Thursday, November 5th, 2020
Vote Counts Continue, More Congress Diversity & Election Comforts
All the news you need in about 10 min:
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Story Summaries
All the news stories mentioned in today's episode are listed with links below, so you can spend as much -- or as little -- time as you want to peruse the latest happenings...
Latest Presidential Race Results
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden locked down projected wins in the critical states of Wisconsin and Michigan, putting him just six electoral votes away from victory. As of early this morning, only five states still haven’t been called: Alaska, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. Alaska is expected to go to President Trump. The other four are toss-ups. If Biden wins just one of them, he wins the presidency. President Trump would have to win more, but he does still have a path to victory.
Read More: Politico, AP
Record Number of Biden Votes
Even if Joe Biden doesn’t win, he’s already made history. He broke a record for the most votes ever cast for an American presidential candidate. More than 72 million Biden votes have been counted so far. The previous record was set in 2008 when about 70 million people voted for President Barack Obama. Both Biden and Trump may end up breaking that record. About 68.5 million votes have been counted for Trump so far. Millions of votes still need to be counted.
Read More: CBS News, USA Today
Trump Sues PA, MI, GA
The Trump campaign is filing lawsuits in three battleground states. In Pennsylvania, Trump sued over the state law that lets election workers receive and count mail-in ballots up to Friday as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. In another lawsuit, the Trump campaign says it was denied access to observe the process, but state officials say both parties got access, and ballots were counted fairly. The Trump team also sued Georgia, asking the court to make sure late-arriving mail-in ballots aren’t being counted since state laws prevent that.
Read More: AP, WaPo, WSJ, The Detroit News
USPS Untraced Ballots
There are new questions about untraced mail-in ballots. The USPS said nationwide, about 300,000 ballots received entry scans at mail processing facilities, but not exit scans. This happened across 15 states. Civil and voting rights groups filed a lawsuit, saying they wanted more information. The president of the largest postal worker union said it’s possible the ballots weren’t scanned because they got higher priority. “We weren’t worried about the scan,” he added. “We were worried about getting to the Board of Elections on time.
Read More: WaPo, Politico Reporter, Reuters, Vox
Senate Balance of Power
It’s looking like the balance of power will stay the same in Congress. Democrats already secured the majority they had in the House. Now, it seems Republicans are doing the same in the Senate. Every race hasn’t been called yet, but we know more than half a dozen Republicans held onto their seats from Montana to Maine to South Carolina. Just like with the presidency, control of the Senate could come down to races in North Carolina and Georgia.
Read More: CNN, WSJ, AP, Reuters
More Diversity in Congress
Come January, Congress will include more people from diverse backgrounds. For example, New York elected the nation’s first two openly gay Black men to Congress. New Mexico became the first state to elect all women of color to the House. History was also made in Missouri. Democrat Cory Bush is the first Black woman from Missouri to be elected to Congress. In North Carolina, Republican Madison Cawthorn became the youngest person elected to Congress in modern history. He’s only 25 years old.
Read More: The Hill, Business Insider. NY Times
Oregon Decriminalizes Hard Drugs
Voters in Oregon decided to decriminalize small amounts of hard drugs, not just marijuana. We’re talking about cocaine, heroin, meth, and more. This decision means people caught with small amounts of those drugs won’t be arrested. They’ll be given a violation instead, similar to a traffic ticket. They’ll get the option to either pay a fine or go to new addiction recovery centers, paid for by the tax revenue from the state’s legal marijuana sales. Of course, people caught with larger amounts could still get jail time.
Read More: AP, FOX News, NY Times
New MS State Flag Approved
Mississippi has officially replaced its Confederate-themed flag. It was the last U.S. state flag to feature the Confederate battle cross and the state legislature decided to scrap the design over the summer. The new design has a magnolia flower in the middle of a star circle and the phrase “In God We Trust.” Now that voters have given the OK, the flag is already flying outside certain government buildings and at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
Read More: NBC News, CBS News, AP
Americans Seek Comfort Food & Booze
It seems Americans turned to comfort food and alcohol to cope with the stress of Election Day. According to Google Trends, searches for junk food reached all-time highs on Tuesday. People searched for things like “pizza near me” and “cookies near me.” The search for “liquor stores near me” also hit a new high. The alcohol delivery company Drizly saw orders increase by 68% compared to the previous four Tuesdays.
Read More: CNN, Newsweek, Google Trends
Cosmic Radio Burst Source
Astronomers think they’ve solved a cosmic mystery surrounding fast radio bursts. Those are powerful emissions of radio waves in space. Astronomers were reportedly able to track a burst back to a type of dense star called a magnetar. Magnetars have more mass than our sun but are squeezed into an area about the size of Manhattan. They occasionally spew bursts of radio waves and that’s what’s been causing the mysterious phenomenon lately. However, scientists say the bursts aren’t dangerous to humans.
Read More: AP, USA Today, Engadget, CNN
Drake Set Billboard Record
The rapper Drake has set another music record. He’s now had 21 hits on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop songs chart. That’s the most of all time. Drake even beat out icons like Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder to set the new record. His new song “Laugh Now Cry Later” is what pushed him over the edge. Earlier this year, Drake made Billboard chart history when he set a new record for the most songs on the Hot 100 chart, Billboard’s main songs chart that includes all music genres.
Read More: AP, Billboard
Thing to Know Thursday: Electoral College
For a presidential election, there are a total of 538 electoral college votes in play around the country. The winner needs more than half of those, at least 270, to claim victory. Each state is given a certain number of electoral votes based on how many representatives it has in the House, plus two Senators. In 48 of 50 states, it doesn’t matter how close the race is. Whoever ends up winning it gets all the state’s votes in the electoral college. The only exceptions are in Nebraska and Maine. In those states, electoral votes are split by congressional districts.
Read More: AP, CBS News, USA Today