Three things for October 27
1. Barrett confirmed as Supreme Court justice
Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court late Monday by a deeply divided Senate.
“This is a momentous day for America,” Trump said at the swearing-in event at the White House.
Justice Clarence Thomas administered the Constitutional Oath to Barrett. According to AP News, Barrett will participate in the court after taking the judicial oath administered by Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday.
Barrett told those gathered at her swearing-in she learned through the “rigorous confirmation” that “it is the job of a judge to resist her policy preferences.”
“It’s a privilege to be asked to serve my country in this office, and I stand here tonight truly honored and humbled,” said Barrett.
48-year-old Barrett will give conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court.
2. Customer creates app to track which McDonald’s ice cream machines are broken
Rashiq Zahid created a web application, McBroken, which tracks which McDonald’s ice cream machines are broken throughout the U.S.
McBroken works by attributing a red dot to locations that do not have a working ice cream machine and a green dot for those with a working ice cream machine.
Yesterday, according to the app, 8.98% of McDonald’s ice cream machines in the Cleveland and Chattanooga area were broken. By accessing the McDonald’s app and placing an ice cream order every minute, Zahid found a system to accurately measure the number of working machines.
Because Zahid ordered ice cream every minute, the app marked him as a bot, which forced Zahid to find a different way to test the ice cream availability. Zahid made an adjustment; now the app checks every thirty minutes. Now, the website is fully functional, but time errors are still possible.
3. Early vote total exceeds that of 2016
Seven days before Election Day, records are being set for the number of people early voting. According to AP News, Americans have already cast a record-breaking 62 million early ballots, putting the 2020 election on track for historic levels of voter turnout.
University of Florida professor Michael McDonald created a turnout-tracking database that found 15 million more pre-election votes were cast this year than in the 2016 election.
This spike in early voting could be attributed to the desire to avoid large crowds on Election Day. With COVID-19 presenting many new challenges this election year, some have chosen to vote early to social distance.
“It’s good news because we were very much concerned about how it would be possible to conduct an election during a pandemic,” McDonald told NPR News, citing concerns that voters would return mail-in ballots en masse at the conclusion of the early voting period, overwhelming election officials. “Instead, what appears to be happening is people are voting earlier and spreading out the workload for election officials.”
More than one-third of the votes already returned come from the three most populous states, California, Texas and Florida.
