Day: November 5, 2019

Voters in several states are headed to the polls on Tuesday, November 5, to cast votes in elections that could lead to major shifts in power.

In both Mississippi’s and Kentucky’s gubernatorial races, Democrats have the potential to retake the governor’s seats, and in Virginia, Democrats could flip the House and Senate.

In Kentucky, the governor’s race is being cast as a referendum on President Donald Trump; can a Democrat win in a deep-red state one year from a presidential election? And in Mississippi, Attorney General Jim Hood has a good shot at becoming the state’s first …

Jim Hood is a political unicorn. A Democrat, Hood nonetheless has won four consecutive statewide elections in the blood-red state of Mississippi — all of them for attorney general. Now he hopes to add a new line to his resume. He’s the Democratic candidate for governor in Tuesday’s election. And the polls suggest that he’s got a real fighting chance.

But there’s a catch. Mississippi held a constitutional convention more than a century ago to, in the words of one former state governor and US senator, “eliminate the n****r from politics.” One still-remaining vestige of that convention …

Free speech and privacy on the internet declined globally for the ninth consecutive year according to the Freedom on the Net 2019 report by bipartisan watchdog and think tank Freedom House.

The report’s authors cite two main reasons for the decline: increased online election interference — by government and civilian actors alike — and increased government surveillance, both of which are spreading on social media platforms. These are topics that continue to dominate the news cycle, whether it’s Facebook’s ad policy that allows politicians to spread lies or Amazon’s growing relationships with police departments that use its Ring smart doorbells …

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Voters across America face state and local elections

• Voters across the country have the opportunity to select their representatives Tuesday as several states hold elections. [Vox / Li Zhou]
• Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky are looking at tight gubernatorial races, as many view these races as a referendum on Trump’s own candidacy. [Washington Post / Tim Craig and Seung Min Kim