In the voice of Samuel L. Jackson: Vote, dammit, vote!

Ben Rosen (@ben_rosen) Tweeted: FOUNDING FATHER: we must always have an electoral college and 2 senators per state ME: ok but what if 40 million people live in california FOUNDING FATHER (spits out tea prepared by a slave): there’s HOW many people in WHAT https://twitter.com/ben_rosen/status/1054178990733193216?s=20

https://hurstbeans.com/recipes/traditional-15-bean-soup
I gotta say: this stuff is SOOO good. Chuck in a ham hock (smoked, if you’re lucky), pull it out 30 min. before soup’s done, let it cool, pull it apart with your fingers, dice, throw back in soup, serve with dry red wine…. SO GOOD.

(Also: 2 hrs MINIMUM.)

https://mobilize.us/s/KETEz3

For everybody who slept through the 2010 mid-terms because we were all “post-racial” etc.: You are now reaping your own whirlwind. 2010 was redistricting. Gerrymandering reigned, and you didn’t see it coming because you were… “blissful” is the nicest word I can chime up with. Redistricting in 2010 led to 2012 congressional AND STATE elections, including for STATE supreme court justices and legislatures. Rulings on the legality/constitutionality of state gerrymanders and election law came from those justices. And now, here we are.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/25/business/media/hunter-biden-wall-street-journal-trump.html

Former BuzzFeed editor-in-chief, now working for the New York Times:

«“This is ‘60 Minutes,’ and we can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Lesley Stahl told him. Mr. Trump then did more or less the same thing as Mr. Reynolds, posting a video of his side of the interview to his own blog, Facebook.»

🙂

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/24/murkowski-amy-coney-barrett-vote-432126

Huh. So weird. I never would have expected that.

https://twitter.com/DavidPepper/status/1318593791331282944

So… the guy did a champion job of burying the lede, but basically: the Ohio Supreme Election is incredibly crucial and has national implications. Karl Rove is already involved. Ohio Dems could use some help.

I contributed.

[Followup, 7 Nov 2020: we got one out of two judges.]

https://www.gq.com/story/sean-penn-war-against-covid

I love paragraphs like this.

«Seven months ago, zoom was a verb, my wife wasn’t my barber, and I’d never heard my father sobbing on the other end of the phone. In that world, I also didn’t spend my Saturdays volunteering at what may be the United States’ largest testing center for a novel coronavirus—but now I do. I look forward to it all week. Oddly enough, standing in a Dodger Stadium parking lot with Sean Penn barely ranks on the list of weird shit occurring in my life at this moment.»

What the heck, Republicans? Efforts to block voting all over the place? And this is just this morning’s stories.

Iowa:

«Republicans who control the Iowa Legislature passed the law in June after the primary saw record turnout with heavy mail-in voting, which was promoted as a way to keep people from contracting coronavirus at crowded polling places.

The law specified that auditors cannot use government databases to fill in blanks on absentee ballot request forms and must contact voters by email, phone and mail to provide the information. Auditors say that task is time-consuming and not always successful.»

(https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-iowa-health-elections-voting-fraud-and-irregularities-7eded080a100ba799c71d36c9f0f002c)

Alabama: Supreme Court Blocks Curbside Voting In Alabama, An Option During Pandemic

«At issue was the decision by the Alabama secretary of state [a Republican] to ban counties from allowing curbside voting, even for those voters with disabilities and those for whom COVID-19 is disproportionately likely to be fatal.»

(https://www.npr.org/2020/10/21/926472968/supreme-court-blocks-curbside-voting-in-alabama-an-option-during-pandemic)

North Carolina:

«A divided federal appeals court has upheld North Carolina’s deadline extension for mail-in votes to be counted in the upcoming election, calling the measure a “common sense change” at a time when the U.S. Postal Service is inundated with ballots.

In a 12-to-3 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected Republican efforts to block the six-day extension. The ruling allows ballots to be received up to nine days after the election as long as they are mailed on or before Nov. 3.»

(https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/north-carolina-ballots/2020/10/21/3bc443d4-13a6-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html)