Morning Reads for Tuesday, November 2

It’s election day and polls are open throughout Georgia! What’s on the ballot in your area. Municipal? School Board? County Commission? SPLOST? Maybe you are one of those people who lives in a very super special place and you have a SPLOSH on the ballot, who knows! Find out here.

• Here’s more information about what’s on the ballot today.
• The massive VB 10,000 that graced the St. Simons Sound for nearly two years has left the building.
• Syphilis is surging in the United States (it’s not just teens in Rockdale County this time). The stakes are high: syphilis is very treatable, but many factors have lead to a rise in untreated syphilis, and 40% of babies born to a parent infected with syphilis are at risk of early infant death.
• There is still no decision on the Camden County spaceport. 
• This article by George Chidi is critically important. We have a massive mental health crisis in Georgia, and this piece details how so many of these failures are encapsulated in the plight of one homeless woman in Atlanta. 
• The decennial redistricting session commences tomorrow. Each party has a different vision for Georgia, and that’s reflected in the different maps. 
• Johns Creek is just one of 53 Georgia cities that are now majority-minority, according to the most recent census data. 
• 200 retirees of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board recently learned that the organization is discontinuing their health benefits. Also of note in this article is that the Georgia Baptist Convention is in the process of selling their 15-year-old headquarters building to a developer who intends to raze the facility and construct a mixed use development on the site.
• More than 5 million people across the globe have died of COVID-19.