What A Day - Betting On The Nevada Caucus

Episode Date: February 21, 2020

The Nevada caucuses are on Saturday. It’s the third contest in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary and the first where voters of color will have a huge say in the outcome. We tell you everything you need to know about the “Big Bad Battle In The Desert.”Nine people are dead following a shooting at two hookah bars in Germany on Wednesday. It’s the latest in a tragic pattern of white supremacist violence in the country. And in headlines: Victoria’s Secret goes private, UC Santa Cruz grad students are striking, and Russia is interfering to help Trump (again).

It's Friday, February 21st. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, your source for celebrity gossip about the 3D dog from Call of the Wild. I heard that the 3D dog dumped hot coffee on his assistant's head. I heard that the 3D dog poops with the bathroom door open. Power move. On today's show, an extremist attack in Germany, how that country is responding, then some headlines, but first, the Nevada caucuses. Viva Las Vegas! Viva Las Vegas!

Wonderful. Well, the Nevada caucuses are on Saturday. As you may have heard, it is the third contest in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and the first where voters of color will actually have a huge say in the outcome. As the day approaches, there have been some concerns about how smoothly it will run and when the results will actually be available, largely because Iowa was a disaster. But there are key differences in how these states count the vote and conduct the vote, including a significant early voting period in Nevada. So, Gideon, let's start there. What do we know about the early vote so far? Turnout is very high, which is an encouraging sign for everyone, I think. With the number of people participating in the four-day early voting period this week approaching the total turnout in the 2016 caucus when there wasn't early voting available.

So the early voting aspect is new to this year's caucus. According to the Nevada Democratic Party, they think that the total number could be around 77,000 or more once all the early votes are tallied. For comparison, there were about 84,000 total people who caucused in 2016. So that is pretty good. A party official also told CNN that more than 50% of those who cast these early ballots were first time caucus goers, which again, good for democracy, but

maybe a little tough for us because it makes it hard to know if there will be a fewer people that turn out during the actual caucus on Saturday or be whether the overall numbers when all is said and done are just going to be sky high and everyone will have to tally them really quickly. Well, here's hoping that a lot of people vote. So how is the actual day of the caucus going to work? Hopefully pretty well. Precinct check-ins start as early as 10 a.m. and caucusing actually begins at noon.

As was the case in Iowa, at the caucus locations, candidates must have the support of at least 15% of caucus goers and the first alignment to be viable for candidates who are not viable. Their supporters can move over to a viable candidate or try to reach viability by persuading people to be friends. They say, like, come over to my side. Candidates have to hit the 15% threshold both in congressional districts and statewide to receive a share of the state's delegates. And then we have to account for the early votes. Are you ready for this?

Probably not. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if I am either. So when voters cast those early ballots, they had to indicate on the ballot their first choice and at least two other choices. It's like a ranked voting system where, say, if you're completely sold on one person, you could go on the ballot and pick their name three times.

Or you could pick their name and then say uncommitted two times if you don't like anybody else. Or you could put the first choice and then have a couple after as your second and third. So those early vote ballots got routed to the voters home precinct. So they are going to be counted alongside the folks who go in person on Saturday. Basically, the binary is you can be the cool neighbor who gets to brag that your vote is already done. Or you can be the cool neighbor who gets to brag that your vote is already done, or you can be the guy who has to wake up before noon on a Saturday. The choice is yours. According to the Nevada Independent, a local news site,

a small percentage of the early voters, around 940, are being informed that when they filled out those ballots, they have now been voided. They must have likely made some sort of mistake in that selection process, like I was saying, and they need to come back Saturday if they want to participate. Now, to take a breath here, all these complicated steps, along with the reporting of three sets of results, like in Iowa, we get, you know, that first alignment vote total, the final alignment vote total, and our lovely friends, the delegate equivalents, has led DNC Chairman Tom Perez to not commit to having the

full results out on Saturday. After Iowa, they are all emphasizing that they want to be really, really, really accurate rather than just rush them out and be speedy. Yeah, if only we could have both. And we know after that Iowa debacle, Nevada abandoned its plan to use that same app. So what do we know about the technology that the state switched to just in the past couple of weeks? Well, they're calling it the Nifty Caucus Calculator. Good alliteration. The tool is a Google Forms program that is preloaded onto iPads with early vote results specific to the precinct.

It also has formulas that are used to calculate delegate allocation. Volunteers have been getting hands-on trainings with the iPads that are going to be used with the tool since Tuesday, and that's going to continue through Saturday. And according to the New York Times, when the caucuses are done, results are supposed to be submitted four times. There's a lot of math. I know, I know. Jesus Christ. Just to ensure that, you know, they have backups for everything. So the one is into the google forms the other is by phone to the nevada democratic party hotline through a photo of the reporting worksheet that is to be texted to the party and then a paper backup as well there is a lot of work for these

folks that are doing this sounds like they have a huge 61 page manual that has been given out with all the instructions so if you like homework you can go be a volunteer and if you signed up to be a volunteer you still have to go even after you have you read the 61 page that you can't renege now. We don't make the rules. There are also going to be a lot of officials from the DNC that are there on Saturday and a lot more people working on this and being on deck throughout the weekend. And in Nevada specifically, the other element that's going on is that, you know, the state party is very well regarded. And Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader and the most important Democrat in Nevada, is really eager to prove that this can work out well and easy, no complaints, in order to keep Nevada's early

state status and maybe even take over that Iowa number one spot. Wow, interesting. That's some cool stuff. Well, what else are we looking out for besides smoothly reported results, please? Yes, knock on wood. Public polling has shown Senator Sanders with a lead, sometimes a sizable one. And he has actually spent a decent amount of time in some of the upcoming Super Tuesday states that are early voting now. A sign of confidence from them. The other campaigns seem to think that he is in the lead. But again, these polls, it's a difficult state to poll. But as with the first few races, we'll be looking to see if A, Sanders does win, and if so, by how much in terms of the delegate math, and B, what the order of candidates are that are behind him, as a lot are looking to revive their campaigns,

improve their appeal outside of those majority white states. That's real. Well, we will talk to you again about Nevada on Monday's show. If you live in Nevada and haven't gotten out yet, go caucus. Elvis would love that for you. He would. You'd make him proud. Wednesday night in Hanau, a small city in Western Germany, a racist extremist opened fire at two hookah bars, killing nine mostly young people in Germany's worst mass shooting

in recent memory. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the suspect appeared to have acted out of, quote, right-wing extremist racist motives and described hatred as a, quote, poison in German society. This is yet another tragedy and took place in a city that many people might not be familiar with. Akilah, what can you tell us about the city itself? Yeah, so Hanau is 16 miles outside of Frankfurt in West Germany. It's diverse and small with just about, you know, 95,000 residents. But the diversity is really important to note because that's sort of the belief as to why these places were targeted. The two hookah bars where the shooting happened are popular with patrons

of Middle Eastern descent. Five of the victims held Turkish citizenship, and that's according to Turkey's state news agency. So this follows an uptick in far-right white supremacist violence worldwide, but specifically in Germany over the past few years. Can you talk through some of what's been happening there? Yeah. So last October, an anti-Semitic gunman attempted to attack a synagogue on Yom Kippur in eastern Germany in the city of Halle. He wasn't able to enter and instead shot two people dead on the street. And the attack really underscored the rising threat of neo-Nazi

violence. Last June, conservative German politician Walter Luca, he's an advocate of liberal refugee policy, he was shot at his home. And just last Friday, police arrested 12 members of a German far-right group believed to have been plotting several attacks on mosques similar to the ones carried out in New Zealand just last year. So yeah, just as hate crimes and murders by white supremacists have been on the rise in the U.S., they've also been increasing worldwide as well. And it's just scary and terrible. It is. So what's being done to combat this? I mean, not to be too alarmist about it, but I mean, it seems like something that requires a very strong response. For sure. Well, Germany has some of the world's strictest

gun laws and last year moved to tighten them further, including requiring background checks after a spike in shootings by right wing extremists. It's something the U.S. could learn from. But in this case, the gunman had a license. Minority leaders want to take more action. In an interview with Reuters, Reinhard Schramm, a Jewish community leader in Eastern Germany, said, quote, it is certainly not looking good for minorities, especially Jews and Muslims, and it's not going to get any better. So that gives us a sense of how minorities are feeling there right now. He went on to name check AFD, a far right party in Germany that has been gaining

traction in local and national elections and has been criticized for promoting racism as part of Any of that sound familiar? Eerily. Yeah. After news of the shooting broke, YouTube deleted the shooter's channel. And while that provides relief in the way of stopping the spread of hateful rhetoric and traumatizing families, it can also hinder our ability to understand who influenced the shooter on the platform, who he was subscribed to, how he found them, and interrogate that more publicly. By the way, if you're looking for excellent reporting on online radicalization,

check out Kevin Roos' work at the New York Times. He's awesome. But finally, in December, officials in Germany said the government would create 600 new intelligence positions for identifying, tracking, and rooting out violent right-wing networks. Hopefully, this includes in-person and digital tracking that will reduce the occurrence of these abhorrent crimes. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Victoria's Secret is going private. This comes after founder and CEO Les Wexner stepped down yesterday and sold the company to private firms for substantially less than what it's worth.

There were a lot of different factors leading up to the lingerie chain's demise. First, there was Wexner's problematic close ties to the late disgraced Jeffrey Epstein. Then there was the New York Times expose on the mistreatment of their models. Finally, it was the company's inability to adapt to a changing lingerie market, because as it turns out, women don't want scratchy laces on their underwear or uncomfortable bras that push their boobs five inches above their face. In a press release, Wexner said the firms will bring a fresh perspective to the business. No more scratchy lace. Tensions between graduate students at UC Santa Cruz and the University of California's administration continue to escalate after nearly two months of striking. Hundreds of

grad students are demanding a significant raise to their paychecks so that they can afford housing in one of the most expensive areas in the country. That's right. Beautiful, beachy Santa Cruz, California. That's a plug. A protest started in December when graduate workers withheld the final fall quarter grades of undergraduate students. The administration was pissed. Students who bombed their final in intro to semiotics and Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy were stoked. Things escalated last week when police in riot gear arrested 17 students during a peaceful demonstration. The president of the UC system has given strikers until midnight tonight to release the grades or face consequences as severe

as contract termination. Wow. If you figured that Russia had chosen to stay out of our elections this time and focus on their beautiful churches and noble dog breeds, it turns out you were not right. In a briefing last week, intelligence officials told lawmakers that Russia is interfering in the 2020 campaign to help Trump get reelected. That this meeting was even held enraged the president and might have led to the firing of outgoing director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire. Trump was apparently concerned that Democrats would try to, quote, weaponize the information that was shared, which in Trump language means acknowledge it or treat it like it's real at all. Trump's reaction prompted concern among intelligence officials that he might try to dismantle some efforts to uphold the integrity of this election. Strap in, folks. 2020 is going to be a weird one. Stick to the noble dogs, please. Google Education is a kind hearted little program that gives free computers to resource-deprived schools.

Or is it a thinly-veiled intelligence operation meant to spy on your 10-year-old nephew while he shops for Funko Pop toys online? A lawsuit brought by New Mexico's attorney general is alleging the latter. He's suing Google for using donated Chromebooks to collect physical locations, search histories, YouTube viewing habits, and other data from the students who use them in violation of both federal and state privacy protections. It's not the first time Google has faced these accusations. They got fined $170 million last year for harvesting children's data for advertising purposes on YouTube. For their part, Google says the New Mexico lawsuit is, quote, factually wrong, and that they do not use personal information from their Google education programs to target ads. Just for researching this article, I've been put on a Google watch list and my Android phone is yelling at me. Just kidding. That's only Charlotte who makes the group watch at difficult. Sorry, Charlotte. And those are the headlines.

That's all for today. If you like the make sure you subscribe leave a review write a little note on the whiteboard outside our freshman year college dorm room and tell your friends to listen and if you're into reading and not just the opening crawl at the beginning of star wars movies like me what a day is also a nightly newsletter check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe i'm akilah h Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And that's why I'm retaking Intro to Semiotics and Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy. Giggity, giggity, goo. All right. All right.

What a Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.