Are Republican voters 'warming up' to the science of climate change? A new study suggests as much, as CNN columnist and environmental reporter John D. Sutter details on today's BradCast. [See link to audio of today's show at end of article.]

That news comes not a moment too soon, as record high temps in Alberta, Canada's tar sands oil region (ironically enough) sets the town of Fort McMurray on fire and sends some 80,000 residents scrambling for their lives amidst "apocalyptic" devastation. But are the attitudes of GOP voters on the planet's climate crisis changing quickly enough to prevent the worst effects of global warming, even as the Republican Party's apparent standard-bearer this year, Donald Trump, regards the science as little more than a massive "hoax"?

"I think there's a lot less division on this issue than gets made out in the media," Sutter tells me on today's show. "The skeptical voices, especially on the conservative side, are often heard the loudest. They come through the loudest on blogs. They have big media platforms and they get attention. But I don't think that's representative of what the actual American public thinks, and what the voters think. I do think there's a lot more room for agreement on climate change between conservatives and liberals than is often made out in the media."

In fact, as Sutter notes in his column on the new survey from the Yale and George Mason University's programs on on Climate Change Communication, "The percentage of conservative Republicans (not just Republicans but conservative Republicans) who believes climate change is happening has jumped 19 percentage points in the last two years, to 47%." He goes on to explain why that movement seems to be occurring now and to offer his explanation for the apparent contradiction between a huge majority of GOPers who support research into clean, renewable energy, even as so many of them remain climate crisis deniers.

"I think there's a disconnect between what people believe out there in reality and what politicians are willing to say. Because for them to propose regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, for example, they'd have to go up against some pretty monied special interests," he says. "There's a difference between real people and what politicians are willing to take up."

We also discuss Sutter's very encouraging recent reporting on the upcoming Washington state Initiative-732, which would put a price on carbon emissions --- "this often gets called the 'Holy Grail' of climate change policies," he says --- so that polluters will no longer be allowed to pollute for free. Just over the border in British Columbia, where a carbon tax was implemented in 2008, he explains, "the sky didn't fall" as predicted by fossil fuel industry opponents. In fact, "their economy has actually been out-pacing the rest of Canada" and "the level of support for the carbon tax has grown over time."

While Sutter's reporting on these issues at the CNN website is fantastic, I felt I still needed to ask him about the dearth of climate reporting on CNN's airwaves where, as a study last month found, viewers "see far more fossil fuel advertising than climate change reporting."

Also on today's BradCast: The U.S. Dept. of Justice notifies of North Carolina that their new law to discriminate against the LGBT community is a violation of the federal Civil Rights Act and may cost the state more than $2 billion in federal education funding; and Donald Trump, who will desperately need Hispanic voters if he hopes to win the Presidency this November, offers a remarkably offensive tweet on Cinco De Mayo. Because, of course he does.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Massive wildfire forces evacuations in Canada's tar sands oil country; FL's coral reefs are dissolving; 'Widespread and persistent' fracking contamination in ND; CA's massive natural gas leak will cost more than half a billion dollars; PLUS: President Obama promises Flint, MI water crisis will not be forgotten... 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): Here's what it would take for the US to run on 100% renewable energy; Brazil Files $44 Billion Lawsuit Against Vale, BHP For Dam Spill; New Federal Rule Would Permit Thousands of Eagle Deaths; Federal Court Rejects US Plan For Restoring Embattled Northwest Salmon; Unstoppable Sudden Oak Death Kills a Million California Trees; Controlling Zika Mosquitoes May Be 'Lost Cause'; Harvard Scientist, Longtime Solar Skeptic, Now Sees the Light... PLUS: New Record Set for World's Cheapest Solar, Now Undercutting Coal... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Judge rules children's federal climate change lawsuit may go forward; Big Oil spends $100 million a year on climate denial propaganda and obstruction; Some good news for wolverines, tigers and bees; PLUS: Probe into what Exxon knew about climate change science expands beyond Exxon... 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): Unable To Compete On Price, Nuclear Power On The Decline In The U.S.; Lawsuits Charge that 3M Knew About the Dangers of Its Chemicals; Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists; Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists; For The Navajo Nation, Uranium Mining's Deadly Legacy Lingers; Drowning History: Sea Level Rise Threatens US Historic Sites; Water With Unsafe Lead Amounts Found In Hundreds Of Schools; In Iowa Corn Fields, Chinese National's Seed Theft Shows Vulnerability... PLUS: Lousiana Tribe May Move Entire Community North In First-Of-Its-Kind Test Case... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, we catch up on a lot of news, polls, twists and turns --- most of which underscore, yet again, why elections and representative democracy matter...no matter what the corporate "news" media tries to tell ya.

Among the stories covered on today's thrilling episode!...

• New polls find, once again, that Bernie Sanders leads Hillary Clinton in match-ups against all potential Republican opponents (and even among Democrats nationally); Also, that the front-runners in each party are remarkably unpopular within their own parties.
• Bruce Springsteen cancels a North Carolina concert Sunday due to the state Republicans' new pro-discrimination law;
• The GOP in Nebraska is attempting to 'swipe' a potential electoral college vote from Democrats;
• San Francisco (where the economy is booming, as it is elsewhere here in California, now under Democratic control), becomes the first U.S. city to mandate paid parental leave;
• More clear evidence that thinking big about policies and progressive ideas pays off when the people bother to fight for them and turn out to vote (when they are allowed to vote, anyway), rather than turn cynical and stay home.

All of that and much much more on today's program, including new evidence that the Keystone pipeline leak in South Dakota is far worse than originally reported by TransCanada, the company which owns it, and Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report which also includes some very encouraging news today...

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On today's BradCast, we cover the results, the fallout and the voting disasters from Tuesday's Primary Election in Wisconsin --- the most important parts of which continue to be ignored by the bulk of the corporate mainstream media.

First up (after a bit of breaking news out of West Virginia), both Ted Cruz on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, reportedly won their respective Presidential Primaries yesterday by huge numbers and record turnout. Yet, with the growing likelihood of contested conventions for both the Republican and Democratic parties, the corporate media continue to downplay the Sanders surge against Hillary Clinton (he's now won 7 of the last 8 nominating contests, most of them by 'yuge' margins), even as they continue to go round-the-clock in their coverage of Donald Trump and the GOP nomination fiasco.

They also continue to ignore the difficulties that so many Americans are having even casting their vote, thanks, in particular in Wisconsin, to the GOP's Photo ID restriction law that we've been warning about for a very long time and which resulted in untold thousands of voters, particularly at universities around the state, waiting in lines for hours --- if they were able to wait at all and if they were able to get the "proper ID" --- to simply cast a vote. (See this very short video of a very long line, by way of just one example, if you don't believe me.)

If it was this bad for a Primary in WI (and in AZ, IL, NC, MO, FL and elsewhere, so far this year), imagine what November will be like when all 50 states vote at the same time. The MSM better start ignoring those concerns immediately!

We then take a few listener calls and emails on all of the above (including my thoughts on the "Bernie or Bust" movement) before our latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen on the Keystone pipeline springing a leak, another heat wave in Alaska, new details on the number of Americans who will be killed by climate change, and much more that, coincidentally, is also being under-reported and/or completely ignored by the mainstream corporate media...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: New report finds climate change is going to kill a lot of Americans; The Keystone Pipeline springs a leak; Good news and bad news for California's epic, historic drought; Another heat wave hits Alaska; PLUS: Customers flock to reserve Tesla's Model 3, which doesn't even exist yet... 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): Can Coal Companies Afford To Clean Up Coal Country?; ‘Fractivists’ Increase Pressure on Clinton and Sanders in New York; Climate Change Puts Trillions in Financial Assets At Risk: Study; Federal Judge Approves $20 Billion Settlement From BP Oil Spill; Chicago To Start Testing Water In Homes of Children Poisoned By Lead; New Study: "Acidic Pacific: Act Now, or West Coast Pays Dearly; Judge: Climate Change Imperils Wolverines And Feds Must Act...PLUS: Australia: No 'science for science sake'... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Big Oil CEO dies just one day after indictment on conspiracy charges; Bernie Sanders pledges to stop two more tar sands pipelines; Florida bans fracking ban bans; Oregon breaks up with coal; Iowa breaks wind --- records, that is; PLUS: NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly's new perspective on returning to Earth... 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): Climate Deniers’ Favorite Temperature Dataset Just Confirmed Global Warming; Oil And Gas Industry Has Pumped Millions Into Republican Campaigns; Bitter Contract Dispute Extends to Who Owns Yosemite Names; BHP's Samarco To Pay $5.1 Billion In Damages For Dam Disaster; Justice Department Refers Exxon Investigation Request to FBI; In An Unusual Move, The EPA Tries To Pull A Pesticide From Market... PLUS: Polar Bear Critical Habitat in Alaska Restored by Appeals Court... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Hillary Clinton pushes Congress to act on the Flint Water Crisis; Donald Trump calls out Republican hypocrisy on eminent domain; Bernie Sanders fights to stop oil and gas pipelines in New Hampshire and Vermont; PLUS: President Obama proposes a ten dollar per barrel tax on oil, and fossil fuel industry heads explode... 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): U.N. Agency Proposes Limits on Airlines’ Carbon Emissions; Sea-Level Rise 'Could Last Twice As Long As Human History'; New Federal Gas Storage Rules Likely to Mimic Industry's Guidelines; Obama Proposing Clean-Water Cuts Amid Flint Outcry; Gulf Of Mexico Open For Fish-Farming Business; Australia 'Isolated' From Global Research After CSIRO Climate Cuts; Half-Built Nuclear Fuel Plant in S. Carolina Faces Test on Its Future; Chlorine Trains Pose an Even Deadlier Threat Than Oil Trains... PLUS: 'Wrong type of trees' in Europe increased global warming... and much, MUCH more! ...

Last year ended with a number of voter database breaches --- from the Sanders/Clinton/DNC database kerfuffle to the discovery of the still-mysterious posting of some 191 million voter records online shortly thereafter.

But those concerns may pale in comparison to the fact that the nation is about to begin voting in Presidential primaries and caucuses using electronic voting systems and tabulators that have failed time and again, that remain vulnerable to both malfunction and malfeasance, and that are often impossible for the public to oversee in any meaningful way.

On today's BradCast: Welcome to Presidential Election 2016! Good luck! (We're gonna need it.)

Joining us to discuss the voter database breaches as well as concerns about election integrity and oversight in early caucus and primary states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and beyond is Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org.

Harris, the election integrity watchdog featured in HBO's Emmy-nominated 2006 documentary Hacking Democracy, has been investigating and writing about those voter database breaches lately, including a new one that has just been discovered concerning tens of millions of additional voter records.

While voter registration databases actually contain public information, she explains, there are restrictions on their use, and they are not supposed to simply be posted publicly for download. "This stuff is not secure. It'll probably never be secure," she warns. "One of the things I did was really research how many of the breaches have occurred over time, and it's a shocking number. You can't secure this stuff." As we discuss on today's program, that point is something to keep in mind when you hear advocates of Internet Voting systems (the next nightmare that some hope to force upon American democracy) claim otherwise.

We then step through the differing voting processes used in each of the early voting states, with Harris explaining that completely unverified and/or unverifiable e-voting and tabulation systems --- most of them hacked many times in the past --- will once again be in use in every state in the union. Yes, even where hand-marked paper ballots are used, almost all of those ballots are tabulated by unverified computer systems.

"I'm not at war with a machine," she explains. "I'm at war with no transparency. We have to be able to have some way to see and authenticate that count, before the ballots travel anywhere."

Harris tells me: "The key here is not that there will never be a mistake, or never be fraud. The key is that the public has a right to accountability. If you can catch it, and do something about it --- if you're vigilant enough and doing a patriotic duty of vigilance --- then that's the whole point. When you start saying, 'No, you can never see, you can never account for it,' then you have a problem."

We discuss how it was, in fact, public oversight of hand-counted paper ballots at GOP caucus sites in Iowa in 2012 which resulted in the correct results actually becoming known weeks later, long after the Republican Party misreported them on the night of the caucuses.

Transparency, however, is not quite as easy in other early voting states like New Hampshire (remember the unbelievably unverified mess there in 2008, when Hillary Clinton's victory defied even Exit Polls taken on the day of the Primary?) and, especially, South Carolina (remember the unknown Alvin Greene's 100% unverifiable and inexplicable victory in their 2010 Democratic U.S. Senate primary?)

"There's not just one magic wand you can wave, but there are things to at least force some accountability into it," Harris tells me, describing some of the ways election integrity advocates can try to force the issue a bit. Among her suggestions: "You can go [to the polling place at closing time] and snap a picture of what those [computer tabulated] results are with your cell phone and compare it with, at least, what they report" later on.

We cover a lot of ground in the conversation and I suspect we'll be discussing this issue with her, and others, a lot more as the election year moves forward. But today's show is a good place to begin.

Finally, speaking of warnings we keep trying to give you, Desi Doyen joins us for the very first Green News Report of the new year as El Niño --- turbo-charged by climate change --- ravaged the globe over the holidays and beyond...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Britain's new flood defenses already overwhelmed; Record extreme weather over the holidays turbocharged by El Nino and climate change; State of emergency for Flint, MI water crisis; State of emergency for massive CA natural gas leak; PLUS: TransCanada sues Obama over Keystone XL pipeline rejection... 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): Italian Mob's Toxic Waste Dumping Is Giving People Cancer; EPA Says Pesticide Harms Bees In Some Cases; Oil Prices Decline More Than 5 Percent as Stockpiles Increase; U.S. Wildfires Burned Record Area In 2015: Agriculture Department; U.S. Issues New Dietary Guidelines That Will Change The Way You Eat; FDA Just Banned These Chemicals in Food. Are They the Tip of Iceberg?; The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare... PLUS: British Coal, the End of a Mining Industry... and much, MUCH more! ...

It was a very busy live BradCast from the KPFK/Pacifica Radio studios in L.A. today, with a lot of breaking news, callers and more!

First: California Governor Jerry Brown declares a state of emergency as the massive natural gas leak at Porter Ranch, near Los Angeles, continues to pump millions of tons of climate changing methane (and more) into the atmosphere. And then, also breaking, Canadian tar sands oil company TransCanada files a complaint, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and in federal court, charging the U.S. violated the so-called "free trade" pact when Obama blocked the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline late last year.

Next: We're joined by attorney and long-time BRAD BLOG legal analyst Ernest A. Canning to discuss the new ruling by the CA Supreme Court overturning their 2014 decision that removed Proposition 49 from the state's general election ballot. The initiative, placed on the ballot by the state legislature, sought an "advisory opinion" from the electorate as to whether the state should call on Congress to overturn the infamous Citizens United decision with a Constitutional amendment.

Canning explains the new decision and how, as he reported here in early 2015, the state's high court got it wrong in the first place when they disallowed CA voters to express their opinion on Prop 49 back in 2014. He also explains why he's been absent, of late, from The BRAD BLOG! Tune in to find out why, where he's been, and if we'll ever get him back!

Then: Extreme weather, super-charged by climate change, kills scores of Americans in dozens of states across the U.S. over the holidays and the media misreports (or ignores) it completely. We correct the record (with an assist from our old friend, climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann!)

Finally: Listener calls! Including one that I am pretty sure comes from the old MovieFone guy!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 'Green News Report' Special Coverage 2015 Year In Review: Before 2015 and its landmark events slip into the history books, a quick review of just some of the most important environment and energy stories from a watershed year for the planet... And all in just six minutes!...In today's year-ending 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): Year of Clout: 10 Stories of Indigenous Environmental Influence in 2015; Greener choice, bar soap or body wash?; Storms snarl travel, threaten rare Winter tornadoes in U.S.; Nuke plant contractors faked 10 years of inspection records; Obama signs microbead pollution ban; Superbug bacteria resistant to all antibiotics found in UK... PLUS: Shale Oil running out of survival tricks as OPEC ramps up pressure ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: A carbon tax is coming for Alberta's dirty tar sands; Obama says U.N. climate conference in Paris must go forward; Senate Republicans vow to monkeywrench international climate agreement; PLUS: FDA approves first-ever GMO salmon for human consumption... 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): Corporate Money Fueled PR Campaign for Climate Doubt Over Two Decades; Seven key issues to be addressed at the Paris climate summit; Top Republican Lawmaker Rebutted on Climate Study Accusation; US To Cancel Lease on Land Sacred To Blackfoot Indian Tribes; Report: 90 Percent of Disasters Are Weather-Related; Tensions, threats as California’s new groundwater law takes shape; 139 Countries Could Get All of their Power from Renewable Sources... PLUS: Runaway global warming becomes a concern as permafrost melts ... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast (audio link below): The U.S. House rolls over for ISIS. And, could NAFTA and TPP lead to a return of the previously rejected Keystone XL pipeline?

First, the U.S. House voted today to do the bidding of ISIS by passing a bill that would essentially block refugees from war-torn Syria and Iraq from coming to the U.S.. Shamefully, while the bill was passed mostly by Republicans, some 47 cowardly Democrats voted in favor of what both Bin Laden and ISIS have made very clear they would love to see.

Meanwhile, wingnut conspiracy theories about Obama's super secret plan to force a "Muslim overthrow of the U.S." and the "Islamization" of our country continue to grow from the bowels of rightwing radio up through state legislatures and even into Congress and the U.S. Presidential race.

All of that, as, surprise surprise, a new report finds that illegal Mexican immigration is actually at a net negative during the Obama Administration, with some 130,000 fewer undocumented Mexicans now in the country, versus prior to 2009.

Then, financial journalist David Dayen of The Fiscal Times, Salon, WaPo, The Intercept and more joins us to explain his disturbing assertion about the troubling mechanism built in to both NAFTA and the newly released TransPacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement that could lead to approval, after all, of the Keystone XL pipeline --- even though the dirty tar sands project has finally been rejected by the White House.

Dayen explains how KXL's owner, TransCanada, could invoke the "extra-judicial tribunal" known in both trade agreements as the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system in order to force compensatory damages that might either lead to approval of the pipeline after all and/or serve to help scuttle the TPP itself.

The ISDS tribunals, as Dayen explains today, are "composed of corporate lawyers who can act on behalf of the corporation in one case and then sit on a panel judging that corporation on another case." He says that "one of the options" TransCanada now has is that "through the ISDS system in NAFTA, they can sue and say 'this is a violation, you are discriminating against a foreign pipeline operator relative to domestic pipeline operators, and we are going to sue for compensatory damages based on our expected future profits'." The resulting decision could become a "political footbal" at the "worst possible timing for the Administration," as they hope to put TPP up for a vote in a Congress where more Republicans and Democrats are coming out against the agreement.

There is much more that you need to know about in our conversation concerning the proposed TPP agreement, now that its 5,000 or so pages have finally been released to the public and now that the frontrunners for President in both the Republican and Democratic Parties have come out against it. "Political football," indeed.

Listen to today's show for much more welcome clarity on all of the above!

Finally, speaking of pipelines and more, Desi Doyen joins us with our latest Green News Report on yet another rejected Canadian pipeline; the GOP's intensifying witch hunt against scientists (as discussed in more detail on a recent BradCast with David Roberts); and the planet's hottest October ever recorded...

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Did someone or something flip election results last week in Ohio's statewide ballot initiative Issue 3 to legalize marijuana? We try to get to the bottom of that question --- and many others --- on today's BradCast. (Audio is linked below.)

As initially reported by Ohio's Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, and later by Steve Rosenfeld, screenshots captured from several different media outlets on Election Night last week show what appear to be impossible results on both Issue 3 and on Issue 1, a ballot measure for redistricting reform in the Buckeye State.

For example, according to screenshots from Dayton's WHIO-TV website, as published in the Fitrakis, Wasserman and Rosenfeld articles, Issue 3 reportedly had 969,662 "Yes" votes with 39% of precincts reporting. But later in the night, with 45% of precincts, there were only 614,866 "Yes" votes on Issue 3. That's a seemingly impossible drop of more than 300,000 votes in the initiative that is said to have ultimately failed, according to the unverified election night results reported by the OH Sec. of State.

Similarly, screenshots of results on Issue 1, which ended up reportedly passing, saw "No" votes drop impossibly from 990,555 to 486,596 later in the evening.

What explains these numbers? I spoke to Matt McClellan, Communications Director for Ohio Sec. of State John Husted (R) earlier today. He says that WHIO and the other media outlets whose screenshots were cited by Fitrakis, Wasserman and Rosenfeld, were all Cox Media outlets and "the problem was on their end."

"Someone was manually entering data," McClellan told me. "When they noticed the mistake, they made a correction." He went on to say that the Secretary of State's website had no such discrepancies or irregularities throughout the evening. His office does not take their own screenshots throughout the night, so we can't confirm that either way, at the moment, though McClellan says the office "went back and double-checked to make sure" after the issue was initially reported.

In response to the Sec. of State office's assertions (we offer more detail on them during the show), Fitrakis shared pre-election tracking poll results with me, that suggest the marijuana initiative should have passed, rather than lost, by a 2 to 1 margin. "Tracking polls suggest more that [results] were flipped than not flipped," he told me today. Fitrakis was is skeptical of the explanation from Husted's office, while adding that if Cox is manually entering results on the fly on Election Night, "then they need to stop, because it's absurd."

For the record, our calls to try and confirm the OH SoS' claims with WHIO and/or Cox Media have not yet been returned. But, again, much more detail during the program.

As if all of that isn't enough of a mess, the citizen movement to demand a hand count of the questionable results of last week's Kentucky Governor's race continues to grow. A petition has been posted to Change.org asking KY SoS Allison Lundergan Grimes to carry out a hand count of paper ballots statewide. So far, more than 10,000 have signed on to the effort, as we discuss today as well.

Finally on today's show, Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report on the fossil fuel industry's no good, very very bad week...

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