You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
1 lawyer
Michael Barrett, the director of Missouri’s public defender system, says he has a big funding problem. In an unusual letter to the governor, Jay Nixon, Barrett said the state’s public defender system is ranked 49th in the U.S., that its budget has been repeatedly cut, and that he can’t hire enough attorneys for the department to do its job under the current funding level. Luckily, section 600.042.5 of state law allows him to essentially pick any member of the Missouri bar to defend a case if the need arises. So, he’s assigned a case to a prominent Missouri attorney, Gov. Jay Nixon, to prove his point. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch]
23.9 percent
The reasons why people don’t vote vary; specific demographic groups have different reasons for not making it to the polls. For instance, 23.9 percent of high-income non-voters (making $150,000 or more per year) said they were out-of-town on Election Day, and 42 percent of those non-voters 65 or older cited illness or a disability. [Bloomberg]
47 percent
Percentage of Hillary Clinton supporters who said that they have no close friends who support Donald Trump. For Trump voters, that figure was 31 percent. We’re all in our own bubbles. [Pew Research Center]
1.9 million homes
According to Zillow, that’s the number of homes that could be affected by rising sea levels related to climate change by 2100. All those houses, about 2 percent of those in the U.S., are worth about $882 billion. [Zillow]
$60 million
A 40-year-old Nigerian known as “Mike” has been arrested by INTERPOL and the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crime Commission. They allege he’s behind $60 million worth of online scams that used malware to compromise email accounts and commit fraud. [INTERPOL]
$82 million
Amount of money raised by Trump and the Republican National Committee last month, according to the Trump campaign. That’s a huge improvement from Trump’s previous fundraising pace. [The New York Times]
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