It seems that even Republicans in Florida have finally been forced to notice/admit what we've been pointing out about the 2016 election for years now. And our guest on today's BradCast, a longtime county elections chief from the Sunshine State, is none too happy about any of it. He offers several serious-as-a-heart-attack warnings about 2020 in the bargain. [Must-listen audio link to show is posted at end of article.]

But, first up today, the nation and world continue to pay a dangerous and painful price for whatever did or didn't happen that resulted in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The Administration continued to ratchet up their threats of war against Iran on Wednesday by ordering all nonessential U.S. Government staff out of Iraq, citing unspecified and publicly unsupported claims of threats from Iran. The face-off clearly comes from Trump's ill-considered decision to pull out of the 2015 Obama Administration-brokered, seven-nation nuclear agreement which had effectively ended Iran's nuclear program. Though even the Trump Administration conceded Iran has been faithful to the anti-nuclear pact, Trump withdrew the U.S. and re-imposed crippling sanctions. He's now threatening war, for reasons that nobody seems to understand, and has deployed war ships and bombers to the tinder-box region.

Back at home, Trump's stolen U.S. Supreme Court has inspired dozens of new anti-abortion laws in state after state. On Wednesday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the most draconian measure yet, a bill that would outlaw almost all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest, while jailing doctors who perform the (currently) Constitutionally-protected procedure for up to 99 years. The new law, adopted on Tuesday by the male-dominated state Senate and signed less than 24 hours later, would not only force women to carry the child of their rapists, it could also penalize doctors more harshly than the rapists. The ACLU has vowed to challenge the law which would require even pregnant 11-year old rape victims to carry their baby to term.

In North Carolina on Tuesday, Republican primary voters selected their candidate to run against Democrat Dan McCready in the do-over election for the state's 9th U.S. House Congressional District after the Republican candidate and Baptist Minister Mark Harris was discovered to have hired a GOP contractor who carried out a massive Absentee Ballot Fraud Scheme last November. The 10-candidate GOP primary resulted in hard-right, Trump-loving state Senator Dan Bishop being selected to run against McCready in September's do-over election. Bishop is the author and lead sponsor of NC's infamous 2016 law restricting bathroom access for transgender people.

But, as the nation and world continue to pay the price for Trump's nightmarish Presidency, new questions emerge (or, at least, are finally being noticed by Republicans) regarding his own supposed 2016 election victory. On Tuesday, Florida's new Republican Governor Ron DeSantis acknowledged the FBI notified him that election systems in at least two different Florida counties were infiltrated by by Russian intelligence in advance of the 2016 election. He says the FBI has barred him from publicly stating which two counties those are.

The news comes on the heels of similar (and similarly vague) allegations detailed in the redacted Special Counsel report [PDF] from Robert Mueller (see Volume II, page 50, "Intrusions Targeting the Administration of U.S. Elections"), as well as public claims in 2018 made by Florida's then Democratic U.S. Senator Bill Nelson. Nelson's assertions about Russian access to the state's elections systems were publicly ridiculed at the time by then Gov. Rick Scott and other GOPers, even though Florida's Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio was told about the same information at the same time as Nelson in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Scott would go on to narrowly defeat Nelson for the Senate seat in 2018 and Republican DeSantis is said to have narrowly edged out Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum on the same day. Both races were so close they resulted in unprecedented statewide "recounts".

However, as our guest today, 30-year veteran Leon County, FL Supervisor of Elections ION SANCHO explains, "recounts" in Florida amount to little more than running the same paper ballots through the same optical-scan computers which tallied them --- either correctly or incorrectly --- in the first place. Sancho, the legendary elections chief in Tallahassee, the state's capital, was so well-respected by all sides that he was tapped in 2000 to oversee FL's notoriously aborted Presidential recount that year. He is furious today about DeSantis' announcement, the secrecy behind which are the counties that were penetrated (he retired after the 2016 election), and explains that he was lied to by the FBI when he was told, during a then confidential conference call with Bureau officials in 2016, that "no county had been hacked" in the run-up to the election.

"The Justice Department has continued to obfuscate and lie about this situation from the very beginning. I was on a confidential call on September 30, [2016] in which all 67 election officials here in this state, and the state election officials, were informed by the FBI that no county had been hacked. The state hadn't been hacked. They told us that. And we now know, from the documentation that's been released through The Intercept and Mueller, that was false. We now know from the documentation, some time in early August [of 2016], the successful penetration occurred."

Sancho also now questions whether there were more than two counties penetrated and says he has no reason to trust the claims by either DeSantis or federal officials that election results were unaffected by the attack. "Here's the crazy thing about it," he tells me, "the Russian GRU knows which counties they've penetrated. The only people that don't know are the election officials and the citizens and voters of the state...it's time the American citizenry, particularly Floridians, figured out that information."

He also hails NSA whistleblower Reality Winner as a "heroine" for alerting the world to documents revealing that the Russian GRU had penetrated elections systems in Florida (and possibly elsewhere) via coordinated spear-phishing attacks that allowed them access to voter registration and website election results reporting systems made by VR Systems, a private election systems vendor with contracts in dozens of U.S. states. Winner is currently serving 5 years in federal prison for having leaked those documents to The Intercept in 2017.

Sancho demands to know "why Homeland Security decided to keep critical information from state and local election officials" for so many years. "Why weren't we told?" He also furious at Rubio and other Republicans for their treatment of Nelson when he tried to blow the whistle himself last year. "Nelson was vilified as being old and senile for saying such a ridiculous thing. And actually he was right...And quite frankly, the individual whose stock falls in my eyes is Senator Rubio, who confirmed what Sen. Nelson said, only after the election. He could have told the truth, and said that Sen. Nelson is raising a valid point. He kept his mouth shut. He put his party over this nation, and we are poorer for it today."

As to the security of the state's election systems as we head into 2020, he warns that "Florida is not well protected," adding a chilling note: "You do a reconnaissance before a major attack," he tells me, "and I don't think we've had the major attack yet."

Sancho has plenty more to say regarding Florida's move to unverifiable computer-marked paper ballots in advance of the upcoming Presidential election, and much more that I hope you'll click below to tune in for. There's simply too much to fully summarize here.

But one last point for now. Sancho also offers his thoughts today on the recent measure passed by GOP state lawmakers to undermine Florida's Constitutional Amendment 4 which was adopted by nearly 65% of statewide voters last November, allowing some 1.5 million former felons in Florida who have completed their prison sentences as well as all parole and probation, to have their voting rights restored. The new GOP measure, which awaits DeSantis' signature, would bar those newly-eligible voters --- including more than 20% of the states African-American voting-age population --- from registering to vote unless all court-imposed fines and fees are paid.

"What the Republicans did was reprehensible," Sancho rails, arguing that the bill contradicts "the overwhelming, clear language" of the statewide constitutional ballot measure. Many have described the new GOP bill as a poll tax. Sancho calls it more "cash register justice", as it will allow those with money to vote, but not those without. "This is clearly restricting the right to vote based upon who can afford to pay. Jim Crow has been reestablished in Florida."

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On today's BradCast: More races were called and more candidates conceded over the weekend, as the counting from the midterm elections gets still closer to finally wrapping up, and as voter suppression by GOPers in two key states worked their magic. [Audio link to show follow below.]

But, first up today, the latest on the horrific California wildfires, with nearly 1,000 still said to be missing in the enormous Camp Fire in Northern California, where 77 were confirmed to have been killed as of airtime. Donald Trump toured the region over the weekend, referred to Paradise --- the town which was leveled shortly after the inferno broke out on November 8th --- as "Pleasure", and otherwise made something up, apparently out of whole cloth, about Finland raking their forest floors to prevent such disasters. Desi Doyen joins us for actual facts that apparently the President of the United States doesn't have access to, and to warn about what effect the rains predicted for this week over the Thanksgiving holiday may have on the blazes and their dangerous aftermaths.

Next, it's back to the continuing tally and fight to count votes from the November 6th midterm elections, as the last of the still-undecided races begin to get wrapped up, and several races get called by media over the weekend. In Florida, Republican Governor Rick Scott's years of disenfranchising some 1.7 million former felons (500,000 of them African American) paid off. The Sunshine State's incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson finally conceded to Scott after a partial hand-count in the state --- where more than 8 million paper ballots were tallied (either correctly or incorrectly, who knows?) by computer scanners --- resulting in a 0.12 percent edge (10,033 votes) for the termed out Republican Governor in the U.S. Senate election. Similarly, Democrat Andrew Gillum officially conceded to Republican Ron DeSantis in the Governor's race, after final computer tallies showed him losing by just 0.41 percent

The losses for Dems in Florida come on the heels of Democrat Stacey Abrams' loss to Republican Sec. of State and master vote suppressor Brian Kemp in the Georgia Governor's race late on Friday. Broad criticism of Kemp's massive voter suppression over the past eight years continued over the weekend, in what is unlikely to ever be viewed as a legitimate election.

Meanwhile, a runoff in the Secretary of State election in Georgia is now scheduled for December 4th and, in Arizona, Democrat Katie Hobbs has been named as that state's next Secretary of State, after media had inaccurately called it for the Republican candidate on election night. The Sec. of State position in both GA and AZ will play a crucial role in those two key swing-states in advance of the 2020 Presidential election.

Also over the weekend, the last of the California U.S. House races was called, with first time candidate, Democrat Gil Cisneros, defeating Republican Young Kim to turn the last of Orange County's once-impenetrably Republican House seats "blue". Dems now control every U.S. House seat in what had long been a GOP bastion, flipping four of them in just one election. They also now control every statewide elected position and enjoy a super-majority in both houses of the state legislature, all without partisan gerrymandering in the state where an independent commission draws state and federal districts.

Dems now hold a remarkable 45 to 8 advantage in California's U.S. House delegation, and have picked up at least 37 seats nationwide in the midterms. Just four more races are undecided (in NY, UT and GA) as of airtime.

And, as discussed today, a Special Election for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi in coming up on November 27th, with Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith heavily favored in her contest against Democrat Mike Espy. However, Hyde-Smith has recently been caught on video-tape making several troubling "jokes" about public hangings and voter suppression --- in a state with a long and disturbing history of both.

Finally today, we open up the phone lines to listeners on all of the above and much more, as we discuss what Democrats did right and wrong in the 2018 midterms, and what they might be wise to focus on once they officially take control of the U.S. House majority in January...

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On today's BradCast: Good news for Democrats out of Maine, a mixed bag (at best) out of the Florida "recounts", and more shameful news from Georgia's illegitimate Governor's race...

First up, a federal judge in Maine allowed computer vote counting to continue today under the state's new Ranked Choice Voting scheme, denying a Constitutional challenge, for now, by an incumbent Republican Congressman. With the computer tally allowed to move forward based on the RCV algorithm, two-term GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin, who won the first tally (but without receiving a majority of first choice votes), is said to have been defeated by Democrat Jared Golden after the second choices of voters who had selected other candidates for the first choice were then added to the totals until one candidate, the Dem in this case, received a majority of votes.

If you're confused by that, it's just one reason why I've long been no fan of Ranked Choice Voting (sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting). Nonetheless, Golden's reported win results in a total pick-up, so far, of 35 U.S. House seats for Democrats, with several more undecided races pending that is likely to boost their "blue wave" to as many as 39 new seats in Congress.

A federal judge in Florida on Thursday observed that the state's elections have become a "laughingstock" which state officials "choose not to fix". He's right. In fact, the Republicans who have run the state for years now have chosen to make voting and counting ballots accurately --- and in a way that the public can know they've been counted accurately --- just about as difficult as humanly possible. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker issued an order today finding Florida's absentee ballot "signature matching" scheme to be unconstitutional. The order allows some 4,000 voters whose Vote-by-Mail or provisional ballots had been rejected due to certain signature issues a few more days to try and cure those problems in their counties by Saturday at 5pm.

Sen. Bill Nelson's campaign, however, in his razor-thin re-election contest with Gov. Rick Scott, had wanted those ballots added to the count sight unseen. (Scott is appealing the ruling nonetheless.) With the explosion of Vote-by-Mail across the country, signature matching problems are becoming a big concern, particularly with votes cast by younger voters who use computers and don't develop personal signatures and for older voters whose signatures have changed over time. Add to that the problem of the awful computer touchscreens used to record those signatures at DMVs and polling places.

In a separate case today also brought by Nelson's campaign, Judge Walker denied an extension for statewide "machine recounts" in the U.S. Senate and Governors races across the state, despite the absurdly short statutory deadline to complete them by today. That, even after Palm Beach County --- one of the state's largest Democratic strongholds --- explained that they were physically unable to complete their "recount" even for only the U.S. Senate race due to their aging and failing computer tabulators which overheated during the process and can only tally one race at a time.

Immediately following the end of the "machine recount," Scott's Secretary of State ordered what suffices for a "manual hand-count" in Florida to begin in the U.S. Senate race, where the margin remains less than 0.25% percent. That limited hand-count of ballots for which the computer scanners reported no vote in the U.S. Senate race must be completed by Sunday --- another arbitrarily short deadline that seems designed to stymie a real hand-count of votes.

The reported 0.41% margin of Republican Ron DeSantis over Democrat Andrew Gillum in FL's Governor's race remains too large to merit an automatic hand count. But, given the "systematic machine failure during the machine recount" in Palm Beach, Democrats filed a new lawsuit today seeking a full hand count of all votes cast in the County.

In Georgia, meanwhile, more counting of absentee and provisional ballots ordered by federal courts to be included in the tallies continued, as Republican Gubernatorial candidate and vote suppressor Brian Kemp called again for counting to end. He remains just 0.22% above the mark that would trigger a December runoff with Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams. Her campaign continues to decry Kemp's horrific administration of the election while Secretary of State, and many outside the state --- including Ohio's Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown --- now see a Kemp victory, if it happens, as illegitimate. Brown went so far as to say: "If Stacey Abrams doesn’t win in Georgia, they stole it. I say that publicly, it’s clear."

The maddening story of 92-year old African-American voter Christine Jordan's fight to even cast a provisional ballot this year in Georgia (after voting in the same place for the last 50 years!), underscores that argument, as we discuss today.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with grim news on the rising death toll in California's record wildfires, some accountability for a top EPA official who was arrested today, and new Democrats in the U.S. House are already moving for bold action on climate change...

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On today's BradCast: The electoral dysfunction --- and the fight to count every vote anyway --- continues today in Florida and Georgia, along with some new good news for Democrats elsewhere. At the same time, of course, the dysfunction of Donald Trump's White House never ends. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

After a quick update today on several thousand newly tabulated votes in Georgia (most of which were for Democrat Stacey Abrams in her uphill battle for Governor against Republican vote suppressor Brian Kemp), we start today with news that another U.S. House seat has flipped from "red" to "blue" in California. As the counting continues in the Golden State, the AP and others declared first-time Democratic candidate Josh Harder the winner over four-term Republican U.S. Rep Jeff Denham in the previously GOP-leaning Central Valley.

That brings Dems to a 33-seat pickup, so far, in U.S. House contests this year. A number of other races in previously very Republican areas of California, such as Orange County, have already been declared as flipped to Democrats, with several others still undecided but trending towards Democrats. Those remaining undecided House races and a few in other states could ultimately result in a massive "Blue Wave" as large as 39 new seats in Congress, by my count, as votes from the November 6th midterms continue to be tallied.

In Florida, however, as the state's 67 counties scramble to complete an unprecedented three statewide computer "recounts" in the U.S. Senate, Governor and Agriculture Commissioner races (not to mention several other state legislative and local races) by this Thursday at 3pm, dozens of lawsuits are being filed in state and federal courts.

We cover some of the most notable today, including incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson's suit to extend the arbitrary "recount" deadline set for Thursday. At least one county, Democratic-leaning Palm Beach, has already said that it will be physically impossible to complete all of the machine rescans there in time, thanks to their aging computer tabulation system which can only scan one single race on 300 ballots at a time. Making matters still worse in the state's third most-populous county, those scanners reportedly overheated this week, leading to mismatched tabulations for the first batch of 174,000 ballots scanned (of some 700,000 total). That means that batch will need to be re-rescanned.

And all of that before a similarly absurd statutory Sunday deadline to complete any subsequent so-called "manual recounts" in races such as Nelson's U.S. Senate contest against Republican Gov. Rick Scott, where the margin is less than 0.25 percent. (It's currently reported to be just 0.13%, or 12,562 votes out of more than 8 million cast.)

Nelson has asked a federal court to extend the deadlines in all 67 Florida counties and, in separate filings, seeks to force a review of tens of thousands of absentee vote-by-mail ballots rejected across the state due to claims of signature mismatches and other unspecified "voter-caused error". Scott's hand-picked Sec. of State Ken Detzner is opposing those suits, and Scott has filed several of his own to try and halt the ongoing tabulation.

But not all Republicans oppose extending the deadlines and counting of all ballots, as we also note today, even as most of them, including the President of the United States, are calling for "recounts" to end and incomplete tallies reported from last weekend --- just days after the Tuesday midterms --- to be certified instead. (Friendly reminder here that Republicans held up a statewide hand-count in the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota for eight months in order to keep Al Franken from being seated in the Senate until July of 2009!)

Then, we're joined by BradBlog.com legal analyst ERNEST A. CANNING for the latest on the lawsuit filed by CNN this week (and supported by Fox "News" of all outlets!) against the White House for their removal of press credentials for White House Correspondent Jim Acosta. Not only is the White House in violation of the Constitution's First and Fifth Amendments, the complaint alleges, but the White House and Secret Service also reportedly blocked Acosta from a planned interview with French President Emmanuel Macron last weekend at an event marking the centennial of the WWI Armistice. That, even though the interview was approved by France...and Trump failed to even show up at the event!...

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The Trump dumpster fire continues at the White House today, with CNN filing a lawsuit to restore White House press credentials for White House correspondent Jim Acosta, fresh rumors of top Administration officials about to be axed, and a "stunning" public call from the First Lady to fire National Security Advisor John Bolton's top deputy. But it's still the ongoing dumpster fires in Georgia and Florida that we focus in on once again on today's BradCast, as Democrats and voting rights advocates fight to ensure all legitimately cast ballots are tallied and the results are accurately recorded and reported. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

With the news out of Arizona late last night night that the U.S. Senate seat of retiring Republican Jeff Flake has most likely been won by Democrat Kyrsten Sinema over Republican Martha McSally, many have lauded the GOP Congresswoman's gracious concession video Monday night, even as Trump and the RNC were reportedly pressuring her to advance phony claims of fraud and miscounts in the race. To her credit, she did not take the bait. But that's likely only because she still hopes to be appointed by the Governor to the state's other U.S. Senate seat in the coming months.

Meanwhile, in Florida, an unprecedented three statewide "recounts" are now underway (as we discussed in detail on yesterday's BradCast), with Republicans holding diminishing leads in both the U.S. Senate and Governor's race. Those so-called "recounts" must be completed by Thursday November 15th. But, as our guest yesterday, Ion Sancho (who oversaw the state's 2000 Presidential "recount") explained, it will be physically impossible for paper ballot tabulation computers in Palm Beach County to finish the job before the state's absurdly short and largely arbitrary deadline this week.

Today, a state judge in Leon County, FL extended that deadline for Palm Beach --- one of the state's most populous and Democratic-leaning counties --- until November 20th. (Note: I incorrectly called it the most populous on today's show. I mispoke. It's the third most populous in the state.) Will similar court orders for other counties, such as Broward, be far behind? If not, the incomplete results tabulated by last Saturday, November 10th, just days after the Tuesday midterm elections, will be used in the final results, according to state law.

Will Republicans file a federal challenge to today's state court order? GOPers have been repeating their Florida 2000 playbook which successfully robbed voters of a legitimate count (and, likely, Democrats of a Presidential victory) that year. Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Donald Trump have been offering up evidence-free charges of "fraud" in the vote count and ginning up protests outside tabulation centers. So, a similar federal legal challenge may not be far behind if the numbers keep narrowing against Republican Gov. Rick Scott in his Senate race against incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, and against Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis in his gubernatorial contest against Democratic Mayor Andrew Gillum.

At the same time, in Georgia, the federal courts continue to find in favor of voting rights advocates. On Monday night, a federal judge ordered the state to hold off on certification of election results and to review the voter registrations of those forced to vote by provisional ballot. The judge in the case brought by Common Cause Georgia said the state must create a website or telephone hotline for provisional voters to learn whether their votes had been counted or rejected --- with detailed reasons for the rejection and an opportunity to cure whatever is said to be have been the cause of it --- before Friday.

In a separate case today, brought by the Coalition for Good Governance and the National Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights, a different federal judge granted an emergency ruling to stop the unlawful rejection of Vote-by-Mail absentee ballots in Gwinnett County, GA based only on missing information such as a voters birth date. The judge found the state's process to be in violation of the federal Civil Rights Act.

We're joined today by Common Cause GA Executive Director SARA HENDERSON to try and make sense of the continuing dumpster fires in the state set ablaze by Republican vote suppressor Brian Kemp who resigned his position as Secretary of State last week after declaring victory in his race for Governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams --- even as the fight continues to tally thousands of uncounted or rejected absentee and provisional ballots. Kemp is reportedly leading the race with 50.24% of the vote, less than one-quarter of one percent above the 50% mark that would trigger a December runoff between him and Abrams.

Henderson explains that, thanks to the disastrous way Kemp has run the election, as well as how the state's electoral system has been allowed to whither over the past several decades, it's virtually impossible to know how many uncounted or incorrectly tabulated ballots remain across the state. "This whole circus that we're witnessing is just a product of years and years of defunding elections," she tells me.

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen with our latest Green News Report on the horrific and record-breaking wildfires in California, and the latest federal court rejection of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline...

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The Florida election official so well-respected by Republicans and Democrats alike in 2000 that he was tapped to oversee that year's historic Presidential "recount" between George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida (until it was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court), tells us today that it is likely impossible for the state to complete three statewide recounts --- for U.S. Senate, Governor and Agriculture Commissioner --- in time to meet the state's ridiculously arbitrary statutory deadlines. Run by Republicans for decades, the state "puts a premium on speed", rather than accuracy, ION SANCHO, the 28-year former Leon County (Tallahassee) Supervisor of Elections tells me on today's BradCast. "This is, by no means, a system geared toward finding the truth." [Audio link to show follow below.]

Sancho explains how it is currently unlawful to add any vote to the totals as based on a hand examination of ballots by human beings, as he details the process now officially under way in the Sunshine State for a machine "recount" in the gubernatorial race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis (who, the computers report, leads by about 0.41%) and a supposed "manual" count in the U.S. Senate contest between incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and term-limited FL Gov. Rick Scott (which Scott is said to be leading by 0.15%, or less than 15,000 votes out of more than 8 million cast.) Sancho details how even in a "manual" count in FL, ballots are first fed through tabulation computers and only ballots determined by the computers to be over- or undervotes are then re-examined. But, even those ballots are, yes, "remade" by officials onto a fresh ballot paper so that it can can then be run through a computer tabulator.

Given the limitations on the so-called high-speed tabulation systems made by companies like ES&S, still used across the state --- which only accept "300 ballots at a time" --- the scanners used in counties like heavily Democratic-leaning Palm Beach "cannot physically do this job" before statutory deadlines run out. All ballots must be "recounted" by Thursday (even though overseas and military votes aren't due until this coming Saturday!) It's a system, Sancho describes, that was put in place before the very popular no-excuse absentee Vote-by-Mail system was allowed in Florida, along with provisional voting and other election practices that require time-consuming ballot-by-ballot evaluation to determine whether it's eligible for tabulation in the first place.

As noted on today's program, Florida will have "counted" and "recounted" its ballots (correctly or incorrectly, we will never know) less than a week and a half after last week's midterms, several weeks before California even announces completion of its initial count in early December.

All of this, as Scott and even the President of the United States are falsely charging election fraud is ongoing in the state's two largest counties (Broward and Palm Beach), despite a complete lack of evidence to support any such claims. Scott's own Secretary of State and Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement --- who Scott oversees and who both have authority to oversee elections and election crimes in all 67 Florida counties --- concede they have no evidence to support the GOP claims. Sancho also responds to the "laughable" charges of "fraud" being made by Scott and the "truth-free statement" tweeted by Trump on Monday morning, which falsely claims that "ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged" in Florida.

A couple of points worth underscoring here, as the Republicans have been busy dusting off their 2000 playbook to lie about "fraud" occurring in Palm Beach and particularly in Broward, in hopes of shutting down the tabulation of legitimate ballots altogether, once again, in Florida: 1) Brenda Snipes, the Supervisor of Elections in Democratic-leaning Broward County, which has had a number of election failures over the years, was appointed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush in 2003; 2) Current Republican Gov. Rick Scott appointed his hand-picked Sec. of State Ken Detzner, who has tasked officials from his own office to oversee Broward's election office this year; 3) Nobody from Detzner's office or Florida Law Enforcement has seen or alleged any criminal wrong doing in the county. None of that, however, has prevented GOPers from claiming otherwise.

"Everybody's vote needs to be given the same weight," Sancho, a longtime election integrity champion who has taken on both the state and the voting machine companies argues during today's conversation. "It shouldn't depend upon whether you're in a competent or incompetent jurisdiction. Your vote should count if you cast them properly and you've made no errors."

Also today: Desi Doyen on California's horrific, deadly wildfires which have, to date, killed 31 across the state with hundreds more still unaccounted for; Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, in a still too-close-to-call race against GOP Sec. of State and notorious vote-suppressor Brian Kemp filed a new lawsuit over discarded absentee and provisional ballots on Sunday; Democrat Kyrsten Sinema appears to have defeated Republican Martha McSally to win the the U.S. Senate being vacated by Republican Sen. Jeff Flake in Arizona; And 15-term Orange County, CA Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has reportedly been unseated by Harley Rouda in one of the state's most GOP districts. That would bring the net pickup for Democrats in the U.S. House to 32, with results for more than ten seats in CA and elsewhere still said to be too close to call...

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On Thursday, Florida Democrats filed a federal lawsuit in which they alleged that the Sunshine State's, county-by-county, subjective signature match procedures for rejecting vote-by-mail (VBM) and provisional ballots are arbitrary, lacking in standards, and, over several election cycles, inconsistently applied so as to have a disparate impact on minority and young voters. This, the complaint alleges, deprives those voters of Equal Protection under the law as mandated by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As explained by the Democrats' attorney Marc Elias to WLRN Miami:

Elias' assertions about the arbitrary and erroneous nature of signature mismatch rejections appeared to be partially born out via a Nov. 9 Tweet published by former Rep. Patrick Murphy, after he learned on Election Day --- too late to remedy the problem --- that even his "absentee ballot wasn't counted due to 'invalid signature' match"...

We're getting tired of being right about this stuff. The political apocalypse we predicted for the day(s) after the 2018 midterm --- from problems counting ballots to Trump's "burn it all down" response to the results --- appears to be playing out in a number of ways today. We have several big news items today regarding reported results in Florida, Arizona and Georgia on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show posted below.]

But first today, we needed to hit several disturbing breaking news headlines...

• 12 people were killed in a mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, CA, a wealthy suburb just outside of Los Angeles in Ventura County, during it's popular country music college night. The shooter, who took his own life, was reportedly a 28-year old white male Marine combat veteran thought to be suffering from PTSD. Victims are said to include the bar's security guard, an armed Sheriff's deputy, and a survivor of the October 2017 massacre in Las Vegas that killed 58 and left more than 800 wounded;

• 85-year old U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was reportedly hospitalized on Thursday, after fracturing three ribs in a fall in her office;

• A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump Administration's attempt to kill President Obama's 2012 DACA program was likely done so in violation of the law. For now, the protection from deportation for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought here as children will stay in place, though the Administration has filed for a quick ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court;

• The White House has barred CNN's Jim Acosta from the White House, after the President's bonkers post-election press conference on Wednesday. The White House lied about their reasons for doing so, despite video of the presser revealing their blatant lie;

• And Trump's firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the day after the midterms is quickly leading to a full-on Constitutional Crisis, as he has named Matthew Whitaker, a former political operative and opponent of Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation, as Acting AG responsible for overseeing that probe. Normally, the Deputy AG --- Rod Rosenstein, who had been overseeing it following Sessions' recusal --- would fill that role. It's feared Whitaker, a Trump loyalist, is likely to move to scuttle the Mueller investigation at any moment.

Meanwhile, the fight to count votes continues to grow predictably uglier in several states following Tuesday's contentious midterms. Democrats are now said to have picked up at least 31 seats in the U.S. House, taking back control of the chamber from Republicans, with analysts forecasting that they could end up winning as many as 38 new seats, as votes continue to be tabulated and canvassed across the country. But there are growing concerns about computer-tabulated results in U.S. Senate and Governors races in at least three different states tonight...

• In Florida, a "recount" now appears inevitable in the U.S. Senate race between incumbent U.S. Senator Bill Nelson and his Republican challenger Gov. Rick Scott, with the margin between the two at less than 0.22% as of airtime. That would trigger an automatic statewide hand count in the Sunshine State. But there remain many questions about uncounted provisional and absentee ballots, as well as tens of thousands of suspicious undervotes in the Senate race reported by the paper ballot computer tabulators in Broward County. Some 25,000 voters, according to the computers, voted for down-ticket races like Agricultural Commission, but failed to vote in the top-of-the-ticket U.S. Senate race?

  In the state's gubernatorial election, Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis' lead over Democratic Mayor Andrew Gillum, has now fallen to 0.47 percent. If it stays below 0.5 percent, it would trigger an automatic machine "recount" statewide. (The margin must be below .25 percent for a hand count in Florida.)

• In Arizona, there are nearly three-quarters of a million completely uncounted ballots across the state, leaving the results of the highly-contested and very close U.S. Senate race between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in doubt. Arizona sources tell me that this many still-uncounted early and absentee ballots is now unusual for the state. But with all eyes on whether Democrats can flip the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Jeff Flake blue, a lot more people are now noticing. Sinema currently leads McSally by about one-half of a percentage point, according to the latest computer-tabulated numbers.

• And in Georgia, attorneys for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams held a news conference today, in which they offered a blistering response to Sec. of State Brian Kemp's declaration of victory in the Governor's race, and his belated resignation as SoS along with it. Team Abrams charges there are thousands of wrongly rejected and still-uncounted ballots in the state, though --- thanks to Kemp's horrific administration of the election --- they are unable to know how many there actually are and how many voters were unlawfully prevented from voting at all. They forcefully repeated Abrams' Election Night vow to fight to assure that every vote is counted, even if legal action is required to ensure it.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with both good news and bad for the environment from Tuesday's midterm elections.

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On today's BradCast: Some brakes --- some --- may now finally be applied to our ongoing Trump-induced national emergency, in the wake of his election two exhausting years ago. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Despite shameful obstacles placed in front of voters across the country during Tuesday's midterms, Democrats managed to wrestle back control of the U.S. House of Representatives by flipping at least 27 seats, as of airtime, with the results of several other races still unknown, according to unverified computer tabulation in all 50 states. Setting aside partisan issues, women and diverse candidates were the biggest winners yesterday...along with the American people.

At the same time, the GOP reportedly picked up several seats in the U.S. Senate, even while Democrats racked up some very important (and, occasionally stunning!) wins at the gubernatorial level. Those wins and losses (including Scott Walker ousted and Kris Kobach denied!) are likely to reverberate for the next decade, as the next round of redistricting occurs after the 2020 census.

Today we review as many of the noteworthy reported results from House, Senate and Governor races as we can possibly jam into one single show....and then we hit several important ballot initiative results as well.

Moreover --- and, perhaps, as importantly --- we look at several "too close to call" races where no winner has yet been declared by media and/or a number of contests with outcomes worth questioning, including in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere. (If only every candidate sounded like Georgia's Stacey Abrams at the end of a reportedly very close election night!)

Election Day may be over, but the fight for public oversight of results may just be beginning.

Oh, and as we long predicted would happen if results didn't go Trump's way on November 6, today he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions to begin his move against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Nonetheless, for today at least, we won't allow Trump to hijack our news cycle on The BradCast...

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It's another very busy show on today's BradCast (for a change), exactly two weeks out from this year's crucial midterm elections. Among the stories covered [audio link to show is posted below]...

• After Trump describes the Saudi lies about their assassination of WaPo journalist Jamal Khashoggi as "the worst" coverup "in the history of coverups" (who would know coverups better?!), the Administration announces they will revoke visas for some of those involved. Good thing those guys only chopped up a journalist instead of showing up at our border to legally claim asylum or they'd have been thrown in jail without their children for months!;

• We finally found the "angry left wing mob"! Apparently one of them put a bomb in the mailbox of Democratic funder George Soros. That seems an odd thing for "the left" to do, doesn't it? (Happily, nobody has attempted to bomb either the Koch Brothers or the many other Republican funders like Sheldon Adelson who give far more money to GOPers than Soros has ever given to Dems.);

• Florida's Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis really doesn't want to answer any actual questions. On Sunday, he dodged just about everything asked of him during his debate with Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum on CNN and on Monday he cancelled an hour-long interview with the Editorial Board of the USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida;

• Rolling Stone releases audio of Georgia's Republican Sec. of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, from a private campaign fundraising event last Friday, in which Kemp, the state's chief election official, is heard lamenting that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams is spending millions on GOTV efforts which, he says, "continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote."

  Little wonder Kemp has spent years trying to keep Georgians from voting, supports the state's easily-hacked, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems, and is being sued by at least five different voting rights organizations for the myriad ways the state has been working hard to prevent voters --- particularly African-American ones, like Abrams --- from voting;

• In Texas (as in Georgia, Nevada, and elsewhere around the country), early voting turnout is breaking records over previous midterm elections and even nearing Presidential election numbers in some cases. But Democrats would be wise not to make too much of those numbers for a host of reasons that we discuss in detail today. Among them: evidence suggests GOP enthusiasm is up as well and lines shouldn't be as long as they are, with hours-long waits in some places, suggesting unprepared election officials and failing voting equipment which could make for a nightmarish Election Day;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with more global warming-fueled hurricanes coming (including Hurricane Willa now crashing into Mexico and gunning for Texas and maybe later this week, the East Coast, as well as Typhoon Yutu barrelling towards the Marianas and Guam), more new global heat records, and some reasonably encouraging news about debates taking place around the country in advance of the November 6 midterms, where candidates are finally being asked by journalist moderators about their positions on climate change!...

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(Or use "Click here to listen..." link below.)

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Mexico braces for powerful Hurricane Willa --- and so does Central Texas; September 2018 was the fourth hottest September ever recorded; PLUS: Climate change and clean energy are on the ballot in the November midterms --- and even in the debates... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Late night shows find ways to joke about climate change; Trump tweets out photo-shopped map falsely claiming US has 'cleanest air'; Poll: Independents more likely to support candidate favoring climate action; Austin issues unprecedented boil-water notice after record flooding; Microplastics found in human poo; Water around Utah uranium mill grows more polluted; U.S. EPA withdraws Obama-era groundwater protection rule for uranium mining; Michigan warns of PFAS levels in deer around Air Force base; A remote Hawaiian island has now vanished beneath rising seas... PLUS: Supreme Court pauses kids' climate case in win for Trump... and much, MUCH more! ...

It's remarkable how one's thinking about global warming can change when a tree falls into your house, or your house is blown away entirely. Among the stories covered on today's BradCast [audio link to show is posted below]...

• Some GOPers in North Carolina are rethinking their climate change denial in the wake of Hurricane Florence;

• Also in NC, a state court panel finds the latest GOP scheme to restructure the state Board of Election to take away power from the Democratic Governor to be unconstitutional, but allows the Board to stay in place until after the midterms, when voters will be voting on a Republican Constitutional amendment to make the otherwise unconstitutional scheme legal. And a Republican county elections board appointee in NC is forced to step down after alleging that Democrats hope to make pedophilia legal;

• In Florida, where the death toll following last week's Hurricane Michael has climbed to 35, Republican Gov. Rick Scott issued an emergency Executive Order [PDF] to "bend" state election laws to make it easier for voters in a number of storm-ravaged counties to vote in the November 6th midterms. The new rules for eight counties in the Republican-leaning Panhandle offer leeway to county officials to declare new early voting sites, send absentee ballots to addresses other than those on file for voters, allow voters without ID to vote on normal ballots, and allows early voting to continue right up until Election Day in the affected counties. All measures that the Florida Governor and his state Republican Party have charged in the past would result in voter fraud. But, with the termed-out Scott now in his own tight race for the U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, he doesn't seem quite as concerned about it. (For the record, I'm in favor of these changes for voters, many of whom have had their polling places destroyed, or absentee ballots and IDs blown away in the storm. But it's a shame that Scott has shown much less concern for the voting rights of the rest of the state's more Democratic-leaning voters over the years.);

• In Wisconsin, a fourth former Gov. Scott Walker administration cabinet secretary comes out against Walker to endorse his Democratic opponent Tony Evers in the state's very close gubernatorial contest;

• And, in Kansas, a second former Republican Governor has publicly endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Laura Kelly in her race against controversial Republican Sec. of State and GOP "voter fraud" fraudster Kris Kobach. Former KS Gov. Mike Hayden is just the latest in a long list of current and former GOP lawmakers who have endorsed the Democrat over Kobach in a race believed to be tied between the two (though independent Greg Orman's candidacy may very well serve to throw the election to Kobach).

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with updates on Hurricane Michael, the topic of climate change finally being raised by journalists at a Texas debate for the U.S. Senate between Republican climate science denier Ted Cruz and his Democratic opponent Beto O'Rourke, and some news about the one thing that could end up changing many minds about the impacts of global warming...

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On today's BradCast: If you think the way the Republican Party has rigged and stolen the U.S. Supreme Court is appalling, just wait until you see what they're trying to do of late at a few of the state Supreme Courts! [Audio link to show is posted below.]

But, first up today: Donald Trump says the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia told him he had nothing to do with the disappearance --- and, likely, murder --- of Washington Post journalist, Saudi citizen and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey. The Prince's word appears to be good enough for Trump, who went on to compare the situation to the allegations of sexual assault against now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

Meanwhile, the midterm elections are now exactly three weeks away and early voting got underway on Monday in Georgia where, you'll be shocked to learn, it didn't go well. After our previous coverage of ongoing racially disproportionate voter suppression schemes under the command of GA Sec. of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp (who is in a tight election contest with Democrat Stacey Abrams), and after very serious and years-long concerns about their completely unsecure, wildly hackable, and 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems, it appears that the electronic pollbook systems failed across Fulton County (Atlanta) on the first day of early voting.

In not entirely unrelated news, the GOP appears to now be a wholly owned subsidiary of Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

Then, we move to some of the insanity of several attempted state Supreme Court coups this week with Slate's legal reporter MARK JOSEPH STERN. Stern joins us to detail both some good news from the Florida state Supreme Court, regarding that state's Supreme Court, and an apparent Constitutional Crisis in West Virginia after a decision by that state's Supreme Court, regarding their state Supreme Court. If it all sounds nuts, it's because it is.

First, in Florida, outgoing Republican Gov. Rick Scott had vowed to name three new Justices to the Court, even though the Democratic-appointed Justices he planned to replace will not be vacating their seats, because of term limits, until after Scott officially leaves office in January. Stern reports the largely good news --- with a caveat or two --- regarding the Sunshine State's Supreme Court's unambiguous ruling last week that will leave the job of appointing three new Justice to Scott's successor instead (who will be either Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum or Republican Ron DeSantis, depending on how things go on November 6th.)

Then, things get far crazier at the West Virginia state Supreme Court, where the Republican state legislature, along with Republican Gov. Jim Justice, have been attempting a coup by impeachment of all five Justices on the state's 3 to 2 Democratic-majority Court. This story has more jaw-dropping twists and turns in it than I can possibly describe here --- including five temporary replacement Justices determining that at least one of the impeachments was unconstitutional under state law and the GOP-majority state Senate which hopes to move forward with a trial anyway...if only they could only find a Justice willing to preside over it, as required by the state Constitution.

Just tune in for the insane details on how, as in Florida, West Virginia Republicans are doing anything and everything they can to blatantly steal a Democratic-majority high court.

And, as if that's not enough, Stern then reports on the wildly hypocritical decision by the U.S. Supreme Court last week that will leave a new voter suppression law --- enacted by North Dakota Republicans --- in place for the November midterms. The ruling effectively changes the state's election law at the last minute before this year's general election and is likely to disenfranchise thousands of Native American voters. The ruling threatens to undermine this year's re-election chances of Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who won her previous election in 2012 by just 3,000 votes, and could assure Republicans hold their control of the U.S. Senate along with it.

Yes, elections and Supreme Courts --- be they at the federal or state level --- matter!

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, as the long road to recovery begins and the death toll increases after the catastrophic Hurricane Michael, and as a bought-and-sold Republican Party --- from Marco Rubio in Florida to Donald Trump in the White House --- continue to deny the deadly and costly impacts of climate change on behalf of their fossil-fueled corporate owners...

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Given the pivotal role Florida and its 29 electoral votes have played in recent Presidential elections, November's midterms could prove to be pivotal in the state, and not only for Florida. November 6th, 2018 could prove to be a landmark moment for democracy, helping to determine the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election.

The combination of a win by Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Andrew Gillum, along with passage of the state's Amendment 4, could be a death knell to right wing voter suppression schemes which have long plagued the Sunshine State.

Amendment 4 is a ballot measure "designed to automatically restore the right to vote for people with prior felony convictions, except those convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense, upon completing of their sentences including prison, parole and probation". As observed by the Intercept's Rachel Cohen, Florida's "draconian" felony disenfranchisement law --- "passed in 1868, after an unsuccessful attempt by Florida and other [former Confederate] states to reject the 15th amendment" --- has served to disenfranchise "more than 20% of otherwise eligible black voters in Florida."

If adopted by voters next month, the new Constitutional measure would automatically "restore voting rights to an estimated 1.5 million Floridians who have fully completed sentences," Cohen reports. If added to the 13 million currently registered Floridian voters, Amendment 4 could potentially increase total voter rolls by more than 10%.

Only 3% of African-Americans identify themselves as Republicans. Thus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to calculate the potential impact of increasing, by 20%, the number of black Florida voters who would be eligible to vote in 2020.

But, felony convictions are not the only means by which Republicans have sought to suppress turnout of the "wrong" voters over the past two decades during which the GOP has occupied the Governor's mansion and exercised the Chief Executive's right to appoint Florida's Secretaries of State...

What does it say about the state of the nation when reporting on sworn allegations against a U.S. Supreme Court nominee may be NSFW? Safe for work or otherwise, we have that along with much more encouraging news on today's BradCast. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

First up, a report, for context, from Washington Post in 1990 about the alcohol and sex-fueled house party culture of several elite private high schools in Maryland, including the ones attended by both U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and at least one of his accusers.

Then, four sworn declarations were filed with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, under penalty of perjury, on Wednesday, by the attorneys for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, on behalf of witnesses who say they were told years ago by Ford about her allegation of the attempted rape by Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge during one such high school house party. Each witness describes how Ford informed them about what she says happened, long before Donald Trump selected Kavanaugh as his SCOTUS nominee. (It's also worth noting that Ford's letter to her U.S. House Representative about the incident was also reportedly sent prior to Kavanaugh actually being named to fill the seat vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy.)

Incredibly, none of those were the most startling declaration filed with the Committee under penalty of perjury on Wednesday by a long shot. Julie Swetnick, a long time federal agency employee with active and inactive Secret and Public Trust security clearances, filed a jaw-dropping affidavit detailing her years of knowing Kavanaugh and his close friend Mark Judge during high school in Maryland. In the declarations she says she attended many house parties at which the pair were present during those years, and charges that Kavanaugh "drank excessively" and would become abusive and physically aggressive toward girls whom he and Judge would "target" after spiking punch at the parties "with drugs and/or grain alcohol."

Most disturbingly, however, she describes her "firm recollection" of seeing both men lining up to participate in "gang rapes" of the incapacitated girls, and says that she became one of them in 1982. Swetnick attests that "shortly after the incident" she "shared what transpired with at least two other people" and is "aware of other witnesses that can attest to the truthfulness" of her statements.

Still, even with this third named accuser of alleged sexual crimes and misconduct in high school and college by Kavanaugh, the President of the United States refuses to order an FBI investigation into any of the charges, and Republicans on the Judiciary Committee intend, as of now, to move forward with Thursday's hearing with testimony only from Kavanaugh and Ford (but none of the many other witnesses or accusers). They say they plan to vote on his nomination in Committee the following day. A full Senate floor vote --- according to Donald Trump at a presser at the UN today, in which he described the allegations as part of a "big, fat con job" by Democrats --- could happen as early as this weekend, with the Court set to begin their new term on Monday.

Following those horrors today, we look toward the November midterms for at least some hope. A new poll by AP and MTV finds young voters, for some reason, citing increasing anxiety about the election. We also cover the widespread national effort to make voting easier for students on college campuses, and the effort by Republicans to prevent that. Happily, we can report an encouraging ending this week to one long fight to make it easier for students at a college near Philadelphia to participate in their own democracy.

Finally, we take a look at some mostly encouraging new polling for Democrats in U.S. Senate (and Gubernatorial) races in Florida, Texas and Arizona...

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