FEATURING MATT NELSON AND MONY RUIZ-VELASCO – President Donald Trump demanded on Twitter to “Stop the Count!” a remarkable utterance for a sitting president to ask that legitimately cast votes in an election be excluded. Pro-Trump supporters—some of them armed—are demonstrating outside a vote counting center in Detroit, Michigan saying “Stop the Count,” while others are in Maricopa County, Arizona demanding that votes be counted. Either way what Trump and his supporters want is for him to be declared the winner by any means necessary. Meanwhile progressive groups have organized rallies around the nation demanding to #CountEveryVote. 

For more information visit EmergencyElection.org. 

Matt Nelson, Executive Director of Presente.org and co-editor of the recently published book Turnout! Mobilizing Voters in an Emergency, Mony Ruiz-Velasco, Alianza Americas‘ Associate Director for Network Power.

FEATURING NORMAN SOLOMON – News broke on Wednesday that the Justice Department has made the case to federal prosecutors that it can send armed federal agents to vote-counting centers by law. Three people who saw a message to that effect described it to the New York Times. The paper explained that there is a “law [that] prohibits the stationing of armed federal officers at polls on Election Day. But a top official told prosecutors that the department interpreted the statute to mean that they could send armed federal officers to polling stations and locations where ballots were being counted anytime after that.” 

Norman Solomon, co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” 

Vote counting continues in numerous key states as authorities in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan work to finish tallying all ballots for the November 3rd race. The Georgia Secretary of State on Thursday morning announced that there were just over 50,000 votes remaining to be counted as President Donald Trump’s lead over Biden started to narrow. In Arizona, which news outlets had claimed Joe Biden won, more batches of votes were counted on Wednesday night narrowing the difference between Trump and Biden. Vote counting in Pima and Maricopa counties announced they will release updated vote counts on Thursday. Some voters in Arizona complained that the markers they were given to fill out their ballots bled through the paper thereby invalidating their ballots but authorities have assured them that all votes are being counted. In Nevada where vote counting has appeared slow, Biden’s lead over Trump has grown.

President Trump’s campaign has filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, and is expected to file one in Nevada as well to try to seize power as vote counting in the Presidential race continues and shows him losing to Joe Biden. In Pennsylvania specifically Trump has asked the Supreme Court to stop the counting of mail-in ballots that were postmarked before election day but received after. The Georgia suit is based on a similar line of logic but on Thursday a judge tossed out the case saying there was no evidence of fraud.

Trump supporters gathered at numerous locations demanding that their President’s will be respected. Outside a vote counting center in Maricopa County, Arizona, Trump supporters and those demanding a fair count held dueling rallies. In Detroit, Trump’s protesters gathered outside the TCF Center and at one point even entered the building chanting “Stop the Count.”  Reuters reported that, “Police in New York City, Denver, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, all reported they had arrested some protesters, often on charges of blocking traffic or similar misdemeanors.”  We speak with people who have been monitoring the polls as well as progressive activists organizing to “count every vote.

FEATURING JOHN NICHOLS – There was a record shattering turnout in Tuesday’s race with more than 100 million voters having cast their ballots even before election day. And while Americans were warned that massive reliance on mail-in and absentee voting could mean that the race could be up in the air for days, there was a palpable sense of disappointment among progressives that millions of voters still chose a neo-fascist. 

Although he lost Texas and Florida, Joe Biden’s path to the White House has strengthened with the flipping of Arizona from red to blue. On Wednesday he won Wisconsin and is projected to win in Michigan. Projections of a “Blue wave” appear to have not transpired as Democrats have barely hung on to their House majority and appear likely to remain a minority in the Senate. Even hopes of flipping many state houses from red to blue fell short. 

Read John Nichols’ latest piece in The Nation entitled, Biden: ‘It Ain’t Over Till Every Vote Is Counted, Every Ballot Is Counted,’ HERE.

John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation magazine and host of the podcast, ‘Next Left.’ He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times. He is also the author of numerous books including Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse: A Field Guide to the Most Dangerous People in America (Nation Books)  and The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party: The Enduring Legacy of Henry Wallace’s Anti-Fascist, Anti-Racist Politics.

FEATURING ARUN GUPTA – The day after a momentous but anti-climactic election day there is no definitive answer as to who will be the next President of the United States. But, projections show that former Vice President Joe Biden will likely eke out a win. Going into the election polls showed Biden with a large lead nationwide and narrow leads in states like Texas and Florida. But President Donald Trump won those two large states, making the race more competitive than expected. What does Biden’s probable narrow victory mean? 

Arun Gupta is an investigative journalist who has written for the Washington Post, The Nation, Raw Story, The Guardian, and Jacobin. He is also a regular news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali. 

President Donald Trump claimed on election night from an event at the White House that he had effectively won the Presidency even though several states remained undecided, millions of votes had yet to be counted, and he was behind in the electoral college vote tally. He echoed this sentiment on social media and Twitter and Facebook responded by flagging the statements as false. Democratic Nominee Joe Biden slammed them as “outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect.” Trump’s words should come as no surprise however considering that he had already laid out his strategy in public ahead of the election. Even his own adviser Chris Christie scolded him for claiming victory saying, “There’s just no basis to make that argument tonight.”

According to Associated Press as of now, Joe Biden has 248 Electoral College votes, 22 shy of the 270 needed to win the Presidency. Biden so far leads in the popular vote 50.22% to Trump’s 48.16%. Polls showing Biden with a narrow lead in the key states of Texas and Florida proved to be wrong as Trump won both on election day. In Florida in particular, a surge of Latino voters apparently helped the President have an edge. Biden won the traditionally Republican state of Arizona and New Mexico, and is leading in Nevada. In Pennsylvania more than a million mail-in ballots are yet to be counted as Trump shows a lead. But that lead could evaporate when the Democratic-heavy mail-in votes are included. The Republican Party has sued to block the counting of some mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. Although AP has declared Biden the winner in Wisconsin, Trump has now said his campaign  will demand a recount of Wisconsin’s votes even though he had been claiming there should be no vote counting after election day. On election night Trump also wanted vote counting to continue in Arizona but not in Pennsylvania. 

Mr. Biden has already set a record for winning more votes than any other Presidential candidate in U.S. history, including the previous record-holder Barack Obama. On election night Mr. Biden gave an optimistic assessment. His  campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon announced on Wednesday that Biden will win Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, thereby cinching the election. 

As Trump held a potential Covid-19 super-spreader event inside the White House with hundreds of people crowded around one another without masks,

FEATURING DANIEL ELLSBERG – With just weeks before the November 3rd election, poll numbers show former Vice President Joe Biden with a strong lead over incumbent Donald Trump. But four years ago there were similar polls showing a lead for the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and the rest is history. 

My next guest calls Trump, “a domestic enemy of the Constitution.” In an op-ed for the Metro Times in Michigan Daniel Ellsberg sounds the alarm on what he calls, “an authoritarian threat to our democratic system of a kind we’ve never seen before.” 

Read Ellsberg’s oped in the Metro Times in Michigan entitled, “Trump is an enemy of the Constitution and must be defeated,” HERE.  

Daniel Ellsberg, lecturer, scholar, writer and activist and former Defense and State Department official who faced 115 years in prison for disclosing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. He is the author of four books including, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (2017) and the winner of the Right Livlihood award. He recently wrote an op-ed in the Metro Times in Michigan entitled, “Trump is an enemy of the Constitution and must be defeated.”

** This segment was originally broadcast on October 14, 2020.

FEATURING JESSE WEGMAN – With the 2020 Presidential race reduced down to one candidate from each major party, the two presumptive nominees, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will face one another in a general election this November. 

Which means now is the perfect time to remind ourselves that Americans don’t actually vote directly for president – we vote in an electoral college that determines who the president will be. Given that our current president won the electoral college vote in 2016 and yet lost the popular vote by 3 million ballots, is there any more evidence needed that the current system is flawed? 

Jesse Wegman, member of the New York Times editorial board, writing editorials on the Supreme Court and legal affairs. He was previously a senior editor at the Daily Beast and Newsweek, a legal news editor at Reuters and the managing editor of the New York Observer. His new book is called Let The People Pick The President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College.

** This segment was originally broadcast on April 10, 2020.

On a momentous election day in the United States with a nation on the edge, voters who had not yet cast their ballots early headed to the polls. There were reports of long lines of voters waiting to cast their ballots in Arizona, Georgia, and elsewhere but such phenomena are common on Election Day. What is not common is the fact that more than 100 million ballots were cast before November 3rd, a record-breaking number. USA Today explained that the number includes, “35.7 million in-person early votes and 64.6 million ballots cast by mail.” It is estimated that total turnout could exceed 150 million, which by percentage of population has not happened since 1908. In the states of Texas, Washington, Hawaii, and Montana, turnout has already exceeded 2016 levels. 

The very first official results of the 2020 election showed 100% sweep for Democratic nominee Joe Biden. The tiny town of Dixville Notch in New Hampshire which has five eligible voters that include Republicans, cast all five votes at midnight and all of them for Biden. Meanwhile Arizona, a state that generally votes Republican appeared to swing toward Democrats if polls are to be believed. Still, Biden’s lead over Trump in the states of Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania narrowed in the immediate lead up to the election. Biden lead fell from double digits in October to 7.5% ahead of the election – still a healthy margin. A Republican pollster explained that the presidential election has come down to three swing states—North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio—and that Biden would need to win only one of those to win the election. 

As votes are cast the battle over whose ballots will count is in full swing. President Trump and the Republican Party have premised a White House victory on declaring a result prematurely and then legally challenging the legitimate counting of all votes. The pandemic shifted the way Americans vote and in Harris County, Texas, where 120,000 voters cast their ballots by car, county officials have now shut down the Covid-safe voting mechanism fearful that the state Republican Party will try to invalidate the votes. Harris County is home to Houston and leans heavily Democratic. Although the state Supreme Court and a federal court ruled against the GOP’s attempt to invalidate drive-through votes, the case heads to an appeals court and County officials, worried about endangering more votes, simply took down the drive-through option on election day. Meanwhile the US Postal Service announced that the pandemic and staffing shortfalls impacted the delivery of absentee ballots to voters in D...

FEATURING MELANIE MITCHELL – Eight people were arrested and dozens pepper sprayed by police in Graham, North Carolina over the weekend as hundreds of voters marched to a polling place to vote early. While there are numerous reports of President Donald Trump’s supporters harassing and intimidating people ahead of the election, police appear to be taking a similar approach in seeing large numbers of Democratic-leaning voters as a threat. The family friendly event was permitted and among marchers were young children and elderly voters. But that didn’t stop Graham police from pepper spraying them and violently arrested several marchers. My next guest was present at the Saturday event. 

Melanie Mitchell, member of Down Home North Carolina and a lifelong resident of Alamance County. She was among the marchers who attempted to go to the polling station.