Part 1. Scott Braddock, editor of the Quorum Report, reports on the situation in Texas.
Currently, there is a big fight in Texas about mail-in voting. The Harris County (Houston) clerk has sent out requests for mail in ballots to voters in the county. The Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme court has spoken of his support for this move, even though the indicted Texas Attorney General is suing The County Clerk for this. According to the statute in Texas, the reason for requesting a disability absentee ballot is defined by the voter. It will be an interesting court fight.
Trump and Biden are close in the opinion polls, and it may be that this court fight is an attempt to invalidate Harris county votes after the election takes place. The Republican party is sending out absentee ballot requests to non-Republicans. These requests have invalid/nonexistent return addresses.
HEB, a popular grocery chain, is supporting voting by educating voters, and with offers of providing voting drop boxes.
Part 2: Steffen Schmidt, Professor Emeritus at Iowa State University, “Dr. Politics. “
We discuss the situation in Iowa, which is disastrous.
Iowa is in the midst of a water shortage. The water system in DesMoines is polluted due to runoff from farms and feedlots.
The formerly well-respected medical school in the U of Iowa is being sidetracked. When Iowa needed a way to track Covid cases, a company whose leader is a friend of Ashton Kutcher, the actor, was given a $25M no-bid contract to perform this task, even though they had no experience. As protest to this, and other state actions, a sickout was launched.
Covid Cases are not being counted accurately, and decisions are being made on bad data. There is a high positive rate, especially among students. The governor waffled on allowing college football games, then reversing that decision, and now games will be played to empty stadiums.. Tailgating is still happening, though this spreads the virus. People are becoming increasingly more careless. Senator Joni Ernst has adopted a Qanon meme that health care workers are overcounting covid cases, and this is fueling a dismissal of true medical information. This is also feeding into the disinformation barrage about protests and “riots”.
