November 7, 2016

Tomorrow You’ll Be Able to View Vote Estimates in Real Time

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Slate is moving boldly beyond the now-routine practice of releasing early exit poll results. It has teamed up with VoteCastr, a Silicon Valley startup run by data gurus from both the George Bush and Barack Obama campaigns, to provide us with real-time estimates of who’s ahead throughout the day:

VoteCastr will make rolling projections of how many ballots have been cast for each candidate in each of the states we’re tracking: Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If you visit Slate at 11 a.m. EST on Tuesday, you’ll see projections for how many votes have been cast for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in each of those states as of 11 a.m.

….Slate readers will be able to watch live as those vote totals update throughout Election Day. They’ll also be able to sort the data in a number of different ways. We’ll make it possible, for instance, to compare real-time turnout in Trump-leaning counties and Clinton-leaning counties, as well as to gauge turnout in counties grouped by age, income, and race. If our real-time trackers are seeing that turnout in Pennsylvania’s middle class or predominantly black counties has surpassed 2012 levels, you’ll know that. If turnout in Ohio counties that are predominantly white or lower class does the same, you’ll know that, too.

Needless to say, this is a horrible abuse of the editorial process that we should all strongly denounce—which I’ll probably get around to doing on Wednesday because I’ll be too busy obsessively checking it throughout the day on Tuesday. I’m willing to bet that all the other denouncers will be checking it too.

In other words, this doesn’t really bother me. Maybe I’ve just gotten too jaded. But honestly, it’s not clear that being aware of these estimates affects voting patterns very much. Are you more likely to vote if your guy is ahead and you’re stoked about it? Or if your guy is behind and you’re scared that someone horrible will win? Beats me. Besides, if more than 0.5 percent of the population is actually aware of what Slate is doing, I’d be surprised.

Anyway, we’ll see. I expect my Twitter feed to be full of folks either panicky or gleeful about the latest VoteCastr results. So I probably couldn’t ignore it even if I wanted to.

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This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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