State Elections Watch: A Primer on What I’m Watching (Part 1/2)
The midterms are nigh upon us. If you live in the D.C. metro area, there’s a chance that you’ve already voted — nearly 16,000 Washingtonians had already cast their ballots as of 5:00 pm on October 29, 2018. In addition to D.C., 36 states either have provisions for early voting or ‘no-excuse’ absentee voting or both, essentially allowing millions of voters to cast their ballots before Election Day 2018 (November 6).
According to Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, millions of voters have already voted in the 2018 midterm elections, considerably exceeding the number of ballots cast at this point in the 2014 midterms. In some jurisdictions, 2018 ballots cast have exceeded totals for the entire 2014 election, prompting quite a bite of speculation about which party benefits from this development— I’ll leave that exercise to bettin’ folks.)
Still, while Election Day will see most of the nation glued to quivering needles, John King passionately pointing at a large, red-and-blue map, or poring over homemade Bayesian electoral models, the final results — or even just the definitive preliminary results — may not be available until late in the day, or even days after November 6th. As this excellent WaPo piece by Bonnie Berkowitz and Shelly Tan lays out, the reliance of some jurisdictions on early voting and absentee/vote-by-mail ballots means that ballots can come in as late as three days after the last in-person ballot (in California) or a full 15 days later (in Alaska).
While a multi-day waiting period is pretty unlikely and a two-plus-week wait is a basically impossible scenario for determining the partisan control of the House, Senate, gubernatorial races, and most state legislatures, it’s conceivable that these electoral dynamics could cause delays at the local level. For example, it could be some time until provisional ballots are added to close vote tallies for California’s numerous ballot initiatives, or in several Maine elections; run-off provisions in Georgia could delay the declaration of a winner in the state’s hotly contested gubernatorial race until December 10th.
election night? Not so fast …” Washington Post; Published October 29, 2018.
So what, pray tell, are you to do while the slow gears of democracy churn and whir their way to a result? If your answer was something along the lines of ‘patiently wait with baited breath and follow the developments of pivotal state and local contests,’ you are absolutely correct. Here are a few to get you started:
1. Georgia’s gubernatorial election.
Georgia’s gubernatorial election between Stacey Abrams, Brian Kemp, and Ted Metz has been gobbling up headlines for all the wrong reasons. The race, which features current Secretary of State Brian Kemp, has been profiled as an example of numerous electoral misdeeds from controversial voter purges to absentee ballot rejections and requiring the evacuation of a poll-bound bus full of elderly citizens because “Jefferson County Administration felt uncomfortable with allowing Senior Center patrons to leave the facility in a bus with an unknown third party.” (The “third party” is Black Lives Matter.)
With 1,188,634 ballots cast as of 7:00 pm on October 29, 2018, it appears that this race will break both early voting and overall election turnout records despite the chicanery from the Secretary of State’s office. Oh, and did I mention that former president Jimmy Carter just called for Kemp’s resignation?
2. Florida’s gubernatorial election.
Changing the pace a bit from election administration nuts-n-bolts, the Florida election has been a canine-themed clash of two well-funded campaigns featuring young candidates — a potential bellwether for future contests between an increasingly Trumpian GOP and more demonstrably progressive Democrats. (‘Canine-themed’ primarily due to the dog whistles coming from the Republican DeSantis and the now-viral debate takedown of DeSantis by his opponent, Fred Gillum: “A hit dog will holler… I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist. I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”)
The race is appealing in that it reflects potential paths forward for America’s two major parties that are growing more popular but still operate outside the true mainstream. Gillum, who received Bernie Sanders’s endorsement in the Democrat primary and campaigned on M4A, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and impeaching President Trump, is arguably as left in his positions as any Democrat who has yet to openly embrace socialism. Republican Ron DeSantis, who is less than one year older than his Democrat opponent, is patently opposite in just about every other way. While Gillum is prominently pushing his party to the left on the national stage, DeSantis is tripling down on a platform fundamentally indistinguishable from that of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential bid — indeed, the young Republican ran not just on the President’s planks but on the President himself, appearing on Fox or Fox Business 121 separate times from the beginning of his GOP primary race against Adam Putnam.
3. The other gubernatorial elections!
To be sure, there is a healthy smattering of other gubernatorial elections that will have far-reaching implications for state-level reproductive health legislation, criminal justice policies, and the ability of public employees to organize and collectively bargain. According to analysis by Ballotpedia, 25 of the 33 states with gubernatorial elections on November 6th are battleground elections — of these, 16 are currently held by Republicans.
According to FiveThirtyEight, poll averages indicate that 24 states will be governed by Democrats and 26 will be governed by Republicans, suggesting a post-2018 election shift towards the Democrats but not entirely to the Democrats. Still, fully 12 of the races forecast by FiveThirtyEight are functionally toss-ups, so the best preparation for November 6th is probably mixing in some patience with your coffee — these contests may not be determined until late in the evening.
4. New York State senate election.
New York State politics rose to prominence on the back of a hotly contested gubernatorial election between well-known but controversial incumbent governor Andrew Cuomo and Cynthia Nixon, whose background was in grassroots progressive organizing. Nixon was able to acquire the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) but was unable to win the Democratic Party nomination.
Still, a number of similarly progressive candidates (e.g., Julia Salazar) and some moderate candidates edged out six of the eight Democrats of the so-called Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) during the primaries. While the IDC officially disbanded in April 2018, the Conference had caucused with Republicans in the NY State Senate since 2016 and was primarily responsible for keeping the party’s legislation far short of the priorities of Democrats in similarly blue California.
All of the individuals who unseated IDC challengers as well as the two remaining members of the now-defunct Conference are running in districts that are leaning or are solidly Democrat, so the party is now likely looking at padding its majority in the twelve districts that are currently rated as having nearly even chances of falling to either Democrats or Republicans. Given that ten of the twelve are currently held by Republicans, there is a good chance that Democrats will increase their majority in the chamber — without a 2018 IDC-equivalent, Governor Cuomo is likely to face measurably more pressure to tackle the issues on progressives’ to-do lists.
