Category: Uncategorized

You have questions. That’s good. Let’s get them answered.

Election night has now stretched into election week, and Americans are glued to the agonizingly slow march toward 270 electoral votes. It’s been a weird election, appropriate for this weird year, being observed by a uniquely mistrustful viewing public. You’re probably seeing a LOT of claims, ranging from accusations of fraud, to concerns about people’s ballots not being counted.

Here’s a list of the main points of confusion we’re seeing in the newsroom, and some explanation for what you’re seeing:

“Trump was SO far ahead in so many states, and now all of a sudden he’s losing?!”

This is the situation we’ve seen in the most hotly contested swing states, and here are the reasons why:

1. The first counties to report results are typically the smaller, more rural ones, because they don’t have as many ballots to count, nor as many polling places to close up and get tabulated. Those counties tend to vote Republican. In Nevada, for example, the first two counties to release results were Lyon and Churchill counties, both deeply red regions, despite relatively tiny populations. If you had looked at Nevada’s results at that point, Trump was absolutely annihilating Biden in Nevada. The only two counties in Nevada with populations in the six figures or higher are Washoe and Clark, both of which trend more strongly Democrat. Those counties are still counting up their ballots. So as they get through their counts, the numbers from Nevada will shift in Biden’s direction. That’s what we’re seeing in the swing states: the biggest counties with the most Democrats are the last to report, making it appear that Biden is getting a “comeback win” when in reality, if all results were held and then released at once, it wouldn’t look that way at all.
2. Mail-in ballots are much slower to be counted, since much of the process has to be done by hand (opening envelopes, verifying signatures, etc.), compared to the digital process of in-person voting. Also, some mail-in ballots are still arriving at county headquarters (which is allowed in Nevada, as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day). So most of the “late” results that have been released are coming from mail-in ballots. And most mail-in ballots are coming from Democrats.
   
   Why, you ask?
   
   Many Republican campaigns discouraged voters from casting their ballots through the mail-in system. There have been various accusations from the GOP and the Trump campaign about the mail-in system being vulnerable to fraud. So, more Republicans chose to cast their ballots in person. As mentioned above, in-person votes get released faster, so the early returns were showing more strongly for Trump. As mail-in ballots get tabulated, that’s why it looks like it’s a Biden wave. Once again, if everything were released at once, it wouldn’t look that way at all.

“I sent in my ballot, but the website/Ballottrax doesn’t show that it was counted.”

If you’re voting in Nevada, and you’ve been checking to make sure your vote was counted, you might have seen that your ballot was “received” or “completed” but not yet that it was counted.

That’s because all results are considered “unofficial” until the official “Canvass of the Vote,” which makes results official. This year, that happens on November 16. Election officials say not to worry about your online status; it’ll show your vote as “counted” once the results are made official. The website just hasn’t updated with that information yet.

Some of the websites might not show that it’s received yet at all. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t received; according to election officials, that just means it’s not reflected on the website yet. If you’re really concerned, the best bet is to call your county registrar.

HOWEVER– there ARE some mail-in ballots that have not been counted because they require a “cure,” meaning they weren’t signed, the signature doesn’t match, or there’s some other issue (damage, etc.). County officials contact those voters to get the issue resolved, but there is a deadline to make that happen.

To check if your mail-in ballot was received (in Nevada), you can use these links:

https://www.nvsos.gov/votersearch/

https://nevada.ballottrax.net/voter/

Or, you can contact your county’s registrar of voters and ask. Don’t be afraid to make a phone call; there are people answering the lines for this exact reason.

“There are thousands of fake ballots/dead people are voting/illegal immigrants are voting/ballots are being thrown away/people are voting twice/generally the integrity of our election process is garbage.”

There aren’t, and it isn’t.

In the last general election, the Nevada Secretary of State (who is a Republican, by the way), found fewer than a dozen instances of attempted election fraud. Out of more than a million recorded votes. The numbers are the same in other states. Election officials of every party, race, creed, religion, gender, and sexual preference agree unequivocally: there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

This isn’t a party conspiracy; elections are run by individual people in diverse counties across the country. There is no one person in charge of counting ballots, and no one person (or one party) with the power to affect the integrity of the system in that way.

Keep in mind that election fraud is a felony. Getting caught has serious repercussions, with very few potential rewards if successful, unless it’s done in the tens of thousands. It’s hard to imagine tens of thousands of individuals being willing to forge signatures or attempt to vote twice, and risk felony convictions just to influence an election in a jointly agreed-upon way. That kind of coordinated effort is honestly just not realistic.

Now, of course no system is perfect. There are issues on a very small scale. Every now and then a voter will be caught attempting to vote twice. There’s usually one or two stories of people being turned away at the polls for one reason or another. But presidential elections are decided by votes in the thousands, not in the single digits.

If someone is trying to convince you that one documented example of voter fraud means there must be hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes, then you should ask yourself why they want you to believe that.

And finally, a note on propaganda:

At the end of the day, the integrity of our election system is the absolute foundation of American stability as a democracy. There is nothing more sacred than the freedom to cast a vote, and trust that whatever the voters decide will be implemented, and power transferred peacefully. Shaking the country’s confidence in that system, without evidence, is fundamentally un-American. It’s also EXACTLY what the FBI warned us a few weeks back would happen, from other countries attempting to undermine the American election. Don’t let them win.

 

Here we go—there’s another prominent male figure accused of sexual assault and harassment, and a growing list of women is coming forward to report, in some cases many years later, that they were sexually assaulted or harassed by this man.

Well-intentioned (I hope?) people on the internet (ha), have responded, inevitably, with: “Well I’m no fan of rape or whatever, but why didn’t they report it sooner? Suspicious.”

I have never been raped. I have never been sexually assaulted, nor harassed by a man with power over me. But I HAVE been sexually harassed more times than I can count, in person, on the internet, through email and social media, and over the phone. I’m a local public figure, and as most of us women in the business say, “it’s just part of the job.”

It’s just part of the job to have my level of skill equated to how well I fill out a body con dress; to have my male counterparts receive no criticism nor commentary about their looks, while if I gain weight/lose weight/change my hair/wear a new style/wear a color viewers don’t like/don’t match my lipstick to my dress well enough/don’t smile enough, I hear about it from viewers. I have been told by men to “cover up” and have been told by men that the station should just dress me in Victoria’s Secret, because they’d rather see me in that.

It’s frustrating, but it’s part of the job.

It’s just part of the job that regularly, men seek me out on social media, wanting to know, “Am I single?” or “When will I meet up with them?”

And when I say no, I’m not interested, it’s just part of the job that they either ignore what I say and keep trying, or cuss me out and tell me I’m not that hot anyway.

It’s just part of the job when they then track down my home address and send me roses, along with messages outlining our “relationship.” When they send me love letters from prison. When they ask me if they can buy my used underwear, or when they find my boyfriend on social media to “congratulate” him on “winning” the object that is me.

It’s just part of the job when these men send me pictures of their penises, sometimes up to a dozen pictures a day, from so many different email addresses that I can’t block them fast enough.

It’s so much a part of the job that I don’t even think to report it. I’m busy. All day. Working a high-pressure, high-liability job that I love, that occupies most of my working minutes. With the rest of my time, I like to maintain some semblance of a life. These men, these intruders on my busy day, these unwelcome advances that I’d just prefer to ignore—I don’t have time for these men.

But sometimes they cross the line enough that I get nervous. My natural instinct for self-preservation starts ringing alarm bells, and I tell someone. I tell my boss. I tell my boyfriend. I tell my buddy at the police station. They tell me to report it. I listen.

Here’s what it takes to report even a minor incident of sexual harassment or stalking: The victim must print and fill out several pages of forms, detailing exact times and dates of all contact. Find, and in so doing, look at, the dozens of unwanted and disgusting pictures of strangers’ penises. Print them out. Screen shot and print out facebook messages. Make copies of all texts, emails, and letters. Take the report to the police station. Sit and wait. Go into a room with a victim services advocate to go over everything you’ve printed and documented once again. Expect this to take quite a bit of your time, every time.

Then—you have a choice. Do you want to send a detective to their homes and scare them out of further harassment? Do you want to file for a temporary restraining order (usually lasts a month or two)? Do you want to face them, literally face these disgusting, unwelcome strangers, in court, to extend this restraining order? Do you want to have to prove to other strangers (usually men) that this behavior made you feel threatened? Do you want to spend hours on hours that you don’t have focused on this unwanted, unasked-for situation, just to feel safe?

You worry that any of these actions might cause these men to retaliate. We are not dealing with rational people. Normal people don’t behave this way. Any kind of contact might just make it worse. Is it better to do nothing and hope it stops?

Worse yet—who else knows? Are your bosses understanding and sympathetic? Or do they brush it off, make you feel like you’re making a big deal out of nothing? Could it hurt your reputation at work? Are you “playing the woman card,” “acting weak,” “overreacting,” or “being emotional”? Are you “just trying to get attention?”

I’m lucky in that I’m surrounded by a supportive team, an understanding boss, a loving family, and many great law enforcement officers who have gone above and beyond to help me. I’m lucky in that I can carve out time to deal with this, that I have a car to drive myself to the police station, and connections within law enforcement because of my job. Because of my job I might also be taken more seriously, since these men are “random weirdos,” taking penis pics in their mothers’ dusty basements, not wealthy, powerful men with connections and prestige that outpace mine.

These men have no power over me, no say in what jobs I’ll get or what opportunities I’ll have. They’re anecdotes; stories I can tell when female journalism students want to know what they should be prepared for in the real world. I can dismiss them. I don’t have to see them every day. They don’t sign my paycheck. And yet, dealing with them has cost me hours of time, days of worry, and far too much brain space.

When I think about what it would be like if the nameless stranger harassing me online were instead my boss, sitting in a glass office down the hall, calling the shots on whether I succeed in my career, it chills me. Who WOULD report it?