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All about elections

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All about elections

May 05, 2022 | 8:00 pm ET
By Emily Dobler Siddiqi
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News From The States: Evening Wrap

Hi, newsletter fam! Dobby here, filling in for our favorite author, Kate. It’s been a minute since I’ve had to put on my writing hat, and I’ve written approximately 500 drafts of this introduction and am happy with exactly none of them, so let’s just get to it, shall we? (Kate wasn’t kidding when she warned y’all to be nice to me last night!)

The Big Takeaway

‘Tis the season for elections, which means there’s a lot of action happening around the states. Let’s start in Georgia, where early voting for the midterm elections kicked off Monday even as legal challenges to the state’s voting process continue in the background. As we noted earlier this week, this is the first test of state lawmakers’ sweeping changes to election policy, which include new deadlines for provisional ballots and restrictions on drop boxes.

More than 27,000 people cast in-person ballots across the state on Monday, according to the Georgia Recorder — a primary first-day record. To put that into context, that’s three times the number of residents who cast early, in-person ballots on the first day of the 2018 primary and double the amount from the June 2020 primary, according to the secretary of state’s office.

That high turnout didn’t go unnoticed by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who said voting was going smoothly and used it as evidence that last year’s election overhaul doesn’t suppress minority voters. “There’s plenty of other days for early voting and things are going smoothly now,” he said Wednesday. “It looks like we’re going to have a record year for voter participation and that’s a good thing.”

Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger telling everyone that everything is fine, just fine. (Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder)
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger telling everyone that everything is fine, just fine. (Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder)

That’s a nice takeaway, Brad, but to get the full story, you have to look beyond just the numbers. There are still several lawsuits related to the voting process currently making their way through the courts, many of which claim that the new rules do in fact make it harder to vote (looking at you, “wet” ink signature rule). And there were thousands of residents from Fulton, DeKalb and Cobb counties who initially received incorrect ballots, leaving them scrambling. Officials said the issue was caused by a discrepancy between the precinct map approved as part of redistricting by the General Assembly and a county commission district on the secretary of state’s website.

Redistricting has similarly thrown a wrench into Ohio’s election season. As we’ve noted before, Ohio is kind of a mess when it comes to not gerrymandering! To quickly recap: This year was the state’s first stab at using a bipartisan commission to draft legislative maps, an initiative approved by voters in 2015 after decades of laughably obvious partisan district lines. The group’s literal only job is to update state and congressional districts by using historical voting patterns.

The commission is on Round 5 of trying to craft a fair map, with a Friday morning deadline ordered by the state Supreme Court, the Ohio Capital Journal reported. Given the group’s abysmal track record so far, I feel confident saying nothing of substance will come from this exercise. The federal court has already said that if no maps exist by May 28, it will implement the third version of legislative maps the commission passed, which was rejected by the state supreme court as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, to be used for the rest of the 2022 election.

The map mess has forced Ohio to split up its primaries, with one held this week and another set for later in the summer. Tuesday’s ballot featured congressional races, judicial and municipal candidates and a handful of state offices, including governor, attorney general and secretary of state. Among the winners, per the Capital Journal: J.R. Majewski, the Port Clinton man who built a national profile by splaying former President Donald Trump’s face across his 19,000 square-foot front yard.

Some people have too much time on their hands. (Screenshot from the music video for “Lets Go Brandon Save America”)
Some people have too much time on their hands. (Screenshot from the music video for “Lets Go Brandon Save America”)

Majewski, an Air Force veteran who says he works in the nuclear industry, will officially face off against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who first won the seat in 1983. He became infamous in 2020 after media appearances highlighting his very intense hobby, which apparently took him about 50 hours to paint.

Majewski, unsurprisingly, checks a lot of the Republican red meat boxes: Loyal to Trump? Check. Believes in the QAnon conspiracy theory? Check. Hates abortions and gun control? Check. Thinks the 2020 election was stolen? Check. Attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021? Check. Appeared in a music video decrying “cancel culture”? Check. 

Another candidate who checks a lot of those same boxes? Kristina Karamo, a Republican who’s vying to become Michigan’s next secretary of state. In addition to being a fan of QAnon and the Big Lie, Karamo believes that celebrities are putting people “under a satanic delusion,” churches featuring rainbow flags are “agents of Satan,” people doing yoga are participating in “a satanic ritual,” and just … so many other ridiculous things I don’t even want to get into. 

Karamo was endorsed last month as the state party’s choice to take on Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in November, with the winner administering the state’s elections. That could have big implications for the 2024 presidential race, where Michigan is again poised to be a pivotal swing state, the Michigan Advance reported

Kristina Karamo is another person who has, um, perhaps too much free time. (Allison R. Donahue/Michigan Advance)
Kristina Karamo is another person who has, um, perhaps too much free time. (Allison R. Donahue/Michigan Advance)

Karamo came to national prominence after she alleged illegal vote counting at the TCF Center in downtown Detroit where she showed up as a self-appointed “poll challenger” while officials counted approximately 174,000 absentee ballots. However, her allegation was based on a misunderstanding of the counting process.

“If the GOP wants a secretary of state who peddles in conspiracy theories and doesn’t have the first idea how to provide competent, customer-service driven leadership then they’ve got their candidate,” Benson campaign spokesperson Liz Boyd told the Advance. “Not only will Kristina Karamo undermine our democracy and overturn our elections, she’ll take us back to the days when customers had to ‘take-a-ticket and wait’ hours just to renew a driver license.”  

Can I at least still get an “I voted” sticker? Mizeur Releases Economic Plan for (Maryland) 1st DistrictClark County (Nevada) School Board president to defend seat, voting history against four challengersHolland Children’s Institute poll finds disconnect between voters and the Nebraska Legislature

Caught Our Eye

From John Waters and David Simon to formstone stucco and Old Bay seasoning, there’s a lot to love about Baltimore. There’s also, as Maryland Matters tells us, a lot of lead. Fun!

Despite being the first U.S. city to ban lead paint in residential housing in 1951, Baltimore has an estimated 85,087 occupied housing units with “dangerous lead hazards,” the Abell Foundation found. The state Department of the Environment estimated that lead-based paint hazards accounted for 78% of all potential sources of lead exposure in Baltimore in 2021, according to the report, and long-term exposure to elevated levels can cause myriad health concerns.

A beautiful city, with all the lead paint you could ever ask for! (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
A beautiful city, with all the lead paint you could ever ask for! (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

As with anything else, fixing the problem won’t be cheap. Lead abatement work on the affected units could cost between $2.5 billion and $4.2 billion, while lead hazard control — which the report calls “more limited in scope” — could cost between $851 million and $1.4 billion. Plus, Baltimore largely relies on federal funding to tackle lead reduction. 

“Even with increasing funding allocations from the federal government,” said Luke Scrivener, a Baltimore data scientist who authored the report, “the city is only scratching the surface of the widespread lead paint hazards, and city officials have to make difficult decisions about how to allocate those funds.”

From the Newsrooms

One Last Thing

If you, like me, are still mad as hell about this week’s Roe news, check out this helpful list of seven proactive ways to channel your anger

This edition of the Evening Wrap published on May 5, 2022. Subscribe here.

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