BHN's Carol Angela Davis and Julia Dudley Najieb report on the live election results and speak with Black News Link featured guests about the Iowa, Texas, Illinois and Georgia races
By Black Headline News
Watch above video or download the audio version of this news story below.
In this Black Headline News Live Election Special with news anchors Julia Dudley Najieb and Carol Angela Davis, the first hour is composed of election 101 specifics and vocab, helping the audience understand the significance of the 2022 midterm elections. While Dudley Najieb reviews the status of states with open U.S. House of Representative seats and the 35 U.S. Senate seats open, Davis reviews the federal laws which regulate voter intimidation or attempts of fraud at the polls while voting.
Thereafter the show hosts talk with Danielle Sanders, managing editor of Chicago News Weekly, about the status of races in Illinois followed by Dana James, publisher of Black Iowa News, who reviews the unfortunate innuendos of racism of the incumbent and gubernatorial candidate Kim Reynolds.
During the second hour, show hosts, Dudley Najieb and Davis have a lengthy discussion with Cheryl Smith about the depths, misuse, and taken-for-granted Black vote---she feels people need to come together as a collective to change the history of broken promises from elected officials who do not follow through for the Black community.
Dudley Najieb saves the last 45 minutes of the BHN election live show to talk about the ballot process to all who voted, citing the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law's Derek Tisler, who spoke during an Ethnic Media Services news briefing last week. Tisler reviews the federal laws that protect voters as well as the ballot certification process each state must abide.
As pollsters and election experts on news programs call the 2022 midterm election regarding the U.S. House, U. S. Senate races and high profile gubernatorial races, the reality is, voters may not know the official results right after the election night when the polls close. Instead, a guesstimation is what news watchers and readers get based on the analysis paralysis from media and election analysts proposing different scenarios and outcomes of key races.
Final results can also be managed based on past elections or rules per state. For instance in California, most of the ballots are received by mail-ins; some ballots arrive a week later, although they are postmarked on or before election night by 8:00 PM. As a result, some ballots may come well after the election date of November 8, 2022.
Meanwhile, voter anxiety can be calmed by election expert, Derek Tisler who serves as the Elections & Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. His work focuses on issues related to election administration, security, and disinformation. He is a co-author of several recent reports at the Brennan Center, including Election Officials under Attack (2021), How to Fix the New York City Board of Elections (2021), and Ensuring Safe Elections (2020). His work has been featured in media outlets across the country, including Foreign Affairs, FiveThirtyEight, and The Hill, among others.
Tisler holds a BA in economics from Michigan State University and is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Legal Forum.