By Bob Hennelly

It’s Nov. 4 and tomorrow is Election Day. On this episode of Pacifica’s We Decide: America at the Crossroads, we look at how Close to 75 million Americans have already voted, and voters in North Carolina and Georgia have set early voting records. In nine states, officials reported half of the voters registered had already cast their ballots.

Meanwhile, a widely-respected poll published in the Des Moines Register over the weekend showing Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of former President Donald Trump by three points has challenged the conventional wisdom that the only states in play are the so-called “swing” or “battleground states.” Trump carried Iowa twice and in 2020 won the state handily 53 percent to 45 percent for Biden. The poll suggests Harris’s late breaking surge was from older women who were likely to vote.

In the first half of this week’s show, we hear from Frank Albergo, president of the Postal Police Officers Association, and the union’s business agent Jim Bjork. According to the union that represents the uniform Postal Police, even as more states turned to the U.S. Mail to help conduct their elections, there’s been an 845 percent surge in robberies of mail carriers from Fiscal Year 2019 to Fiscal Year 2023. Mail theft also spiked over 900 percent from since 2017. We discuss what exactly is going on. 

We speak with renowned journalist Greg Palast whose investigative reports have been featured in the Guardian and who wrote the best-selelr “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”   Palast talks to us from Atlanta, Georgia where he has just released a powerful film about the latest orchestrated attacks on the right to vote. “Vigilantes Inc: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen” was produced by legendary actor Martin Sheen. 

Next up, we get an update from New York NewsGuild CWA President Susan DeCarava about the strike involving several hundred New York Times Teach Guild members who have spend the last two years trying to secure their  first contract. We ask DeCarava what the accelerating corporate consolidation of newspapers, radio and TV stations means for our democracy. We also check in with New York Times NewsGuild member and shop steward Ben Hartnett about what's at stake for rank and file members looking for a fair remote work policy, as well as a just cause rationale for performance reviews.

We finish up with the latest edition of “Sprouts,” a compendium of campaign and election stories from Pacifica’s nationwide affiliates hosted  by Lisa Loving, news director at KBOO, in Portland, Oregon.

Listen to the entire show below:

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