In Other News: Mississippi Gets a New Flag as Oregon Votes to Legalise Possession of Opioids

Thousands of mail-in votes are still being counted in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina as the United States awaits a conclusive result in Tuesday’s election result.

The Democrats look unlikely to take the Senate, after falling short in several key contests, such as Maine where Susan Collins beat off Sara Gideon's challenge.

So what else happened on Tuesday?

​Mississippi Votes for New Flag

A new state flag for Mississippi was approved by 70 percent of voters, five months after the Governor, Tate Reeves, signed a bill to scrap the old banner, which included the Confederate battle flag in one corner.

Its replacement - a red, yellow and blue flag with a white magnolia in the centre and the words In God We Trust below - was fluttering proudly from several state buildings on Wednesday, 4 November.

Former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson, who led the commission which approved the new design, said: "Mississippi voters sent a message to the world that we are moving forward together. I have a renewed sense of hope for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and I know this new symbol creates better prospects for the entire state of Mississippi."

​George county and Greene county - in the far south-east of the state - were the only two out of 82 in Mississippi which voted to reject the new flag and keep the original, which was associated with slavery and the losing side in the Civil War.

Eartia Cotten, 61, an African-American bookkeeper, said of the new flag: “I love it.”

She told AP she had not been been fazed the old flag and added: “It's just what we had.''

Oregon Legalises Hard Drugs

Voters in Oregon on the west coast passed Measure 110, making the state the first in the union to decriminalise possession of small amounts of hard drugs.

Almost 60 percent of Oregonians voted in favour of the proposal, which will mean drug addicts will not be prosecuted for handling wraps of cocaine, meth or opioids.

The measure, funded by the state’s marijuana tax revenue, would also establish drug addiction recovery centres and aims to treat users as patients, rather than criminals.

​Drug dealers will still be prosecuted for possession of larger quantities with intent to distribute.

Mike Marshall, the executive director of Oregon Recovers, told KATU why he had campaigned for the measure: "We all support decriminalisation. The notion that people are criminalised because they suffer from the disease of addiction is just fatally flawed. It’s a consequence of both the war on drugs and the stigma assigned to addiction."

California Votes on Gig Economy

Uber, Lyft and Doordash are celebrating after voters in California voted to give them an exemption from a state law which required them to offer full employment benefits for their delivery drivers.

James Patterson, a pensioner in Sacramento who does deliveries for DoorDash and Postmates, welcomed the outcome, saying he wanted to be treated as an occasional contractor, rather than an employee.

​He said: "You can just work when you want and stop whenever you want and as someone who is retired, it's nice to get a little supplemental income whenever you need it.''

Trade unionists said those in the so-called “gig economy” needed better working conditions.

Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart and other app-based firms spent US$200 million on campaign adverts.

The voters of California also rejected Proposition 21 - which would have extended rent control - but approved Proposition 17, which will restore voting rights to 50,000 convicted felons in the state.

North Carolina Elects 25-Year-Old Paraplegic

Voters in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District - the pandhandle in the west of the state - have elected Madison Cawthorn, 25, as their new Senator.

Cawthorn, who has been confined to a wheelchair since a car accident in 2014, will be the youngest member of Congress in modern history.

​The Republican candidate beat his Democrat rival Moe Davis for a seat vacated by Mark Meadows, who became Donald Trump’s chief of staff in March this year.

Cawthorn, who is on the right of the party, pulled off a surprise victory over Lynda Bennett in the Republican primaries earlier this year. Bennett had been endorsed by Trump.

Prior to this week, the youngest member of Congress was Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who was 29 when she was elected in 2018.

Cawthorn is on the opposite end of the political spectrum from the New Yorker and said during the campaign he had decided to run because "our faith, our freedoms and our values are under assault from coastal elites and leftists like Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."

Delaware Elects First Transgender State Senator

Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender state senator in the country when she was elected by the voters of Delaware.

McBride, a Democrat, said: “It is my hope that a young LGBTQ kid here in Delaware or really anywhere in this country can look at the results and know that our democracy is big enough for them too.”

​McBride, who was born Tim, won 70 percent of the vote.

McBride, who claimed she felt female from the age of four, told The Lily: "I would go into my bathroom, look into the mirror and say out loud, ‘I’m transgender’ and then instantly, I would feel a ton of shame and say, ‘No, I’m not. No, I’m not’."

She interned for President Barack Obama at the White House and became the first openly transgender person to give a speech at a party convention, in 2016.

Colorado Elects Former Governor as Senator

The Republican Senator in Colorado, Cory Gardner, lost his seat to the state’s former Governor, John Hickenlooper.

​Gardner, who only won the seat in 2015, lost by almost 300,000 votes to Hickenlooper, who was Mayor of Denver from 2003 to 2011 and then Governor of Colorado from 2011 to 2019.

Gardner was hampered by being on the coat-tails of President Trump, whose approval ratings in Colorado are at record low levels following the pandemic.

Chips Felkel, a Republican strategist, told Sputnik that Gardner had “not been a good candidate”.