Over: Days After Election, These Races Are Still Undecided

The lawsuit comes as state election officials continue to scan and count ballots for the hotly-contested 2nd Congressional District race. Unofficial tallies had Poliquin with about a 2,000-vote lead going into the ranked-choice tabulation, but neither he nor Democrat Jared Golden had enough votes to win with an outright majority, a requirement under the election law that voters approved two years ago.

"We are aware of the pending litigation. We are continuing to process ballots to complete the tabulation of votes and will continue to do so," a spokeswoman for the Maine secretary of state's office said Tuesday morning. "If we receive a court order to halt the process, we will review it with our legal advisers."

An exit poll conducted by FairVote, Colby College in central Maine and the Bangor Daily News suggested that Golden could win in the runoff round because he could obtain second- and third-place rankings of voters who picked independents Will Hoar or Tiffany Bond as their first choice.

Elections

This Maine District Went For Obama, Then Trump. Now It's A Toss-Up

Golden's campaign manager Jon Breed tweeted that Poliquin's action is "an affront to the law" and said Poliquin should have challenged the law before votes were cast.

Rob Richie, president of FairVote, a group pushing ranked-choice voting in other states, says the lawsuit follows a national trend of politicians filing lawsuits when they don't like election results.

"It's essentially a ratcheting up of sore-loser behavior. And that's the overall frame for this," he said. "We see nothing in the lawsuit that is going to stick."

Michael Morley, an associate professor at the Florida State University College of Law, says the timing of Poliquin's lawsuit, after the election, probably won't work in his favor because of something called laches — a legal term that essentially means that the lawsuit is too late.

"Courts are very reluctant to change the rules of an election after it's already occurred," he said.

As for the heart of Poliquin's suit, that the ranked choice voting system is unconstitutional, Morley said that argument would mean that the runoff elections used by several other states would also be unlawful.

Poliquin's attorney, Lee Goodman, said during a press conference on Tuesday that filing the lawsuit earlier may have been too soon to get a favorable ruling.

"I believe everybody was hoping that we would never reach this point," he said. "But we did reach this point."

Goodman also said it hadn't been clear earlier that ranked-choice voting would be used even though it was used during the June primaries and election officials confirmed months ago that it would be used for congressional races on Election Day.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "The real fraudster in Florida"

Spoiler

There is fraud in Florida’s U.S. Senate race.

Mitch McConnell just perpetrated it.

Florida has still not certified a winner in the contest between Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Rick Scott. Elections officials are recounting the vote after the initial tally showed the two separated by a mere 13,000 votes of some 8 million cast.

But the Senate majority leader, reelected to that position by his colleagues Wednesday, decided not to trouble himself with such technicalities. On Wednesday morning, he stood by Scott’s side in the Capitol and declared Scott a senator. “We’re here this morning to welcome our six new Republican senators that allowed us to continue our majority,” the Kentucky Republican said, introducing Scott and the five new duly elected Republican senators to the press.

“Governor Scott,” CNN’s Ted Barrett called out. “Do you still contend that there’s fraud going on in Florida with this recount?”

Scott, the current Florida governor, forced a thin smile and looked away. McConnell’s lips curled into a smirk. Aides shooed the cameras and journalists from McConnell’s office; the coming-out photo op for the new “senator” was done.

Scott has leveled the stunning accusation, without evidence, that “Nelson is trying to commit fraud to win this election.” He has said his Democratic opponent, a three-term senator, is “just here to steal this election.” His lawyers have alleged in court that there is “ongoing election fraud.”

President Trump, seeing opportunity to trash another American institution, joined in, saying, also without evidence, that ballots are “missing or forged” and “massively infected.” He said officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties are trying to “find” votes for Nelson.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is under Scott, has “no active investigation” of fraud. The Florida Department of State, also under Scott, has seen “no evidence of criminal activity.” A Broward County judge, rejecting Scott’s request to impound voting machines, said those alleging fraud must provide evidence.

But there is abundant evidence of something: an antiquated voting system that can’t keep up. In Palm Beach, the elections supervisor said its outdated equipment overheated, causing figures to not add up as it attempts to meet the recount deadline of Thursday. Equipment problems in Broward also delayed the recount.

There is deep cynicism in Republicans complaining about the lengthy recounts and, worse, suggesting fraud is the cause: They voted down funds for updated voting equipment for states. Senate Republicans on Aug. 1 blocked Sen. Patrick J. Leahy’s (D-Vt.) plan to send $250 million to states for cybersecurity and “replacing outdated election equipment.” A few weeks later, the bipartisan Secure Elections Act stalled in the Senate, in part because “we didn’t have the level of Republican support we needed,” Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said.

The $380 million Congress has authorized amid the Russian hacking (the first substantial funding since the aftermath of the 2000 election) is but a sliver of the $1 billion to $2 billion it would cost to get states’ voting systems up to date, according to Lawrence Norden of New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

Last week’s voting problems — in Georgia, South Carolina, Michigan and New York, as well as Florida — are a direct result of Washington’s neglect. “You can’t have it both ways,” Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos tells me. (He also serves as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State .) “You can’t scream about all the delays we’re having while also not stepping up and providing the resources we need.”

But Republicans prefer to scream “fraud” when the voting systems they starved inevitably break down. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) joined Scott and Trump, saying Democrats are trying “to steal a seat in the U.S. Senate.” McConnell pronounced himself “concerned.”

McConnell continues to rival Trump in the harm he’s doing to the institutions of democracy. He destroyed the campaign-finance system, using legislation and lawsuits to build the current era of unlimited dark money. He destroyed the last vestiges of bipartisan cooperation in the Senate with his year-long stall of Merrick Garland and his use of the “nuclear option” to seat two Supreme Court justices. Now, he is thwarting efforts to sustain the integrity of the nation’s voting systems — and then, when it inevitably fails, exploiting the failure to his advantage.

Maybe Scott will win when all the votes are counted. But, as Jeremy W. Peters of the New York Times observed Tuesday, even if Nelson wins, “it is not unthinkable that Republicans would consider using their majority power in the Senate to refuse to seat Mr. Nelson and to give the seat to Mr. Scott instead.”

As if on cue, McConnell on Wednesday morning declared Scott a new Republican senator — before bothering to learn the outcome of the election.

I have two friends who live in Kentucky. I've asked both of them why KY keeps foisting Bitch on us. Neither could provide an explanation.

[Audrey2]

This is so ridiculous, I can't even be offended.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/disguised-illegal-voters-cost-republicans-midterm-victories-trump-211538601.html

I'm putting the first paragraph and some of the more ridiculous things in the quote boxes.

Quote

Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Democrats wearing disguises and voting more than once were responsible for Republican losses in tight congressional elections.

"The Republicans don't win and that's because of potentially illegal votes," Trump was quoted as saying by right-wing website The Daily Caller.

Of course, Trump is whining about potentially illegal votes! His people didn't sweep the election, which means someone must have been conspiring against poor Trumpy.

Quote

Trump claimed, without providing any evidence, that blatant use of fake voters in disguise had swung close elections.

"When people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It's really a disgrace what’s going on," Trump said.

Is anyone else getting the mental image of voters in a whole host of famous people masks or super hero costumes going in time after time to vote?

Quote

Trump shot back, saying that any ordinary shopper already carried documents that could be used at a polling station.

"If you buy a box of cereal -- you have a voter ID," he was quoted as saying.

Really? I'm not a big fan of cereal so I haven't bought any recently, but I'm quite sure I didn't have to show ID last time I sprang for a box of Golden Grahams. Has anyone else been carded when buying cereal?

Oh Donnie, I think you really need some specialized help.

[Cartmann99]

 

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

Really? I'm not a big fan of cereal so I haven't bought any recently, but I'm quite sure I didn't have to show ID last time I sprang for a box of Golden Grahams. Has anyone else been carded when buying cereal?

Only when I spring for a box of Drunken Tobacco Flakes with Sudafed Sprinkles.

[AuntK]

Can you imagine the mess if FLORIDA had the ranked-candidate voting system like Maine does? Holy hanging chads, we would have to wait until 2020 for results!!!!

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

Is anyone else getting the mental image of voters in a whole host of famous people masks or super hero costumes going in time after time to vote?

I'm getting a mental image of voters going to the polls wearing those black-rimmed fake glasses with the fake nose and moustache!!!!LOL!

[formergothardite]

6 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

. Has anyone else been carded when buying cereal?

Has he actually ever been grocery shopping at a regular grocery store? I have a feeling that if he has, it has been a very, very, very long time and he hasn't the slightest clue that you can just walk in a store and buy stuff. You can even use cash! He might be only used to club membership stores where you do have to show your ID to get in the door and he truly doesn't understand that most people don't need an ID to buy groceries. 

I can't wait to see how Sarah Sanders will spin this. Last time he said something ridiculous about needing an ID for groceries she was at least able to claim he meant alcohol, this time he specifically said cereal. 

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, formergothardite said:

Has he actually ever been grocery shopping at a regular grocery store? I have a feeling that if he has, it has been a very, very, very long time and he hasn't the slightest clue that you can just walk in a store and buy stuff. You can even use cash! He might be only used to club membership stores where you do have to show your ID to get in the door and he truly doesn't understand that most people don't need an ID to buy groceries. 

I can't wait to see how Sarah Sanders will spin this. Last time he said something ridiculous about needing an ID for groceries she was at least able to claim he meant alcohol, this time he specifically said cereal. 

I don't think he ever goes shopping, period. He's got employees to do that for him. Plus, he only eats McDonalds and Kentucky Fried, so there's no reason to go grocery shopping anyway. 

As to the Sarah Sanders spin, it won't be necessary. When was the last time she held a press co again? Yeah, I can't remember either.

[onekidanddone]

10 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

This is so ridiculous, I can't even be offended.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/disguised-illegal-voters-cost-republicans-midterm-victories-trump-211538601.html

Do you think he means people were dressed as illegal voters? Not sure how that would look in real life though. There is no 'illegal' look, but who cares about reality,  to Trump being brown is all the proof he needs.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Today in Failed Democracy:

 

You need an overhaul of the voting system.

[onekidanddone]

33 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

How many flips does this make so far? The Dems are flipping more than Gabby Douglas.

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope one of Dumpy's nannies has hidden his phone, because I'm sure there will be a twitter meltdown: "Florida recount: Hand recount ordered in U.S. Senate race in Florida"

Spoiler

TALLAHASSEE — The five-day sprint to run ballots in Florida through counting machines for a second time ended Thursday, with the state ordering a manual recount of results in the U.S. Senate race, where about 12,600 votes separated Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson from Republican Rick Scott, the state’s governor. No such measure was ordered in the governor’s race, where former congressman Ron DeSantis (R) held an edge over Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D).

At least three counties did not submit new totals for the machine recount and are relying on counts from last week. Palm Beach County’s election supervisor said less than an hour before the 3 p.m. deadline that they would not finish the machine recount in any of three statewide races still in question and would move on to the manual recount at 4 p.m. In Broward County, results from the machine recount were received at 3:02 p.m. — two minutes past the deadline. And in Hillsborough County, officials said the number of votes after the recount was lower, but the margins in the races were the same, so they were sticking with the first unofficial returns.

In the governor’s race, former congressman Ron DeSantis (R) held a 0.41 percent lead over Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum at the start of the recount, outside the 0.25 percent threshold for a hand recount. Gillum said in a statement that he would not concede.

The state race for agriculture commissioner is also going to a manual recount.

Early Thursday, Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court in Tallahassee ruled that at least 4,000 voters must be given two extra days to resolve issues with their signatures and have their ballots counted. The decision affects Floridians who cast mail-in or provisional ballots but whose signatures did not match records maintained by state officials. More than 4,000 ballots across 45 counties in Florida were rejected because of inconsistent signatures, he wrote in his opinion. In the other 22 counties, the number is unknown.

Nelson’s campaign filed a suit seeking a public list of all voters with mismatched signatures, while Scott’s campaign said it was appealing Walker’s decision. “We are confident we will prevail,” Scott campaign spokeswoman Lauren Schenone said in a statement.

While the ruling gives Nelson new hope for chipping away at his deficit, it falls short of the more sweeping decision his lawyers sought and is probably not enough to change the outcome of the race on its own.

Walker emphasized the court was not instructing county canvassing boards to “count every mismatched vote.” But he said the state’s process for curing ballots with irregular signatures had been applied improperly, robbing voters of the chance to make corrections before Nov. 5. State law requires canvassing boards to notify voters “immediately” if they determine a mail-in ballot contains a signature inconsistent with the one on file.

It was unclear how many of the ballots rejected over signature issues would be subject to review. Walker said only that those voters who were “belatedly” notified their ballot was rejected would be given until 5 p.m. Saturday to fix any issues.

Marc Elias, Nelson’s lead recount attorney, praised the ruling. “We look forward to ensuring that those voters who cast lawful ballots have them counted,” he said in an email.

In his court decision, Walker stopped short of invalidating the signature-match requirement, concluding instead that the directive had been applied unlawfully because so many voters were given no chance to fix their rejected ballots and prove their identity. He also declined Nelson’s demand that all the mismatched ballots be counted “sight unseen,” as the judge put it.

Drawing an analogy to the rules governing football, Walker declined to throw out the regulation just because there had been a faulty call, observing, “Football fans may quibble about the substance of the rules, but no one quibbles that rules are necessary to play the game.”

Walker said the plaintiffs, the Florida Democratic Party and the Nelson campaign had established “irreparable injury” to the constitutional right of citizens “to cast their ballots and have them counted.” Specifically, Walker noted that while the deadline to submit a mail-in ballot was 7 p.m. Election Day, the deadline to “cure” a mismatched signature was 5 p.m. Monday, the day before — meaning those voters not notified or notified too late had no recourse.

There was similarly little recourse for provisional voters — those who cast special ballots subject to verification because they showed up in person on Election Day unable to verify their eligibility to vote.

There was new tension on another front, as Scott’s campaign manager called on Nelson to urge state Democrat Party Chair Terrie Rizzo to resign. The call came in the wake of a revelation that the Florida Department of State, which oversees elections, asked state law enforcement officials and federal prosecutors to investigate allegations that Democrats sent incorrect voting instructions to mail-in voters in four counties.

In another case, a Broward County judge ruled Thursday against Scott’s bid to exclude votes tallied there after Saturday’s initial counting deadline, saying he wasn’t going to approve it because there are other means to argue that some ballots shouldn’t be included.

The manual recount expected in the Senate race would begin at 7 a.m. Friday.

There will be 100 tables set up with two election workers, two campaign representatives and two party representatives at each, according to instructions distributed by election officials. Only the election workers are allowed to handle ballots, while wearing gloves.

The recount is scheduled for 11-hour days Friday and Saturday, with two 30-minute breaks each day. The deadline is noon Sunday.

“The table participant stays all day,” the instructions say. And that is not the only rule for volunteers working the recount: No phones at the tables. No pencils or pens. No food or beverages. Hands must be lotion- and oil-free in case of accidental contact with ballots. Activists for both parties quip that they are scouting for volunteers willing to go for hours without snacking or moisturizing.

The Senate race will determine the size of the GOP’s majority in 2019 and shape the power structure in the nation’s largest swing state. Together, the two sides have racked up at least 10 lawsuits trying to gain a legal advantage in the recount.

Scott’s campaign announced Thursday that it had raised more than $1.4 million for its recount efforts.

 

[Drala]

18 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Today in Failed Democracy:

 

You need an overhaul of the voting system.

I agree.  The state is jerrymandered out the ying-yang.  We voted for bipartisan redistricting reform in 2016.  It remains to be seen how well that works after the 2020 census  with a Repug governor, secretary of state, and a Repug statehouse supermajority likely to put their thumbs on the redistricting scales.  

I've been puzzling over how the state got so Red.  I think the Ohio Democratic party has its head up its ass and isn't doing enough to support statehouse candidates.  The NYTimes ran this article in today's paper about how, in addition to poor party support, the unions aren't supporting Ohio's Dem candidates.

Spoiler

Why the Perfect Red-State Democrat Lost

Taylor Sappington is exactly the kind of candidate his party should want in Ohio. But he couldn’t get union support.

By Alec MacGillis

Taylor Sappington heard the call like so many other Democrats in the year after Nov. 8, 2016. He had seen Donald Trump coming, homing in on his little town of Nelsonville, Ohio, in the state’s impoverished Appalachian southeast. The town of 5,300 people had voted for Barack Obama twice by large margins.

Mr. Trump was Nelsonville’s pick in 2016, though it was more by default than acclamation. Mr. Trump won there with less than a majority, with 30 percent fewer votes than Mr. Obama had gotten four years earlier.

Mr. Sappington, a 27-year-old Ohio native, took this as evidence that Nelsonville was not beyond redemption, that the town where he had grown up in hard circumstances — the son of a single mother who was for a time on food stamps, living deep in the woods in a manufactured home — wasn’t really Trump country.

Not so long ago at all, Ohio was considered the quintessential swing state — it had, after all, voted for the winning presidential candidate in every election starting with 1964. Something happened this decade, though. The 2010 national “shellacking” of Democrats left a particularly strong mark in Ohio. The Republicans who assumed control of Columbus pulled off an aggressive gerrymandering of federal and state legislative districts. In 2012, when Barack Obama won the state for the second time, Republicans held 12 of the state’s 16 congressional seats despite winning only 52 percent of the total House vote.

The state’s makeup had been trending red, too. At a time when the share of white voters without college degrees — who are fast becoming the Republican base — decreased nationwide, it held strong in Ohio. The state was drawing relatively few immigrants, its education system was sliding in national rankings and, with its smaller cities and towns falling far behind thriving Columbus, it was losing many young college grads to jobs out of state.

Not Taylor Sappington, though. He wanted to stay. He had gotten hooked on national politics in high school, around the time he read a book on Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign. And he had gotten out of Nelsonville, winning nearly a full ride to George Washington University.

But he felt out of place in D.C. — the wealthy students who abused expensive drugs and thought nothing of paying big cover charges at clubs, the dead-eyed people in suits rushing down the sidewalks — and he’d come back to finish at Ohio University, down the road from Nelsonville, in Athens. He took a break from school to work for Mr. Obama’s 2012 campaign in Ohio. And even before he had his diploma in hand, he’d run for, and won, a seat on the Nelsonville City Council.

The council seat came with only a $100 monthly stipend. So Mr. Sappington kept working as a waiter at the Texas Roadhouse in Athens. Later on, he added another gig: fixing broken smartphone screens in partnership with his younger brother, who drove an hour each way to work as a correctional officer at the prison in Chillicothe.

Mr. Sappington was content to stick with this combination for a while. He scratched out a living while pushing his agenda on the Council: finding the money to fix the town’s rutted roads, demolishing vacant homes, pushing for a mayoral system of government.

Then came 2016, which gave Mr. Trump an eight-percentage-point win in Ohio and swept in a new state representative for the district that included Nelsonville, which had been held by a Democrat for the previous eight years.

It was now held by a young Republican, Jay Edwards, who had been three years ahead of Mr. Sappington at Nelsonville-York High. He was a star quarterback who’d gone on to play linebacker at Ohio University, the scion of a prosperous local family.

Mr. Sappington was still mourning the election when, just a few weeks later, he confronted darkness of a different order. His longtime boyfriend — a gentle autodidact who had taught himself to build furniture and musical instruments when not working at Ruby Tuesday — committed suicide, at age 25.

At the next council meeting, Mr. Sappington spoke about the death, and the need for better mental health services in southeast Ohio. Jay Edwards was in the audience, as both Mr. Sappington and another council member recall, and stood up to leave in the middle of his remarks. (Mr. Edwards declined to comment on the record about that meeting or the race.)

A few months later, Mr. Sappington suffered another loss: the suicide of one of his cousins. A high school friend, a former service member, was succumbing to opiate addiction.

The gloom seemed relentless. Mr. Sappington decided the best way to fight it was to have something else to think about. Late last year, he made up his mind to run against Mr. Edwards, to reclaim the 94th House District in the Ohio statehouse for the Democrats.

He knew it would be a challenge. He was young. He would be vastly outspent. On the other hand, the district had been blue until very recently, and 2018 was promising to be a strong Democratic year. And he could, at least, count on support from unions and national progressive groups.

What he didn’t reckon with was that those organizations were already making a very different sort of calculus about his district, and about Ohio in general.

In December 2017, with the help of students at Ohio University, Mr. Sappington produced an arresting two-minute campaign video that included drone footage panning over Nelsonville, with its handsome town square lined with semi-abandoned brick buildings. “Why is that so many will grow up without parents because of this drug crisis? Why is it that our graduates struggle to find good-paying jobs?” he said in the video. “So much of this seems invisible in Columbus.”

The video was so powerful that the Ohio House Democratic Caucus played it at a fund-raiser in Columbus. Mr. Sappington learned of this secondhand, he said, because he wasn’t invited to the event. In general, he was having difficulty getting assistance from party leaders in Columbus, who seemed to be ranking candidates’ eligibility for support based in large part on the money they’d been able to raise. It wasn’t easy for a waiter in the poorest corner of the state to get people to write him checks, but Mr. Sappington had been prepared for that challenge.

What he hadn’t been prepared for was the lack of organizational support. Progressive groups in Washington and New York were focused mostly on congressional seats — never mind that it was state legislatures that would determine congressional lines for the next decade.

But most confounding were the unions. One by one, they started supporting Jay Edwards. And not just the building-trades unions, which sometimes side with Republicans, but the Service Employees International Union and the public sector unions — AFSCME, the Ohio Education Association and Ohio Civil Service Employees Association. The only endorsements Mr. Sappington received were from the National Association of Social Workers and the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers.

He was stunned. He was about as pro-union as one could be. In his video, he had mentioned his earlier activism against the law that Ohio Republicans had pushed through in 2011, eliminating collective bargaining for public employees, which was later overturned by referendum. His mother had been active in AFSCME; his brother belonged to the Civil Service Employees Association. And Mr. Sappington himself was a low-wage service worker. Yet he was losing labor support to a Republican who had supported a state budget that effectively reduced funding for education.

What he learned when he asked around, and what I later confirmed, was that the unions were, in many cases, making a grimly pragmatic decision in his race and others around the state. The Democrats had fallen to such a woeful level in Ohio state government that unions felt as if they had no choice but to make friends, or at least nonenemies, with some Republicans, in hopes of staving off anti-union measures such as “right-to-work” legislation and elimination of prevailing-wage standards.

For years, unions in the Midwest have rightly prided themselves on delivering the Democrats far higher margins among white working-class union members than among their nonunion brethren. But Mr. Trump had strained that bond in some unions, drawing support from many members even as their leaders had remained nominally committed to Hillary Clinton. Most unions were back on board with the Democrats in Midwestern federal and statewide races this year. In state legislative races in Ohio, though, unions hedged their bets.

The Ohio Education Association, for instance, endorsed 13 Republicans in state House races and three in State Senate races, while staying neutral in some others.

“If we were just looking at this as a partisan exercise and ‘to the winner go the spoils,’ we’d have been on the outside looking in, and we can’t let that happen,” said Scott DiMauro, vice president of the Ohio Education Association. “Republicans have supermajorities in both houses, and we’ve got to work with both parties to make progress on key issues.”

Joe Weidner, communications director for AFSCME’s statewide Council 8, gave a similar rationale. “We don’t just push the button for the Democrat,” he said. “It’s for the people who are behind us and will support us and we’ll support them. Party is important for us; we align a lot with the Democrats. But we also have Republicans we align with.”

Seen from one side, this was realpolitik. Seen from another, it was self-fulfilling fatalism, consigning the unions’ Democratic allies to permanent minority status.

Mr. Sappington forged on without the unions. His campaign’s slogan: “Health Care. Infrastructure. Integrity.” He had the help of a dedicated band of supporters, including an Ohio University student, Jordan Kelley, who was on leave from his studies while he saved money for his final semesters working at Buffalo Wild Wings. Bit by bit, Mr. Sappington raised money, bringing in about $80,000. That was enough for radio ads, postage for thousands of handwritten postcards and stipends for campaign workers.

But it was far less than the $430,000 that Mr. Edwards had raised since 2016, nearly half of which was from unions. He shared much of this largess with others in his party, which meant the unions’ money was also helping Republicans who were less pro-labor than Mr. Edwards.

In August, Mr. Sappington got the ultimate affirmation of his candidacy: He was one of 81 candidates across the entire country endorsed by Mr. Obama. That imprimatur cast the unions’ position in an even starker light: They were now lined up behind a Republican against a Democrat endorsed by the still-popular ex-president.

Other organizational backing remained slow in coming. The state House Democratic Caucus sent a young campaign manager and paid half of his salary, but he was ill-suited to rural organizing and he stayed only six weeks. Mr. Sappington struggled to get Democratic candidates for statewide office to campaign alongside him in the district. One national progressive group whose help he had sought sent no money, but did send, as a gesture of moral support, a package that included nuts and dried fruit.

On the night before the election, when other candidates might have done final phone-banking, Mr. Sappington had to report to Texas Roadhouse for a staff meeting on new food-safety measures. The next day, he traveled around the district to check on turnout levels. At night he headed to a vacation cabin in the woods that he had rented to watch election returns. His friends and family assembled to eat his mom’s chili and watch MSNBC.

Mr. Sappington sat with a laptop, monitoring the numbers trickling in from around the 94th District. Athens had turned out strongly, and he’d racked up big majorities there. But he’d been swamped in the rural areas. Mr. Edwards’s margin was the exact same as it had been against a different Democratic opponent two years ago: 58 to 42 percent.

The numbers were bleak for Democrats across the state. Sherrod Brown had won re-election to the Senate against a flawed opponent, by about six percentage points, but he was an anomaly. Democrats had not managed to win a single one of those gerrymandered congressional seats. They still held only four of 16, despite winning 48 percent of the congressional vote. They had lost not only the election for governor but for every other statewide office.

They’d picked up only four seats in the state House and lost one in the Senate, leaving Republican supermajorities in both chambers — this despite Democrats having won a near majority of total votes in those races, a sign of just how effectively gerrymandered districts were. In a way, the Democrats’ failure to make big gains had affirmed the unions’ self-protective strategy; but that failure had been partly abetted by the unions themselves.

There was another aspect, though, to the failure of the unions, state party leaders and progressive organizations to strongly support candidates like Taylor Sappington. He is a native of small-town Ohio, working-class not only in his roots but in his own livelihood: exactly the sort of elected official whom Democrats say they need to cultivate in areas where the party is losing ground.

At 9:45 p.m., Sappington slipped out of the cabin to call Jay Edwards and concede the race.

When he came back into the cabin, his face was drawn. He said that Mr. Edwards hadn’t immediately known who was calling, and a hard conversation was made harder.

“Hey, Jay,” he recalled saying. “It’s Taylor Sappington.”

“Taylor who?” said Mr. Edwards.

 

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How is America so bad at this? 

 

[AnywhereButHere]

My "favorite" was the republican operative on Ari last night bitching about how the democrats are rigging the Broward County outcome even though the votes are now not being counted and THEIR GUY IS STILL WINNING EITHER WAY. I mean, seriously. It's like they are autoprogrammed to claim fraud no matter what.

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[AmazonGrace]

Fresh from Failed Democracy

 

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From Failed Democracy Today 

 

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Another Flip Alert: