Strong turnout and early voting | Hour 2

And again, thank you so much for your support. All right, let me jump over here and get Brett Jensen on. He'll be here in studio for the election night coverage tonight with yours truly. Brett Jensen, how are you, sir? Just fine. I'm on my way back from Belmont into Mecklenburg County right now. So just driving around, seeing how things are. You know, I mean, the. The prediction was that it was going to be, you know, the tsunami, the tidal wave, and maybe it'll still end up being that way. But, you know, early indications are places that I've had, that I've been to, in talking to the people that keep, you know, counts for, you know, at the polls, they actually do this for their living. And they're saying that the voter turnout, at least in Gaston County and a couple places I've been to in Mecklenburg County, is that that rivals that of the presidential election day in 2024, which is what the Republicans have to have if they have any semblance of hope of winning a lot of these elections. Yeah, so that would be surprising if turnout in a midterm approach is turnout in a general presidential election, I should say. And for folks who aren't aware, like the There are a couple of counties in North Carolina that basically drive the Republican turnout or totals. You know, Union County, I think, is like the biggest one. A lot of Republicans in Union County. And so they need high turnout in Union County. Same goes for the Democrats. Right. Like in Mecklenburg County, Wake County. Uh, they rely on those urban centers in order to drive their statewide numbers as well. Now, obviously at the district levels, um, there's, uh, there's a benefit, you know, when you drive turnout, you get more, uh, district race participation as well, but they really, the Republicans need to make up. And we were just talking to Andy Jackson, uh, from, uh, the John Locke foundation and the early voting, uh, gap right now, the lead that Democrats have is somewhere in the neighborhood of like 350,000 ballots cast. Um, So I'm not sure they're all straight Democrat tickets, but we can assume so. That's a very hefty lead, right, for the Republicans to try to overcome in one day on Election Day when Republicans say they prefer to vote and do. So where have you been? You say you were just in Gaston County. Have you gone around anywhere in Mecklenburg yet or? Yes, I have. Yeah, I've read to a couple of voting places in Mecklenburg County, and turnout has been heavy. There were lines early this morning out the door before they even opened the doors here in the South Park area and other places. And to your point, though, I will tell you, every single Republican politician will tell you, especially those in statewide races, They cannot win the statewide race without a strong Republican turnout in Mecklenburg County. Yes, the voter electorate is generally 19% in Mecklenburg County are Republicans. But at the same point, there are more Republicans in Mecklenburg County than there are in Union County or Gasset County, just by sheer numbers. And they will tell you, we can't win a statewide election without voter turnout from Republicans, even in deep, dark blue Mecklenburg County. Right, and the challenge there is always. you don't give Republican voters anybody to vote for because there are so many unopposed races, right? Democrats just run the table. I mean, you look at the judicial races this time around, not a single Republican on the ballot. You know, your sheriff's race, no Republican challenger. And so that if you don't give people anything to vote for on their ballots, you then can you really be surprised when you don't drive that turnout? You're exactly right. They're just by a raw ballot count number. You need the Republicans in Mecklenburg County and in Wake and like the four of them in Durham. I'm just kidding now. There are more than four in Durham. But yeah, like these, yeah, these deep blue cities, they do have tens of thousands of Republican voters that that also need to turn out and vote the ballots. Now, like when I go Like in the last one, I don't ever vote. If I see an unopposed candidate, I just leave it blank. I just go to the next race and helps me get through the ballot a lot faster. So did you did you do any speaking or talking to any of the voters while you were out there checking in with the because you can, by the way, anybody can ask what Brett asked. Like you can go when you walk into your ballot station, your voting station, you can go and ask them, like, what voter number am I? Right. And they'll tell you. So you can get a pretty good idea of how many people have voted before you that day. Early morning is going to be tougher because not a lot of people have voted. But if it's in the afternoon, you can ask them and kind of get a general sense of how busy it's been. No, and I did speak to a voter, and you're 100% correct, and I did speak to some voters, and I asked them, it was all the same thing, like, why did you wait until today? Were you not worried about the rain? Were you, like, not worried about your dog getting hit by a car or being sick or having a flat tire or whatever? And I spoke to several voters, and they all essentially had the same answer. And we're talking people that were literally in their early 30s and people that were in their late 60s. They all had the same answer. And it was, well, I'm a traditionalist, and I like to vote on Election Day. And one of the younger ones that I spoke to said, yeah, I don't think that far ahead about what might happen or bad happen, what bad might happen on Election Day. I just like voting on Election Day because that's the way I think it should be. And I was like, OK, well, if you're not worried about weather. And then he said, well, look at the weather today. It's perfect. And I was like, no, you're right. But you don't know what could have happened on your way over here to vote. So but it's a lost argument. And a lot of times, yes, they do. They do like to show up on Election Day. And I will never forget. I remember speaking with Dan Bishop back in 2019 when he was running against Dan McCready for Congress yesterday. And McCready had voted early. And I said, well, you know, Dan, are you going to be voting much like Dan McCready just voted? Are you going to be voting early? And he looked at me and he said, Brett, I'm a Republican. I vote on election day. And I said, well, he just got free publicity out of it. And then two hours later, oh yeah, we'll be voting on Friday. Right. Well, yeah, I understand the nostalgia, you know, but I don't understand from a strategy standpoint, like, the campaigns, the parties, they want to bank the votes as early as possible so that they don't have to now worry about this to the extent that they have to worry. I mean, you think about it, you've given Democrats a 350,000 vote lead in the state, and now you have to close that gap. And that's a heavy lift. And if you've got 20, 30 people per county or per district, rather, that something happens, they forget, they get held up at work, they get, you know, kid gets sick at school, whatever. And now you don't get, you don't go vote. And like, that's the risk that you're always running. All right. And so let me ask you this. I was also told that you had another chat with apparently your new BFF, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant again. Yes. So, We had set things up last week, and it wasn't able to happen, and so they. They reached out to me late yesterday afternoon and said the Treasury Secretary, as you know, lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and he has a house in the mountains in Cashiers. And so he loves the Carolinas, and he would like to come on your show today. And obviously, I don't think it's coincidental that today is Election Day. Like, I don't think there's a coincidence. I know. I know. But no. But we did about a 15-minute phone interview. He's currently in Minnesota with a lot of people, a lot of— mucky mucks uh about you know going over some more fraud in minnesota like a lot of people are up there today like administrative people so he's in minnesota today but um so he called me from there but yeah he uh look he talked i asked him i said you know the carolinas what about the carolinas is reality maybe versus perception when it comes to the economy. And he said, look, we understand that things right now, everything, everything that people might be upset about is all driven by fuel prices, which is all driven by the war. And once that happens, everything will go back to normal. As a matter of fact, it'll be better than usual. He said, pharmacy is down 4.5%. Housing is starting to come down a little bit and become a little bit more affordable. And then once that happens, then the interest rates will probably drop back below 6% again. So he was very optimistic. And he said, look, the reality is things are actually going better. You're not getting taxed on your social security and tips and overtime. And so he was definitely making the case why things are actually better than maybe what they seem. And so people can hear this interview, not tonight. Not tonight. Well, actually, I'm going to give it to Beau, and hopefully he'll be able to play it in our election coverage tonight. Okay. All right. Well, that's a plan. Otherwise, if it doesn't get played tonight, I'm sure you've got your show tomorrow. A hundred percent. There you go. So you can listen to Breaking with Brett Jensen. He'll be on tomorrow because he's preempted tonight for election coverage, but he'll be in studio providing that. So we'll see you then. Breaking, Brett Jensen from the WBT Newsroom. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Pete. Appreciate it. Take care. 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Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. Ben Shapiro posting up onto the Twitter machine. Today's election matters. It will either set the groundwork for a Democratic Party revival in all of its most radical forms, or it will signal that the Trump realignment has legs. Go vote and don't listen to the demoralization agents, right and left, who tell you that it doesn't matter. He is exactly right. From the text line, Oscar says, when do the early votes get released? Right when the polls close. Yeah, usually. Well, in the past, we and I think it was Andy Jackson who was talking earlier that we're going to be going back to that old method where we're going to get the absentee ballots dropped immediately after the polls close. And then you get the early vote numbers dropped. But but now I'm not so sure because I just saw this from A.P. Dillon. That the State Board of Elections is holding two press conferences today. There was one at 11 a.m. about a possible delay in posting results at 7.30, so that could be pushed to 8.30. They're having another press conference at 4 o'clock this afternoon. They will be meeting about four counties in that might need extended voting hours due to technical issues that arose this morning. That's all the information I have at this time about that. And that is pretty standard. There's usually a couple precincts around the state where something happens and then they give them an extra, you know, 15 minutes, half hour, hour, whatever it is. Meanwhile, this is for the folks who are like, I'm going to wait until Election Day to vote because it's a tradition. And we heard Brett Jensen say that he asked a younger person about it, and they were like, oh, but look at. The weather today. Yeah, no, today, it's a beautiful day today. You lucked out on that one. Or you could be down in Florida, where voters in seven counties are now being directed to temporary polling locations after widespread flooding. which prompted Governor Ron DeSantis to issue an emergency order allowing election officials to relocate voting sites ahead of the midterm elections. Florida Department of State confirmed polling place changes in Brevard, Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Okeechobee, Palm Beach, and St. Lucie counties. So that's what could happen on election day. That's why If you've got an early vote period and you know who you're going to be voting for, why not just bank the vote, you know? Also, Westchester County. In New York. Election officials have confirmed the cause of widespread voting machine problems across the county. Apparently, the ballots, the paper ballots are too thick. for the machines to accept. Whoops. Who ordered the wrong card stock? Oh my gosh. It's the thickness of the paper ballots that prevents voting machines from accepting ballots at polling locations throughout the county. I'm not sure why this is only in Westchester County. The Board of Elections... sincerely apologizes to voters and poll workers for the inconvenience, but they strongly encourage all voters to remain in line, exercise patience, and most importantly, cast your ballots. So there's that. Guy Benson from Fox News says, California, wholly impressed by this is soon going to adopt this as its official policy. That's possible. That's quite possible. From the text line, John from New Jersey says, heading out to vote shortly, we have a tradition of going to the diner afterwards. This year is a twofer. It's my birthday as well. Happy birthday, John. I will then commence making art and drinking dark and stormies to celebrate the end of political commercials. Matt Says, I'm on my way to vote up at the church in Derrida. I will ask them what number I am and text you when I am done. 980 number says, I have not voted yet. Can I write in Barney Fife for a Mecklenburg County Sheriff, or would that be disrespectful to the entire system? No, I don't think that would be disrespectful. I don't know if you can, I mean, I think you could write somebody in, but they're not going to count them because they're not a qualified candidate. Demoralizing is an entire ballot of almost exclusively one candidate and one party, says Paul. Well, yeah. So, Paul, you should consider running for an office and throw your name in the hat and then throw the hat into the ring and maybe run for an office. Maybe get involved in the local Republican Party. Wonder which Democrat county Ray Cooper's 90,000 votes are going to appear in. Maybe Pat McCrory knows. Monica says, you think you're going to vote at lunch and then you get your precinct and something like that is going on. Right. Exactly. You know, like you don't know what any problem that occurs with like ballots that are ballots that are too thick flooding in your county and they have to relocate. And now they've moved the polling station away. you know, 20, 30 minutes away and now you don't have time to get there on your lunch break or you don't have time to get there after work. And it just becomes so much easier to say, oh, well, who cares? That's why if you go vote early when there are like no lines whatsoever and if you show up at an early voting site after work or something and something like that is going on, well, you could just leave and you can come back on another day because in North Carolina, you've got Like, you know, what, 10, 15 days, whatever it is. That's the benefit of early voting. The benefits far outweigh. Now, look, I'm not a fan of early voting that's like a month long. I'm not a fan of that. However, the rules allow you to go vote a week before the election. Why not just knock it out, bank the vote, and then you don't have to worry that if something occurs, you're not going to get to get to the precinct, you know? All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. Another text. Pete, you said no lines for early voting. Not where I live. I went to South County Library twice. Line was out the door. I left. Voted this morning at 9 a.m. No line at all. Walked right in. Voter number 100. Only 100 at 9 a.m.? Early voting is overrated. Okay, I don't know why... OK, I disagree. I don't think that it's overrated. I'm not sure. Like, I rate it as basically the same, if not just a little bit better than waiting until Election Day to vote. See, because even in your example, 704, number, you still benefited from early voting. Because had there been no early voting and all of those lines, all those people that prompted you to walk away, right? Had they not voted early, they would be in line this morning. A lot of them would have been in line this morning and you would have had. To wait anyway. So them going to vote early, remove them from the precinct when you showed up today. But that's the beauty of it. You get to go early vote. If the line is too long, you leave, as I said, and then you went back and the line was still too long. So you left and you still had other days that you could have attended and you can still vote on election day. And if a long line is going to prompt you to walk away, then you benefited today by not having a long line, right? Again, I don't know about overrated only because I don't know what you're grading it on. I don't know how you're rating it because without, I mean, but even in your example, you still benefited from it. Whereas if it was strictly on election day only and there were no early voting, then you would have had a massive weight. The kind, like we used to see when I was a kid, you know, on the news, and I would see these massive lines as people are trying to vote all at, you know, on the one day. So, like, I think that makes it a little bit better. Frank says, I used to be one of the, there shouldn't be any early voting people. During the last two elections, I voted early, and I have changed my mind about it. I showed up, voted within about 10 minutes, and was on with my day. I agree with you that a month is way too much early voting. If you can't find a day during one week of early voting, you don't care enough to make the time. Yeah, and that's, I agree, that's true. You have a responsibility to participate in your self-governance. Mandy says, I voted the first Saturday of early voting. I am a caretaker of older parents who keep throwing me monkey wrenches. They also early voted. they know their toolboxes. Yeah, right. That's the thing. You just, you don't know what might happen on election day itself. And when you only have that one day, somebody gets sick, you get in a car accident, you get sick, whatever, something happens. And now you don't go vote. But all those people, they voted. All those other people that are going to vote in, you know, Marxists, they all got their votes in early because they know what they want. See, Marxists advocate for a Marxist America, right? That's what they want to see happen. But for some reason, I don't know. I saw it was that Pastor Howerton made a point about this, that like Marxists advocate for a Marxist country. Islamists advocate for an Islamist country. But Christians don't seem to do that. Christians are like, no, no, no, we got to have a separation. Let's not mix our politics with religion. We don't want to endorse anybody. That's separate. You know, that's the kingdom. This is, you know, this is just the government and we're not going to weigh in on any of this stuff. And then, you know, what happens then is that you're going to be governed by those other people. That's how that happens. Okay. If you're not going to vote your principles, you know, then you're going to be governed by people who don't share your principles. That's how that happens. This from a former pole dancer. He worked in the utility industry. That's the pole that he was climbing. My civic duty mantra as an American. If I don't vote, I'm giving away my power as an American. In the 40-ish years that I've been eligible, I have missed two primaries. I reserve my right. To complain about what government is doing. Don't think of it as voting for somebody you don't like or whatever. Think of it as preserving your moral authority to complain about the people that are in office. I don't always vote for the winner, but I do always vote for the candidate who best matches my positions. Sometimes I hold my nose. It's not really hard to do when the alternative is infinitely worse. This is my first cycle in my new state, Tennessee, and I'm starting off where I left off last cycle. I voted early because I'm always at work. Pretty simple. Conservatives, get yourself to the polls. Vote, vote, vote. It's not difficult. So in North Carolina, we have our legislative races on the ballot. And by the way, our state legislature, they have nothing to do with the gas prices. I mean, they did suspend the gas tax, but other than that, they do not have any impact on the global commodity markets and the trading of the barrels of oil and decisions about Iran or anything like that. They don't send any money to Israel. They're just state lawmakers. Now, if you would prefer to be governed by Democrats and what they would prefer to do, Like what they would prefer to do is to repeal a whole bunch of the stuff that the Republicans have done in the last 15 years. The first time that Republicans gained control of the legislature in a century. So, uh, and, and what they proceeded to do was only to make, you know, North Carolina, uh, one of the best, best states for businesses. Um, they lowered the taxes on everybody. Um, I mean, if you, you know, they, they passed, uh, all sorts of legislation about, you know, removing DEI and getting boys out of girls' sports and all of that stuff. And if you would prefer that we just reverse all of that stuff, then by all means, protest the gas prices by sending Democrats to Raleigh. I mean, that makes logical sense. You should totally, yeah, you should totally consider doing that or something. Because that's on the ballot. All of these races are on the ballot. These legislative districts. Senate, House. Okay? Andrew, welcome to the program. Hello, Andrew. Hey, good afternoon, Mr. P. How are you guys doing? I'm doing all right. How are you? All right. So I'm going to kind of up the vacuum when it comes to the early voting. I don't know why more people don't race it. I'm Richard from Pennsylvania. I live in Georgia. And We have like 18 days of early voting. Went into my precinct and voted and out in about three minutes went all my day. As a truck driver, I like to have an option, especially since, you know, I'm going to be on the road most of the time. So it's such a nice thing to have instead of having to do the mail-in ballot or absentee or whatever it's called. Yeah, I mean, I remember, you know, back in my day when I was like the first presidential election that I could vote in 1992. And I had to mail I had to mail it back to New York State. And I missed the deadline, you know, and like that was because I was at college. So like I couldn't get back to New. York to vote. And so I had to mail it in. Nowadays, like college kids can vote on their campus for some reason. I still don't understand that. So why do you think people are so reluctant on the Republican side to embrace early voting? The biggest thing I hear is the T word, tradition. I mean, I like, I guess, totally understand the whole. Tradition thing, but, you know, when it opens up and have that flexibility of voting early, I want to have that option, especially since we've seen countless number of examples where Things happen on Election Day where voting machines either don't work, or in the case of Long Island, New York, after George Sanchez was ousted and the election was held. And what happened that day, there was a pretty significant snowstorm where a lot of people couldn't make polls and lost their house seats. I just don't get it. I also don't get why people don't vote just in general. Um, and I'll leave you with a quote from, uh, one of my favorite senators, Senator John Kennedy. Uh, he said this a couple of times and I, I kind of agree with it. Uh, just go vote, go vote. If dead people can vote, so can you. There you go, Andrew. I appreciate the call, sir. Yes, sir. You have a good one. All right, man. Stay safe, uh, out there on the roads. Um, I see here this is Jeff with a G. When the concept of early voting first came along, I thought it would benefit Republicans more since getting by the polls on a work day is tougher for a working conservative taxpayer than it is for a lefty tax taker. Yeah, like you would think. Right. You would think. All right. Johnny seems like he's on Blackpill path. I'm not really sure what he's talking about here. Jim here. New York has early voting. Now it does. If the ballots are too thick for the machine. To process today, why weren't they too thick to process during early voting? Yes, we may have a good platform for launching a juicy conspiracy theory here. Wally says, love your show. Thank you, Wally. Would like your opinion on why the Republican Party did not demand an answer on Roy Cooper's health and why they didn't demand a debate with Cooper and Whatley. I can't understand why Cooper is allowed to hide, praying for a huge Republican turnout today. I don't know. Yeah, I am not sure. J.D. Vance made reference to the cease and desist letter that the Cooper campaign sent to A.P. Dillon in the North State Journal when she inquired about his health status. Donald Trump made some reference to it as well at his rally that he did in North Carolina afterwards. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not involved in those campaigns. I've gotten a lot of questions from people about that. By the way, again, the North Carolina legislative races are up for grabs. And one of the things that the legislature has been doing under Republican control, it's been to put in place laws that that protect the election. They've been passing election security measures for years, right? They've been. Going not just through the legislative process, they've been overriding gubernatorial vetoes to do this. They've been fighting in court to try to get these. I mean, it took us a decade to get voter ID, right? Because Democrats, they just oppose it, even though their voters support it. But Democrat lawmakers just keep on opposing voter ID in any manner. And so that's what you're empowering. Like people who are like, I'm mad at fill in the blank, whatever it is, if it's not about your specific state lawmaker or something that the state has done, right? This is who you're empowering, the people who are going to roll back all of these things, all of these election integrity measures. You're mad about early voting being 10 days. A Republican shortened that period. Right. Democrats are going to expand that thing. They'll probably go to six months. Well, maybe not that long. All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to ThePeteCalenderShow.com. 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