Smart Talk: Election Day updates

• Merideth Bucher
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  Producer of WITF's Smart Talk
• Staff
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  Staff reporting

On the eve of the 2020 General Election Smart Talk will wrap-up pre-election coverage with a conversation with WITF Reporter Emily Previti.

VotesPA is the official site for the Commonwealth Department of State and for questions and voting information, follow this link. 

Results of the Nov. 3 election in Pennsylvania, and across the country, won’t likely be known for days. The counting of ballots continues after election night most years. This year’s expected surge in mailed ballots means election offices will need extra time to tally all the votes.

As that occurs, some candidates may call for the counting to end and for themselves to be declared the winner. However, winners will be decided when all the votes are counted — that’s the American election system at work.

WITF’s journalists will cover that process, and WITF will rely on The Associated Press to call races for the winner based on the AP’s rigorous, time-tested method.

Seven months into pandemic and long-term care facilities still have major supply shortages

It is estimated that more than 65-percent of COVID-related deaths in Pennsylvania have occurred in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Residents of these facilities typically fall into high risk populations due to their age and underlying health conditions, which are often related.

The availability of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for workers in these facilities has been “dangerously low” since the beginning. The shortages of these supplies has exacerbated the problem and put residents and workers at severe risk. Now, eight months into the pandemic the shortages are still a big problem nationwide.

PennPIRG advocate Emma Horst-Martz appears on Smart Talk Monday to offer details on a new report that exposes supply shortages still plague these facilities.

Say Something Big is a ‘Breast Cancer Support Group in a book’

Finally, as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Leigh Hurst, the founder of the Feel Your Boobies Foundation, is on the program to talk about her new book Say Something Big and her own breast cancer experience.