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Election Results: When will Minnesota’s ballots be counted by?

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So far, this series of explainers has visited the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—looking at when each might release their election results. Now let’s visit the Land of 10,000 Lakes: Minnesota.

For an explanation about the difference between mail-in and absentee ballots, check out this piece here by Ben Wilson: The Difference Between Absentee and Mail-In Ballots.

Minnesota has been one of the most consistently Democratic states in the country. Like Michigan and Wisconsin, Minnesota forms part of the Democrats’ traditional “Blue Wall” of support in the Great Lakes region. The last time it voted for a Republican was for then-incumbent President Richard Nixon in 1972. In 1984, it and the District of Columbia were the only parts of the country to give the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale electoral votes. However, all that could change in a couple weeks.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the state by a razor-thin 1.5-point margin in 2016, a 44,593-vote difference between her and then-GOP nominee Trump. That’s a far cry from 2012, when then-President Barack Obama won the state by 8 points.

All of that being said, there’s a ton of pressure on humble Minnesota.

To prevent a backlog of ballots to count on Election Day, election workers have already begun counting absentee ballots. 60% of the requested absentee ballots in Ramsey County—where St. Paul is situated—have already been returned, CBS News 4 WCCO reports. So far, over 900,000 Minnesotans have voted.

How the ballot counting process works, according to deputy auditor Heather Bestler, is: “The ballots are scanned, the machine reads them and stores the information. Then, at 8 p.m. on election night, we hit tabulate. And that’s when we get all the results.”

According to the same WCCO report by Christiane Cordero, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, the state’s head of elections, has said that the state is in a relatively good position to turn in results quickly.

One thing to keep in mind is that a state court and Simon agreed to allow ballots to be counted that are postmarked on Election Day and received by clerks up to seven days afterward, in anticipation of the U.S. Postal Service being weighed down with ballots.

All things considered, most of the results could likely be released within the two weeks following November 3, assuming that things go as planned.

You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.

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Report: Beijing’s military hacked U.S. nuclear firm before Hunter Biden aided Chinese bid to acquire it

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A bombshell report by Just the News explains that “U.S. officials were acutely aware that Beijing was trying to obtain America’s premiere nuclear reactor technology, including through illicit hacking, months before Hunter Biden and his business partners sought to arrange a quiet sale of an iconic U.S. reactor company to a Chinese firm, according to court records and national security experts.”

Hunter Biden attempted to assist CEFC China Energy to acquire Westinghouse, one of America’s most famous electricity and appliance brands, as well as its state-the-art AP1000 nuclear reactor.

Hunter began his work with the Chinese company in early 2016 – while Joe Biden was the sitting Vice President – memos show. According to a copy of the indictment, just 20 months earlier, his father’s Justice Department charged five members of a Chinese military hacking unit for breaching the company’s computer systems in search of intellectual property and internal strategy communications.

Just the News reports:

In May 2014, the five operatives of the People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 61398 were charged with hacking into the systems of six U.S.-based companies across different industrial sectors, including Westinghouse Electric Co., SolarWorld, United States Steel Corp., and a union. The attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, called the breach a classic case of “economic espionage.”

One operative gained access to Westinghouse’s computers in 2010 and “stole proprietary and confidential technical and design specifications related to pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing” pertaining to the company’s advanced AP1000 nuclear reactor design, according to an indictment filed by the Department of Justice.

“Among other things, such specifications would enable a competitor to build a plant similar to the AP1000 without incurring significant research and development costs associated with designing similar pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing systems,” the indictment reads.

Just the News notes that while there is no evidence at the moment that Hunter Biden was aware of or involved in the hacking efforts by the Chinese, documents previously released by Congress in the Biden impeachment inquiry show Hunter Biden wrote in one text message in 2017 that he believed one of the CEFC officials he worked with, Patrick Ho, was the “f—ing spy chief” of China.

Ho was later indicted in the U.S. and charged with corruption. Joe Biden’s brother James told the FBI he believed CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming had a relationship with China’s communist president.

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