The portal insider right now is an extremely grim indication of how awful the maga media engine could become in the coming days (it’s almost like they’re preparing for a very specific set of complaints) pic.twitter.com/r9qZ8v7egt
— The Real Charlie Warzel (Parody Account) (@cwarzel) November 8, 2022
According to the typically wise Jon Ralston of the Nevada Independent:
Adding in the new urban totals, the Rs now have a 6,500-vote lead in Nevada, and that’s not including the jump they’re sure to have on Democrats in rural areas.
It’s all about the Indies and mail now.
*Does not include mail drop boxes or mail delivered today.
— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 8, 2022
So non-major party voters are turning out in greater numbers than Democrats to vote in person today in both Las Vegas and Reno. It’s still early and the relevant vote totals are very small compared to early voting.
But unless the Democrats REALLY mail it in, I see red people.
— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) November 8, 2022
Major chaos on Election Day in Luzerne County, PA. Dozens of polling stations ran out of paper for printing ballots. Voters had to be turned away.
The court has just decided to extend the polling hours to 10 p.m. – an unprecedented move.
— Dasha Burns (@DashaBurns) November 8, 2022
Anne Ryman of the Arizona Republic reports:
To recap, 20 percent of polling places in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, report technical problems with the sorters on Election Day. This is about 40 of the 223 polling stations. Maricopa County officials say technicians are trying to determine the cause of the technical problems with the taggers. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer says, “This particular issue is not something we’ve seen in recent elections.”
Maricopa County officials say that if you run into problems with the classification, you have three options, and your vote will be counted in each: 1) stay where you are and wait for the table to connect 2) leave your ballot in the secure slot (gate 3) at table 3) go to a nearby polling station.
What are tabulators? At the polls, Maricopa County voters fill out paper ballots and then insert their ballots into on-site tabulators. Classifiers count the votes and store both the ballots and the results.
Votebeat Arizona adds:
In an effort to brush off conspiracy theories, Maricopa County Chairman Bill Gates said “none of this indicates fraud or anything like that” and assured the public that ballots cast in affected locations would be counted properly. “Everybody can still vote,” Gates said. “No one is deprived of a right. And we have layoffs”…
But Republican leaders were already declaring malice. Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward took to Twitter to criticize Republican Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Democratic Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs over the issue. Republican Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, one of the state’s leading proponents of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, used the problem to urge a “return to paper ballots, to hand counting, to districting the election day”. In fact, all ballots in Arizona are paper ballots.
In the meantime:
A Republican familiar with the war room talks says all options are on the table in Maricopa County, including asking a judge to extend in-person voting hours. The plan for now is to make sure voters show up during regular hours. https://t.co/zfwrZdmDKo
— YvonneWingettSanchez 🏜 (@yvonnewingett) November 8, 2022
Ed Kilgore: Just a reminder that there are an unusual number of competitive House races this year in West Coast states that accept postmarked ballots on Election Day for several days afterward (nine in California, three in Oregon, two in Washington, one in Alaska, according to the Cook Political Report). The home inspection will probably be settled before any of this matters, but if somehow it isn’t, we could be waiting a while.
Alaska’s largest congressional district will be decided by a ranked-choice vote after all mail-in ballots are completed. So if this is a horrible night for Democrats, the ultimate hangover could be the discovery that Sarah Palin is coming to Washington. (Not favored to win, but you never know.)
[email protected]: “If you lose tonight, would you concede?”@GenDonBolduc: “Well, yeah. Of course.” pic.twitter.com/tjNhulE6Xd
— Today™️ (@Azi) November 8, 2022
Love it or hate it, the New York Times election needle is alive again. Right now it’s too early to make predictions, so enjoy these last few hours of low blood pressure before America’s future ends up on the counter.
Look upon my Works, Mighty Ones, and despair! Illustration: Screencap/New York Times
With several hours left until the polls close at 7 p.m., Georgia election officials are reporting minimal wait times at polling places across the state. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that, within the first few hours of voting, DeKalb and Fulton counties saw wait times of less than six minutes. Gabriel Sterling, the chief of operations in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, tweeted: “Voting across Georgia so far has been spectacularly boring.”
Ed Kilgore: About all the cries of fraud we’re going to hear today and tonight: Some of it is old-fashioned Republican fear of inner-city Democrats stuffing the polls that goes way back to the 19th century. If the Republicans win the swayed election anyway, they’ll hush it up. But another part of this is the MAGA crusade to delegitimize voting in general, and that will continue no matter who wins or loses. As you may recall, Trump complained about voter fraud after his 2016 victory.
Voters wait to cast their ballots at Biltmore Fashion Park on Tuesday in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Philadelphia officials announced Tuesday morning that they will repeat a roughly three-day process called “poll book reconciliation,” which requires election officials to scan all in-person ballots to make sure no one voted twice. The decision comes after a Republican legal advocacy group founded by Karl Rove and William Barr sued the city’s Board of Elections, which abandoned the process for the 2022 election because it now has more effective practices to catch the extremely rare phenomenon. double voting.
Notably, Republicans sued to reinstate this practice only in the overwhelmingly Democratic city of Philadelphia, which means a huge swath of blue votes will come very late in the race, creating the red mirage — the impression on election night that Republicans they’re winning, thanks to higher rates of GOP voters going in-person — more extreme in Pennsylvania.
The Intelligencer’s Ed Kilgore analyzed the countless number of polls released this election cycle to determine what results are predicted for the midterm elections. When it comes to the US Senate and which party could take control in January, he decided it’s “a real toss-up.”
Republicans are defending 21 seats, six of which were left open after retirements. Just four of those races are rated competitive (either upsets or races that lean toward a particular candidate) by the experts at the Cook Political Report. Democrats are defending just 14 seats, only one of which is “open”. Cook considers five of those races competitive. FiveThirtyEight’s projections based on polls and expert opinion now give Republicans a 55 percent chance of flipping the Senate (this and their individual race projections are probabilities, not predictions). Democrats have a 45 percent chance of holding the Senate.
Read the rest of Ed’s prediction here.
Mehmet Oz said Tuesday morning that he will accept the results of the Senate race in Pennsylvania, breaking away from the policy of party leader Donald Trump, who endorsed Oz in the primary. “Yes, of course,” he told reporters after casting his vote in Montgomery County.
At a rally for JD Vance in Ohio on Monday night, Donald Trump teased his “major” 2024 announcement coming next week. And with it, he provided a reminder of the insanity that would follow for years to come. He called Nancy Pelosi an “animal” and called his two impeachments “bullshit.” Referring to the Supreme Court leak, he said that journalists who do not reveal their sources should be jailed and suggested that they should be assaulted by prisoners.
The Associated Press reports that the social media platform is “struggling to respond to political misinformation and other harmful posts” ahead of Election Day amid the company’s volatile transition under Elon Musk:
The recent mass layoffs spared many of the people whose job it is to keep hate and misinformation off the social media platform. Musk cut just 15 percent of those content-moderated workers, compared with about 50 percent job cuts across the company, an executive said last week. But in preparation for…
