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New Yorks most powerful Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, will likely descend on the state capitol in Albany next week to participate in the states Electoral College vote, handing the states 29 electoral votes for former Vice President Joe Biden.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whos also one of the states electors, said Tuesday that state law will likely prevent the vote from being conducted virtually.

We dont believe, legally, you can do it virtually, Cuomo said. Theyre going to have to come assemble in the capitol.

Its unclear where the vote will be held. In the past, the Electoral College vote has been held in the State Senate chamber. That could be too tight this year given social distancing rules in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

State law requires the vote to be held at noon on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December, which lands on next Monday, December 14.

The vote is largely procedural; New York will award each of its 29 electoral votes to Biden as the winner of the states popular vote. The state did the same in 2016 when it awarded its votes to Hillary Clinton, who lost that years election to President Donald Trump.

The states Electoral College is a real whos who of state politics, singling out some of the most prominent Democrats.

Along with Cuomo and the Clintons, the states electors include Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and more.

The list of electors also includes people who dont hold elected office, like Mario Cilento, president of the state AFL-CIO and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Some of the states mayors including Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, and Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren are also on the list of electors.

Cuomo also voiced support for changing the Electoral College, which has been the subject of criticism in the past when candidates for president lost the popular vote but secured the election through electoral votes.

"I think the time might've come to change the Electoral College, and I would support that change," Cuomo said.

He didnt provide details, but predicted that public support for changing the nations presidential election system may have grown enough in recent years to spur action from federal lawmakers.

This might be the election that puts it over the edge, Cuomo said.

Originally posted here:
NY's Top Democrats, Including Clintons, Will Cast Electoral Votes in Albany Next Week, Cuomo Says - WSHU

"I'm an elector in New York," the 2016 Democratic nominee told SiriusXM's "Signal Boost." "I'm sure I'll get to vote for Joe (Biden) and (Sen. Kamala Harris) in New York. So, that's pretty exciting."Clinton has previously called for the abolition of the Electoral College, where electors directly vote on the president and vice president of the United States. She advocated for the president to be instead selected based on the US popular vote. Clinton won almost 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump in 2016, but lost the election after Trump secured a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

When Americans cast their votes in presidential elections, they are not selecting the President directly. According to the system laid out by the US Constitution, Americans are voting for 538 electors, who meet in their respective states and vote for the President and Vice President. These electors comprise the Electoral College, and their votes are then counted by the President of the Senate in a joint session of Congress. Each state is in charge of selecting their own electors.

There is an elector for every member of the US House of Representatives (435) and the US Senate (100), and an additional three for people who live in the District of Columbia. It takes 270 electoral votes to get a majority of the Electoral College and win the presidential election.

Clinton told SiriusXM's "Signal Boost" that she is worried there won't be a final conclusion to the 2020 election, "for a couple of days, if not longer."

She said she had planned to vote early in-person for the upcoming election, but said the lines where she lives have been several hours long.

"I'm waiting for either a break in the line so I can vote early, or I'll just, you know, take up a bag lunch and go stand in line and vote on Election Day, depending upon what I can get done," Clinton said with a laugh.

CNN's Zachary B. Wolf and Dan Merica contributed to this report.

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Hillary Clinton says she is an Electoral College elector ...

This is the thing, if you go back and review Hillarys speeches and tweets and debate performances from 2016: She was right about an awful lot. Not about everything. She had her share of lulus, like predicting that the election of Trump would set off a global financial panic and plunge the economy into a recession. (Oops. Took a pandemic to do that.)

But she did have some strikingly good insights. You see it in the she warned us memes on Twitter: Heres the snippet of her listing possible reasons Trump hadnt released his tax returns (hes a tax evader, hes in hock to mysterious creditors, hes not the bazilionaire we think), all of which turned out to be true; theres the snippet of Hillary telling Trump that he was a puppet, which is worth reading in fuller context:

TRUMP: from everything I see, [Putin] has no respect for this person.

CLINTON: Well, thats because hed rather have a puppet as president of the United States.

TRUMP: No puppet. No puppet.

CLINTON: And its pretty clear

TRUMP: Youre the puppet!

CLINTON: Its pretty clear you wont admit

TRUMP: No, youre the puppet.

CLINTON: that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him, because he has a very clear favorite in this race.

So I think that this is such an unprecedented situation. Weve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election. We have 17 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin and they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing.

Two weeks ago, Hillary slyly said her own polite version of I-told-you-so. In my case, theres a whole speech for everything, she tweeted above a screenshot of this especially pungent quote from 2016:

Now, just imagine if you can. Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office, the next time America faces a crisis. Imagine him being in charge when your jobs and savings are at stake. Is this who you want to lead us in an emergency? Someone thin skinned and quick to anger whod likely be on Twitter attacking reporters or bringing the whole regulatory system down on his critics when he should be focused on fixing whats wrong? Would he even know what to do?

Yet it never mattered. She couldnt get enough voters to listen.

Why was this?

Tiresome to say, but part of it can be chalked up to gender. Novelists and Hollywood writers may create delightful female know-it-alls, from Elizabeth Bennet to Hermione Granger to Olivia Pope. But they seldom get happy endings in real life. In real life, such women are often despised precisely because they are right.

And if you reread Hillarys speeches, you can see that her words were really unsparing and precise. She wasnt shyly hiding her erudition. To wit: Donald Trump doesnt know the first thing about Iran or its nuclear program. Ask him. Itll become very clear, very quickly. Or: There is a difference between getting tough on trade and recklessly starting trade wars. In What Happened, she compares Putin to a subway manspreader.

Talk about a guy who had a problem with powerful ladies. After Hillary criticized one his policies, Putin told the press, Its better not to argue with women.

But some of the reasons Hillarys warnings may have gone unheeded were more idiosyncratic. Early in her career, she tested good peoples patience not with her rightness, but with her self-righteousness. The former Senator Bill Bradley comes to mind: Decades ago, she batted away his request for a more realistic health care reform bill, adding that the Clinton administration would demonize anyone who stood in its way. That was it for me, Bradley told Carl Bernstein, in terms of Hillary Clinton.

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Hillary Clinton Was Right to Warn Us - The New York Times

I Think About This a Lotis a series dedicated to private memes: images, videos, and other random trivia we are doomed to play forever on loop in our minds.

In a discussion about job creation spanning infrastructure to coding at a July 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign rally, the then-candidate introduced an idea for an app-based video game. I dont know who created Pokmon Go, she said. Oh no. But Im trying to figure out, dont do it, how we get them to have, oh God Pokmon Go to the polls.

Hearts stopped. The ground shook. Birds fell from the sky and began commuting by foot; aquatic life emerged from the sea with only one question on their fish lips: Why? The final words were delivered in the stilted speech pattern politicians generally use to implore crowds to take action like Go to the polls but with a palpable hesitation. If there was someone out there who knew why Hillary Clinton was saying the words Pokmon Go to the polls, it did not seem to be Hillary Clinton and it certainly wasnt the fish.

Pokmon Go to the polls has lived with me ever since. Of course, the horrifying goings-on of national politics give a person ample opportunity to think about going to the polls and then, naturally, Pokmon Go-ing to them. But my mindworm unfortunately does not stop there. I should Pokmon Go to the store, Ill think to myself. Do you need to Pokmon Go for a walk? Ill ask my dog. Ill text a friend, Pokmon Go to the polls. Hell text back, Pokmon Go to the polls.

The phrase was upsetting at first. Donald Trump was running for president president! and our best defense against him was standing onstage imploring us to Pokmon Go to the polls. A non-ideal situation. And let me be clear: I wanted Hillary to win. Not begrudgingly, not holding my nose. I was excited to vote for her, and I wanted her to win. I couldnt wait to Pokmon Go to the polls. But I suppose, at that moment, we should have seen what was coming. We should have seen that we were Pokmon Go-ing to hell.

Trump soon shared a video on Facebook of a game called Crookd Hillary NO, wherein an unseen player pitched a Pok Ball at, and subsequently caught, a Hillary Pokmon, bringing up a view of her Pokdex page. (The Pokdex is sort of like an in-game Pokmon encyclopedia, not to insult you with the clarification.) Career Politician, it said. 30,000 emails deleted. Often found lying to the American people, rigging the system, and sharing TOP SECRET emails. The video has over 13 million views. Produced and circulated during his campaign, its of an oddly higher quality than the hasty, pixilated, rarely coherent memes that have come out of his administration. It is clear his team has Pokmon Go-tten a little too comfortable.

Clinton was Pok-mocked and memed by non-supporters and supporters alike. Still, a pro-Hillary defense arose: The idea that if Bernie Sanders had said something like Pokmon Go to the polls, people would have cut him slack. They would have thought it was charming, maybe they would have even thought it was funny. And while its hard enough to imagine we live in a world where one presidential candidate said Pokmon Go to the polls, let alone two, I think theres a bit of truth to this. If a man says something funny, people tend to assume the humor was intentional; women arent always afforded this assumption. Do I think Hillary Clinton understood the potential humor to be found in Hillary Clinton saying something like Pokmon Go to the polls? Well. Lets just say that whether she did or she didnt doesnt make my point any less valid.

Regardless, it was indeed Hillary who said Pokmon Go to the polls, and it was, in fact, the American public who did not heed what was implicit in her command: that we Pokmon Go to the polls and vote for her, specifically in a way that would allow her to win the Electoral College.

Donald Trump was instead elected president. Our evolution as a nation ground to a halt, Pokmonically speaking. The phrase has morphed in my life from an unpleasant memory to a prescient warning. I beg you, listen to the dreaded whisper of the past. Take heart. On Tuesday, if you haventvoted early or by mail, please Pokmon Go to the polls.

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Remember When Hillary Joked About Pokmon Go to the Polls? - The Cut

Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a deeply divided Senate, Republicans overpowering Democrats to install President Donald Trumps nominee days before the election and secure a likely conservative court majority for years. (Oct. 26) AP Domestic

A post on Instagram from Not the Bee ahumor-based news, opinionand entertainment site from the creators of The Babylon Bee depictsan edited tweet from Hillary Clinton.

"Happy birthday to this future president," the tweet appears to read, with a black-and-white photo of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

In the post, the word "birthday" has been crossed out and replaced with the word "confirmation." The word "president" has been crossed out and replaced with the word "justice."

In its new form, it reads, "Happy confirmation to this future justice."

The post went up on Oct. 26, the day the Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Barrett to the high court, per USA TODAY.

Not the Bee has not responded to a request from USA TODAY for comment.

The post is based on a real tweet from Clinton in 2016.

On Oct. 26, 2016, she posted a photo of herself as a child on Twitter along with the caption"Happy birthday to this future president."

Two weeks later, onNov. 8, 2016, she lost the election to President Donald Trump.

In its post, Not the Bee simply subbed out the black-and-white photo of Clinton with a photo of Barrett and added itsstrikethroughs and substitutetext.

The photo is a real portrait Barrett then known as Amy V. Coney that hangs in a student hall of fame display in Southwestern Hall at Rhodes College, per the Commercial Appealin Memphis, Tennessee.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laughs as she speaks with USA TODAY about the Hulu docuseries "Hillary" directed by Nanette Burstein.(Photo: Jasper Colt, USAT)

Not the Bee is not the first to poke fun at Clinton for her premature tweet.

In 2017, the DailyDot an outlet that reports on internet culture marked the tweet's first anniversary with a compilation of jokes about it.

"It's a tweet that will surely haunt us every year on Oct. 26," the story predicted.

So far, it's been right.

Fox News rounded up over a dozenjokes about the tweet this week.

Others also pointed out that thetweet (and birthday)coincided with the vote that confirmedBarrett to the Supreme Court solidifying a conservative majority on the court.

Even Senate Majority LeaderMitch McConnell gotin on the fun.

"It was a wonderful birthday present for Hillary Clinton to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court Monday night on her birthday," he said, per Newsweek. "I'm sure she was so grateful. So grateful."

Based on our research, the post from Not the Bee is SATIRE. In 2016, Hillary Clinton tweeted a photo of herself as a child on her birthday with the caption,"Happy birthday to this future president." After she lost the election, it became a meme. This year, her birthday coincided with the confirmation vote for Justice Amy Coney Barrett fueling further jokes and parodies, like the one created by Not the Bee.

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Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This fact check is available at IFCNs 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more.

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Fact check: A birthday tweet from Hillary Clinton was edited to be about Amy Coney Barrett - USA TODAY