District includes contra costa and santa clara california. Thanks for being here. Good to be here. Thank you. I know you were affected by the shutoffs at your home this time around and for quite a while, too, right . About 48 hours. This morning we were throwing away everything in our refrigerator and freezer and im sure everybody had the same experience. Its not a small thing, im not trying to minimize but what other problems can be brought on by the poweroffs. The company thats doing this are doing it because they fear the wind event will create wildfires. It comes from a good point of concern, which we all have, but its because that their electrical grid hasnt been hardened and they think these winds can create the fire event were fearful about. So they created these Public Safety power shutoffs. There are people that rely upon power for life. Life meaning their electric wheelchair, keeping their medicines cool, heart and lung machines, and those folks are in great danger when you shut off power and so theres a concern about whether the company has done enough to make sure they have the power they need to survive. The cable goes out. The internet goes out. Cell towers arent working. Weve got hundreds of thousands of people in the bay area have lost that communication connection and their ability to hear about alerts, evacuation alerts and the like, the ability to make 911 calls comes into question. Those are two big consequences. You mentioned people with powered life care and devices. Did you get any cries for help this time around from your constituents . Well, part of the issue with the event just happened and weve asked the electric for whats called medical baseline customers that were affected and whether or not there are some who did not get power that they needed at the time at which they needed. There are some factual questions that need to be answered and were going to dig into those facts with the utility. What about medical facilities . The constant use of generators, im sure theres some negative impacts. Do you think pg and e can support the medical facilities because of how frequently this happens . Again, a part of our problem is they dont have microareas where they can be more precise in what they shut off. Hospitals could have no power and across the 7eleven. You cant have surgeries when you think youre going to lose power, so the Hospital System itself is impacted in significant ways. Priers a psps and ongoing. When they run generators theyre incredibly muting and the air quality in the ba bay area doesnt like these jen raters that are running even right now in my neighborhood because of the events. Theres no doubt that hardening of the infrastructure is the answer but these shutoffs are trying to keep us out of the wildfire now while pg e takes on hard work. No wind in my neck of the woods, you say. Are you suggesting that the utility is not being strategic enough in areas it chooses to shut off power or perhaps their forecasts are lail off . The terrain in the bay area is varied. I have may be at a house thats 300 feet above the ground. Mount di an low is a couple of thousand of feet from the ground. How to adjust for the different wind speeds. My area, it wasnt so bad. I dont think you shut off power because you have 30 or 40mileanhour winds unless you feel your structure is that vulnerable. Part of the sclours that pg e is to conduct and show what the pinned pd wind speeds were to prove that this shutoff was required and necessary and proven out by real events. I had legislation in this year that did two things. One, it would require pg e to make sure to provide backup power play. I had a second bill that would require that Cell Phone Companies require a battery backup for 72 hours of power at their cell towers. Both bills were killed in the state asblim because of the power of the utility lobby. Thats a whole nother conversation for another time. I want to move into covid, though. More reopenings are happening this week, as counties including yours, contra costa move from red to the less rerestrictive tier of ormg. How do you feel about the pace of reopenings now . I know you didnt think it made much sense to start to reopen like that. Right. And i have been somewhat critical of the governors response. I think there were some stumbles in may and over the summer. I think hes starting to get it right. I think the reaction that theyre taking now to slow down reopening, to create real data signals adds to whether you can reopen again or whether you have to close again. I think the governor is doing a good job. We can see that as we look to other states around the country. There are outbreaks happening in most of the states and the country but in california weve been able to curtail that. I think if they have governor newsome deserves applause for the work hes doing. Were not out of the woods yet. We have some worries as we get into the cold and winter season. Right now calibratesing what we need to do from a Government Point of view appropriately. Ultimately, its still our behavior. The disease the virus spreads because of permanent contact. Absolutely. In the bay area, weve had a lot of responsible work on that by everybody. We only have time for one last question. I want to bring up your view on schools and ask you what you think. In your district we have seen protests, sometimes by parents, also by a student saying we want our schools fully open. I know vom but most are still not. What is your view on managing that risk and where the right level is right now in terms of inperson learning . Right. Its been a disaster i think Public Health has to drive those choices. We have to get rid of the spread and we have to be careful not to contribute to the spread. I think the cautious nature of the state and of the school board is appropriate and as much as we want our schools back in school, Distance Learning is not working. Its not great, but we have to be very careful there. Im going to say the cautious route is the best one even for our kids when we so much want them to be back in the class room. All right. Thank you so much for stopping by via zoom today. Appreciate it. Take care. Thank you. Were less than one week away from the president ial election. Up next, deep dive into voting trends and what were for members like martin. An air force veteran made of doing whats right, not whats easy. So when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. Thats how you do it right. Usaa insurance is made just the way martins family needs it with hasslefree claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. Because doing right by our members, thats whats right. Usaa. What youre made of, were made for. Usaa welcome back. Six days to election day and a slough of new polls are out. Many suggest joe biden has a 10 to 14point lead over pruch nationwide. But as we know we dont elect the president on the popular vote. How Demographic Groups are trending right now and whats happening in california. Joining us is wall mitchell, Vice President of political data, thats a bipart zap voter data firm based in sacramento. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I want to ask you how you think poll places will look here in california on election day. Weve seen huge lines at polling places across the country. That makes us a little nervous. Tu think that here given all that we know about the use of mailin ballots. Everything that you know, could that happen here with the long lines . Im afraid that it might. And it might happen in some areas that we wouldnt normally expect it. The fact is that weve had rapid turnin of the nail mailin ballots and a lot of people are using drop boxes. Thats great. Weve set records and probably will have an alternate record in the state this year. The challenges that there are still some Voters Holding on to those ballots expressing interest in voting in person maybe because they dont trust vote by mail or theyve heard people from either Political Parties saying they cant have confidence in the vote by mail system. So as a result theyre spd in going to the polling places on election day, voting in person, and its unfortunate but i think a lot of them are going to have an experience that we werent expecting with potentially long lines, with you know, a process that takes longer than it used to. And those delays might be really frustrating. They are saying theyre not willing to use the vote by mail system. All right. Thats logical based on what the president has indicated what he thinks about that whole system. But do you think the fact that, you know, youre talking about potential lines. I know cities in the state are trying to mitigate that. Oakland announced the coliseum will be a voting location. Do we have fewer polling places because of covid . Yes. So the state overall has reduced the number of polling locations. There are more of these vote centers, so you know, you can go to Staples Center or go to, you know, lot of big locations where there is a lot of social distancing and you can go vote. But in most areas its just going to be the local vote center. There might be a line in your neighborhood that you wouldnt have expected, but vice news reported that california was basically leading the country and reducing its number of polling locations by 73 . Thats pretty dramatic, and if everybody votes by mail, theres not going to be any problem. Right. If there were a lot of people that decide that they just have to go in person and they have to go on election day, then we could be in for some trouble. Lets talk about the ballots that have been returned. We know california is twothirds democratic, Something Like that, right . Its not a mystery who would take the state but what is the early turnout and ballots suggest to you about whos engaged and whos turning out and well try to extrapolate that into the national race. Yeah. So in California First thing we saw was a rapid increase in the number of vote by mail ballots being returned. At one point in the first week there was a 20fold increase in voters that turned in ballots in the first few days. Right now weve already surpassed the number of ballots cast in the 2016 election and unlike some other states our state was already me dominantly vote by mail. 75 of the votes cast were vote by mail. The number of people returning ballots isnt just a measure of the change in the election system. Theres also a measure of enthusiasm. The challenge is when we look deeper at those early vote by mail, those voters were largely likely voters to begin with. We still havent seen a lot of participation from younger voters, latino voters, and if you look at a map of l. A. County, youll see really high turnout on the west side and in san gabrielle valley and low turnout in the core of the city. Thats interesting because the democrats have been trying to send out a message, mail in your ballot now. You would think the folks you might consider their core Demographics Group would be doing that. They are, but its largely their core Demographic Group that are the homeowners, the more regular voters, the voters who have traditionally voted by mail mailing those ballots in earlier. A lot of the less frequent voters need to get to them in the next six days or theyre going to be on the sidelines. All right. The latest poll shows biden with a huge popular lead. Polls in the Battle Ground states are more telling. Can you give us a sense of how things are trending in the days before the election . Trending nationally really good for the Biden Campaign, especially the late polls that have come in. It looks as though the Tipping Point states will be those states that really decided the 2016 election. Pennsylvania, wisconsin, mvp, florida, texas, those kinds of states. In those, in most of those, the Biden Campaign has a polling advantage thats greater than the polling advantage that Hillary Clinton has. Of course, this is polling and like you said, people dont win president ial races because of the polls. Theres a lot to go between now and then. Some of the early voting has also like weve seen in california really been strongly democratic, and that might be something that folks in the wiefd camp take and think, well, weve got the votes in the bank but again theres a long way to go and what eventually turnout looks like is really anybodys guess right now. All right. Well, watching us on facebook, she says sorry, i just dont trust polls right now. Lol. Its not funny. Its kind of sad that people dont trust the polls. Tell me if you think the polls have been adjusted and corrected, since the mistake, being so off in 2016 . The National Poll in 2016 was right. It showed Hillary Clinton with a Small National vote lead and thats what ended up happening. The polling where it was wrong was in a lot of midwestern states. Just for the short synopsis why many believe it was wrong is that a lot of white lower education lower income voters were not projected to be turning out in 2016 and they did and when they did, they were largely voting for trump. In this election cycle, there have been a lot that pollsters have done to make sure that theyre capturing some of these less frequent voters, that theyre not kind of missing that whole swath of the electorate, and in my estimation, its more likely that pollsters have kind of erred on the opposite direction this cycle by putting too much emphasis on some of these voters and if they dont vote, that could end up being wider margins. Well see. That leaves me to my last question. What are some of the scenarios that you fore see for Election Night . I realize,000 probably anything could happen. But really what are the things for the voter to have kind of a guide, a playbook . What should they watch for . Which states and whos surprising this candidate by going that way . What to look for . What are the scenarios . Yeah. So i think as im watching it, theres two sets of states that i think are really critical to kind of determining whether or not were going to go to bed early or were going to watch this thing for weeks. Florida and texas would be the first set. These are states where donald trump is leading or is expected to win or at least tilting in his way. If biden were able to win one or two of those states, the race would be over pretty quick. If trump wins those states, then were looking at the Tipping Point state being pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, and the towns with those three states is that those three states have laws that say the early vote, the mailin votes cant be counted until election day or the night after the polls close. That means in california where we will have ten million ballots processed by the time the polls close and can report those results immediately, in those states, theyre going to have to start from scratch. Lets start signature verifying. Lets open up these ballots. Start running them through the machines. If were waiting for those three states to decide this president ial election, we could be waiting days or weeks. Ok. That was the last question but i want to confirm something for one of our viewers. Holly wants to know if i can bring my completed ballot to the polling place on tuesday and have it count. I think the answer is yes. Yes. You can drop it off. They can take it from you and verp fie that it looks right. You can get a ballot there fresh. But it really would be add slap tables to go ahead and use the drop box or mailin now just to avoid having to take space out of the Election Centers that will be impacted on election day. Thank you for joining us. Appreciate your insight. Take care. Thank you for having me. All right. Up next, can kids socialize and exercise safely . One local company sometimes. Less is more. So, heres humira with a thinner needle. Its the same humira, with the same effectiveness you know and trust. But a thinner needle. For a better injection experience. Ask your doctor about transitioning to humira with a thinner needle 3 out of 4 humira patients have already transitioned to humira with a thinner needle and you can pay as little as 5 a month with your copay card. Humira can lower your ability to fight infections. Serious and sometimes fatal infections, including,. Tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems,. Serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. Tell your doctor if youve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common. And if youve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections,. Or have flulike symptoms or sores. Dont start humira if you have an infection. The same humira, with the same effectiveness, and a better experience. Ask your doctor about transitioning to humira with a thinner needle. If you cant afford your medicine, abbvie may be able to help. Welcome back. Doctors agree with parents. Kids need socialization even in a pandemic. The trick is to do it safely. A fremont based company kids to pros have come up with a solution called park pods. Joining us is the ceo and founder of the company. Thapgts for joining us. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. So weve heard a lot about the learning pods where you get the small groups of kids together to learn maybe with one teacher, socially distanced. Can you sman park pods and how they work . Absolutely. It started four years ago with a mission to make enrichment accessible to every child. When covid hit us and we moved on to zoom learning, our children, as you mentioned, socialization having kids being outside doors safely became of importance to every parent and of course every childs social and emotional wellbeing. Park pods came about when we started our pod but parents were like can you do this in our Neighborhood Park . Pause thats where kids would love to be. And then we can have their friends come looping. As you might know cdc guidelines saying being outdoors socially distanced is the safest way for kids out and about playing. So park pods came about and within a matter of days there was a lot of traction from both families to sign up to the point that we now have car pods in 20 different cities starting in the month of november. Wow. So how many spots do you have in the bay area . At each loca