KQED's Forum

California is experiencing a record number of early votes with over 9 million ballots cast as of Friday. Secretary of State Alex Padilla is encouraging voters to keep it up as high turnout and COVID-19 safety protocols will likely lead to longer lines on Election Day. We'll check in with Sec. Padilla about early voting, how to make sure your ballot gets counted and what to expect when voting in person this year.

After election ballots are cast, the spotlight turns to the Electoral College with its 538 electors.  Unlike most elections in the U.S., the presidency is decided not directly by voters, but by members of the Electoral College, who are assigned based on the results of the popular vote in each state.  In this hour, we break down the role of the Electoral College and hear why there’s ongoing debate over its relevance.   

Is the presidential election keeping you up at night? Straining your relationships? Maybe even giving you panic attacks? You’re not alone. An American Psychological Association survey found that nearly 70% of adults in the U.S. are finding the election a significant source of stress. That’s a dramatic jump since 2016, and it’s worse for Democrats than Republicans. What are you doing to calm your nerves? And what will you do if the election doesn’t go your way? We’ll get tips on how to manage these times.

President Donald Trump has made restricting immigration a central component of his administration and campaign messaging. On the other side, former Vice President Joe Biden has promised to reverse some of Trump’s policies, such as family separation, setting up a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and to establish a “fair and humane” immigration system. With the election approaching next week, we’ll discuss each candidates’ policy positions on one of the nation’s most divisive issues.

San Francisco has moved very cautiously thus far in the coronavirus pandemic, recently distinguishing itself for being the first California city to reach the “minimal” spread tier on the state’s coded system.  And while the Bay Area is reporting the first significant uptick in cases since August, regional numbers are far lower than a growing national outbreak.  San Francisco Department of Public Health Director Grant Colfax joins us to discuss his strategy for weathering the upcoming holiday season in a pandemic that’s taking a heavy toll on the city’s economy and shows no sign of slowing down.

Dia de los Muertos, the annual Latin American tradition of honoring the dead, will take on a special significance this year, in which the pandemic has created a collective sense of grief. While coronavirus has impacted everyone, Latinos have disproportionately felt the brunt of the pandemic both in terms of deaths and economic hardship. Dia de los Muertos is, in essence, a time of confronting death and remembering loved ones who have passed. In a society that prefers to neglect feelings of grief, cultural and spiritual expert Lara Medina says the tradition provides lessons in how to heal, cope and understand death. With Dia de los Muertos approaching next week, Medina joins us to talk about what the tradition can teach us in a year so heavily marked by loss.

Every election cycle includes “Get Out the Vote” campaigns, but the 2020 election is seeing extraordinary levels of voter enthusiasm, engagement and messaging -- even amidst the pandemic. Research shows that the U.S. lags behind most other democratic countries when it comes to voter turnout. This year, however, states across the country are shattering early voting records, signaling the potential for historic turnout. We’ll talk about the strategies and push to get out the vote in 2020.

Families across California will finally be permitted to visit loved ones in nursing homes, after months of being unable to have in-person visits. Updated guidelines released Friday allow indoor visits in California’s 46 counties currently in red, orange and yellow tiers; it also only applies to long-term care facilities, like nursing homes, but not to assisted or independent living communities. We’ll hear about the new guidance and how the state is keeping elder care facilities safe during the pandemic.

New York City, an international travel hub and region with 19 million people, was particularly vulnerable to a fast-spreading pandemic like coronavirus.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s new book “American Crisis” takes stock of what his state  and its largest city have been through, details the shortfalls of the federal response, and offers a blueprint for future outbreaks.

Major recent polls suggest that former Vice President Joe Biden will defeat President Donald Trump by a decisive margin in next week's election. A simulation by FiveThirtyEight shows Biden winning 88 times in 100, and a model from The Economist puts Biden’s chances of winning the electoral college at 95%. But for the obsessive poll watchers who in 2016 were shocked by Trump's win, today's numbers are fraught. We'll talk about how election polls are constructed, how to interpret them and how methodologies have changed since 2016.

Published two decades ago, political scientist Robert Putnam’s bestselling book “Bowling Alone” struck a nerve with its stark warning about loosening social and political cohesion in America. In their new book “The Upswing”, Putnam and co-author Shaylyn Romney Garrett offer solutions for improving civic life in a country beset by COVID-19 and a divisive election. Putnam and Garrett join Forum to talk about the book and share lessons from history about how the U.S. can recover solidarity and a collective national identity.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN Sunday that the U.S. is “not going to control the pandemic,” because “it is a contagious virus just like the flu.” But thinking of COVID-19 like the flu and employing a flu-pandemic playbook is not an effective response, according to sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In her latest piece for The Atlantic, Tufekci highlights a factor she says is key to this pandemic: COVID-19 is an "overdispersed" virus, which means it tends to spread in clusters. When dealing with overdispersion, she writes "identifying transmission events (someone infected someone else) is more important than identifying infected individuals." Tufekci outlines how countries like South Korea and Japan have used aggressive contact-tracing approaches that include backwards tracing to the original contact, as well as clamping down on potential super-spreader events, to slow the spread. That's in stark contrast to the U.S., where the federal response has been the idea of creating "herd immunity" and where the White House itself became the source of a super-spreader event earlier this month. Tufekci, who the New York Times has called "perhaps the only good amateur epidemiologist,” joins us to talk about the rising cases across the country, prospects for getting the pandemic under control and feelings of "pandemic fatigue."

California prison officials frequently fail to enforce mask requirements for prison staff and inmates to stop the spread of coronavirus. That's according to a report issued Monday by the California Office of the Inspector General, which noted that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has reported that 69 incarcerated persons and 10 staff members have died of COVID-19 as of Oct. 7. We'll review the report and also discuss last week's state court order that San Quentin State Prison reduce its inmate population by half to combat the spread of the virus.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo joins us to discuss how his city is faring as the coronavirus pandemic wears on. Last week, the city unveiled the first of three emergency housing projects with 78 rooms to provide shelter for homeless people. Meanwhile, the city emerged as an economic bright spot in September by adding 9,000 jobs, but close to half of the city’s downtown storefronts remain shuttered. Coronavirus cases in Santa Clara County have steadily declined since peaking in late July. About 58 percent of confirmed cases are among Latinos even though that group only makes up 26 percent of the county’s residents. We talk with Liccardo about ongoing efforts to suppress coronavirus, tackle homelessness and rebuild the local economy.

New reports of foreign election interference emerged this week when national security officials announced that Iran and Russia obtained voter registration data that could be used to threaten voters and sow discord ahead of the November election. In an advisory Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security further called out Iranian actors for spoofing legitimate media sites to spread misinformation about voter suppression and ballot fraud. But according to The New York Times, security experts say that Russia remains the more dangerous threat to the integrity of the 2020 election. We'll talk to New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger about foreign attempts to influence this November's vote.