LAS VEGAS – Former Vice President Joe Biden maintains a slight lead in Nevada, with just about 12,000 votes more than President Donald Trump. However, more than 50,000 mail-in ballots remain to be counted in Clark County alone.

Election officials in Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, hope to have the bulk of mail-in ballots counted and tabulated by Sunday.

According to the state’s website, former President Joe Biden currently has 604,251 of the vote or 49.43% votes total.

President Trump has 592,813 of the vote or 48.50% votes total.

That is a difference of 11,438.

These are not the final results.

In Clark County, the registrar of voters, Joe Gloria, said as of Thursday morning, they had more than roughly 50,000 mail-in ballots to count Thursday. There are also about 60,000 provisional ballots that his county needs to verify and count. All in-person votes were tabulated and reported already.

“That is a number I cannot tell you (how many ballots are left to count). I do not know how many ballots will come through the mail,” Gloria said. “I can’t count the mail ballots until they are all delivered,” and they can be delivered up until Tuesday.

In Nevada, all mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day are valid and can be counted up until one week after Election Day.

Meanwhile, just moments before the updated vote totals were announced, Trump’s campaign announced they will file a lawsuit in Nevada, alleging various forms of potential voter fraud. This is the fourth lawsuit the campaign has filed in the last 24 hours; Wednesday the Trump campaign filed in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt said observers have not been able to observe signature comparisons and ballot counting.

The Trump campaign says there is also proof that non-residents voted, and those votes are being counted. In Nevada, residents need to live in the state for at least 30 days before casting a ballot.

The Trump campaign’s legal action includes the first-hand account from a woman, Jill Stokke, who says she went to her polling place on Tuesday and was told she had already cast her ballot. She says she always votes in person, and asked election officials about it. She claims someone stole her mail-in ballot, and that of her roommate.

Stokke has trouble seeing, and told local media she cannot read the print on the ballot without help.

When asked about the incident, Clark County’s registrar of voters, Joe Gloria, said he is aware of the Stokke’s claim, and feels confident in how it was handled.

“I personally dealt with (her issue). She brought her claim to me. We reviewed her ballot, and in our opinion, it is her signature. We also gave her an opportunity to provide a statement, if she wanted to object to that and provide a challenge to that. She refused to do so. A member of the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office investigations team also interviewed her, and they had no issue with the assistance we tried to give her,” Gloria said.

“Due to all the irregularities,” Laxalt said they are asking the state “to stop the counting of improper votes.”

In response, at a later press conference, a Clark County official said their goal is not to be fast, but to be accurate.

“We are not aware of any improper ballots being processed,” Gloria said. He also said they have done everything they can to accommodate observers and to make their process transparent.

These are similar arguments made in Trump campaign lawsuits filed in Michigan and Pennsylvania about observers not being allowed to observe ballot counts. In Georgia, Thursday morning, a judge has dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit.

Biden shared a message of optimism and called for patience Thursday. “Be patient, folks. Votes are being counted, and we feel good about where we are,” he tweeted.

Yesterday, the Nevada Republican Party said that it has received “thousands of complaints” by voters with issues during the General Election and that it’s investigating each one closely.

Shortly after the GOP made that announcement, Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria answered questions about it during a press conference on Wednesday. He said at the time that he had not received any specific complaints from the party when asked about it by a reporter.

“Other than issues in the polling place regarding some of their observers,” said Gloria, “we addressed them where we could. But no I haven’t had anything provided to me.”

Amy Abdelsayed from KTNV.com contributed to this story

Source Article from https://www.fox13now.com/news/election-2020/trump-campaign-to-make-major-announcement-in-las-vegas-thursday-morning

The 2020 hurricane season continues its relentless onslaught as Eta, the 28th named storm of the season, lashes Central America with torrential rains and whipping winds. Typically Central America is a graveyard for hurricanes — but not Eta. Increasingly, forecasters are concerned Eta will reemerge over the warm Caribbean waters and then head toward Florida this weekend.

Eta weakened over land overnight, and the one-time fierce hurricane was a tropical depression as of 10 a.m. ET Thursday, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. But Eta is expected to head into the Caribbean Friday and move northeastward. The models show the system reorganizing, with some modest restrengthening this weekend over the Caribbean and the Florida Straits, north of Cuba. On this path at least two more landfalls seem likely: Cuba on Sunday and possibly South Florida on Monday.

CBS


If Eta makes landfall along the U.S. coastline, it would break the record for the most named storms to make a U.S. landfall in a season, at 12. If it regains hurricane strength, that would break the record for most landfalling U.S. hurricanes.

As of Thursday morning, Eta was over Honduras and moving northwest. The system is forecast to keep dumping torrential rains and cause flash flooding. The hurricane center said it “will likely degenerate to a remnant low or trough of low pressure” Thursday morning.

So far, Eta has been blamed for at least eight deaths.

Later this week, Eta will begin to feel the influence of upper-level steering to its north causing the storm to make a hard right turn, pushing it back over the hot northern Caribbean waters. While some intensification is likely, it will be limited, at least initially, because Eta will have to contend with some dry air, upper-level wind shear, interaction with the landmass of Cuba, and limited time.

By Saturday the system will cross over Cuba, likely as a tropical storm, and then head toward South Florida. It is still uncertain how strong Eta will be and the degree to which the storm will impact South Florida. Most likely Eta will either be a strong tropical storm or even a low-end hurricane. Some models show a direct hit, while others show a glancing blow over the Florida Keys. 

Regardless of exact track, Eta will bring a stretch of very wet weather across South Florida from Friday through early next week. Depending on the track, over a foot of rain seems likely in some spots.

After the storm passes South Florida, most models then show it snaking back westward into the Gulf of Mexico early next week. Gulf waters are still warm enough for Eta to once again regain strength. Although it is too early to know if and where another landfall could take place, some guidance suggests yet another Gulf Coast landfall is possible by the middle of next week.

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eta-could-hit-south-florida-may-become-hurricane-again/

A Danish vaccine specialist has warned that a new wave of coronavirus could be started by the Covid-19 mink variant.

“The worst-case scenario is that we would start off a new pandemic in Denmark. There’s a risk that this mutated virus is so different from the others that we’d have to put new things in a vaccine and therefore [the mutation] would slam us all in the whole world back to the start,” said Prof Kåre Mølbak, vaccine expert and director of infectious diseases at Denmark’s State Serum Institute (SSI).

He added, however, that the world was in a better place than when the Covid-19 outbreak began.“We know the virus, have measures in place including testing and infection control, and the outbreak will be contained, to the best of our knowledge.”

Denmark, the world’s largest mink producer, said on Wednesday that it plans to cull more than 15 million of the animals, due to fears that a Covid-19 mutation moving from mink to humans could jeopardise future vaccines.

Announcing the cull, the country’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said 12 people were already infected with the mutated virus and mink are now considered a public health risk, based on advice from the SSI.

Prof Allan Randrup Thomsen, a virologist at the University of Copenhagen, went further, telling the Guardian on Thursday that while Denmarkwas not “on the verge of being the next Wuhan” there were risks.

“This variant can develop further, so that it becomes completely resistant, and then a vaccine does not matter. Therefore, we need to take [the mutation] out of the equation. So it’s serious.”

In interviews with Danish media, Thomsen advised shutting down northern Denmark due to the risks from mink farms, a task made easier by the Limfjord, which cuts across northern Jutland.

Although bridges across the fjord remain open, all restaurants, pubs, cafes and sports activities in the area will close shortly.

A Dutch virologist and zoonosis expert, Wim van der Poel, said more research was needed but that even without the mutation, a reservoir of the virus in mink or others of the mustelid family such as badgers and martens was to be avoided.

“It seems the mink-variant mutation is found in the spike protein of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, but we don’t really know. And we don’t know what kind of vaccine we are going to have. So a lot more research is needed,” said Van der Poel.

But even without a mutation, the continuing circulation within mink herds may pose a risk to humans. “We assume [this] is a risk too in the Netherlands, but our fur farming is being phased out already. There’s no more fur production now after the end of this year,” he said.

Van der Poel is currently looking at the effect of Covid-19 spreading to mustelids, a family of carnivorous mammals including weasels, badgers, otters, ferrets, martens and wolverines, among others. “ If that happened, then you have a reservoir in our local wildlife, and we could get reinfected before we even get a good quality vaccine.”

Prof Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, said: “The idea that the virus mutates in a new species is not surprising as it must adapt to be able to use mink receptors to enter cells and so will modify the spike protein to enable this to happen efficiently.

“The danger is that the mutated virus could then spread back into man and evade any vaccine response which would have been designed to the original, non-mutated version of the spike protein, and not the mink-adapted version. Of course, the mink version may not transmit well to man, so it’s a theoretical risk but Denmark is clearly taking a precautionary stance in aiming to eradicate the mink version so that this possibility is avoided or made much less likely.”

Jussi Peura, research director of the Finnish Fur Breeders’ Association and animal geneticist, was more sanguine. He said he understood the worry in Denmark, but felt the decision to carry out a cull might have been too extreme.

Instead, he suggested continuing with the control measures that were working in Finland.

“Right now we have zero cases in fur farms in Finland. We have a total of about 700 fur farms and of those about 150 are mink, all Covid-19-free so far.”

Sign up for the Animals farmed monthly update to get a roundup of the best farming and food stories across the world and keep up with our investigations. You can send us your stories and thoughts at animalsfarmed@theguardian.com

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/05/danish-covid-19-mink-variant-could-spark-new-pandemic-scientists-warn

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Trump, with 214 electoral votes, faced a much higher hurdle. To reach 270, he needed to claim all four remaining battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada.

With millions of votes yet to be tabulated, Biden already had received more than 71 million votes, the most in history. At an afternoon news conference Wednesday, the former vice president said he expected to win the presidency but stopped short of outright declaring victory.

“I will govern as an American president,” Biden said. “There will be no red states and blue states when we win. Just the United States of America.”

It was a stark contrast to the approach of Trump, who early Wednesday morning falsely claimed that he had won the election.

Trump’s campaign engaged in a flurry of legal activity to try to improve the Republican president’s chances and cast doubt on the election results, requesting a recount in Wisconsin and filing lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. Statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes; Biden led by more than 20,000 ballots out of nearly 3.3 million counted.

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For four years, Democrats have been haunted by the crumbling of the blue wall, the trio of Great Lakes states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that their candidates had been able to count on every four years. But Trump’s populist appeal struck a chord with white working-class voters and he captured all three in 2016 by a combined total of just 77,000 votes.

The candidates waged a fierce fight for the states this year, with Biden’s everyman political persona resonating in blue-collar towns while his campaign also pushed to increase turnout among Black voters in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee.

It was unclear when a national winner would be determined after a long, bitter campaign dominated by the coronavirus and its effects on Americans and the national economy. But even as Biden’s prospects improved, the U.S. on Wednesday set another record for daily confirmed coronavirus cases as several states posted all-time highs. The pandemic has killed more than 233,000 people in the United States.

Trump spent much of Wednesday in the White House residence, huddling with advisers and fuming at media coverage showing his Democratic rival picking up battlegrounds. Trump used his Twitter feed to falsely claim victory in several key states and amplify unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about Democratic gains as absentee and early votes were tabulated.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the president would formally request a Wisconsin recount, citing “irregularities” in several counties. And the campaign said it was filing suit in Michigan and Pennsylvania to halt ballot counting on grounds that it wasn’t given proper access to observe. Still more legal action was launched in Georgia.

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At the same time, hundreds of thousands of votes were still to be counted in Pennsylvania, and Trump’s campaign said it was moving to intervene in existing Supreme Court litigation over counting mail-in ballots there. The campaign also argued that outstanding votes still could flip the outcome in Arizona, which went for Biden, showcasing an inconsistency in its arguments over prolonged tabulation.

In other closely watched races, Trump picked up Florida, the largest of the swing states, and held onto Texas and Ohio while Biden kept New Hampshire and Minnesota.

Beyond the presidency, Democrats had hoped the election would allow the party to reclaim the Senate and pad its majority in the House. But while the voting scrambled seats in the House and Senate, it ultimately left Congress much like it began — deeply divided.

The candidates spent months pressing dramatically different visions for the nation’s future, including on racial justice, and voters responded in huge numbers, with more than 100 million people casting votes ahead of Election Day.

Trump, in an extraordinary move from the White House, issued premature claims of victory and said he would take the election to the Supreme Court to stop the counting.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell discounted the president’s quick claim of victory, saying it would take a while for states to conduct their vote counts. The Kentucky Republican said that “claiming you’ve won the election is different from finishing the counting.”

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Vote tabulations routinely continue beyond Election Day, and states largely set the rules for when the count has to end. In presidential elections, a key point is the date in December when presidential electors meet. That’s set by federal law.

Dozens of Trump supporters chanting “Stop the count!” descended on a ballot-tallying center in Detroit, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete vote count took to the streets in cities across the U.S.

Protests — sometimes about the election, sometimes about racial inequality — took place Wednesday in at least a half-dozen cities, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and San Diego.

Several states allow mailed-in votes to be accepted after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday. That includes Pennsylvania, where ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 can be accepted if they arrive up to three days later.

Trump appeared to suggest that those ballots should not be counted and that he would fight for that outcome at the high court. But legal experts were dubious of Trump’s declaration. Trump has appointed three of the high court’s nine justices including, most recently Amy Coney Barrett.

The Trump campaign on Wednesday pushed Republican donors to dig deeper into their pockets to help finance legal challenges. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, during a donor call, spoke plainly: “The fight’s not over. We’re in it.”

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___

Jaffe reported from Wilmington, Delaware. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Andrew Taylor in Washington and Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this report.


Source Article from https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/11/05/metro/with-wins-michigan-wisconsin-biden-edges-toward-270-electoral-college-votes/

The Associated Press and Fox News have called Arizona for Joe Biden. The New York Times has not.

In most races, The Times automatically accepts the race calls made by The A.P. But in the most important races, we independently evaluate whether to accept an A.P. call, based on our own analysis.

The main reason we have not yet accepted the call in Arizona? We do not believe there’s solid enough data on the votes that remain to be counted after Election Day. The data we do have suggests that President Trump could fare well. Mr. Biden was and is still favored in our view. But on Tuesday night and afterward, there was no way to preclude, based on hard evidence, the possibility that Mr. Trump could win. That’s what a race call means to us.

As of 1:30 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, DecisionDesk HQ and Reuters had not called Arizona.

The Associated Press stands by its call. Associated Press calls are displayed by hundreds of newspapers nationwide, as well as by Google. Sally Buzbee, executive editor of The A.P., said: “The Associated Press continues to watch and analyze vote count results from Arizona as they come in. We will follow the facts in all cases.”

The late count in Arizona includes ballots in three categories: ballots that arrived in the mail in the final days before the election; mail ballots that were dropped off at polling places on Election Day; and provisional ballots, which are given to voters who cannot be validated as eligible to vote when they appear on Election Day. Usually, all three lean Democratic. This year, it’s not so clear.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/upshot/arizona-election-call.html

California voters expressed a clear appetite for criminal justice reform on election night, supporting a series of ambitious changes after a summer of mass protests sparked a painful reckoning around racial injustice and debate over the role of policing.

Results throughout the state have not been finalized. But on statewide ballot measures and in key local races, voters backed progressive candidates and policies that promised to hold police more accountable and shift taxpayer funding away from law enforcement and toward social services.

In some cases, voters leapfrogged their own elected officials in the state Legislature to enact policies that never gained traction or fell short of passage during recent legislative sessions in Sacramento — where the idea of broad, statewide policing reform has loomed large but never fully materialized.

California has been a leader on easing the tough-on-crime tactics of an earlier era, but the results of Tuesday’s balloting opens a new front for more aggressive reforms, such as calls to reduce funding to law enforcement agencies.

Well-funded police unions and other groups, who were able stall police reform legislation in Sacramento, were less effective convincing voters the move would endanger public safety. But it also comes in a year in which crime — particularly homicides — are rising significantly in some cities, including Los Angeles.

“There was a time in California where the impulse was to incarcerate more people, three strikes and you are out,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said of the election results Wednesday. “I don’t think that is the impulse in California any longer.”

In Los Angeles County — one of the nation’s largest criminal jurisdictions and a longtime trendsetter in criminal justice issues — voters appeared to have ousted Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, who was accused by her critics of being too lenient on cops and too cozy with police unions, and passed a measure mandating that county officials spend more on jail diversion programs, mental health and housing.

In San Francisco, voters approved measures that will ramp up oversight of the local sheriff and undo a requirement that the city‘s Police Department maintain a certain size — a rule that some had seen as a barrier to defunding the department more broadly.

At the state level, voters restored the right to vote to parolees, and rejected a measure that would have increased penalties for petty offenses.

Advocates said the reforms are substantial, but do not solve all the issues they see with the criminal justice system. Still, decisions voters made this week will reshape how services are accessed by homeless people and those released from prison, and how police shootings are investigated and assessed for criminality by prosecutors.

They also suggest support among the broader electorate for reimagining public safety and shifting responsibilities and funding away from police, a process already being contemplated in L.A., where the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget was cut by $150 million earlier this year.

The shift — following a summer of protests over police brutality against Black and brown people — is one that police unions had spent heavily in campaign contributions to halt, and one activist groups on Wednesday claimed as a major victory after years of effort.

Activists felt particularly encouraged by the apparent fall of Lacey, whom they have protested and rallied against for years for her refusal to prosecute police officers in a number of controversial shootings of unarmed men.

Although results were not finalized Wednesday, Lacey’s challenger, George Gascón, seemed poised to win, which Black Lives Matter Los Angeles’ Baba Akili called “a testament to the power of consistent collective action.”

A general election redefined by a summer of protests against police brutality and racial injustice, coupled with a nationwide turnout surge among progressives, could propel Gascón into office.

The group rallied in celebration of Lacey’s apparent loss in downtown L.A. on Wednesday afternoon, and suggested a Gascón victory could reshape the way prosecutions are handled in an office that files well over 100,000 criminal cases each year.

“Los Angeles County is winning and we owe it all to organizers,” said Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Gascón has promised to expand the use of pretrial diversion programs and alternative sentencing courts in L.A. County, methods Lacey faced criticism for not using enough, and reopen investigations into a number of past shootings by police officers.

A Gascón victory would be the biggest win yet in a nationwide push to elect more progressive prosecutors, and Chemerinsky said it was one of the more significant criminal justice wins of the election, reflective of a broad desire to continue reforms.

Gascón’s message, and that of the reform activists, seemed to resonate with voters.

Four years ago, Los Feliz resident Willie Mack, 43, voted for Lacey and for City Councilman David Ryu. This year, he changed course on both candidates, voting for Gascón after learning more about Lacey’s record and her support from police unions, and voting for Ryu’s challenger, Nithya Raman, in part because of her position that the LAPD was overfunded.

Raman, an urban planner who looked on course Wednesday to represent the city’s Silver Lake-to-Sherman Oaks district, had argued in favor of making the LAPD a “much smaller, specialized armed force,” removing officers from traffic enforcement and vehicle collision duties.

A ‘political earthquake’ hits City Hall as Nithya Raman’s strong showing in council race propels a leftward push in L.A.

Of his vote for Gascón, Mack said there “needs to be a line between cops and the people required to hold them accountable.” Of his vote for Raman, he said, “We need fresh blood.”

The board of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents rank-and-file LAPD officers and backed Lacey, said Wednesday that it joins “other Angelenos in praying that [Gascón] does not do for our city what he did to San Francisco,” which it said was “overrun by a mental health crisis and open-air drug markets” when Gascón was that city’s top prosecutor from 2011 to 2019.

Voters also backed the passage of Measure J, which will require L.A. County to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on social services while precluding certain funding from being spent on prisons, jails or law enforcement. Eunisses Hernandez, co-chair of the Yes on Measure J campaign, called its passage “a true step in changing structures” that have long prevented communities of color from being prioritized.

Los Angeles County voters have approved Measure J, which will divert more county money to social services and jail diversion programs.

At the state level, voters stood firmly behind past measures to limit punishments for petty crimes and lower prison incarceration rates by rejecting Proposition 20, a measure that would have toughened sentencing for certain crimes. Although backers of the proposition said those earlier efforts had increased crime and left low-level offenders unpunished for repeat offenses, more than 60% of voters rejected that argument — including many in conservative counties such as San Bernardino, Placer and Kern.

Jay Jordan, executive director for Californians for Safety & Justice, which championed many of the reforms Proposition 20 was aimed at repealing, said its defeat showed that Californians across the political spectrum no longer view incarceration as an answer to social problems.

“No one agrees with criminalizing homelessness and addiction,” Jordan said. “No one agrees with overincarceration.”

Reform advocates did not sweep up victories on every measure they backed. One, Proposition 25, which would have eliminated most cash bail in the state, was rejected by voters.

Cash bail has become a national goal of criminal justice reformers, but the 2018 California bill to ban it — which Proposition 25 was a referendum on — ended up dividing advocacy groups, some of whom feared that language added to the bill during final legislative negotiations would have extended pretrial jail stays and increased racial bias.

On Tuesday, some observers said that voters were confused on the proposition. Still, they feel confident that cash bail has a limited future in the state, with the state Supreme Court and federal courts set to address the issue in pending cases.

However, some cautioned that with a pandemic still unchecked, continued criminal justice reform is not guaranteed.

According to a poll this summer by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, many Californians support police reform but also the police. That support varies geographically in the state, as well as among people of different races and political affiliations. Reforms palatable in some areas of California are not popular in others.

Magnus Lofstrom, policy director for criminal justice at the Public Policy Institute of California, said past reform efforts have been fueled in large part by the desire to lower incarceration rates, and the urgency may abate as officials drive the state’s prison and jail populations down to levels not seen since the 1990s in an effort to halt the spread of COVID-19.

“Where that takes us now is very difficult to say,” he said.

Times staff writers Jaclyn Cosgrove, David Zahniser and Laura Zornosa contributed to this report

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-05/after-contentious-year-in-american-policing-voters-in-l-a-across-california-back-justice-reforms

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (WDAF) — Voters in Wyandotte County had an interesting choice to make Tuesday.

One candidate-elect is headed to the Kansas Statehouse, despite admitting that he engaged in revenge porn as a teenager several years ago. Aaron Coleman, who was elected as a state representative for Kansas’ 37th District on Tuesday, said he didn’t expect to win on Election Day. 

Source Article from https://www.ksn.com/news/your-local-election-hq/georgia-secretary-of-state-to-hold-news-conference-on-election-results-at-1030-a-m/



PORTLAND, Ore. (NewsNation Now) — A riot was declared in Portland, Oregon, and protesters took to the streets in Seattle on Wednesday as people demanded that every vote in Tuesday’s election be counted. Hundreds were protesting in both cities against President Donald Trump’s court challenges to stop the vote count in battleground states.




The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office at about 7 p.m. declared a riot after protesters were seen smashing windows at businesses. In the interest of public safety, Gov. Kate Brown activated the use of the state National Guard to help local law enforcement manage the unrest, according to the sheriff’s office.



Brown said previously she would keep state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and police officers under a unified command into Friday in Portland to handle protests amid uncertainty over the winner of the U.S. presidential election.







The Oregon National Guard had been on standby. Brown’s order places law enforcement agencies under the joint command of the Oregon State Police and Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department, which allows those agencies to use tear gas if necessary to quell unrest. Mayor Ted Wheeler, who is also police commissioner, banned the use of tear gas by Portland police earlier this fall after concerns about an overly aggressive response to the unrest.




Portland has been roiled by five months of near-nightly racial injustice protests since the police killing of George Floyd, and several hundred people marched in the city on Tuesday. Law enforcement made no arrests and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office thanked demonstrators for remaining peaceful.



Portland demonstrators on Wednesday held signs saying, “Count Every Vote,” and “Keeping Hope Alive.”




Protesters in Seattle said they are also trying to make sure the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice causes remain in the spotlight. Some carried signs saying, “Stop Trump’s Racist Voter Suppression,” “Black Lives Matter,” and “Don’t Steal the Election.”




The presidential race between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump remains too close to call, with votes still being counted.




Protesters rally about the election Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

“It’s important to trust the process, and the system that has ensured free and fair elections in this country through the decades, even in times of great crisis,” Brown said in a statement. “All Oregonians have the right to free expression and peaceful assembly. But political violence, intimidation, and property destruction will not be tolerated. We are all in this together––so let’s work together to keep our fellow Oregonians safe.”





Source Article from https://myfox8.com/news/riot-declared-in-portland-as-protesters-smash-windows/

Demonstrators supporting President Donald Trump holding signs and American flags stood outside the Maricopa County, Arizona Elections Department on Wednesday while workers continued counting mail-in ballots in the U.S. presidential election.

Voting in Arizona has been a point of contention in this year’s election. On Tuesday, Fox News projected that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden would win the state, prompting some observers to claim the network had made the call too early. Some voters in Arizona may have been influenced by social media videos that alleged that ballots filled out with a felt-tip marker were not counted by tabulation machines.

Some of the protesters were observed carrying firearms. Arizona is an open carry state. Because of the protest, the building was closed to both the public and members of the media. Workers, however, stayed behind to continue counting.

“Staff at the @maricopacounty Elections Department will continue our job, which is to administer elections in the second largest voting jurisdiction in the county,” read a tweet from Maricopa County Elections Department. “We will release results again tonight as planned. We thank the @mcsaoz for doing their job, so we can do ours.”

Members of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s department were called inside the building in case the protests grew violent.

According to a statement sent to Newsweek on Thursday morning, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office was “monitoring the crowd. At this time, the crowd is peaceful and there have been no arrest or citation issued.”

Maricopa County is the largest county in Arizona with over 4 million residents. Both Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden are hoping to gain the state’s 11 electoral votes. During an early morning press conference on Wednesday, Trump said that there were still “a lot of votes out there we could get” in Arizona. Trump also claimed that he didn’t need to win Arizona in order to win re-election.

After Fox News projected a Biden win in Arizona on Tuesday, senior Trump adviser Jason Miller tweeted that it was “way too soon” to make that call. Fox News has declined to retract the projection. The Associated Press also called Arizona for Biden early Wednesday morning with 80 percent of the vote tabulated.

Some Arizona voters saw the controversy over using markers on ballots as evidence of voter fraud. In a Wednesday interview with CNN, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs debunked the theory that felt tip markers would somehow invalidate ballots.

“All of those ballots are being counted,” Hobbs said. “And even if the machines can’t read them for some reason, the marker bled through to the other side. We have ways to count them.”

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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/workers-inside-arizona-polling-center-count-votes-armed-protesters-wait-outside-1545023

A California ballot measure over whether Uber and Lyft should treat their drivers as employees divided gig workers but was approved by voters.

Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images


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Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

A California ballot measure over whether Uber and Lyft should treat their drivers as employees divided gig workers but was approved by voters.

Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

California voters handed Uber and Lyft a big victory — and labor unions a big setback — when they approved a measure allowing the ride-hailing companies to keep classifying their drivers as independent contractors.

For Joe Renice, who drives for Uber in San Francisco, the measure’s passage was a relief.

“This is a job that I make over $100,000 a year doing. And I have complete and total freedom and flexibility to do that,” he said.

The measure, known as Proposition 22, cements the business models of transportation and food delivery apps, which pay workers for the services they provide on demand. If the measure had failed, the companies would have had to abide by a new state law that says gig workers should be considered employees, and therefore entitled to costly benefits such as unemployment, health insurance and paid sick leave.

Proposition 22 does mandate that the companies offer drivers some new benefits, including stipends to buy health insurance, accident insurance and some guaranteed level of pay. Still, it’s a far cry from the standard benefits most employers in the state must offer their permanent workers.

Renice says most people know what to expect when they start driving for the app companies.

“We know going in this is a tradeoff,” he said, adding that he is willing to give up benefits like a set salary, retirement savings and insurance “for the ability to do this when and where and how I want to do it.”

But, he acknowledged, “it’s not for everybody. Some people are better off being employees. Not me.”

The companies supporting the measure leaned heavily on drivers who share Renice’s view to make their case to voters. They blanketed the state with TV, radio and internet ads featuring drivers talking about why they support the measure.

If somehow Californians failed to see those ads, they were likely to catch the messages that came by text, on flyers in mailboxes and on delivery bags used for takeout. The companies even used their own apps to lobby drivers and passengers, sparking a lawsuit from some drivers.

In all, Uber, Lyft and the food delivery app DoorDash spent more than $200 million in support of Proposition 22, making it the most expensive ballot measure campaign in California history.

Opponents raised less than a tenth of that amount. Their campaign banked on free publicity around events such as driver protests outside Uber’s San Francisco headquarters and the home of chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi.

Khosrowshahi celebrated the victory in an email to drivers on Tuesday night. “The future of independent work is more secure because so many drivers like you spoke up and made your voice heard — and voters across the state listened,” he wrote.

But not all drivers were happy with the outcome.

“Drivers are being taken advantage of and Prop 22 was really just an attempt by Uber and Lyft to legalize it,” said Jerome Gage, a Lyft driver in Los Angeles who worked on the campaign opposing the measure. “Drivers now, more than ever, need to organize and improve our working conditions.”

The proposition was opposed by labor groups that had helped shape the state law Uber and Lyft were rejecting. They said the companies’ emphasis on flexibility is a distraction, since nothing in the law, known as AB5, requires them to set schedules for drivers. Instead, they said, the companies were seeking special treatment to avoid taking on the costs of providing full employment benefits.

“What happened here was a legal and power grab by billionaires to deprive workers from their workers’ rights and human rights,” said Edan Alva, a former Lyft driver and an organizer with the labor group Gig Workers Rising.

Organizers said the election results were a blow, but they said they would not back down from continuing to organize drivers and push for greater labor protections.

Uber and Lyft are still facing a lawsuit from the California government, which has been trying to force them to comply with AB5. The ballot measure does not end that legal battle but it will probably have a far more limited impact on the companies.

Labor groups are also looking beyond California to other states that are facing off with Uber and Lyft over whether drivers are employees.

“My pride is hurt,” Gage said. “But one thing that has been inspiring me is the energy in this grassroots level effort to fight Uber and Lyft.”

Editor’s note: Lyft and Uber are among NPR’s financial supporters.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2020/11/05/931561150/california-voters-give-uber-lyft-a-win-but-some-drivers-arent-so-sure

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien says the president plans to “immediately” request a recount in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where the race remains close.

In Wisconsin, if a race is within 1 percentage point, the trailing candidate can force a recount.

Stepien says in a statement Wednesday: “The President is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so.”

President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden are still locked in a tight race for the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

The fate of the United States presidency is hanging in the balance, with Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, battling for three familiar battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that could prove crucial in determining who wins the White House.

In the race to the 270 electoral votes needed to win, Biden has 238 while Trump has 213.

The AP called the race at 2:50 a.m. EST Wednesday, after an analysis of ballots cast statewide concluded there were not enough outstanding to allow Trump to catch up.



Source Article from https://www.azfamily.com/news/politics/election_headquarters/president-trump-plans-to-immediately-request-a-vote-recount-in-wisconsin/article_899e2180-1ec6-11eb-bbe3-2b5bb071df68.html

In September, the nonpartisan Black Economic Alliance political action committee endorsed the Democratic ticket. The Congressional Black Caucus PAC, which included the now-deceased civil rights icon John Lewis, endorsed Biden’s presidential bid in April.

Democratic presidential candidates have received nearly 90% of the Black vote on average for the last six decades, not including this election. Trump in 2016 only won 8% of the Black vote, and 9% this year, according to a Tufts University analysis of voting data.

But the balance may be changing, albeit incrementally. Support for the Democratic ticket has been slipping among African Americans, with the Black male vote dropping to 80% this year, lower than the 82% won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and the 95% and then 87% that went to Barack Obama’s first and second term, respectively. One in three Black men living in the Midwest voted for Trump this year, an NBC News poll of early and election day voters found. And a recent pre-election poll by Upshot found that the racial gap in presidential preference has shrunk by 16% as Trump makes gains with Black and Hispanic voters.

Still, if the numbers are anything to go by, Republican presidential hopefuls have a long way to go with Black voters. According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, from 1936 onward, no Republican presidential candidate has ever won more than 40% of the Black vote.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/05/bets-robert-johnson-voting-democrat-gives-black-americans-minimal-return.html

President Donald Trump is chipping away at former Vice President Joe Biden‘s lead in Arizona, raising the possibility that he could take the state, giving him some breathing room in his bath to the presidency.

CNN analysts said that new Maricopa County data shows Trump is gaining on Biden and, if votes continued that way, could even “meet and beat” Joe Biden in the state. Joe Biden is still winning the county, with 51.4 percent of the vote in the county but around 200,000 votes remain to be reported.

“Trump has been meeting the thresholds he needs to at least pull even,” CNN said. “The biggest question is the composition of what’s left.” Both campaigns will have a strong sense of the makeup of votes still to come in, with analytics on previous voting data which, CNN says, the “Biden campaign says they feel good about.”

Until recent results came in, Joe Biden was comfortably ahead in the state with 55 percent of the popular vote but now, that stands at around 50.5 percent, with Trump at around 48.1 percent. There is still around 15 percent of the vote to be reported.

On Tuesday night, the Associated Press and Fox News called Arizona for Biden, giving him 11 electoral college votes. With Arizona in Biden’s corner, Trump has to win all five of the remaining states, including Nevada that’s leaning toward Biden, but the president’s campaign pushed for the outlets to retract calling Arizona before all the votes were counted.

“No news outlet should stand by a called race in Arizona,” Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign, posted on Twitter. “This thing isn’t over.” The tides started shifting in Trump’s favor on Wednesday evening. Unofficial results from 9 p.m. Eastern gave Trump 43,966 additional votes and Biden 30,322, bringing Biden’s lead in the state down from 92,817 votes to 79,173.

It put Biden at 1,469,341 votes statewide and Trump at 1,400,951 with 86 percent of the votes being reported, according to the New York Times, with Biden having 50.5 percent of the vote and Trump with 48.1 percent.

“HUGE gains for President Donald Trump in Maricopa County, Arizona,” Representative Andy Biggs posted on Twitter. “He is trailing by less than 80,000 votes now STATEWIDE. There are hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding.”

With Arizona going to Biden, as has been called by a number of networks, the Democratic candidate is only six votes away from the 270 threshold to become president of the United States. In that scenario, Trump will have to win the five remaining states—Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Alaska—to win the election, while Biden only needs Nevada, a state that’s leaning Democratic.

However, if Trump secures a victory in Arizona, it would move Biden farther from the 270 vote goal post and means Trump could sacrifice Nevada and still have a path to victory.

As has been the case around the country, voters aren’t entirely confident in the validity of the election in Arizona. Voters were concerned about the accuracy of the count after people posted on social media that they were given a Sharpie marker to fill out their ballot and the ink caused it to be rendered invalid.

Clint Hickman, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and Steve Gallardo, supervisor of District 5, pushed back on “misinformation spreading about the integrity of euro elections” and said Sharpies “do not invalidate ballots.”

“We did extensive testing on multiple different types of ink with our new vote tabulation equipment,” the two officials said in a statement. “The offset columns on ballots ensure that any bleed-through will not impact your vote.”

The reason behind the use of Sharpies was that they provide the fastest-drying ink and the officials reiterated that people who voted by mail could use Sharpies and blue or black pens. They also denied that changing results in the vote tally was a case of “fraud,” saying it’s actually “evidence of democracy.”

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Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-could-pull-even-biden-arizona-count-cnn-says-1545000

MADISON, Wis. —  Nearly every ballot cast in the Wisconsin 2020 Presidential Election has been counted, according to officials with the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

As of 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, the town of Willow in Richland County, which has fewer than 300 voters, still needs to report its results, said Meagan Wolfe, the Administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Democratic candidate Joe Biden is currently leading in Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes, according to unofficial returns.

President Donald Trump was leading over Biden on Tuesday night due to ballots cast during in-person voting. But Biden took the lead early Wednesday morning after the city of Milwaukee reported its roughly 170,000 absentee votes.

Wisconsin poll workers were not able to begin processing absentee ballots until Election Day. Because of this, state and local election officials warned that it could be awhile before results were announced for Wisconsin.

Wisconsin election officials said voting and the counting of ballots have gone well in the state and according to law.

Wolfe called the election an “incredible success” during a media briefing Wednesday morning.

She also stressed that any results being reported in Wisconsin are unofficial. Counties are just starting the process of canvassing, which means they are triple checking results.

Nov. 17 is the last day for counties to wrap up the canvassing process and the Wisconsin Elections Commission won’t even start to compile official results until next week, Wolfe said.

In Wisconsin, three of the past five presidential races have been decided by fewer than 1 percentage point. A candidate can force a recount in Wisconsin if a race is within 1 percentage point.

President Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien says the president plans to “immediately” request to a recount in Wisconsin.

A recount process would be done at a county level, Wolfe said.

By law, the Trump campaign cannot request a recount until the state receives results from the county.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source Article from https://www.channel3000.com/nearly-every-ballot-counted-in-wisconsin-biden-continues-to-lead-over-trump/

PORTLAND, Ore (KTVZ) — A riot was declared Wednesday evening and the Oregon National Guard has been activated in response to demonstrators smashing windows in downtown Portland.

The declaration was made around 6:45 p.m. by “unified command,” a law enforcement partnership made up of Oregon State Police, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and the Portland Police Bureau, KGW reported.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown organized the command group to address potential violence in Portland this week with tensions heightened from the election.

KGW’s Mike Benner tweeted photos and videos of broken windows on 6th Avenue and West Burnside, as well as Southwest 10th Avenue and Harvey Milk Street.

Unified command said at least eight people have been arrested. It is warning demonstrators to leave the area.

The riot declaration and decision to bring in the National Guard were made in response to one group of protesters, who began the night at North Park Blocks before marching through downtown. 

Another group of demonstrators, estimated at a couple hundred people, was gathered along the waterfront. They first gathered at Revolution Hall in Southeast Portland before marching to the waterfront, at one point disrupting traffic on the Morrison Bridge. The Defend Democracy Coalition, a coalition of more than 50 different community groups, organized the demonstration, calling on protesters to “stand up for Black lives, demand that every vote be counted and defend our democracy.” Participating groups included faith organizations, labor unions and numerous activist groups. Unified command thanked organizers for “managing their event safely.”

Wednesday’s events follow a largely peaceful gathering and march through Southeast Portland on election night. Estimates from journalists in the crowds at Tuesday night’s “unity march” said hundreds of people marched from Revolution Hall through the streets of Southeast Portland chanting the names of Black people killed by law enforcement.

Source Article from https://ktvz.com/news/crime-courts/2020/11/04/portland-riot-declared-windows-smashed-national-guard-activated/

Election officials in DeKalb County say they have finished counting all their ballot just after midnight Thursday morning.

As of 12:20 a.m., DeKalb County Voter Registration and Elections reports they have processed all 369,948 votes cast in the county for the 2020 presidential election.

Officials said that includes 127,019 absentee ballots, 195,376 advance voters, and 47,553 ballots cast on Election Day.

The county reports an additional 1,753 overseas ballots as part of the Uniformed Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Any additional ballots will have until Friday at 4:30 p.m. to arrive and cannot be postmarked any later than Nov. 3 to qualify.

The county reported 201 ballots need to “cured” and that those voters are being contacted by phone or overnight mail. Those voters will have three days after being contacted to provide any necessary information to help resolve the issue and have their vote counted.

DeKalb County also had 1,600 provisional ballots cast. Voters have until Friday to resolve any issue so those ballots are counted.

The unofficial tally has been submitted to the state. The votes won’t be certified by the DeKalb County Board of Registrations and Elections until Friday, Nov. 13.

Source Article from https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/election-officials-say-dekalb-county-is-finished-with-its-count

In one of the most liberal states in the country, California voters have twice had an opportunity to expand rent control statewide amid a historic housing affordability crisis.

And both times voters have given a resounding “no” to the idea.

The decisive failure of Proposition 21 on Tuesdaylike Proposition 10 before it in 2018 — shows that despite California’s reputation as a progressive bastion, voters here are far from willing to support one of the most well-known housing ideas championed by the left.

“Ensuring tenant protections has always been an incredibly difficult thing to achieve in California politics,” said Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), a rent control supporter who has been unable to push a similar plan through the state Legislature. “This outcome reflected that.”

Proposition 21 was opposed by nearly 60% of voters, according to vote totals Wednesday afternoon, appearing on track to go down in defeat by a similarly large margin to the nearly 60% of voters who were against Proposition 10.

Supporters and opponents of rent control gave many reasons for the persistent losses.

Landlord groups significantly outspent the measures’ advocates, allowing the campaigns against the initiatives to hammer home with voters potential problems with rent control. And Democratic politicians and traditionally left-leaning interest groups such as labor unions have been split on the issue. Notably, Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t support either rent control initiative, arguing this year that Proposition 21 would hurt the supply of affordable housing and detract from already available tenant protections.

Public polling in recent years has shown that Californians back the idea of rent control and prefer it over other ways to address the state’s housing problems. But once actual measures were placed on the ballot, support has quickly plummeted.

Californians weren’t actually voting on any new rent control policies in either election. Instead, both initiatives would have done away with or changed current statewide prohibitions on most strict versions of rent control, which would have allowed cities and counties to pass their own measures later on. Initiative supporters have said they wanted to allow local governments to tailor their renter protections, recognizing that housing challenges in the Bay Area and Los Angeles are different than those in the Central Valley and other more rural areas.

But the distinction between voters approving rent control and voters giving their city councils the ability to pass rent control allowed opponents of the initiatives to capitalize on uncertainty over what the initiatives actually did. Initiative supporters have said that some voters told them they believed voting against the measures meant they supported rent control.

In both campaigns, total fundraising for the rent control measures topped $100 million, with landlord groups — predominately real estate investment trusts including Essex Property Trust, Equity Residential and AvalonBay Communities — outraising supporters by more than 2 to 1.

The financial advantage allowed opponents to use a well-worn strategy for combating California initiatives, said Mark DiCamillo, polling director at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.

“It’s a formula,” DiCamillo said. “You confuse, and you befuddle and you whatever. You raise enough doubts with voters and you win.”

In Proposition 21’s case, opponents cited concerns, echoed by academic research, that rent control could hurt the availability of rental housing, making the state less affordable overall. Landlord groups also said in advertisements that the allowable rent increases written in the initiative to provide some financial benefits for landlords weren’t strict enough to protect tenants.

Deb Carlton, an executive vice president with the California Apartment Assn., a landlord group behind both opposition campaigns, said her side was able to convince Californians that the potential downsides of the two propositions were too great — even though the organization’s private polling initially showed public support for rent control.

This time around, the campaign also benefitted from voter fatigue since they had already weighed in against rent control two years ago, she said.

“It was almost malpractice, quite frankly, to do it again,” Carlton said.

Both rent control initiative campaigns were funded by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles nonprofit that poured more than $60 million into the losing efforts. Michael Weinstein, the foundation’s president, said he knew he was always going to be outspent but was counting on a more friendly electorate in a presidential election year to drive a change in the outcome from 2018.

He also noted that bills that would allow for stricter forms of rent control in the state Legislature have struggled to even get out of committee.

“What other choice is there?” Weinstein said. “The Legislature hasn’t represented renters. The governor doesn’t represent renters. The only choice we have is to continue to organize.”

The state’s housing affordability crisis and the constant debate over rent controls have led to some new protections for tenants. Last year, Newsom signed a measure that caps annual rent increases at 5% plus inflation in most rental housing more than 15 years old, a bid to eliminate massive rent hikes that have forced people from their homes.

Although the law still allows rents to rise much faster than incomes, it is one of the strongest policies of its kind in the country.

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-11-04/liberal-california-defeated-rent-control-again-housing-crisis

PORTLAND, Ore. — Calling on election officials to “count every vote,” protesters marched through the streets of several American cities on Wednesday in response to President Trump’s aggressive effort to challenge the vote count in Tuesday’s presidential election.

In Minneapolis, protesters blocked a freeway, prompting arrests. In Portland, hundreds gathered on the waterfront to protest the president’s attempted interventions in the vote count as a separate group protesting the police and urging racial justice surged through downtown, smashing shop windows and confronting police officers and National Guard troops.

In Phoenix, about 150 pro-Trump protesters, some of them armed, gathered outside the county recorder’s office where a closely watched count of votes that could help determine the outcome of the election was being conducted.

At several points, protesters contended that Adrian Fontes, the county official who oversees elections in Maricopa County, was improperly failing to count some ballots and costing Mr. Trump votes in Arizona’s most populous county — although there was no evidence that any ballots had been improperly tossed.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/us/election-protests-portland-minnesota-arizona.html

“Progressive groups and liberal billionaires targeted the Florida House with tens of millions of dollars,” incoming Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls said in a statement. “They showed up pushing their out of state agenda on Florida voters. And [Tuesday] was an unprecedented win for House Republicans.”

Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by 375,029 votes in Florida, more than twice the size of his 2016 margin of victory. Riding his coattails, down-ballot Republicans crushed long-in-the-making Democratic House campaigns in nearly every region of the state.

In the Tampa Bay area, Republican Linda Chaney defeated incumbent Democrat Jennifer Webb 52-47 in House District 69.

On the other side of the state in St. Lucie County, Rep. Delores Hogan Johnson lost to Republican Dana Trabulsy 52-47 in House District 84.

And in South Florida, Republican Tom Fabricio ousted Democratic Rep. Cindy Polo in House District 103, which includes portions of Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Fabricio won the seat 54-45.

Republicans also won two hotly contested open seats.

Rep. Fiona McFarland bested Democrat Drake Buckman 54-45 in House District 72, a seat opened when Democratic Rep. Margaret Good made a bid for Congress. Good lost on Tuesday.

And in Miami-Dade County, Republican Demi Busatta Cabrera topped Democrat Jean-Pierre Bado in House District 114, vacated by Democratic Rep. Javier Fernández, who lost his bid for a Florida Senate seat on Election Day.

Sprowls, who begins his two-year term as House speaker on Nov. 17, said the five pickups are a clear sign from voters.

“We won big and received a mandate from the voters to continue to stand up for Floridians and Florida values,” he said.

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/florida-house-democrats-lose-434187