Category: Election

The Washington Post reports :

As of Saturday, there were nearly 5 million uncounted ballots in California, including more than 950,000 in Los Angeles County alone. County officials have 30 days to count their ballots and report them to the secretary of state, which then certifies the results.

Days after Republicans won the presidency and control of the Senate, the exact makeup of the 119th Congress remained unclear, with control of the House uncertain and one Senate seat left to be called.

Early Saturday, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) was projected to win Nevada’s Senate race, according to the Associated Press, marking a victory for Democrats in one of the last Senate seats to be called.

On election night, Republicans secured enough seats to attain the Senate majority. Arizona’s Senate race remains the last one without a projected winner. There, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) leads Republican Kari Lake. If Gallego wins, Republicans will have a 53-seat majority.

The current balance of power in the House is 212 Republicans and 203 Democrats, with 20 races remaining uncalled. Republicans need to win six of them to secure a majority; Democrats need to win 15.

What’s left to be called

By Brae Canlen

The recriminations were swift, against Biden, Harris, and the Democrats. He should have stepped down sooner. She ran a lousy campaign. They should have given us a better candidate.

True or false, these are not the reasons why Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States. As of late Thursday, more than 72 million people voted for him. I’m pretty sure that most of them knew – they knew – he was not a good man. And they didn’t care.

It would be easy to demonize these people, and let’s face it, some of them are wackos (Proud Boys, QAnon, Oath Keepers, etc.). But when I looked at all those red states on the election map Tuesday night, after the polls had closed, I tried to think of the average people who lived there. The parents who had 2.5 kids, pay a monthly $2,209 mortgage payment, and carry a credit card balance of $6,642.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is blaming the Democratic Party after Vice President Kamala Harris lost to now President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans gained control of the Senate.

In a statement shared on social media Wednesday — see below — the U.S. senator from Vermont said party leadership must have “serious political discussions” about Latino and Black workers voting for Republican candidates.

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders wrote. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

Sanders, 83, highlighted several issues he believes the nation has failed to address under the Biden-Harris Administration, from wealth inequality and a worsening standard of living to high prescription drug prices and the lack of guaranteed medical leave.

By Rex Huppke

We are a country that just elected – that just willfully chose – one of the most cruel, unscrupulous and transparently self-serving political figures in modern history to be president. Again.

I never want to hear the words “America is better than this” again. I never want to be told about America’s better angels.

I want honesty. I want an admission of exactly who we are as a country, and let’s be damn clear about that definition: We are a country that just elected – that just willfully chose – one of the most cruel, unscrupulous and transparently self-serving political figures in modern history to be president. Again.

By Mat Wahlstrom

Hunter S. Thompson famously raged at the impending outcome of the 1972 Presidential Election, where another crook looked to beat the better man. With a true patriot’s love of country, he lamented:

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about ‘new politics’ and ‘honesty in government,’ is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

But unlike back then, people could still believe that the system worked and could be counted on to ensure wrongs would eventually be righted. Now, I don’t see how there can be a Watergate

By Kate Callen

Last night, when presidential election returns started going horribly wrong, my sister said to me, “Don’t try to spin this. You always do that.”

Guilty as charged. When life ruptures, I look to Stoicism, to the belief that while we can’t control our fate, we can control our reactions to it. But this moment is too searing for that balm. The shock needs to wear off. That will take time.

What to do as we struggle to breathe again? Right now, it might help to turn away from the national conflagration and look closer to home at some encouraging local election results.

Here are local trends that augur well this Wednesday morning:

What another Trump presidency will mean for California

by Alexei Koseff / CalMatters / November 5, 2024

Former President Donald Trump won a second term after four years out of the White House, likely thrusting California back into leading the resistance against him.

The Associated Press made its call at 3 a.m., declaring that the Republican defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who would have become the first woman president and the most powerful Californian in four decades.

Instead, Californians now face a repeat of Trump’s first term from 2017 to 2021 — another four years of governance consumed by combative showdowns between the state’s Democratic leadership and Washington, D.C., possibly distracting from or even setting back progress on addressing California’s own problems.

Californians Send Anti-Trumpist Adam Schiff to the Senate; Rent Control, Prison Slavery Blocked, Prop 36 Passes

 by Ryan Sabalow and Sameea Kamal / CalMatters / Nov. 6, 2024

While Republicans celebrated a red wave nationally, California voters affirmed the state’s solid blue politics with Democratic candidates seeing strong returns for state and federal office.

As the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency loomed large over California, the state elected a new U.S. senator in Adam Schiff. A Burbank Democrat, Schiff made a national name for himself in the U.S. House by leading the prosecution of Trump’s first impeachment and for his key role investigating the Jan. 6th storming of the Capitol.

While Republicans are also leading most of the key contested races to represent California in Congress, Democrats are ahead in races that would expand their supermajority in the state Legislature, making the state well positioned to lead the resistance to a second Trump presidency.

California’s voters were hesitant to fully embrace a progressive agenda.

Mayors Race

8:38pm From CNN: PT It’s 11:30 p.m. ET, and polls have closed in most of the US. Here are the latest updates on voting

Polls have closed in most of the United States while voting continues in some Western states, as tens of millions of American voters went to the polls Tuesday to choose the country’s next leaders.

Here’s the latest on the voting front:

Kat Schuster /San Diego Patch / Nov. 4, 2024

In California, 8,058,584 vote-by-mail ballots have been returned and 98% of them were already accepted, according to data posted by California’s Secretary of State the day before the election.

Counties were required to mail out ballots by Oct. 7 — all active, registered voters should have received a vote-by-mail ballot for the general election.

Nationwide, more than 76.5 Americans have already cast their ballots in Tuesday’s 2024 presidential election.

According to a Monday analysis by NBC News of data from election officials across the country, 49% percent of early votes in California were cast by Democrats, 30% were by Republicans and 21% were by people who haven’t declared a party.

Not all California residents who received an early-vote ballot had returned them by Monday. The returned ballots represent 47% of those sent to Democrats, 25% sent to Republicans and 28% sent to no-party voters.

The swing states that took the longest in 2020 and could again be slow this year: Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. If the race is close, other states could join the list.

By Patrick Marley and  Amy Gardner / Washington Post / Nov. 4, 2024

Finding out who won the presidency may take days.

Election officials in key swing states are urging Americans to be patient as they tally results, a process that varies from state to state because each has different vote-counting laws.