Mon, Nov 9, 2020, 3PM (CT) #KPFTHouston 90.1FM. POSSIBLE TOPIC(s): Six things that happened while the world watched the US election; Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies; 2021 will be a Congressional apportionment year decided by DOWN-BALLOT results; Despite record turnout, some Texas voters were still shut out; 26-Year-Old Green Mayor Elected in Baldwin Park, CA; Plus 10 Other Green Candidate Victories So Far; John Bolton: “The Republican Party now faces a character test”, In Changing U.S. Electorate, Race and Education Remain Stark Dividing Lines; Republicans maintain majority on Texas education board; Analysis: Texas voters elect to stay the course; Maine 2020 election results, more. Guest: [AUDIO/VIDEO]

The KPFT archive version is missing the first 9 minutes. This is our full uploaded version. ~ Mike

This program was recorded on SUNDAY, November 8 at about 8:30 AM. Due to Covid-19, shows are being prerecorded beginning March 13th and until further notice. We miss our live call-in participants, and look forward to a time we can once again go live.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show airing live every Monday night from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My co-host and Editor is Andrew Ferguson.

Listen live on the radio, or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

Please take a moment to visit Pledge.KPFT.org and choose THINKWING RADIO from the drop-down list when you donate.

For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “At one point he [Trump] started to attack the press and I said, ‘You know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this? You’re doing it over and over and it’s boring and it’s – it’s time to end that. You know, you’ve won the nomination and, uh, why do you keep hammering at this? And he [Trump] said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’ He said that. So, put that in your head for a minute.” ~ Lesley Stahl (“Deadline Club”, May 21, 2018). Excerpt from “Kasie DC”, May 27, 2018

“There’s a reason why you separate military and police. One fights the enemy of the State. The other serves and protects the People. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the State tend t become the People.” ~ Commander Adama, “Battlestar Galactica” (“WATER”, Season 1 episode 2, at the 28 minute mark.)

TOPICS: Six things that happened while the world watched the US election; Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies; 2021 will be a Congressional apportionment year decided by DOWN-BALLOT results; Despite record turnout, some Texas voters were still shut out; 26-Year-Old Green Mayor Elected in Baldwin Park, CA; Plus 10 Other Green Candidate Victories So Far; John Bolton: “The Republican Party now faces a character test”, In Changing U.S. Electorate, Race and Education Remain Stark Dividing Lines; Republicans maintain majority on Texas education board; Analysis: Texas voters elect to stay the course; Maine 2020 election results; More.

Pledge to support KPFT by Text: Listeners can now text “GIVE” to 713-526-5738 and they’ll receive a text message back with a link to KPFT’s donation page, with which they can make their pledge on-line at their convenience.

Make sure you are registered to vote!
1. VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
  1. HarrisVotes.COM – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
  2. Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
  3. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
  4. LibertyElections.com (Liberty County, TX)
  5. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
  6. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
  7. Waller County (TX) Elections
  8. Chambers County (TX) ElectionsFor personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information,
  9. consider visiting ORG. Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
  10. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
  11. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers
    1. HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      3. Current utility bill
      4. Bank statement
      5. Government check
      6. Paycheck
      7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
    2. You may vote early by-mail if:
      1. You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
      2. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
      3. Sick or disabled;
      4. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
      5. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
    3. Make sure you are registered:
    4. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
    5. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
    6. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
    7. Outside Texas, try org.
Six things that happened while the world watched the US election; By Kara Fox | CNN | Updated 12:01 AM ET, Sat November 7, 2020
1. The Israeli military demolished a large portion of a Palestinian community in the West Bank, leaving 73 people, including 41 children, homeless.
  1. The United Nations described Tuesday’s demolition in the community of Khirbet Humsa as “the largest forced displacement incident in over four years.”
  2. Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which administers the occupied West Bank, said seven tents and eight pens were destroyed because they were built illegally in a firing zone in the Jordan Valley.
2. Ethiopia’s military operations stoke fears of civil war
  1. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered troops into the restive northern Tigray region, a move he said was in response to an alleged attack by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on a federal military base in the regional capital of Mekelle.
  2. Abiy accused the TPLF on Friday of “criminal hubris & intransigence” in a message on Twitter, claiming they rejected the federal government’s efforts at “mediation, reconciliation, dialogue.” He said that the ongoing military operations in northern Ethiopia “have clear, limited & achievable objectives.”
3. Trump administration moves forward with $2.9bn drone sale
  1. The US State Department informed Congress Thursday of the Trump administration’s intent to sell 18 armed MQ-9B drones to the United Arab Emirates for an estimated $2.9 billion, a congressional aide told CNN on Friday.
  2. The department also informed Congress the administration intends to sell approximately $10 billion in ordnance, including precision-guided munitions, so-called “dumb” bombs, air-to-air missiles, and air-to-ground missiles, said the aide, who spoke anonymously to discuss the details of the intended sales.
  3. This comes a week after President Donald Trump’s administration issued an informal notice to Congress of an intended sale of 50 F-35 jets to the oil-rich Gulf nation. That sale is estimated at around $10 billion, according to two Democratic congressional aides.
4. Tanzania’s President was sworn in after a disputed vote
  1. Tanzania’s President John Magufuli was sworn in for a second five-year term on Thursday despite the opposition’s call for a repeat election, citing widespread irregularities and fraud.
  2. The October 28 vote was marred by the arrests of candidates and protesters, widespread blocking of social media and allegations of restrictions on agents of political parties to access polling stations, multiple voting and pre-ticking of ballots, the US embassy said.
5. One of India’s best-known news anchors was arrested
  1. Arnab Goswami, the face and founder of right-wing broadcaster Republic TV, was arrested at his home in Mumbai on Wednesday for his alleged role in the death of Anvay Naik, who died by suicide in 2018, according to a statement from the broadcaster.
  2. The case reflects the country’s increasingly fraught and politicized media environment.
6. In Russia, new legislation could give former presidents lifelong immunity
  1. Russian lawmakers submitted a draft bill that would grant former presidents lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution, state-run news agency TASS reported Thursday.
  2. Under current Russian law, presidents cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed while in office. The proposed change seeks to extend that immunity in perpetuity.
Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies; Matt Viser, Seung Min Kim and Annie Linskey | The Washington Post | 7, 2020,
1. President-elect Joe Biden is planning to quickly sign a series of executive orders after being sworn into office on Jan. 20, immediately forecasting that the country’s politics have shifted and that his presidency will be guided by radically different priorities.
2. He will:
  1. rejoin the Paris climate accords,
  2. reverse President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
  3. repeal the ban on immigration from many Muslim-majority countries, and
  4. reinstate the program allowing “dreamers,” who were brought to the United States illegally as children, to remain in the country, according to people familiar with his plans.
3. Although transitions of power can always include abrupt changes, the shift from Trump to Biden – from one president who sought to undermine established norms and institutions to another who has vowed to restore the established order – will be among the most startling in American history.
4. Biden’s top advisers have spent months quietly working on how best to implement his agenda, with hundreds of transition officials preparing to get to work inside various federal agencies. They have assembled a book filled with his campaign commitments to help guide their early decisions. …
5. Biden is planning to set up a coronavirus task force on Monday …
2021 will be a Congressional apportionment year decided by DOWN-BALLOT results.
ELECTION INFO:
1. NATIONAL TURNOUT AVG: 66.5%
2. TEXAS TURNOUT: 61.2% (44^th out of 51, including DC)
3. HIGHEST TURNOUT: MINNESOTA @ 79.2%
4. LOWEST TURNOUT: OKLAHOMA @ 55.3%
5. BALLOTPEDIA (Ballotpedia.org)
  1. Partisan balance: See also: Partisan composition of state senatesand Partisan composition of state houses
  2. In 2020, 154 incumbents were defeated in primary elections.
  3. 61 Democratic incumbentswere defeated. In other words, 87.7% of all Democratic incumbents who ran in a primary won.
  4. 93 Republican incumbents were defeated. In other words, 82.3% of all Republican incumbents who ran in a primary won.^[10]
Green, 26-Year-Old Mayor Elected in Baldwin Park, CA; Plus 10 Other Green Candidate Victories So Far – PRESS RELEASE Green Party of the United States (gp.org) For Immediate Release: November 06, 2020
1. Greens across the country are celebrating 26-year-old Emmanuel Estrada’s winning the office of Mayor of Baldwin Park, CA. That makes him, along with Mayor Bruce Delgado in Marina, CA the highest elected Green official in the country. …
2. This week’s Green wins add to 10 electoral victories from earlier in the year. …
  1. Emmanuel Estrada, Mayor of Baldwin Park, CA (Pop: ~80k)
  2. David Grover for City Council of Trinidad, CA (re-elected) (Pop: 357 (2018)
  3. Sylvia R. Chavez for City Council (At-Large) of Calipatria, CA (Pop: 7,412 (2018)
  4. Sharron Parra for Hyampom, CA Community Service District (Pop: 241 (2010))
  5. Michael Paul Hansen for Humboldt County, CA Community Services District (Population: 136,373 (2018))
  6. John Abraham “Abe” Powell for Montecito, CA Fire Protection District (re-elected) (population was 8,965 at the 2010)
  7. Randy Marx, Fair Oaks Water District (Sacramento County) (re-elected) (Fair Oaks Water District serves approximately 37,000 people)
  8. Matthew Clark, Granada Community Services District (San Mateo County) (re-elected) (approximately 2,500 residences)
  9. Jane Jarlsberg for Joshua Basin Water District, Division 3 in San Bernardino County, CA (Community-owned Water District)
  10. Josiah Dean for City Council of Dufur, OR (re-elected) (Population: 642 (2018))
  11. Michael Clary for Soil and Water Conservation, Zone 4 in Coos County, OR (re-elected)
John Bolton: “The Republican Party now faces a character test”, AXIOS, 11-8-2020
1. John Bolton in an op-ed Saturday [in the UK Telegraph] railed against President Trump’s attempt to falsely cast the election of Joe Biden as one stolen through fraud, saying the “Republican Party now faces a character test,” as it responds to the president’s “deeply troubling” behavior.
2. In Changing U.S. Electorate, Race and Education Remain Stark Dividing Lines – Gender gap in party identification remains widest in a quarter century; PEWRESEARCH.ORG | June 2, 2020
  1. ANDREW: So who makes up the Republican Party’s character?
  2. [SEE FIGURE IN ARTICLE]
  3. ANDREW: This influences policy, as they try and give the advantage to their base, making voting less accessible to the demographics they don’t do well with. Case in point:
Despite record turnout, some Texas voters were still shut out – Texas remains a difficult state in which to vote, and there are bountiful stories of voters who tried to cast ballots and couldn’t. But neither Democrats nor Republicans are questioning the integrity of the results. by Karen Brooks Harper | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 6, 20204 PM
1. Despite doing everything she could to cast a ballot, Wanda Kizzee was left out of the biggest election of her lifetime. … Kizzee, 55, a travel nurse whose ballot mailed to her by Harris County officials never made it to California, where she was working during the election. “This has never happened before, and I almost think it’s criminal that it did.” …
2. … Texas voters were able to vote in large numbers, with upwards of 11 million casting ballots. … [but] Numbers released this week by the state demographer show that in this election, some 5.7 million Texans were registered but did not vote. It is unknown how many of them tried but could not.
3. … Both sides agree that some Texas voters were disenfranchised, though they disagree over why.
4. … Texas Democrats emphasize that the state still has voting laws that cause suppression.
5. Chad Dunn, general counsel for the Texas Democratic Party who led the unsuccessful fight for mail-in ballots for all Texas voters earlier in the summer [says] “[F]or well over 100 years, Texas has led the fight in picking and choosing its voters, and we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for continuing to do so.”
6. Republicans, who salted the political landscape with unverified assertions that massive absentee ballot voting would lead to fraud, won the state convincingly enough to largely abandon that story line …
7. [Said Jared Woodfill, the Houston attorney who led lawsuits against drive-thru voting, multiple mail drop-off sites and several of Gov. Greg Abbott’s pandemic-era election proclamations:] “I think you’re seeing counties where there are fraud issues where the results would have been different, in my opinion, so that will have to be dealt with in the future … But overall, the way the state went is the way it would have gone regardless of whether these irregularities had or hadn’t occurred.”
8. Both sides say state’s voting laws in play during the election are at the root of voter disenfranchisement, but they differ on which laws those are. …
9. “There isn’t any question that there was significant disenfranchisement in Texas,” Dunn said. “Now whether or not that would have made a difference in statewide outcomes is difficult or impossible to determine. There are certainly local races where it absolutely would have had an impact in the outcome.
10. Texas is one of the hardest states in which to vote — for voters of both parties — and, Dunn said, many of the hurdles voters faced this year are not new. …
11. Woodfill sees disenfranchisement through a different prism. If votes were cast illegally, as many of his lawsuits over drive-thru voting and ballot drop-off locations have argued, that in itself is disenfranchisement of legal voters.
12. “There are serious issues that were raised by this election cycle, especially with respect to Harris County,” said Woodfill, referring to several moves by the county to expand access, including the drive-thru locations. “To the extent that illegal votes were allowed to be counted, then a legal vote would obviously be disenfranchised. So yes, I do think that occurred. I personally think that it’s Republican voters that were disenfranchised.”
13. Predictably, Harris County voted blue Tuesday, flipping a formerly Republican state House seat and giving 56% of the presidential vote to Biden with a margin of more than 200,000 votes. …
14. [Texas] was recently ranked 50th in the nation by the Election Law Journal for ease of voting[. T]he stories of disenfranchisement in this election are plentiful, because the hurdles state lawmakers have erected to registering and voting create many chances for the system to fail. …
15. [Said Tammy Patrick, senior adviser to the elections team at the Democracy Fund in Washington, D.C.]: “These things will feed into the ability of someone to either participate easily and conveniently and effectively, or for someone to encounter barrier after barrier after barrier and at some point throw up their hands in disgust and quit trying …”
16. Signatures on absentee ballots get rejected, or the ballots never show up. Voters are incorrectly dropped from rolls. Registrations fall victim to technical glitches and data-entry errors. Discrimination or intimidation, or a simple lack of a ride or time off work can keep people from voting.
17. Sometimes, voters misunderstand complex rules around registration or absentee voting. Other times, poorly trained poll workers turn away voters without educating them on their options. …
18. “It makes me not want to try it ever again,” said Tarrant County resident Adrianna Booth, 25, who was not allowed to cast a regular ballot because there was a problem with the registration date on her voter card. “It just shut me down.” … Her online voter status showed as active. But at the polls when they tried to vote early, her fiance was able to vote, but she was not. The poll worker’s computer said she was ineligible but didn’t say why. …
19. The disenfranchisement of voters is at the core of every war over democracy, every fight over election policy, every lawsuit, every new rule and federal act of Congress regarding election law.
20. Myriad battles over increased polling locations, drive-thru voting, mail-in balloting, voter ID, eligibility and more all come down to one thing: making sure those who are eligible can exercise their constitutional right to vote.
21. Texas has tightened voting restrictions in recent years due to Republican efforts to limit efforts like widespread mail-in voting, online registration, mobile voting and others that advocates say would increase the number of voters in Texas.
22. And whether counties like Harris can count this cycle as a victory in terms of turnout and Election Day activity — and many locals there call it a success — disenfranchisement is a concern that voting rights activists say should never be ignored by the state.
23. “There has never been integrity in our voting process in Texas,” said Crystal Zermeño, director of electoral strategy for the Texas Organizing Project. “We are a voter suppression state, and the laws are set so that you can’t have full democracy and participation.” …
Republicans maintain majority on Texas education board – Democrats targeted three seats on the Republican-dominated board and won one of them this week. Republicans won the other two seats. by Aliyya Swaby | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 4, 2020 Updated: Nov. 5, 2020
1. Democrats are gaining one seat on the Republican-dominated State Board of Education, while Republicans held on in the other races that Democrats had hoped to flip in the 2020 general election.
Analysis: Texas voters elect to stay the course – If you’re going by the numbers of Republican and Democratic winners, nothing really happened in the general election in Texas this year. But there’s a lot beneath the numbers. by Ross Ramsey | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 6, 20204 AM
1. The Republican wins blew up a favorite Texas Democratic slogan: “Texas is not a Republican state, it’s a low-voting state.” That might be pretty good spin, but it turned out to be wrong. Texas voted, heavily. And it’s still a Republican state. Turnout hasn’t been this high, on a percentage basis, since 1992, when two Texans — George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot — topped the ballot in the presidential race. …
2. The biggest prize of the day wasn’t even on the ballot. Based on their wins this week, the Republicans will start 2021 with control of the House, the Senate, the governor’s office and all of the seats on the relatively obscure Legislative Redistricting Board. They’ll control every phase of the process of drawing new political maps for the state’s congressional delegation, the state Senate and House, and the State Board of Education.
So, these are the results of elections as we have them now. What could elections look like in the future, and how would they be reported? Maine may hold the answer.
1. Maine 2020 election results – The state has four electoral votes at stake in the presidential race. By ABC News | November 4, 2020, 2:03 PM
  1. For the first time ever, Maine will utilize rank-choice voting for the presidential contest, meaning voters have the option to indicate their first, second, third and other choices for president. If a candidate doesn’t secure a majority of the vote, then rank-choice voting kicks in. The system was in place for other federal elections, and in the 2018 midterms, Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat, won in the 2nd Congressional District after it kicked in.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig

"An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy."

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Rate this:

Share this:

Like this:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply