Why some midterm races are still too close to call

Let's talk a little more about what we saw last week. We're now five days removed from the midterm elections, and yet the votes are still being counted in places like Alaska and Mississippi. That is where my next guest comes in. Diane Nissenbaum from VoteBeat is live with us here on Weekend Live. Diane, it's good to see you again. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. Let's talk about what we've seen so far. And I want to talk first and foremost, because the last time you joined us here on Fox 5, we were discussing the mechanisms leading up to the election. Would the SAVE Act affect registration? That obviously did not come to pass. We have not seen, at least nothing that we've seen on our level, maybe you have from your reporting, any widespread concerns set forth by any of the candidates about irregularities in the vote counts. Yeah, I think that has largely passed. We are seeing, I think, in some corners, some conspiracy theories popping up. But, you know, there was kind of a sense that you heard from the White House. I saw a quote in a story that it was, quote unquote, too big to rig, which is the sense that the Democrats swept so decisively across the nation in so many places It was it was clear that there was no sort of narrow vote rigging or tampering in any places. And when, you know, there's decisive races in Republican controlled states like Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, that doesn't suggest if it's in the hands of Republicans that Democrats are really able to steal the vote. The one conversation that we continue to have years after it was implemented was ranked choice voting here in D.C. They rolled it out for the first time this year. It has been the law of the land in Alaska for the last few cycles. And that's one of the reasons we don't know if Daniel S. Sullivan will hold on to his job in the United States Senate or if Mary Paltola may take that seat. She is leading in the count right now, but it could still be some time before that election is settled, right? Yeah, there's a couple of things in Alaska. Alaska is just so big and there are rural areas where it takes many days to get the votes back to central counting. So Alaska has a long lead time. It allows votes to come in several days after election day. It's going to take some time. And then in Alaska, they do have ranked choice voting. And they don't actually start that process until the end of this week, once the votes come in. And so there's a delay in getting the votes. And then there's going to be the start of the ranked choice voting. And there, it's really interesting. That's interesting. The New York Times actually did a very great story looking at the numbers. They are able to see how people rank their choices. And right now, Mary Patola. He's in the lead very narrowly over the Senate incumbent, Dan Sullivan. In third place, there's a third Republican or a second Republican in the race who has, I think, about 4000 votes. And then in last place is kind of the second Dan Sullivan, who's the focus of all of this scrutiny and the allegations that the Democrats put him on the ballot to confuse voters. And when they've looked at the rank choice voting. The people who put the alternate Dan Sullivan. First, put Mary Peltola second. So when they get to rank choice voting, it does look like Mary Peltola will be the winner, but we still have to wait and see how that plays out. Yeah, and rank choice voting, I believe, was used for the first time in her initial election to Congress, where she ran against Sarah Palin, and I think there were about two or three dozen other candidates on that, and that's why they do the rank choice, because they winnow it down to four and then two from that point. Okay. Let's talk Mississippi. This is a state that I don't know if many people had this one on their radar. You have in the race for Senate, the incumbent city, Cindy Hyde-Smith, who has run, I believe this is her second time running for a full term. It was always close for her because there is a large Democratic registration contingent in Mississippi in spite of the fact that they've trended red for years and years and years. Then you have Scott Colombe, and the story behind him is fascinating because here's a guy, a prosecutor, who was in line for a federal judgeship. The state's one Republican senator, Roger Wicker, favored the nomination. Cindy Hyde-Smith put a stop on it, and now that margin, which was at about a couple of dozen the day after the election, is now at about 2,000 votes. When can we expect some movement there? Yeah, there's a lot of complications in Mississippi. We're still waiting. They basically have a large number of provisional ballots there that they are counting. Mississippi was using some new credit data that was removing voters from the rolls inappropriately. And so they've They've had to go in. And cast provisional ballots and the need to make sure that those people were allowed to vote. And so they're counting those. And you're right that that has been trending in the Democrats favor over the days since the election. I was I was talking today to an to an official in Mississippi and I was asking, like, what? You know, this is such a race that came out of left field. And and he said, yeah, you know, people are really hurting there. And there was a fascinating ad that ran in Mississippi. where, um, uh, the incumbent Senator was saying that, well, if you're hurting and people were talking about the cost of meat, uh, and she said, choose another protein. Yeah. And Scott and Scott colon turned that into an ad where he said, choose another protein, choose another Senator. And that really seems to have been one of the most potent ads of the, of the campaign. Yeah. I, there was some colorful language used, I think at least the online version of that, but, uh, uh, Hey, uh, so you are, you're on your way to Mississippi next, right? I am. I'm heading there tomorrow and we're going to be checking out the provisional ballots, the counting there and going up into Faulkner country, William Faulkner country to see how they're planning, working things out. They don't actually have a recount statute there for the U.S. Senate race. So there's no way for either candidate to really request a recount. So we're looking at this kind of the underlying elections process. The both sides are putting up some legal challenges. There are long lines, there's disputes over the provisional ballots, and so this could play out for a time, but at the moment, it does look like Colon's got the edge. We'll keep our eyes on that one, and Diane, you and your colleagues at VoteBeat have been a great resource as we've been following these midterms. We'll talk to you soon. We really appreciate it.