MidDays with Gerard Gibert 2026-11-13

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Get ready to go beyond the headlines and join a meaningful conversation with people from around the state. You're listening to MidDays with Gerard Gibert here on SuperTalk Mississippi.

Gerard Gibert (1:02)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to MidDays. SuperTalk Mississippi, I'm your host, Gerard Gibert. On location today at Jones College, Rhino Safe and Sound in the SuperTalk Mississippi headquarters will be, of course, guiding you through the middle of your day with facts, fodder, and fine music on this.

And a lovely one it is out there today, Rhino, but it's going to get a little chillier on us. It is certainly a little chilly today, but brilliant sunshine traveling through the stately pines that as we have here in southwest Mississippi, south Mississippi. Man, really something. Beautiful day out there. What's happening up there?

Jim Ferguson (1:46)

Oh, not too terribly much.

SPEAKER_1 (1:48)

It's just good to be at the weekend.

Gerard Gibert (1:50)

Yeah, we are there. And what a week it has been. The week after the big elections across the country and certainly here in the state of Mississippi, the big Senate race that got national attention has been decided. And that is in the books now. I know Dave filled in yesterday. I was called upon by the Madison County Business League Foundation, of which I am a member, to deliver a little update on the election and provide some post-election analysis. This is one of those deals where I know there's so much data, there's so much information, so much to analyze and process and talk about. You could spend hours doing it, but in the small amount of time that was allotted, we try to give kind of an overview of the results in the landscape and what that means going forward. And something we've talked about here, that hasn't really gotten a lot of attention with respect to the election, but is beginning to receive some attention, and that's the prospect of more states joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Pact.

So it bears just a brief overview of that again. This is something that's below the radar, and this is not something that's done in Washington. It would be done by states at the state level. Eighteen states currently have joined the pact, and what they've agreed to do is to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide for president.

And currently, of course, states award their electoral votes based on who wins the popular vote in their state. There are two exceptions, Nebraska and Maine, who award the electoral votes in their respective congressional districts based on who wins the popular vote in those congressional districts. All the rest of the states do it based on who wins the popular vote in their state, such as in Mississippi. But that's starting to get some attention because there were some trifectas achieved in states that are prospectively could join the interstate pact, namely Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, a couple more. Right now, the way the pact is designed, the way it is designed, there are 222 electoral votes represented among the states who have joined the pact. 48 are needed, 48 electoral votes that would come from states which would join the pact in order to trigger the agreement. The agreement now is dormant, waiting for that 270 If that number is achieved because additional states join it, then those states, in accordance with that agreement, the pact would award their electoral votes based on who wins the popular vote nationwide. If I'm not mistaken, right, the last time a Republican won the national popular vote was Ronald Reagan back in the 80s.

Jim Ferguson (5:25)

No, Trump beat Kamala.

Gerard Gibert (5:26)

In the popular vote, that's right. In 2024, that's right. He sure did. That was the first time that had happened since, I should say, since Reagan in the 80s.

But she may be the worst candidate ever to run for president, only to be exceeded by Hillary Clinton, whom Trump lost the popular vote to, but still prevailed in the electoral vote. This is just something that could change the way we elect presidents. That's the big takeaway from here. And so while we're all focused on the midterms, and we certainly should, and what that meant to the political landscape in Washington, this is something that we need to be paying attention to as well. Meantime, did your email go down, folks? A lot of people's did, because Microsoft had them some problems yesterday with their very popular Office 365 It affected lots of applications. It was kind of spotty in the way that it was affected. It affected and created outages. The Outlook tool in particular, the one that everybody uses is the interface for their back office email. That caused lots of problems really across the world. And because of the use of that for correspondence and communications, it's a very popular tool, of course, for that purpose. So wow, that is really incredible that we had that outage for such a long period of time.