2018 elections

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billy.pilgrim
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Re: 2018 elections

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It all seemed a little strange that mcsally quit whining about the election results and gave such a gracious concession statement. Ol sneaky Joe put out his usual repug praise this morning and said that he would return to his party if there were more like her.

Then I googled. It turns out that mcsally will be appointed to fill Jon Kyle's Senate seat when he steps down on January 3.

In other news, I have heard several of the networks, including CNN and msnbc, say that the Florida judge told both sides to Tampa down the rhetoric.

She did speak to all involved attorneys, but the facts do show that conspiracy rick is really the only scum pushing lies.
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Re: 2018 elections

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Re: 2018 elections

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Midterms: Late results reveal Democrats 'blue wave' as party secures best election performance since 1974

... The Democrats have now picked up at least 32 seats in the House and are on course for four more, in addition to flipping seven governorships and eight state legislative chambers.

Though the Republicans are on track to increase their Senate by two seats, they had expected more....

It means the overall results in the first nationwide election of Donald Trump’s presidency represent the Democrats’ best midterm performance since 1974, a vote which came in the wake of Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation.

Mr Trump, who last week declared election night to have been a “tremendous success”, has since been reduced to making baseless allegations of voter fraud to explain knife-edge contests in key seats such as Florida....

The Democrats needed to gain 23 seats to seize the House majority. Once all the votes are counted, which could take weeks in some cases as absentees and provisional ballots are tallied, they could win close to 40.

They have not lost a single House incumbent so far, and defeated Republican targets such as Mike Coffman of Colorado, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Carlos Curbelo of Florida, and Dana Rohrabacher of California.

They could win as many as 19 House races in districts carried by Mr Trump two years ago, according to House Democrats’ campaign team.
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Vrede too
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Re: 2018 elections

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Stand with Georgia: Count Every Vote
To: Georgia Secretary of State Robyn Crittenden
From: [Your Name]


I am peacefully demanding that the state of Georgia do its job -- count every vote cast in the Governor’s race NOW.

Despite racist Jim Crow-era barriers to voting seen throughout the 2018 election season, Black voters in Georgia showed up to polling locations across Georgia in record numbers.

Voters of Georgia have the right to vote and have their voices are heard -– it is your duty to ensure every vote is counted.
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Re: 2018 elections

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Utah Republican behind in tight race sues to halt vote count

Evidently, massive voter suppression, dark money, gerrymandering and Russian help aren't enough. Now, Repugs across the nation are suing to stop votes, even GI votes, from being counted.
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Leo Lyons
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Re: 2018 elections

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Vrede too wrote:
Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:06 pm
Utah Republican behind in tight race sues to halt vote count

Evidently, massive voter suppression, dark money, gerrymandering and Russian help aren't enough. Now, Repugs across the nation are suing to stop votes, even GI votes, from being counted.
Our country has turned into one gigantic clusterfu*k.

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Re: 2018 elections

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Florida U.S. Senate race triggers hand recount

... Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson trailed his Republican challenger, Florida Governor Rick Scott, by about 12,600 votes, or 0.15 percent of the more than 8 million ballots cast following an electronic recount. The razor-thin margin triggers a manual recount under state law....
Florida judge sides with Democrats, giving thousands a second chance to fix their ballots
Voters have until Saturday to correct their signatures, while the recount results will be delayed until next week.


Thousands of Florida voters whose ballots were initially thrown out because their signatures didn’t match the state’s records will get a second chance at having them counted after a federal judge’s ruling — a win for Democrats in the ongoing battle over the state’s recounts....

Now Florida voters have until 5 pm Saturday to fix their ballots by providing proof of identity and correcting any signature problems.

Walker’s ruling begins with a long analogy about football, in which both teams might not agree on the right call by a referee but do share the principle that games need rules.

“In this case, the Plaintiffs have thrown a red flag,” Walker, an Obama appointee, wrote. “But this is not football. Rather, this is a case about the precious and fundamental right to vote—the right preservative of all other rights.”

Walker was scathing about Florida’s process, which allows counties to toss out mailed-in and provisional ballots for signature mismatches based on standards they set themselves.

“The precise issue in this case is whether Florida’s law ... passes constitutional muster,” reads Walker’s order in the Northern District of Florida. “The answer is simple. It does not.”

“These voters went above and beyond trying to get their legal votes counted,” he writes later in the opinion. “They contacted their local boards of election, presented valid identification, and tried to cure the incorrect signature mismatch determination. But there was nothing they could do.”

The ruling could be good news for the Democratic candidates, who are still trailing their GOP opponents. Currently, Republican Gov. Rick Scott is leading Bill Nelson by fewer than 13,000 votes in the Senate race. Republican Ron DeSantis has a wider lead over progressive Andrew Gillum, 34,000 votes ahead in the current count for the gubernatorial seat. Republicans had argued against counting ballots with signature mismatches or allowing voters more time to prove their identity.

Shortly after the ruling was announced, Scott’s campaign issued a statement saying they would immediately appeal it....
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Re: 2018 elections

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Abrams admits defeat in hard-fought Georgia governor race

:(

The Dems are up to 232 in the House, not sure how many races are left to decide.
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Re: 2018 elections

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Re: 2018 elections

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Amer Fed of Teachers says that the midterm turnout was the largest in 50 years and that 1 in 6 voters was a new one.


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Re: 2018 elections

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Republican Scott secures Florida U.S. Senate seat after recount

... Scott won by 10,033 votes out of 8.19 million cast statewide, Florida elections officials said. Scott took 50.05 percent, compared to 49.93 percent for Nelson, they added....
In other words, Scott only had to suppress 10,034 legit voters to win.
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O Really
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Re: 2018 elections

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Oh, he suppressed far more than that.

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billy.pilgrim
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Re: 2018 elections

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Should anyone wonder why the election supervisor would go against the federal recommendations after their ballot design caused thousands of Jewish liberals to vote Buchanan in 2000.
The recommendations said to never include a single race below lengthy instructions.
But that where she hid the Senate race and 35,000 people missed it. 70% of the county voted Dem.
That's 25,000 votes.
Has she recently come into money?
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Re: 2018 elections

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billy.pilgrim wrote:
Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:12 pm

Has she recently come into money?
Probably from the same fund Bondi got her $25K.

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Re: 2018 elections

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Brenda Snipes (Broward) was a Jeb Bush appointee in 2003, and in 4 elections the GOP has never put anyone up to oppose her. It's funny seeing the Repugs whining about her now.
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billy.pilgrim
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Re: 2018 elections

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Vrede too wrote:
Mon Nov 19, 2018 12:37 am
Brenda Snipes (Broward) was a Jeb Bush appointee in 2003, and in 4 elections the GOP has never put anyone up to oppose her. It's funny seeing the Repugs whining about her now.
They whine for the cameras.

Rick spent 40 million of his own money by October.
Rick believes that the ends justify the means.
Hopefully someone is looking at Brenda's finances.
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O Really
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Re: 2018 elections

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Yeah, Snipes was a Republican appointee, working in a heavily Democratic county - she made "errors" all of which benefited Republicans. Now she's going away generally peacefully. She had to be paid off - and more than once.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/brenda-snipe ... 13998.html

Comments are entertaining, too.

"within minutes after a powerball drawing they can tell you how many people won and where the ticket was purchased and yet we still dont have a reliable way to count votes."
( Of course that's not relevant to an election with theoretically "secret" ballots, but when did that ever matter? Lock her up!)

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Re: 2018 elections

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billy.pilgrim wrote:
Mon Nov 19, 2018 7:26 am
Vrede too wrote:
Mon Nov 19, 2018 12:37 am
Brenda Snipes (Broward) was a Jeb Bush appointee in 2003, and in 4 elections the GOP has never put anyone up to oppose her. It's funny seeing the Repugs whining about her now.
They whine for the cameras.

Rick spent 40 million of his own money by October.
Rick believes that the ends justify the means.
Hopefully someone is looking at Brenda's finances.
I meant the rank and file on forums like the one O Really links. I haven't watched too much of the on camera whining.

Lots of others are arguing back that "his own money" came from us in the form of Medicare/Medicaid fraud.

In Mississippi, Issues of Race Complicate a Senate Election

A special election for the Senate in Mississippi has become a test of racial and partisan politics in the Deep South, as a Republican woman, Cindy Hyde-Smith, and an African-American Democrat, Mike Espy, compete for the last Senate seat still up for grabs in the 2018 midterm campaign.

Ms. Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to a seat in the Senate earlier this year, seemed until recently to be on a glide path toward winning the election in her own right. Mr. Espy, a former cabinet secretary under President Bill Clinton, was running a strong underdog campaign but appeared highly unlikely to overcome Mississippi’s strongly conservative inclination.

Yet the trajectory of the election was thrown into doubt last week when a video was circulated showing Ms. Hyde-Smith, 59, praising a supporter by telling him that if he invited her “to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”

Facing an uproar in a state divided by race and deeply scarred by a history of lynchings carried out against African-Americans, Ms. Hyde-Smith has since retreated from the campaign trail, ducking reporters’ questions and declining to apologize. A former state agriculture commissioner, Ms. Hyde-Smith has instead pursued a strategy aimed at shoring up her support with conservative whites, and she enlisted President Trump to campaign for her on the eve of a Nov. 27 runoff vote.

That may be enough for Ms. Hyde-Smith to secure victory in a solid-red state. But in Jackson and Washington, her apparent inability to take the self-inflicted controversy in hand has unnerved Republicans and stoked Democratic hopes for an upset. A private Republican poll last week found Ms. Hyde-Smith’s lead over Mr. Espy had narrowed to just five percentage points, three people briefed on the data said.

Ms. Hyde-Smith has resisted private appeals from Republicans who have urged her to apologize. On a conference call with political donors last week — hosted by the group Winning for Women, which raises money for female Republicans — Ms. Hyde-Smith struggled to allay potential backers’ concerns about the race, according to four people familiar with the discussion, who insisted on anonymity to discuss a private call.

When one participant asked Ms. Hyde-Smith why she would not simply apologize, the senator offered a meandering and vague answer, saying that she was considering an apology but worried that offering one would only further fuel the issue.

The senator’s weeklong retreat has drawn criticism from voters in both parties that she seems either insensitive to her comment’s racial implications or simply incapable of grappling with them as a public figure....
No way am I getting my hopes up for a win, but just the slight possibility of one in Mississippi is stunning. Any votes for Espy above about 1/3 of the total will come from white voters.
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O Really
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Re: 2018 elections

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I'd think the idea of a Snipes payoff would be just conspiracy fodder, except that we know we have someone in the White House that gave Florida AG Bondi $25,000 to quash (or in appreciation for quashing) the state's case against his ummmm "university." And we know that same guy really really wanted his lapdogs to win. And we know there are more Dems than Repugs in Florida - 11,446,540 registered voters: 40% Democrats. 36% Republicans. 20% No Party Affiliation (independents). 4% Minor Parties And we know Broward is highly Democratic and has a record of electoral controversy, giving cover to "complications" this year. So if somebody could design a ballot that sharply reduces the chance of a Senate vote in a highly Democratic county (a ballot that directly violated the clarity principles published after the hanging chad debacle), and then make sure there is enough controversy about the voting to put the entire county in doubt... then voila! Repugs stay in power. And to make sure everything goes properly wrong, promise Snipes a soft landing with a comfortable nest egg in exchange for accepting a little public abuse. Makes sense to me.

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Re: 2018 elections

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Oklahoma City: If a Democrat can make it there, she can make it anywhere

... After all, Oklahoma was not just any red state, it was blood red — so conservative that elected Democrats had been driven into near extinction. In 2016, Donald Trump won Oklahoma by more than 36 points — a margin surpassed only by results in West Virginia and Wyoming. Republicans controlled all elected statewide offices, including the governorship and its two U.S. Senate seats. They held a supermajority in the state House and Senate, controlling more than 70 percent of the seats in each chamber.

And since 2012, the GOP had held all five of Oklahoma’s U.S. House seats. In the Fifth Congressional District — which includes part of Oklahoma City, the state capital and two heavily rural neighboring counties to the east of the city — no Democrat had won since 1974, and 2018 did not look especially promising.

Rep. Steve Russell, a decorated combat veteran who commanded an Army unit that played an integral role in capturing Saddam Hussein and who had appeared on the television show “Deadliest Warrior,” had held the seat since 2014. He had easily won two terms — defeating his Democratic opponents by 20 points or more in the last two elections — and was considered a sure thing for re-election in a district where Republicans held a significant voter registration advantage over Democrats....

What happened was what some have described as the most shocking upset of the midterm elections. In a development that no one saw coming, including political forecasters who predicted up until the final hours before Election Day that the district would remain safely Republican, Horn narrowly defeated Russell — by just 3,300 votes, or 1.4 percent. She made history, and not just for turning the district blue for the first time in 44 years. In a state that ranks lowest in the nation for women in elected office, Horn became just the third woman — and the first Democratic woman — elected to Congress from Oklahoma.

But Horn’s win wasn’t the only surprise on Election Day. Up and down the ballot in Oklahoma, more than a dozen Democratic women claimed seats in what were presumed to be red districts, including four in local and state legislative races in and around Oklahoma City....

The success of Horn and other Democratic women wasn’t enough to shake the GOP hold on Oklahoma politics....

But while Republicans won, the new legislators aren’t uniformly hard-right conservatives, the faction that had dominated the statehouse in recent decades. Many of those lawmakers were ousted in the primaries — in part because their more moderate Republican colleagues had campaigned against them. Some had even dared to campaign less on social issues and more as pro-government conservatives willing to raise taxes to fix the state’s fiscal woes, including education funding....
:clap:
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