Tag: Florida

In two political battlegrounds, thousands of mail-in ballots are on the verge of being rejected

Tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots for the 2020 election by mail, building on a historic shift in voting methods that started with primary elections held during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mail-in ballots, however, aren’t automatically accepted as in-person ballots are. Rather, they can be rejected if they have signature defects on their return envelopes. Unless cured by voters – which means that voters fix the signature errors on them – these submitted ballots will be rejected. 

Thanks to ongoing reporting of voter turnout in two battleground states, Florida and North Carolina, we can identify the number of mail-in ballots at risk of being rejected. So far, we can tell that there are thousands of ballots flagged for rejection in these two states. In addition, racial minorities and Democrats are disproportionately more likely to have cast mail ballots this election that face rejection. Continue reading.

Pence: Trump sees Florida, Minnesota, Arizona as keys to 270

The Hill logo

President Trump’s campaign is focused on winning in Florida and Arizona to create a path to 270 electoral votes and four more years in office, Vice President Pence told The Hill in an exclusive interview aboard Air Force Two.

Pence, in the midst of a cross-country trip aimed at bolstering Trump and the Senate GOP ahead of Election Day, said those two states and Minnesota, which hasn’t voted for a GOP presidential candidate since 1972, are all top Trump targets.

“Florida’s of great importance. Arizona’s of great importance. We’re going to make sure we continue to campaign in those states,” Pence told The Hill when asked about “must-win” states for Trump. Continue reading.

Here’s Trump’s laughable attempt to clean up his gigantic Florida blunder

AlterNet logoI wrote a piece on June 24, 2020, called “Trump Has Destroyed the GOP’s Vote-by-Mail Advantage in Florida.” On Wednesday, August 5, 2020, you got the opportunity to read the same thing in the Washington Post. At some point between these two articles, someone finally got through to Trump and made him understand his error:

As Greg Sargent notes, the campaign’s goal here is “to delegitimize vote-by-mail in states where they think it will hurt Trump, while legitimizing it in places where they think it will help him.” This is a fallback position — an effort at mitigation. As I predicted, Republican voters were not able to make fine distinctions about where mail voting is good and desirable and where it is bad and corrupt. When Trump attacked expanded mail voting in states like Michigan, it made his base reluctant to trust mail voting in states like Florida where the practice has been long established.

Rather than admit a strategic blunder or completely change course, the attempt at a solution involves promoting mail voting where there is a “great infrastructure” and “great Republican Governors” and dissuading it where it is being newly introduced by Democratic governors. Continue reading.

Florida smashes single-day record for new coronavirus cases

Axios logoFlorida reported 15,299 confirmed coronavirus cases on Sunday — a new single-day record for any state, according to its health department.

The big picture: The figure shatters both Florida’s previous recordof 11,458 new cases and the single-state record of 11,694 set by California last week, according to AP. It also surpasses New York’s daily peak of 11,571 new cases in April, and comes just a day after Disney World reopened in Orlando.

Worth noting: More than a dozen states have reported new highs for daily case numbers this week.

A Sun Belt time bomb threatens Trump’s reelection

Rising Covid-19 caseloads in Florida, Arizona and Texas raise fresh doubts about the president’s reelection prospects.

The explosion of Covid-19 cases in Sun Belt states is becoming another albatross for President Donald Trump’s reelection hopes — and creating a new opening for Joe Biden and Democrats in November.

Republican governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas followed Trump’s lead by quickly reopening their states while taking a lax approach to social distancing and mask-wearing. Now, each of them is seeing skyrocketing coronavirus caseloads and rising hospitalizations, and Republican leaders are in retreat.

It’s hard to overstate the gravity of the situation for Trump: Lose any one of the three states, and his reelection is all but doomed. Continue reading.

Florida’s reopening met with record daily coronavirus cases

TALLAHASSEE — Florida has reported a three-day run of increased coronavirus cases as it reopens its economy and jockeys to host the Republican National Convention.

On Thursday, the Florida Department of Health reported 1,419 new coronavirus cases, the biggest single-day increase in cases since the state began reporting daily figures in March and a 2 percent increase in total cases, bringing the state’s total to 60,183.

The previous highest reporting day was April 17, when the state reported 1,413 new cases, a 6 percent increase at the time. Continue reading.

‘Significant’ increase in Florida pneumonia deaths are likely related to COVID-19: CDC officials

AlterNet logoAccording to a report from the Daily Beast, officials at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) believe that a “statistically significant” increase in pneumonia-related deaths in Florida may be related to the COVID-19 virus.

With Florida being one of the first states to re-open after most of the country went into an almost complete shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, reports of deaths in sthe state have been under more scrutiny than usual as health experts attempt to get their arms around the health crisis.

The report from the Beast’s Erin Banco states, “According to the data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, since the beginning of the year there has been a total of 1,519 deaths in Florida where pneumonia and influenza were listed as the underlying cause. By comparison, in the same time period last year, Florida recorded 1,207 such deaths. The CDC has historically counted pneumonia and influenza deaths together. CDC officials told The Daily Beast that most of the deaths included in that category are pneumonia.  Continue reading.

Trump’s 2016 campaign brass warns he’s in trouble in 2020

Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie told the president he’s down in swing states, prompting campaign chiefs in Arizona and Florida to travel to D.C.

David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski, two key allies and former political advisers to Donald Trump, went to the White House last week to issue him a warning: The president was slipping badly in swing states, and he needed to do something to fix it.

Three days later, the Trump campaign’s political directors in Arizona and Florida — states the president won in 2016 but where surveys show him lagging — were summoned to the White House Roosevelt Room. The officials offered a detailed rundown of his organization in the battlegrounds and tried to reassure the president that he was on firm ground.

After his May 18 meeting with Bossie and Lewandowski, Trump called his top campaign lieutenants to vent his frustration about his political standing. Continue reading.

Florida data scientist says she was fired for refusing to ‘manipulate’ COVID-19 statistics

AlterNet logoThe architect of Florida’s COVID-19 data dashboard claims that she was fired by the state’s health department for refusing to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.”

Rebekah Jones, who managed the dashboard praised by the White House, first announced that she had been removed on May 5 as the Geographic Information Systems manager for the Florida Department of Health in a farewell note citing “reasons beyond my division’s control,” Florida Today reported.

Jones later told the outlet that she had been fired by the department for refusing to “manipulate data.” Continue reading.

#FloridaMorons trends after people flock to reopened Florida beaches

Washington Post logoAerial snapshots of people flocking to a reopened beach in Jacksonville, Fla., made waves on the Internet on Saturday.

Local news aired photos and videos of Florida’s shoreline dotted with people, closer than six feet apart, spurring #FloridaMorons to trend on Twitter after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gave the go-ahead for local beachfront governments to decide whether to reopen their beaches during a news briefing Friday. Duval and St. Johns counties have reopened their beaches, while Miami-Dade County officials said they are considering following suit.

On the same day that Florida reported 58 deaths from the novel coronavirus — its highest daily toll since the pandemic began — DeSantis told reporters that it’s essential that Floridians get exercise outdoors. Continue reading.