MILWAUKEE, WIS - Milwaukee County will run 31,000 absentee ballots through counting machines again after “human error” left the doors of the machines unsealed during an initial count.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported:

Milwaukee’s central count location will rerun about 31,000 ballots after a “sealing” error with the tabulation machines was discovered at the downtown site, potentially delaying a final count by one to three hours, city spokesman Jeff Fleming said.

“It’s just out of an abundance of caution. We have no reason to believe that there was any compromise to any of the machines,” Fleming. “But because they were not fully sealed — human error — and not fully sealed, we are going to zero them all out again … and then rerun the balance that had already been processed.”

Caroline Reinwald, a spokesperson for the Milwaukee Election Commission, said that the doors had not been properly closed for the tabulation machines.

Reported about the problem circulated on social media as well. Click here to read more.

 

NEW YORK, NY - CNN anchor Jake Tapper appeared stunned Tuesday during a live broadcast as early polling data revealed a dramatic 20-point shift among independent voters in Georgia toward former President Donald Trump compared to what President Joe Biden got in 2020.

During CNN’s “Election Night in America” coverage, Tapper seemed surprised by the results of Georgia’s exit poll centers for independent voters who now favor Trump by 11 points. These results are a dramatic reversal from the 9-point advantage Biden held four years ago.

“Independent voters, they make up 31% of the electorate, that is a slightly larger share than what they made up four years ago. Trump is winning them by 11 points in these early exit poll results, 54% to 30%,” David Chalian told Tapper. ” Jake, four years ago, Joe Biden won independent voters in Georgia when he won the state by nine points, so we’ve seen a swing of 20 points towards Trump in terms of the margin, from a nine-point advantage four years ago with independence for Biden to now an 11-point advantage with independence.” Click here to read more.

 

WASHINGTON — A caravan of approximately 3,000 migrants marched toward the U.S. from Mexico Tuesday as Americans took to the polls to decide their next president, according to Reuters.

The migrants reportedly carried banners reading slogans like "NO MORE MIGRANT BLOOD.” Some also carried images of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a religious symbol important to many Mexicans.

"We want U.S. authorities to see us, to see that we are people who want to work, not to harm anyone," a Honduran migrant told Reuters.

He was reportedly joined by his two children and his pregnant wife.

Another migrant reportedly said they marched to draw the attention of the presidential candidates to their struggles. Click here to read more.

 

OMAHA, Neb. - More than a month after a fatal crash, a woman was formally charged with the deaths of four people, including her own children, after authorities said she was driving drunk at nearly 140 miles per hour at the time of the wreck.

Rachel Bickerstaff, a 33-year-old Omaha, Nebraska, woman, cried in her wheelchair during her court appearance on Thursday.

Bickerstaff was booked into the Douglas County Jail on Wednesday after being hospitalized for weeks in Kansas with severe burns. A warrant was issued for her while she was in the hospital.

State authorities asked that Bickerstaff’s bond be set at $5 million; the judge agreed to the request and scheduled her preliminary hearing for Dec. 9. Click here to read more.

 

CHICAGO — A Chicago police officer was shot and killed Monday night in East Chatham, according to Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling, who said the 26-year-old officer “gave his life for this city.”

“The wounds were too great for this officer to recover,” Snelling said, who called such policework unpredictable.

“There is a family suffering right now,” Snelling said, declining to immediately release the officer’s name.

Mayor Brandon Johnson called for the city to embrace the family of the officer, who was just shy of three years of service in the department.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with this family, and as the city of Chicago , we will rise again,” Johnson said. Click here to read more.

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WASHINGTON D.C. - With the election just five days away, the rhetoric from Democrat leaders and their allies has taken a distinct and ominous turn.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Democrat Party is actively preparing its constituency for what it perceives as an existential threat: a Republican victory next week.

Leading figures in the party, from the sitting president to the vice president and beyond, are cultivating a narrative that dehumanizes Republicans, primes their supporters for violent resistance, and sets the stage for a crisis that could threaten the very stability of the republic.

These efforts go hand-in-hand with a series of wargames, including the Democracy Futures Project held less than six months ago in Washington, D.C., where 175 of the most senior and influential government officials, academics, activists, governors, cabinet members, military officers, and grassroots leaders came together to normalize the concept of overturning the outcome of the presidential election if Donald Trump wins in November. Click here to read more.

 

LANSING, Mich - When Michigan created an election misinformation hotline, people flooded the email address with jokes, spam, and attacks on the hotline itself.

Almost all of the reports were from people attacking the hotline, signing it up for email lists, and sending offensive or apparently satirical material, according to a Michigan Capitol Confidential review of the 818 pages of complaints sent to the hotline from Aug. 1, 2024, through Aug. 7, 2024, the first week of the hotline’s operation. CapCon received the documents through a record request.

The Michigan Department of State announced the project in August. The hotline allows anyone to report what it calls “election misinformation” to the Department of State.

“The act of spreading misinformation about the election process, voter rights, or even an issue on the ballot is a serious threat to election security,” the department said. “These efforts – be they foreign, domestic, partisan, or simply malicious – are designed to sow mistrust in our elections process and are damaging to a healthy democracy.” Click here to read more.

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CHICAGO, IL - State test scores are in for Chicago Public Schools, and fewer than 1-in-3 students could read and fewer than 1-in-5 do math at their elementary grade level in 2024.

It was worse for the district’s 11th graders: fewer than 1 in 4 could read and math scores dropped nearly a percentage point from 2023.

The Illinois Report Card released Oct. 30 showed 30.5% of CPS students in third through eighth grade read at grade level in 2024 compared to 25.9% the previous school year. Math proficiency increased to 18.3% in 2024 from 17.5% in 2023.

Among Chicago’s 11th graders, only 22.4% could read at grade level in 2024 and 18.6% performed math proficiently, up just one-tenth of a percentage point in reading since the previous school year and down nearly one percentage point in math. Both reading and math proficiency for Chicago 11th graders remained below 2019 levels.

Absenteeism continued to hover well above the pre-pandemic rate of 24% in 2019 as Chicago schools continue to struggle to engage students, especially minority and low-income students. That means 1 in 4 CPS student missed 10% or more of the school year.

While the data reveals some gains, there is still more to be done. The district must make up for the learning losses and disengagement suffered by students after school closures during the pandemic, plus ensure every Chicago student is engaged and prepared to read and perform math at grade level. Click here to read more.

 

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who took in an orphaned squirrel and made it a social media star vowed Saturday that New York state's decision to seize and euthanize the animal "won't go unheard."

We will make a stance on how this government and New York state utilizes their resources," Mark Longo said in a phone interview.

He declined to specify his possible next steps but said officials would hear from him soon about what happened to Peanut the squirrel and Fred, a rescued raccoon that was also confiscated and put down.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation took the animals Wednesday from Longo's home and animal sanctuary in rural Pine City, near the Pennsylvania border. The agency said it had gotten complaints that wildlife was being kept illegally and potentially unsafely.

State law requires people to get a license if they wish to own a wild animal. Longo has said he was working to get Peanut — also known as P'Nut or PNUT — certified as an educational animal. Click here to read more.

 

LOS ANGELES, CALIF - Imane Khelif, an Olympic boxer from Algeria who won a gold medal in the women’s division at the 2024 Summer Olympics, is confirmed to be a biological male with a sex development condition, according to a French journalist who obtained a medical report, Reduxx reported Monday.

Over the summer, Khelif dominated the Paris Olympics, winning every single round and every single judge’s card in the welterweight women’s division, despite failing gender tests in 2019 and 2023.

A copy of the alleged medical report says an MRI determined, “Khelif had no uterus, but instead had internal testicles and a ‘micropenis’ resembling an enlarged clitoris,” Reduxx reported. The fighter also has XY chromosomes and testosterone levels typical of males.

The French journalist, Djaffar Air Aoudia, also said the test suggests Khelif’s parents are possibly blood relatives. Click here to read more.