Afghanistan's parliamentary election was extended for a second day Sunday after Saturday's voting was marred by violence, technical difficulties, and, in some places, polling stations that did not open at all.

This is the first such election since 2010, and it employs a biometric tracking system to avoid fraud that has not been widely tested. "More than 25 percent of the [voting] centers we observed were not opened," reported Naeem Ayubzada of Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan. "We also observed technical challenges with 32 percent of the biometric systems not working in 22 percent of the polling centers. Also, 9 percent of the centers were not equipped with the biometric system."

The Taliban, which remains powerful particularly in rural regions, has told Afghanistan's 8.8 million eligible voters to stay away from the polls, but despite these obstacles, more than 3 million voted Saturday. Bonnie Kristian

The United States, Russia, and China are not taking part in a new French-led push to crack down on cybercrime with new regulations.

On Monday, 50 governments and 150 tech companies pledged to do more to fight criminal activity on the internet, including election interference, hate speech, censorship, and the theft of trade secrets, The Associated Press reports. The countries taking part include many European nations, as well as Japan and Canada. Even though the U.S. is sitting out for now, U.S. tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have signed on.

CNBC reports that "talks are continuing" with France to determine whether the U.S. will become a signatory, but either way, a French official says that "the U.S. will be involved under other forms."

The effort, spearheaded by France, is referred to as the "Paris call for trust and security in cyberspace." It calls for action to "improve trust, security and stability in cyberspace," but the Trump administration has generally steered clear of such international regulatory efforts, writes CNBC. The office of French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that "now that that half of humanity is online, we need to find new ways to organize the internet" to keep it "free, open, and secure." A similar effort advocating for internet regulations during U.N. negotiations failed in 2017, Reuters notes. Brendan Morrow

Add Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to the list of once-reluctant Democrats now considering a presidential run.

The senator, who just handily won re-election in a state that went for President Trump in 2016 and elected Republicans to nearly every other statewide office this year, has repeatedly said he's not considering a 2020 run. That is, until interviews with Cleveland.com and The Columbus Dispatch were published Monday.

In the Cleveland.com interview, Brown said an "overwhelming" number of people have recently told him to consider a presidential campaign. After all, Brown says, his "message clearly appeals to Democrats, Republicans and independents," seeing as he won his Senate seat by 6.4 points in a state that otherwise went for Republicans in the midterms. Brown says he's listening to those calls and intends to discuss a presidential run with his family over the holidays.

Brown went on to give a similar message to The Columbus Dispatch, saying a "sort of a crescendo" of voices urging him to run have left him "thinking about it for the first time seriously." Brown's wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, shared the Dispatch article in a Monday tweet and Facebook post, saying that "we are considering this because so many are urging us to."

In October, Brown told Cleveland.com he doesn't "really want the job" of president, and in September, he told the Cincinnati Enquirer he wasn't "actively considering" a run. But regardless of his decision, Brown told Morning Joe on Monday that a 2020 Democrat can learn from how he won over workers in the Midwest. Read more about the case for Brown's candidacy here at The Week. Kathryn Krawczyk

Iran remains in compliance with 2015's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal, The Associated Press reported Monday, citing a new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) assessment.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog said its inspectors had all necessary access to nuclear development sites in Iran and determined Tehran has not exceeded the deal's limits on heavy water and low-enriched uranium stockpiles. The IAEA conducts quarterly reports on Iranian compliance.

Whether that compliance would continue was thrown into doubt when President Trump withdrew the United States from the deal and re-imposed sanctions the agreement had suspended. However, Iran has continued to participate, as have China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, the other remaining signatories. Bonnie Kristian

A new Axios/Survey Monkey poll finds Republicans and Democrats alike struggle to use positive descriptors of people in the other party.

A majority of Democrats say Republicans are racist, bigoted, sexist, and ignorant; while a majority of Republicans say Democrats are spiteful. Nearly half — 49 percent — of Republicans also said Democrats are ignorant, which is within the three-point margin of error of to be a majority statement as well.

(Axios)

Asked about positive descriptors, results were similarly bleak. Fewer than 5 percent of either party would characterize people in the other as fair, thoughtful, or kind. However, fewer than a quarter of each side were willing to make the leap to labeling their political opponents outright "evil." Bonnie Kristian

The midterms are over, and one Democrat is looking to put his losing congressional bid behind him — by announcing his campaign for president.

West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda (D), an Army veteran who's been described as "JFK with tattoos," filed documents to run for president on Sunday, Politico reports. Ojeda confirmed his candidacy in an email to supporters on Sunday and in an interview with The Intercept.

During the 2016 presidential race, Ojeda announced he'd vote for President Trump because he saw Hillary Clinton as a Democratic elitist, he later told The Intercept. He later retracted that support over Trump's zero tolerance policy that separated migrant families, and opposed the president as he ran against Republican Carol Miller for a West Virginia congressional seat this year. The district backed Trump by a 49-point margin in 2016, but Ojeda lost the seat by just 13 points and polls showed him beating Miller at one point.

Ojeda will take a firmly populist approach to his presidential campaign, he told The Intercept, commenting that the Democratic Party "is supposed to be the party that fights for the working class." He'll focus on fighting corruption and uniting workers to build a base of support, branding himself as "a working-class person that basically can relate to the people on the ground," Ojeda said.

Ojeda is expected to expand on his presidential aspirations in a speech Monday at noon. Read more about his campaign at The Intercept. Kathryn Krawczyk

President Trump is once again baselessly claiming key Florida elections have been tainted by voter fraud, now also calling for election officials to stop counting votes and declare a Republican victory.

On Twitter Monday morning, Trump said that the gubernatorial and Senate races in Florida should be called for Rep. Ron DeSantis (R) and Gov. Rick Scott (R), respectively. Republicans lead in both races, though each is tight enough to have prompted a recount. But Trump doesn't want to wait for recounts; he says the vote count from Election Day should stand, without counting any of the ballots tallied since.

This is despite the fact that in Florida, voters who are overseas at the time of the election, including members of the military, have until Nov. 16 to have their votes counted as long as their ballots were postmarked by the day of the election, reports Mediaite. But Trump isn't accepting that the vote tally has changed since last Tuesday, claiming that ballots have "showed up out of nowhere" and taking this as evidence of a "massively infected" process, even though the Florida Department of State says it has seen "no evidence of criminal activity at this time," reports Politico. Brendan Morrow