Check Out Part 1 of Truthdig’s 2016 Election Coverage (Multimedia)

As we report the incoming election results on our Live Blog, take a look at our blog entries from earlier Tuesday night.

6:08 p.m. PST: An update from the contested state of North Carolina (via NBC News):

The North Carolina board of elections has extended voting hours at several Durham County precincts after technical problems caused lengthy delays earlier in the day,

The board voted to extend hours by sixty minutes each at the Bethesda and Cole Mill sites, and by shorter amounts at other locations. Polls were originally scheduled to close at 7:30 p.m.

A state court on Tuesday evening denied a lawsuit filed by voting rights groups asking for a 90-minute extension for all sites across the county.

Some voters faced excessive wait time after electronic poll books stopped working and the county switched to paper books. The switch also prevented the precincts from printing out new “Authorization to Vote” forms, voting rights advocates have said. They said some voters were turned away and told to come back later.

5:57 p.m. PST: The “hold your nose and vote” thing isn’t just a campaign season trope to hang headlines on—it’s a full-fledged phenomenon. In fact, it has lasted through Election Day, as the Associated Press discovered Tuesday:

Americans held their noses as they picked a new president on Tuesday: More than half of voters cast their ballots with reservations about their candidate or because they disliked the others running.

That was true both for those backing Democrat Hillary Clinton and those supporting Republican Donald Trump, according to preliminary results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.

After a long, hard-fought campaign, just 4 out of 10 voters strongly favored their candidate.

That’s a shift from 2012, when about two-thirds of voters said they were voting because they strongly favored their candidate.

Other findings from the exit poll:

WOMEN’S ISSUES VS. EMAIL ISSUES

After all of the sound and fury over Trump’s treatment of women, it turned out the issue bothered half of all voters a lot — and women were more concerned about it than men.

About 6 in 10 women were bothered a lot, compared to about 4 in 10 men, the exit poll found.

5:37 p.m. PST: Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool put together a spreadsheet listing 37 ballot initiatives from 17 states that he is updating throughout the evening. What all the tracked initiatives share in common: corporate funding. In each instance, corporate money has been funneled into efforts to either support or defeat the initiative in question.

As of this posting, Amendment 1 in Florida had been defeated. The state with the most on the line? That would be California, with five propositions being decided on the ballot.

5:22 p.m. PST: CNN has positioned Clinton 20 electoral votes ahead of Trump. The Washington Post hasn’t included all the same states in its status report, which for the moment finds Trump slightly ahead. The paper, however, pointed out that races in key battleground states are still too close to call.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press pointed out that, while Trump has taken Tennessee, even that state’s own homegrown candidate, Al Gore, couldn’t win there in 2000. 

5:03 p.m. PST: The Washington Post has filled in Oklahoma in red on its map, and the same outlet is calling Massachusetts, Delaware, Washington, D.C. and Maryland in Clinton’s favor. Their tally projects that Clinton claims 44 electoral votes thus far, while Trump racks up 31.

5:00 p.m. PST: More while-we-wait fodder: Wonder how all these votes get tallied, reported and certified? This article does the legwork to lay out how it all comes together.

4:57 p.m. PST: Donald Trump used a familiar word in his response to the news that former President George W. Bush had not voted for him: “sad.”

4:48 p.m. PST: News from the Senate races: Rand Paul’s hold on his Kentucky seat is looking firm. The North Carolina contest between Deborah Ross and Richard Burr is close, with CBS reporting that Democrat Ross besting Burr by a slim margin. Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Kentucky is also favored to win his re-election bid. Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, is projected to win in his home state, and Republican Tim Scott is slated for victory in South Carolina.

4:43 p.m. PST: Trump takes West Virginia. Ongoing election results, CNN-style (caveat emptor) are being tracked on this page.

4:36 p.m. PST: And now, a little levity: We put out a line on Twitter for suggestions about how to caption the photo, which of course went viral, of a rather ghastly looking cake made loosely in Donald Trump’s image being wheeled into Trump Tower earlier today (sadly, the cake didn’t make it past security). These inspired social media users weighed in:

Caption this? https://t.co/pcPVkoMazN

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) November 8, 2016

@Truthdig pic.twitter.com/Tt0egl1Oyx

— Brett Chamberlin (@99Brett) November 8, 2016

@Truthdig @jasonvolack @ABC
“Chocolate filling?..No, just rage with a dash of despair…”

— Spar Krikorian (@MessianicX_777) November 8, 2016

@Truthdig @jasonvolack @ABC “Whaddya mean I only got 27 electoral votes?..EAT ME!”

— Spar Krikorian (@MessianicX_777) November 8, 2016

@Truthdig “Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god.”

— /r/the_chomsky (@cvmbvster) November 8, 2016

@Truthdig @jasonvolack @ABC Looks like the baker got Trump’s post-election expression just right!

— Spar Krikorian (@MessianicX_777) November 8, 2016

@Truthdig ???? Just eat it! Just eat it! ????????

— ?Local 2406? (@afscme2406) November 8, 2016

@Truthdig @jasonvolack @ABC I’m betting the Baker won’t get paid

— Steve Bowley (@SMBowley) November 8, 2016

4:25 p.m. PST: If it seems like more Election Day projections and exit poll results were announced earlier in the day in previous go-rounds, there’s a reason, as Variety reported Tuesday:

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, and the Associated Press are sticking with their commitment not to report results of exit-poll information in a particular state until voting has closed there. But there will be a tidal wave of data and anecdotal information flowing in throughout the day, including from a new venture that promises to give a real-time readout of the way things are trending.

This year, a group called VoteCastr has teamed with Slate to provide real-time voter information based not on exit polls but on analytics and turnout tracking. VoteCastr’s editorial director and chief strategist, Sasha Issenberg, says the service is providing information that campaigns can rely on internally. He has called the networks’ embargo on information a “de facto self-imposed gag order,” and says it only makes sense to provide this information in real time.

… Ever since NBC News, relying on exit-poll data, called the 1980 presidential race for Ronald Reagan at 8:15 pm ET, when polls were still open across the country, the networks have been under scrutiny over when and how they call a particular state for a candidate. After that year, some members of Congress put pressure on the major networks to withhold declaring a winner until the polls have closed, and the networks have ever since adhered to keeping race projections under wraps until that time.

The issue arose again in 2004, when some early exit-poll data leaked online and was published by Drudge Report, giving a great deal of the world the idea that John Kerry was on his way to defeating President George W. Bush. Even many in Kerry’s campaign were convinced that their candidate would win.

Ever since the 2006 midterm elections, the information has been “quarantined” at an “undisclosed location,” as Joe Lenski, the co-founder and executive vice president of Edison Research puts it. His firm conducts the exit-polling information for the six news organizations, called the National Election Pool.

Only a handful of media representatives are allowed to be at the “undisclosed location” as the data comes in, Lenski says, and they have to surrender their communication devices. “No cell phones, laptops, smoke signals, nothing,” he says. The journalists can get their devices back at 5 p.m. ET; even then, the networks have released only exit-poll data about topics such as the makeup of the electorate and voter sentiment toward certain issues.

Here’s the link to Slate/VoteCastr’s real-time coverage, for those who can’t wait. According to their analytics, Hillary Clinton is “looking good in Florida”—but given what happened in 2000, it’s probably best not to get too confident about the Sunshine State. 

4:18 p.m. PST: While we’re awaiting more news from closing polls around the country, here’s a helpful breakdown from across the pond, courtesy of the U.K.’s The Independent, of the 15 states that matter most in this election.

And for those still able to process yet another U.S. map color-coded to indicate important election-related information, have a look at this one from Politico showing the times when polling concludes in each state.

4:12 p.m. PST: It begins: CNN is projecting that Donald Trump will take Indiana and Kentucky, while Hillary Clinton has Vermont in the bag. That gives Trump 19 electoral votes to Clinton’s 3.

—Posted by Kasia Anderson

3:58 p.m. PST: A tragic piece of news from earlier this afternoon: one person was killed and several others were wounded after a “heavily armed” shooter attacked a polling station in Azusa, Ca. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Few details were released about the shooting, which occurred sometime after 2 p.m. in a residential neighborhood in the area of Fourth Street and Orange Avenue, said Officer Jerry Willison of the Azusa Police Department.

“This is a very volatile and critical situation,” he said.

Willison declined to provide the location of the shooting for the safety of the officers and the victims, he said.

Azusa police urged residents to stay out of the area and asked all residents to shelter in place.

3:53 p.m. PST: Truthdig’s own Bill Boyarsky provides some insight into the day as polls begin to close:

The large voter turnout around the country, including Latino voters, was the surprising election day news as the polls were closing.  Some commentators noted the irony of Donald Trump possibly being stopped by a Latino wall if he loses.

Even my precinct in heavily Democratic and little uncontested Los Angeles had 80 people lining up before the polls opened.  All day, television showed long lines in front of polling places, scenes made more dramatic by cameras shooting images from drones.  Nobody knows what the large turnout means—Latinos,  African Americans and Asians opposed to anti-immigrant Trump or angry white men without college degrees who support the loudmouth billionaire.

But one thing it means is that this election struck a chord in America.  The cynicism of world weary commentators didn’t reflect how the country was feeling.

While waiting for returns, I checked out polling by the respected survey firm Latino Decisions. It predicted just before the election that up to 14.7 million Latinos would vote, more than 2012.  Another Latino survey found Hispanics would vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump 76 percent to 14 percent.

3:40 p.m. PST: Some breaking news out of North Carolina, according to Reuters:

A North Carolina advocacy group on Tuesday filed a lawsuit asking that polls in Durham County be kept open until 9 p.m. after problems with electronic voting rolls there earlier in the day, according to a court filing provided by the group.

Democracy North Carolina filed the case in a state court, shortly before the state board of elections is set to decide whether voting in Durham County should be extended.

We’ll provide updates as they come in.

3:32 p.m. PST: Where are the candidates right now? Let’s do a quick run-through.

Donald Trump is currently in Trump Tower, which is surrounded by dump trucks filled with sand in an effort to defend against any terrorist attacks. Although many hoped he would be eating a slice of cake from his own head, the eerie look-alike dessert has reportedly been removed from Trump Tower:

The @realDonaldTrump head was a cake & told it was a gift. #TrumpCake was whisked away by security out of #TrumpTower #ElectionDay pic.twitter.com/zuJsAPwvSL

— Katherine Lam (@byKatherineLam) November 8, 2016

However, Trump’s campaign may be snacking on some chocolate-chip cookies, according to the Trump campaign’s Director of African-American Outreach, Theresa “Omarosa” Manigault. She also said that Trump is feeling “real chill today”:

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has reportedly “left her home in Chappaqua, New York and is headed to The Peninsula Hotel to watch results.”

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian nominee for president, is getting ready for a voting party, according to his campaign’s Snapchat:

And it’s unclear where the Green Party’s Jill Stein is at this exact moment, but her campaign is hosting an Election Night livestream starting in just a few hours.

3:15 p.m. PST: Another update on voters facing issues at the polls, this time in North Carolina. Alternet states:

The NAACP reports that, early this morning, “the North Carolina State Board of Elections instructed the Durham County Board of Elections to use paper poll books instead of electronic poll books. This abrupt change led to some voters being turned away from certain precincts this morning and in some precincts throughout the day.”

According to the civil rights organization, the problem has since been rectified. “Our understanding is that all precincts now have all the supplies needed to function with paper poll books and we are calling on all Durham voters to persevere in voting,” the NAACP said in a press statement. In light of this issue, the organization is calling on voters to “persevere,” including by returning to cast ballots.

This afternoon, in certain parts of Colorado, the voter registration system went down. It was offline for almost half an hour, but the issue has since been resolved:

MEDIA: Voter registration system went down 29 minutes, 2:47 p.m. to 3:16 p.m. It is back up now. We are investigating. #copolitics

— Lynn Bartels (@lynn_bartels) November 8, 2016

MEDIA: During the 29-minute outage, Coloradans were still able to vote.  #copolitics

— Lynn Bartels (@lynn_bartels) November 8, 2016

Also, an alleged case of voter intimidation has been resolved:

3:01 p.m. PST: Brace yourselves: the first exit polls are expected to hit any minute. Before that happens, let’s take a look at some other numbers.

According to the Los Angeles Times, a record-breaking 135 million people will vote in the election. However, while this number would top the 2012 election—in which 129 million peoples voted—it would not break the record for the percentage of eligible voters casting a vote.

FiveThirtyEight states that Clinton has a 71.4% chance of beating Trump.

Speaking of Trump, many key Republicans are withholding their presidential votes:

Looking for a breather from all of this election coverage? Take a look at Bon Appetit’s piece on how mainstream media players are going to unwind (warning: it involves copious amounts of alcohol.)

2:02 p.m. PST: Have you gotten any freebies thanks to your “I Voted” sticker? If so, you’re not alone.

Businesses across the country are giving out free items to anyone with an “I Voted” sticker. Those items include pie, breadsticks, ice cream and even “F—- Donald Trump” bagels.

However, as The New York Times recently reported, “[a]ll those giveaways are technically against the law.”

But there is one exception: transportation. “It is common for political groups, churches and others to provide voters a free lift to the polls on Election Day,” the Times notes. Indeed, companies like Lyft and Uber are pitching in to help people get to the polls, and other ride services (like the one by VotoLatino) and free public transportation are abundant as well.

While usually the freebie comes after the vote, sometimes it works the other way around. Rapper and activist Chance the Rapper recently threw a free concert in Chicago that ended with a massive parade to nearby early voting stations:

1:42 p.m. PST: Truthdig contributor Sonali Kolhatkar just wrapped up a live video conversation with musician Michael Franti on staying hopeful during the election. Watch the full video below:

1:33 p.m. PST: In a brief telephone interview on Fox News, Trump states that he’s heard reports of voter fraud:

However, voters are reporting a different sort of problem at the polls: long lines and technical difficulties. ABC News reports that voters faced “routine” issues “that come every four years, like the lines, machines not working properly, and issues with ballots or voter rolls.”

It gives examples of these types of voting problems in New Jersey, Texas, Utah and North Carolina, to name a few.

Voter intimidation is also a common worry among those heading to the polls on Election Day. Truthdig’s Sonali Kolhatkar reported on a potential instance of Trump supporters purposely slowing down the voting process for others.

One Twitter user shared an alleged instance of voter intimidation in Florida, a crucial state for the Clinton and Trump campaigns:

In fact, Florida may be facing a high amount of voter intimidation, according to Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “In Florida we continue to receive a substantial amount of complaints about voter intimidation,” she told The Washington Post. In Miami-Dade County, for instance, she says there have been reports of people “yelling, people using megaphones aggressively” at polling stations.

Additionally, there have been reports of voter intimidation in Michigan:

In light of these worrisome reports, many outlets are sharing basic information on how voters can protect themselves at the polls. Check out the American Civil Liberties Union guide here.

1:00 p.m. PST: Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has released a statement in regard to today’s election. He states:

The right to receive and impart true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaks – an organization that has a staff and organizational mission far beyond myself. Our organization defends the public’s right to be informed.

This is why, irrespective of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election, the real victor is the US public which is better informed as a result of our work.

The US public has thoroughly engaged with WikiLeaks’ election related publications which number more than one hundred thousand documents. Millions of Americans have pored over the leaks and passed on their citations to each other and to us. It is an open model of journalism that gatekeepers are uncomfortable with, but which is perfectly harmonious with the First Amendment.

Assange goes on to address the criticisms of WikiLeaks—namely, that the organization has been harming the Clinton campaign. Assange states:

We publish material given to us if it is of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical importance and which has not been published elsewhere. When we have material that fulfills this criteria, we publish. We had information that fit our editorial criteria which related to the Sanders and Clinton campaign (DNC Leaks) and the Clinton political campaign and Foundation (Podesta Emails). No-one disputes the public importance of these publications. It would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to withhold such an archive from the public during an election.

At the same time, we cannot publish what we do not have. To date, we have not received information on Donald Trump’s campaign, or Jill Stein’s campaign, or Gary Johnson’s campaign or any of the other candidates that fufills our stated editorial criteria. As a result of publishing Clinton’s cables and indexing her emails we are seen as domain experts on Clinton archives. So it is natural that Clinton sources come to us. …

This is not due to a personal desire to influence the outcome of the election. The Democratic and Republican candidates have both expressed hostility towards whistleblowers. I spoke at the launch of the campaign for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, because her platform addresses the need to protect them. This is an issue that is close to my heart because of the Obama administration’s inhuman and degrading treatment of one of our alleged sources, Chelsea Manning. But WikiLeaks publications are not an attempt to get Jill Stein elected or to take revenge over Ms Manning’s treatment either.

Publishing is what we do. To withhold the publication of such information until after the election would have been to favour one of the candidates above the public’s right to know.

Finally, Assange addresses allegations that WikiLeaks’ publications are inaccurate. “[I]f WL reacted to every false claim, we would have to divert resources from our primary work,” he states. “Wikileaks remains committed to publishing information that informs the public, even if many, especially those in power, would prefer not to see it. WikiLeaks must publish. It must publish and be damned.”

Read the entire statement here.

12:36 p.m. PST: Photos of Clinton and Trump voting are making the rounds on social media. First, Clinton’s campaign shared this image via Snapchat of the former secretary of state casting her vote:

Meanwhile, the Internet is having a field day with a photo of Trump and his wife Melania casting their own votes—in the image, it appears as though Trump is looking over his shoulder at his wife’s ballot:

See the problem with @realDonaldTrump copying Melania’s ballot is that Melania copied hers from Michelle Obama. pic.twitter.com/b95l3oTo6L

— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) November 8, 2016

The Daily Show shared what appeared to be a similar photo of Eric Trump taking a peek at his wife’s ballot:

Also, Gary Johnson has cast his vote, after campaigning around New Mexico in a Cubs hat—or as he puts it, “the underdog cap.”

And, although he’s no longer running, Sen. Bernie Sanders also shared a photo of himself at the polls:

12:25 p.m. PST: Earlier, we posted about people lining up at Susan B. Anthony’s grave to pay their respects. It appears that many voters are making an additional statement by placing their “I Voted” stickers on the late activist’s headstone:

12:17 p.m. PST: We’re about halfway through the day, and news outlets are looking to exit polls for a glimpse into voters’ mindsets. But how accurate are exit polls?

The NPR Politics Podcast team examines the science of exit polls with Courtney Kennedy, director of survey research at Pew Research Center, in the clip below:

12:07 p.m. PST: Some breaking news out of Nevada: a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign on Monday, alleging that early-voting polling places in Nevada remained open later than allowed last Friday, has been denied by a federal judge.

“The suit, filed in state court, claims people who were not in line when polls closed at some Las Vegas locations were able to vote on Friday,” CNBC reports. “Nevada law allows people already waiting when the polls close to cast ballots.”

Here is a portion of the Clark County Judge Gloria Sturman’s remarks to the Trump campaign lawyer:

Vanity Fair adds that after finishing her statement, Sturman told the lawyer, “Thank you, sit down.”

—Posted by Emma Niles

11:28 a.m. PST: At 12 p.m. PST today, join Truthdig contributor Sonali Kolhatkar for a live-streamed interview on Facebook with Michael Franti “about not letting the election depress you.”

10:26 a.m. PST: After hearing the speech Michelle Obama gave in response to lewd remarks Donald Trump made on a decade-old “Access Hollywood” recording, right-wing media personality Glenn Beck, who once called the president a Marxist and racist, with a “deep-seated hatred for white people,” told The New Yorker that he’s come to admire the Obamas, that he considers himself a supporter of the Movement for Black Lives and that Trump’s “alt-right” supporters, ideological kin of people to whom Beck spent two years fearmongering from a once-popular show on Fox News, “scare the hell out of me.”

USA TODAY reports:

I did a lot of freaking out about Barack Obama,” Beck conceded to The New Yorker. He said he regrets calling the president a racist and he said he considers himself a Black Lives Matter supporter.

“There are things unique to the African-American experience that I cannot relate to,” Beck told The New Yorker. “I had to listen to them.” …

It’s been a long, strange road for Beck, who is searching for a new path. “So much of what I used to believe was either always a sham or has been made into a sham,” Beck told The New Yorker. “There’s nothing deep.”

10:01 a.m. PST:

I’m an Orthodox Jewish Immigrant My vote is private. Dedicated in honor of US CPT Khan, his devotion makes (religious) freedom possible pic.twitter.com/httaaUspeM

— Yosef Rapaport (@YosefRapaport) November 8, 2016

9:55 a.m. PST: More observations of the social consequences of this election.

People losing friends over #Clinton vs. #Trump, but guess who’s not gonna stop being friends? The Clintons and the Trumps.

— George Ciccariello (@ciccmaher) November 8, 2016

9:43 a.m. PST:

pic.twitter.com/0aENy4a9PE

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) November 8, 2016