Hello listeners and welcome to another edition of Politico's nerd cast. I'm Scott Bland, your host.

This week on the nerd cast, we have our first big moves in the 2020 presidential race. Attorney Michael Avinotti and former Massachusetts

Governor Duval Patrick say they won't run for president.

We're going to talk through what that tells us about the way the field might shape up and just

how big it's going to be.

Plus, an electoral fraud scandal is brewing in North Carolina.

Did a Republican congressional candidate's campaign round up a bunch of absentee ballots and use

them to try and swing the race.

We're going to talk with Elena Schneider about exactly what happened there, bring in some fun

historical context, at least I think it's fun, and talk about what might happen next as the 2018 midterms refuse to get put in the rearview mirror.

As always, we're taping us a little bit before noon eastern on Thursday.

Today that's December the 6th, so it's all up to date as of then.

All right, let's get started.

I want to welcome our guests.

We've got two of our national political reporters online, David Siders, joining from California.

David, good to hear from you.

Good to be here.

And Natasha Kereki on the phone from Chicago.

Hi Natasha.

Hey Scott.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And of course, in the studio, we have Senior Politics Editor Charlie Matessian.

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