The Note: House Dems face political tumult

The TAKE with MaryAlice Parks

And they're back.

Members of Congress are back in Washington Tuesday after being out of town for a month around the midterm elections. Members of the current House of Representatives will hold votes in the afternoon, while some newly elected members will begin orientation before being sworn into office in the new year.

There are big questions facing Democrats, who will hold the majority of House seats in the new Congress.

First, whom will they elect as speaker?

Many senior congressional Democrats have said they still plan to support the current leader, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but at least five new incoming members, by ABC News' count, have said they will not vote for her and another 16 have wavered.

Add on top of that the nine returning Democratic members who have said "no" and the more than 20 members of the Problem-Solver Caucus who have said they want changes to the House rules first, and Pelosi could have a battle on her hands.

Even if some of those newly elected folks who are reserving judgment do come around for her in the end, expect many of them to have demands and serious conditions before lending support.

The RUNDOWN with John Verhovek

An estimated 115.8 million Americans voted last Tuesday, the highest midterm turnout rate in the United States since 1966.

But what does it say about this country when just 50 percent of the eligible voting population casting ballots feels like a victory for civic participation?

Despite this year's uptick, more needs to be done to improve voting accessibility.

One bright spot this cycle was the marked increase in the number of Americans who voted early. Thanks to the tireless work by Professor Michael McDonald and his team at the University of Florida, we know that 39.1 million Americans voted early in 2018, the most in any midterm election ever.

Giving voters the opportunity and the ability to cast their ballots early is one tangible way to ensure more Americans can engage in their fundamental right to participate in our democracy.

For as much as we celebrate voting in this country, this election showed us -- yet again -- that not voting is as equally ingrained in our culture as voting is, and that should give anyone interested in ensuring Americans participate in elections cause for concern.

The TIP with Adam Kelsey

There are 58,064 votes currently separating Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams in Georgia's gubernatorial election, according to Georgia’s Secretary of State office. That total isn't even enough to fill two-thirds of the University of Georgia's iconic Sanford Stadium, hence Peach State Democrats' frustration.

Less important than the margin between the two candidates however, is another, even smaller number: 20,710 -- the number of votes that need to be distributed to a candidate other than Kemp at this point forward to knock his percentage of the vote down to 50 percent and force a runoff.

Abrams fileda lawsuit Sunday seeking to prolong the process and include ballots with minor mistakes in the hope of overcoming the diminutive difference, but Georgia state law gives its 159 counties only until Tuesday to certify their results. Half have done so already, including a number of Democratic strongholds south of Atlanta.

As for outstanding votes, last week the secretary of state's office unofficially reported a total 21,190 provisional ballots, cast by voters whose eligibility was in question on Election Day. If just 3 percent of those provisional votes were cast for Kemp, a runoff would be mathematically impossible.

The Abrams campaign claims the number of provisional ballots is closer to 26,000. But even then, for a runoff, nearly 80 percent of those votes would need to have been cast for a candidate other than Kemp, which is a significant uptick from the provisional ballot count as of Monday, in which the non-Kemp votes tally 71.5 percent.

THE PLAYLIST

ABC News' "Start Here" Podcast. Tuesday morning's episode features a town council member in Paradise, California, describing her escape from a deadly wildfire that leveled her community. And ABC News' Jordana Miller, who walks us through the escalating attacks in Gaza. https://bit.ly/2M7OS5c

FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast: A Post-Midterms 2020 Draft. The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team ranks the politicians that seem most likely to win the 2020 Democratic presidential primary in the wake of the 2018 midterm elections. The crew also reacts to the latest tallies from races where ballots are still being counted. https://53eig.ht/2OER2FS

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