Indy Digest: Nov. 7, 2022
Just think … in a little more than 24 hours, all of the election fervor will finally be over.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Just kidding. I hate to say it, but the election insanity will continue well past tomorrow.
In 2020, 42 states and Washington, D.C., had reported enough results for news organizations to project winners in the presidential race by about 3:00 a.m. Eastern.
But eight states took longer. Six of them—all but Alaska and Michigan—have competitive Senate races this year that could determine the balance of power in Congress.
While Tuesday’s election will not follow the exact same patterns, some of the same factors could extend the release of results until later into the week. That means we may again have to wait until after Election Day to know the outcome in some of the most competitive states.
The story goes on to explain why some states may take longer to call than others: “Republican-led legislatures in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have resisted entreaties from local election officials to allow mail ballots to be processed earlier. And extremely close races can trigger automatic recounts or runoff elections. If control of the Senate comes down to the race in Georgia, for example, we may not know the outcome until a Dec. 6 runoff.”
Focusing in on local races … we may not know for weeks who won contests that are particularly close. KTLA explains:
With the rise of mail-in ballots came a few challenges. Not all ballots are counted at once; ballots that are turned in before Election Day are typically counted first, according to (the) California Secretary of State.
After that, officials wait for voting centers to close at 8 p.m. before the next batch of ballots are counted. Those are the in-person votes.
Throughout election night, you’ll see updated totals from those two collections — those are the percentages you see on your TV screen in the evening. …
Some ballots arrive even later but were in the mail before the polls closed. Any ballot that is postmarked by Election Day is eligible to be counted. If your mail-in ballot is collected by your letter carrier before the day ends and arrives within seven days, it will be counted.
Did we mention that poll workers have to verify the signatures on these mail-in ballots? They do, and that takes time as well and will sometimes require some extra investigating if things don’t match.
From there, provisional ballots are counted. That includes people who take advantage of California’s same-day registration, people who believe they are eligible to vote but aren’t found on the voter roll, or people who lost their mail-in ballots.
Then damaged or unreadable ballots are counted, followed by write-in votes.
And remember, that’s tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of votes that will need to be counted after Election Day.
In other words: Be patient. Yeah, we’ll know some stuff before bedtime on Election Day. But there’s a lot that we won’t know—and may not know for quite some time.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
Beyond Cover Bands: The Rock Yard at Fantasy Springs Celebrates a New Stage and an Increasingly Diverse Lineup
By Matt King
November 4th, 2022
Fantasy Springs recently replaced the Rock Yard’s two stages with one, larger stage—complete with a new lighting and sound system.
Vine Social: There’s No Such Thing as a Perfect Thanksgiving Wine Pairing—So Celebrate With Wines Made by Companies That Give Something Back
By Katie Finn
November 7th, 2022
At Thanksgiving, mash the potatoes. Blanche the beans. Brine the bird, and cook the cranberries. But don’t worry about the wine pairing.
Friends No More: Martin McDonagh Has Another Classic on His Hands With ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’
By Bob Grimm
November 7th, 2022
The Banshees of Inisherin reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson from In Bruges, and it is one of the year’s finest films.
Caesar Cervisia: San Diego’s Pure Project, Burgeon and BattleMage Are All Beer-Lovers’ Delights
By Brett Newton
November 6th, 2022
Part two of our beer scribe’s chronicles of his recent San Diego trip.
More News
• Last Week Tonight With John Oliver did one of the best summaries of the dangers our democracy faces due to election deniers and others who are trying to sow doubt about election integrity. The video is below. It’s a 33-minute watch—but it’s very much worth your time. Key quote via The Guardian: “The guardrails that protect our democracy were heavily tested in 2020, and while some major weaknesses were exposed, they thankfully held,” Oliver said. “But since then, there has been a concerted effort to attack the people and institutions that got into Trump’s way, shifting the landscape in ways that could make future subversion attempts even more dangerous.”
• Related is this Washington Post headline, “Republicans sue to disqualify thousands of mail ballots in swing states.” For example: “In Michigan, Kristina Karamo, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, sued the top election official in Detroit last month, seeking to toss absentee ballots not cast in person with an ID, even though that runs contrary to state requirements. When asked in a recent court hearing, Karamo’s lawyer declined to say why the suit targets Detroit, a heavily Democratic, majority-Black city, and not the entire state.” Just … wow.
• Moving on from election news, we actually have some good news about health insurance, via our partners at Calmatters: “Hundreds of thousands of Californians previously shut out of Covered California—the state program that offers discounted health insurance—soon can participate because the eligibility requirements are changing. Prior to the new rules, individuals who had access to an employer-based health insurance plan through a family member were not eligible for Covered California. Employer plans are often expensive for spouses or children, driving up the cost of coverage for those family members. Those caught in this unaffordable ‘family glitch‘ have few choices: buy the expensive plan, try to buy a bare-bones plan separately or go without health insurance. … Starting in January 2023, if a family’s premium costs more than 9.12% of the household income the family could be eligible for federal subsidies, or discounts, through Covered California. According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, the ‘glitch’ impacts an estimated 615,000 people in California, mostly women and children from low and middle-income families.”
• Last week’s Palm Springs wastewater test results for the virus that causes COVID-19 are in … and they’re all over the place: “The average number of copies (of the virus per liter) recorded at the city’s wastewater treatment plant decreased. The average of 913,612 copies/L from the previous week went down to an average of 354,604 copies/L for Oct. 31, 2022, and Nov. 1, 2022. This represents a large decrease from the previous week.” What does this mean as far as trends go? I have no idea. I do know that there’s still a lot of COVID-19 and RSV and influenza out there. Be safe!
• Elon Musk continues to embarrass himself as he destroys Twitter. From NPR: “Elon Musk tweeted Sunday that Twitter will permanently suspend any account on the social media platform that impersonates another. The platform’s new owner issued the warning after some celebrities changed their Twitter display names—not their account names—and tweeted as ‘Elon Musk’ in reaction to the billionaire’s decision to offer verified accounts to all comers for $8 month as he simultaneously laid off a big chunk of the workforce. ‘Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended,’ Musk wrote. While Twitter previously issued warnings before suspensions, now that it is rolling out ‘widespread verification, there will be no warning.’ … Comedian Kathy Griffin had her account suspended Sunday after she switched her screen name to Musk.”
• A fair number of people are heading to an open-source Twitter alternative named Mastodon. How does it work, exactly? The New York Times explains: “Being open source means that Mastodon’s original source code is publicly available and can be redistributed and changed. People can contribute to the code that underpins Mastodon by finding and fixing bugs, adding new features and translating its interface into different languages. Anyone can create his or her own version of Mastodon, known as a server, with rules and regulations that apply only to that version. Those are enforced by the people who use that version. The way that Mastodon operates has raised issues. The right-wing social networks Gab and Truth Social have used Mastodon’s code, which the company opposed. Mastodon has acknowledged that being free and open source means giving up the ability to choose who can use it. … Twitter is a single social network, which means that people sign up for and share content only on Twitter. Mastodon is what is known as a federated platform, meaning it is a collection of social networks—or servers—that link together but are owned by different people or groups.”
• And now for something completely different, we bring you this story from the Los Angeles Times: “A meteor that shot across the Northern California sky Friday night may have caused a residential fire that burned a home to the ground in Nevada County, firefighters said. Fire crews responded to reports of a structure fire on a cattle ranch around 7:30 p.m., about the same time that residents in the area reported seeing a bright light tearing through the night sky, said Penn Valley Fire District Capt. Clayton Thomas. No one was injured but a family’s dog, Tug, was killed, along with several rabbits, fire officials said. ‘There was even a video of someone who saw that light and drove to where they thought it had fallen and they pulled up to where the fire was,’ Thomas said. ‘They thought that was about where they’d seen the light fall.’”
• And finally … our resident astronomer, Robert Victor, has this to say about the total lunar eclipse happening early tomorrow (Tuesday) morning: “If the sky is clear very early on Tuesday morning—unfortunately, the forecast is for mostly cloudy skies over the Coachella Valley—don’t miss the total lunar eclipse in the predawn hours of Tuesday, Election Day, Nov. 8. … From the western U.S., the partial phase gets underway at 1:09 a.m. PST, and the 86-minute total eclipse begins at 2:16 a.m. The deepest and likely darkest stage of the eclipse, when the moon is closest to the center of Earth’s shadow, occurs at 2:59 a.m. PST, when the southern edge of the moon actually passes through the exact shadow center. At that time, the southern or lower left edge of the moon is expected to appear the darkest. … The entire encounter of the moon with the umbra or dark core of Earth’s shadow, including both partial and total phases of the eclipse, lasts 3 hours 40 minutes. If you want to view just the most beautiful and colorful stages of the eclipse, try 2:00-2:30 a.m., or 3:30-4 a.m. PST. Within those half-hour time windows, up until 2:16 a.m. and again beginning at 3:42 a.m., a narrow portion of the moon’s edge will be in bright sunlight, while the rest of the moon will be in deep and perhaps colorful shadow, creating strikingly beautiful visual effects.”
Support the Independent!
Well, folks, we’ve almost made it through another election season. If you’ve gotten something out of our election coverage—or, heck, any of our coverage—I kindly ask you to consider clicking the button below to become a Supporter of the Independent. Our journalism is made available free, but it costs a lot to produce. Thanks, as always, for reading!
