November 16, 2020 7:52 AM
Morning Reads for Monday, November 16, 2020
Over the weekend, someone mentioned that Thanksgiving is a week and a half away. I didn’t have a countdown for that and it really threw me for a loop. SOOO…not trying to ruin anyone else’s Monday, but time’s a tickin.
- The race to get Georgia’s 23,000 17-year-olds registered to vote
- Georgia recount yields few changes in vote totals, Democrats say
- Biden’s corporate tax plan depends on Georgia’s Senate results
- Georgia voting irregularities: The curious case of Biden’s 20,000-vote surge
- Biden campaign says Georgia’s U.S. presidential recount reveals no irregularities
- Despite losing her news job, one woman continues to report on the election in Georgia
- Milledgeville teen among inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts
- Community comes together for Georgia family displaced after tropical storm
- SATIRE: Millions of Americans suddenly confused as to what to do with newfound knowledge of Georgia
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Theresa Garcia Robertson
Wife. Mama. Foodie. Political Junkie. Southern Enthusiast. Taco Lover.
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Here is your monday morning reader for today.
Good article in how the vote went down in Georgia.
“The night before the General Election, Trouble in God’s Country went up with a post wondering if the 2020 election would be rural Georgia’s last stand.
Ten days after the vote, as the state is beginning a hand recount of the presidential vote, our answer is a very firm kinda sorta maybe but we’re not totally sure…
Biden improved at least slightly on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in every North Georgia county except Chattooga, on the Alabama line, and Hart and Elbert, across the state on South Carolina border. But it was around Metro Atlanta and in the fast-growing exurbs that the Democratic gains were the biggest.
Deep red Forsyth County, for instance, went nearly three-to-one for Trump over Clinton in 2016; this year his margin was down to two-to-one against Biden, a shift of eight percentage points from red to blue. Three- and four-point shifts took place across a broad swath of fast-growing (and still Republican) exurban counties like Hall, Barrow, Jackson, Walton and Oconee, moving thousands of votes to the Democratic column.
Trump’s gains over 2016, meanwhile, came primarily in smaller (and mostly shrinking) rural counties through Middle and South Georgia. His biggest gains came in Hancock County (4.2 percent) and Baker County (3.5 percent); between them, they added 2,056 votes to his 2016 totals in those counties.”
https://troubleingodscountry.com/2020/11/13/tigcs-first-crack-at-a-post-mortem-on-the-general-election/
The obvious take away from that is that there was just enough Never Trumpers among the Republicans to swing the state away from him. Forsyth County is a good example as I would guess the Republicans still hold at least a 3-1 ratio there, but as the article points out the presidential vote went down to 2-1.
This has to be a dilemma for the party in the upcoming Senate races as both Perdue and Loeffler have been and apparently still are such loyal Trumpistas. How do they get the normally reliable staid Republicans to come vote for them in a runoff where turnout is everything without alienating the part of the tent still covering the Boogaloo Bois, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys? In my mind, Trump is a stain on the big tent that the Georgia Republican Party has to get behind them if they want to even approach their previous dominance.
Look at the facts, and no matter how you slice it these are the facts: Trump LOST. He and his yes men are still butt hurt and lashing out. It is dangerous to our democracy to have a President that is so unwilling to relinquish power. It is dangerous to the Republican party to continue to kowtow to this tyrant. Even if they somehow swing Georgia back to Biden it makes no difference other than it could guarantee firing up the Democrats to GOTV for the runoff.
It’s of note that demographics in Forsyth also been changing…
have the rules for voting in runoffs changed? because i remember quite vividly being turned away from the august runoff between zell miller and andy young in 1990 because i was too young to vote in the july primary by 11 days, so even though i had already registered to vote, i had to have been eligible to vote in the primary , to be allowed to vote in the runoff…
Shouldn’t this guy be charged with a hate crime? https://thecitizen.com/2020/11/15/anti-trumper-rips-flag-off-vehicle-runs-over-it-several-times-gets-arrested/
Mental disability is one of the protected statuses according to the Georgia hate crime, so you may have a case.
Meanwhile in the Pacific Rim…
https://www.axios.com/rcep-trade-bloc-china-new-world-order-4993564c-ca57-411f-aca4-15250869f762.html
I’m curious how the look into Favorito’s observations pans out (the alleged 20K vote surge). The article is full of just his speculation, but still curious. The most likely problem – one never even suggested- is human error. Perhaps error in using the infamous “upload” button or other act of clumsiness. And an error likely corrected, esp. if there was a decrease in votes reported. Oddly, it’s also hard to tell if he was looking at statewide totals, or just Fulton, because of conflicting presentation. If it was statewide, there should be a recognition that changes to the count would have occurred potentially across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously, and there may be no connection between the vote count changes between the candidates. Curious to see if any resolution.
I’m not sure a resolution will be forthcoming for something a single witness claims to have seen on the SoS website in the wee hours of the morning of Nov. 5. His affidavit that no one else paid attention to can be found here: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2020/Fulton_Trump_Biden_Election_Affidavit.pdf As an IT “professional with over 40 years of experience” I’m sure he is familiar with a common hardware failure that occurs with the nut between the keyboard and the floor. I would submit that it wouldn’t be unusual at all to have Biden’s number jump 20k in Fulton County and it is at best an anomoly in the reversal on the Trump tally that was seemingly observed by one person professionally hitting the refresh button at home. The guy has a history suing previous SoS including Handel and Cox over electronic voting machines.
He probably didn’t even need grooming like many of Trump’s worshipers but there is an interesting article on the subject to be found here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-were-primed-to-believe-the-current-onslaught-of-disinformation which includes:
“Even before he was president, Trump was alleging election fraud without producing evidence. During his 2016 campaign he claimed the election was “rigged” in favor of Clinton, predicted widespread voter fraud and announced he would accept the results of the election only if he won. Over the past year, he has reiterated many of the same baseless assertions, seizing in particular on mail-in voting, which he maintained (again without evidence) would lead to fraud.”
My personal favorite comment from the Twitty Pulpit though didn’t make that article but was included in a rant on Michigan’s vote tallying: “BAD THINGS HAPPENED WHICH OUR OBSERVERS WERE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE.” Huh? If you couldn’t see them how did you…
Very hopeful news on PBS NewsHour tonight, it highlights the vaccine progress. Excellent progress is being made. You can watch it on YouTube if you missed it.
Trump is probably saying, “Why not a month ago?!” Expect more frustration tweets.
Wearing a mask will keep you safer until the vaccine becomes available. Good luck to you folks not wearing a mask. I would hate to be on ventilator in the ICU and find out the vaccine is now available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-jNoPsqFbU
The PBS link for NewsHour, they talk about the timeline for releasing the Coronavirus vaccine and the results so far.
WOW!
(Reuters) – As she sat on a stool at home plate in Miami Marlins Park on Monday a message flashed onto the giant jumbotron behind the first woman general manager of a Major League Baseball team, “Welcome Kim Ng”.
Ng meanwhile had a message of her own: “Anything is possible. That’s my message, anything is possible,” said the 51-year-old trailblazer.
Indeed, but it has taken time.
Thirty years after starting out as an intern for the Chicago White Sox, through assistant general manager stints with the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers and nearly a decade at MLB headquarters as senior vice president of baseball operations, Ng finally shattered another of the sport’s glass ceilings last Friday by securing the top job with the Marlins.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-baseball-mia-ng/anythings-possible-says-mlbs-first-woman-general-manager-ng-idUSKBN27W2TY
They made the playoffs this past season.
My daughter hates baseball, “It’s sooo boorrring!”
it’s been a busy Monday, why the heck is Lindsey Graham of SC talking to our SOS about throwing out votes?
“ns
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Ga. secretary of state says fellow Republicans are pressuring him to find ways to exclude ballots
‘There will be a recount in Georgia,’ state official says
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told the press on Nov. 6 that the state’s final tally would be within the margin for a recount. (AP)
By
Amy Gardner
November 16, 2020 at 6:30 p.m. EST
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), who he said questioned the validity of legally cast absentee ballots, in an effort to reverse President Trump’s narrow loss in the state.
Follow the latest on Election 2020
In a wide-ranging interview about the election, Raffensperger expressed exasperation over a string of baseless allegations coming from Trump and his allies about the integrity of the Georgia results, including claims that Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado-based manufacturer of Georgia’s voting machines, is a “leftist” company with ties to Venezuela that engineered thousands of Trump votes to be left out of the count.
The atmosphere has grown so contentious, Raffensperger said, that he and his wife, Tricia, have received death threats in recent days, including a text to him that read: “You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it.”
“Other than getting you angry, it’s also very disillusioning,” Raffensperger said of the threats, “particularly when it comes from people on my side of the aisle. Everyone that is working on this needs to elevate their speech. We need to be thoughtful and careful about what we say.” He said he reported the threats to state authorities.
The pressure on Raffensperger, who has bucked his party in defending the state’s voting process, comes as Georgia is in the midst of a laborious hand recount of about 5 million ballots. President-elect Joe Biden has a 14,000-vote lead in the initial count.
The normally mild-mannered Raffensperger saved his harshest language for Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), who is leading the president’s efforts in Georgia and whom Raffensperger called a “liar” and a “charlatan.”
Collins has questioned Raffensperger’s handling of the vote and accused him of capitulating to Democrats by not backing allegations of voter fraud more strongly.
Raffensperger has said that every accusation of fraud will be thoroughly investigated, but that there is currently no credible evidence that fraud occurred on a broad enough scale to affect the outcome of the election.
The recount, Raffensperger said in the interview Monday, will “affirm” the results of the initial count. He said the hand-counted audit that began last week will also prove the accuracy of the Dominion machines; some counties have already reported that their hand recounts exactly match the machine tallies previously reported. Election officials in one county, Floyd, discovered about 2,600 eligible votes that were not included in the initial tallies because of a failure to upload them off a memory stick. The secretary of state’s office said those votes probably would have been discovered, but it called for the resignation of the county election director.
“I’m an engineer. We look at numbers. We look at hard data,” Raffensperger said. “I can’t help it that a failed candidate like Collins is running around lying to everyone. He’s a liar.”
A spokeswoman for Collins replied to a request for comment by linking to a tweet Collins sent on Monday in which he described Raffensperger’s “incompetence as Secretary of State.”
Collins ran unsuccessfully for Senate this year and is blamed by some Republicans for pushing the incumbent in that race, fellow Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, into a runoff against the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat.
His fellow Republicans turned on him, but Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger isn’t backing down
In the interview, Raffensperger also said he spoke on Friday to Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has echoed Trump’s unfounded claims about voting irregularities.
In their conversation, Graham questioned Raffensperger about the state’s signature-matching law and whether political bias could have prompted poll workers to accept ballots with nonmatching signatures, according to Raffensperger. Graham also asked whether Raffensperger had the power to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures, Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger said he was stunned that Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. Absent court intervention, Raffensperger doesn’t have the power to do what Graham suggested because counties administer elections in Georgia.
“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Raffensperger said.
In an interview on Capitol Hill on Monday evening, Graham denied that he had suggested that Raffensperger toss legal ballots, calling that characterization “ridiculous.”
But he said he did seek out the secretary of state to understand the state’s signature-matching requirements. Graham said he contacted Raffensperger on his own and was not asked to do so by Trump.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/brad-raffensperger-georgia-vote/2020/11/16/6b6cb2f4-283e-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html