Ohio Primary

Ohio closed it’s polls at 7:30 p.m. yesterday, and presumptive nominee Joe Biden has now widened his lead even further, winning the state with 72.4% to Bernie Sanders’ 16.6% The early votes had Biden edging his opponent, but as votes continues Sanders scrapped enough to make the delegate threshold: he ended with 16.6%, just enough to win him a small portion of the delegates.

Here’s how the delegates were divided (136 pledged delegates were up for grabs):
Biden - 123
Sanders - 13

Here’s how the delegate count stands as of now;


P.S.: It doesn’t include it on the image I screen-grabbed, but if you add the 274 pledged delegates from the cancelled new York Primary to Joe Biden, then that gives you a grand total of 1,702.
SUBSTANTIAL lead for him. Wow!

NEXT: If they don’t end up cancelled, there will be two primary elections happening on May 2: Guam and Kansas. They will total 45 delegates. With or without the cancelled New York contest factored, it won’t be enough to secure Biden the nomination —- neither will the remaining three contests after this that are scheduled for the month of May. The first week of June will probably do it for him, cause it’s the big one with 500 delegates up for grabs.

One primary down (but technically not out yet)

The Democratic Primary isn’t going to be held in one key state - New York

On Monday, New York’s Board of Elections held a vote to cancel the planned closed primary, which was originally scheduled to vote April 28 but got postponed to June 23 because of the Coronavirus pandemic is effectively becoming the first state to cancel its primary. No word on whether it will be rescheduled in time before August’s Democratic Convention.

Apparently that has made Bernie Sanders supported a little infuriated by the move, despite the obvious fact that Sanders withdrew from the race three weeks ago. Adding salt to the wound is the fact that New York has removed his name from the ballot. The only name now appearing is Joseph Biden.

Jeff Weaver, a senior advisor to Bernie’s 2020 campaign,  disapproves of the move and is calling on the DNC to reverse it’s decision, suggesting that the move is “a blog to American democracy”, adding that:
               "No one asked New York to cancel the election, The DNC didn’t request it.
                The Biden campaign didn’t request it. And our campaign communicated that
                we wanted to remain on the ballot…Given that the primary is months away,
                the proper response must be to make the election safe – such as going to all
               vote by mail – rather than to eliminating people’s right to vote completely."[1]

He wasn’t the only one.

An organizing group known as Our Revolution issued a series of tweets after the fact, some of which I screen grabbed and will add now. Basically these series of tweets suggest that because there will be no primary, there will be a challenge to New York’s delegates at the convention in August.

The first one was done seven hours ago[2], expressing shock and disdain over the fact that:

The next tweet came an hour later, stating that “New Yorkers should be pissed. They may not get credentialed at the convention,” read a tweet by the group, and going on to add that: “Suppressing the Sanders vote [in New York] will again lead attacks on the Party across the nation and harm the volunteer effort that our group and others are building for Joe Biden.”
 

(in tweet form, btw!)[3]

The third tweet was almost like a follow-up/add on to the second tweet (which was broken up by other tweets revolving around corporate interests) three hours later in which they quoted the group’s chairperson, Larry Cohen. Cohen’s quote is also seen as a continuation of what he said earlier, so I’m assuming this is either said before the word "Supression" or after "Joe Biden"[4].

On the other end of the spectrum, you get a different response. Democratic Commissioner Douglas Kellner, who voted Monday in favor of cancelling the race, said it was ”a very difficult decision." but it ultimately boiled down to an "unnecessary and frivolous" in the age of a COVID-19 environment.[1]

One of the things Sanders said was that he would continue to amass delegates, a move widely viewed as a way to have increased leverage in crafting the party platform. He ended up endorsing Biden a few days later.

So the question now becomes: is the whole thing non-chalant at this point?

Don’t get me wrong, I do like both candidates and their respected positions, but this to me is a different story than four years ago when Sanders stayed in the race all the way until the end with the last presidential contest. He ended up not winning the ticket, but he certainly did a hell of a lot better than I thought he would. This time, he dropped out after a handful of contests (and a strong start).

With New York's contest being downright cancelled, it would seem that Biden basically won by default and that he would pick up the state’s 274 pledged delegates (out of a total 320). If that’s the case, then the delegate count increases Biden’s lead from 1,305 to a whopping 1,579.

I guess there may be some good news however, and we’ll see if it holds true, in that primary polls will continue to take place in 20 counties that have no other contests scheduled on June 23. We’ll see what happens.

As Rachel Maddow says on her nightly show, watch this space.

Wyoming

And what this post will be the introduction of two image banners:
         1) the "Election 2020" banner
         2) the banner of the state that held their primary/caucus and their results.

This short post is Wyoming.

Wyoming began their elections on April 4. Due to the pandemic sweeping the nation that is the COVID-19 outbreak, the primaries were switched from being in-person to mail-in voting and the voting period was extended to April 17. That was for primaries, but the caucus met yesterday (April 18) to decide on their candidate which is why the results were delayed until today.

The result: Joe Biden was declared the winner (which is a no-brainer, since he is the ONLY candidate left in the Democratic field)

It was the candidate's widest margin, as he won with 72.2 percent (10,912 votes) over Bernie Sanders' 27.8 percent (4,206 votes). Biden picks up 12 of the 14 delegates, while Sanders picks up the remaining two delegates. The four superdelegates will be saved for sometime during the conveention in summer, which I'm pretty sure they will be handed to Biden.

Biden got some pretty big endorsements this week that helped him along towards victory:Sanders endored him on April 13, the following day he recieved an endorsement from his former boss (and 44th U.S. President) Barack Obama, and the day after an endorsement from Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Thursday. Those are the big endorsements,  and he did get a riveting 18 more from big-named Wyoming senator and congresspeople big-shots that the news wasn't able to tell you.

Here is the current delegate count as it stands as of today:

NEXT (Now I can do Ohio, lol): Ohio has cancelled their in-person voting and will instead send their official ballots by mail. They have until April 28 to send in their votes. 136 pledged delegates will be awarded. Whether all of them will go to Biden or if they will be divided amongst the two candidates will be up to the state’s constituents to decide.

Originally, the scheduled primary elections were supposed to be held on April 28 in Deleware, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island -- making up the biggest delegate count of that day. Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, their dates are changed to June 2 and apparently, if the date does not change, Maryland will be included as well). All of them are currently in-person voting, but that could all change between now and June 2.

Alaska, Wisconsin, and Sanders. Oh, my!

It’s been a crazy half-week in the presidential race. Let’s start with the obvious.

On April 7, the state of Wisconsin held their primaries. The governor of the state wanted to extend with the help of mail-by-voting, but Republicans intervened in that state and made sure some polling sites remained open, forcing g some citizens to brave the ‘new normal’ of the outside world (see las blog). Early polling showed a 19 percent drop. I’ll get back to the results later.

One day after, the unexpected happened (well, at least to me): Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent senator and one of two remaining Democratic candidates remaining in the presidential race, dropped out.

The other candidate still remaining in the race is Joe Biden. He is now the presumptive presidential candidate in the Democratic field.

I will post his commencement speech. Even though he is out of the race, Sanders is going to remain on the ballots and try to acquire more delegates and hope for a runoff in the Democratic Convention. He sees himself as winning the “ideological path” as they go forward.

Here is the full speech below:


It was expected at some point, but I was still surprised as he stayed in the fight all the way until the end when he ran in the 2016 primary, knowing full well that Hillary Clinton was going to be the presumptive nominee. I almost thought there would’ve been a repeat here as well.

Which bring us to Alaska and Wisconsin, which were also the final two states that started their primary voting before Sanders. The results however would have to wait until the absentee votes that were received over the weekend.

Joe Biden won both contests as expected. Biden won 11 of the 15 delegates, and it’s not clear how many he’ll pick up in Wisconsin but as of last count ihe’s won 54 of the 84 delegates (Sanders has won 15 so far).

A total delegate count meter hasn’t been updated yet for me to copy and paste on this blog, but this inches Biden towards the 1300 mark while sander is nearing 930. My guess is that the remaining polls will either be a split over delegates, or Biden being the presumptive will get all the candidates. Sanders’ name will still be on the official ballots of the remaining states, so he’s going to try and get the necessary 15 percent threshold to acquire as many delegates as he can to enforce a runoff. He has endorsed Biden today, so now we have the backing of the next presidential candidate from a full count of those candidates who dropped.

I will update this when I can get an official total count meter when all the votes are tallied up from the Wisconsin primary. If not from the main page that I pull the image from, then from another site.

UPDATE @ 4/14/20: Here is the official delegate count - I tried to get the count from Politico but it hasn't updated their count with Alaska & Wisconsin's results. So I went ahead with the delete count from the The New York Times website. I might use them from here on out.

 NEXT: Wyoming is the next state that will proceed ahead with their primaries on Friday via voting-by-mail, where 14 delegates will be awarded to the candidate(s) who maintain a threshold of 15 percent or above.

Update on NEXT: When I wrote this, I didn't realize until after when I wrote about Ohio as the next primary state that I COMPLETELY skipped over Wyoming, which will have its vote Friday, and then Ohio will be next. As a result, I decided to delete Ohio's write-in and will re-post it under this category in the course of my next blog and wrote a quick blurb about Wyoming instead. The Wyoming blog will be this weekend.

Coronavirus and the road ahead to 2020, or where do we go from here?

This is an unusual blog post. I am doing a special one about where the election stands as of now. Several states have issued a mandatory stay-at-home lockdown in the past three weeks, and with the pandemic looking like its not going away soon and as the death toll count rises, the state of the presidential race is on hold at the moment with the remaining states either rescheduling or cancelling the in-person voting. The below is a pic taken from the Wikipedia age on the 2020 election and the states whose primaries are called into question:

Since the last primary took place on March 17, not much has been going on in terms of the race itself. We were supposed to have four more states voting between March 29-April 4. All of hem have been rescheduled with the majority of in-ballot voting cancelled due to fears of the Pandemic. The DNC has adopted an initiative where instead of showing up to cast their votes in a polling station, the constituents can mail-in their ballots and have their voting that way. Wisconsin will be the second state to do this when it begins its primary on April 7 (this Tuesday), but the deadline has been extended until April 13. The April 13th counts as their official Primary Day, and that also means that none of the official results shall be issued until then. So we will be in the dark for the next six days as people cast their votes.

ffor the next six days, we won’t know who will win the 84 of the 97 pledged delegates, but sources indicate that Joe Biden is leading the way against Bernie Sanders. Bernie single-handedly won that state in the runoff to the 2016 election.

While Alaska, Hawaii, and Wyoming did start their primary on April 4, 2020, they have now changed their formats to having the mail-in ballot system. Alaska becomes the first state under this new system, as long as their ballots must be received by the 10th. Fifteen of the 19 pledged delegates will be awarded then.

And also, the Democratic National Convention has also been postponed from July to August. (Talk about a great way to start what appears to be my HECTIC fall semester at DVC.)

There is another problem, however, as of late yesterday and that concern He-Shall-Not-Be-Named who is occupying the Oval Office (and must be guaranteed off to be disinfected once he leaves).

Trump doesn’t want mail-in voting to take place. when asked, his response was that “people cheat with mail-in voting” believing that they “should vote with ID - voter ID. I think voter ID is very important. And the reason they don't want voter ID is because they intend to cheat.” He also wants to try and do away with the election given the fact that, in his mind, he views that he is a wartime president and that we do not need an election during a time of crisis.

Mr. Trump is wrong on all accounts.

Fist of all, the voting ID thing is inadmissible. It is the same as voting in-person and fraud cannot be committed. He will say anything to help his re-election chances, just like he got out of the Vietnam War by claiming bone spurs.

And second, there have been presidential elections during the conflict of the Civil War, the two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the ongoing War on Terror. Below is the analysis of the presidential election year taken place during a war and the result. The following is a short guide of presidential elections during wartime. This doesn't count the American Revolutionary War, in which there was no president until 1788-89 where George Washington was the first president of the United States, winning with ununanimous support from the thirteen colonies.

1864: Abraham Lincoln (R) won with 22 states and an electoral count of 212 to George B. McClellan’s (D) 21. (You needed to have an electoral count of 118 to win)
1916: Woodrow Wilson (D) easily won against his challenger Charles Evans Hughes (R) in a tight race: 277-254 (out of the 266 electoral votes needed to win)
1940: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D) easily defeated his opponent Wendell Wallace with an electoral vote count of 449-82 (out of the 266 electoral votes needed to win). His unprecedented third term was looming on the heels of World War II as the U.S. was getting itself ou under the heels of thee Great Depression.)
1944: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D) easily defeated his opponent Thomas Dewey (R) with an electoral vote count of 432-99 (out of the 266 electoral votes needed to win). Yes it’s THAT Thomas Dewey whose newspaper debacle was the humor of the 1948 election.
1968: Richard Nixon (R) defeated Hubert Humphrey (D) and third-party American Independent candidate George Wallace with a electoral vote count of 301-191-46. 270 electoral cvotes were needed in order to secure a victory (and one that would be the norm for future elections)
1972: Richard Nixon (R) won in a landslide victory against George McGovern (D), who ran on a platform to end the Vietnam War. Nixon won 60.7% of the popular vote and carried 49 states, with the final result being 520-17.
2004: George Bush (R) won against his distant cousin John Kerry (D). His popularity soared after the 9/11 attacks and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden was the primary focus of the election. It was a tight campaign, but in the end it was Bush who claimed victory with the result being 286-251.

The years of 1990-1991 saw the Persian Gulf war and George Bush’s father, George H.W.. Bush, as our nations 41st president. However, the war only lasted for six months, five weeks, and three days. Since it was only one of the shortest wars fought, and since it occured during a presidential term rather than an election season, it didn’t count. (If it was fought any time 1992, it might've been the source for a debate topic and therefore would've qualified as such.)

So that’s that. It has happened before, and American rose up to meet the challenge.

It’s only a matter of time before the next steps will be determined and which road we take as American citizens.

So when the Alaskan vote count comes in, I will still update you on where everything stands as the nation strives toward November.