Texas voters have to wear masks while voting despite Gov. Greg Abbott's exemption, federal judge rules

Texas voters are now required to wear face masks when casting ballots during the pandemic, a federal district judge ruled Tuesday, invalidating an exemption for polling places that Gov. Greg Abbott had included in his statewide mask mandate.

The governor’s mandate for Texans to cover their mouths and noses in public does not apply to polling places, an exclusion that has been challenged as discriminatory against Black and Latino voters who are more likely to be harmed by the coronavirus. Abbott has previously said he encourages voters to wear a face mask, but said he excluded polling places from his mandate to prevent people from being turned away from voting just because they don’t have a mask. Under Abbott’s order, poll workers are also not required to wear masks.

In his temporary ruling, U.S. District Judge Jason Pulliam said the exemption “creates a discriminatory burden on Black and Latino voters.”

Abbott and Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs immediately sought an appeal at the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harris County Clerk's Office, expecting the appeals court to at least temporarily halt Pulliam's order, said Wednesday that it will continue its policy of strongly encouraging, but not requiring, masks at the polls to avoid voter confusion.

The argument for a mask mandate at the polls was first raised in a much broader lawsuit filed against Abbott and the Texas secretary of state in July by Mi Familia Vota, the Texas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and two Texas voters. The plaintiffs also sought things like a month of early voting, the opening of additional polling places and a suspension of rules that limit who can vote curbside without entering a polling place.

Pulliam, based in San Antonio, had dismissed the lawsuit in September, with Texas having convinced him that the sweeping changes sought to the state’s rules for in-person voting during the pandemic were outside of his jurisdiction as a federal judge. But earlier this month, with early voting already underway, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals punted the case back to Pulliam for him to again review the argument for an across-the-board mask mandate for anyone at a polling place.

The appeals court said that if Pulliam found that Abbott’s decision to not require masks at the polls violated the federal Voting Rights Act’s disallowance of discriminatory voting practices based on race, he would have jurisdiction to order changes.

“Black and Latino Texans … are more likely to become infected and more likely to suffer severe illness or to die of COVID-19. Black and Latino voters in Texas also face longer lines at the polls, increasing their risk of transmission by exposing them to crowds of other voters and poll workers,” the plaintiffs wrote in their renewed argument before Pulliam last week. “Under these conditions, Black and Latino voters must choose between not voting or risking their lives or the lives of their loved ones to vote. White voters do not face the same level of risk.”

The Texas attorney general’s office countered that the majority of states are not requiring masks at polling places and argued that the new legal fight over a potential Voting Rights Act violation is happening too late — after more than 7 million Texans have already cast ballots since early voting began on Oct. 13.

“Texas is on track to smash its prior turnout record, even during the pandemic and in counties with large minority populations,” the state’s filing said.

After the court voided Abbott's exemption, in effect requiring masks at polls, the plaintiffs said it was a "tremendous victory for democracy."

"The Judge has already been vindicated, as last night we received reports of polling officials in Texas testing positive for the coronavirus, and other polling places being required to close down because of sick poll workers," said Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP, in a statement. "And, this past weekend, we received reports of poll watchers who were using their maskless presence to approach and intimidate minority voters."

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/28/texas-voting-mask-abbott/

“And Now He’s Dead!” — SICK: Governor Cuomo Jokes About Young Man Who Died from Coronavirus – Then Repeats It (VIDEO)

More people died in New York State per capita to the coronavirus than any place in the world — except for neighboring New Jersey.

New York state ended up being the epicenter of the coronavirus. The state totaled over 33,000 deaths — nearly 10 times the number of deaths in the 9-11 attacks.

Many of these people, it’s not clear how many, died from coronavirus at nursing homes and assisted living centers.

Governor Andrew Cuomo put in place policies that sent sick patients into the nursing homes.

New York State officials have refused to report on how many patients were sent to nursing homes and assisted living centers due to their coronavirus policies.

On Wednesday Governor Andrew Cuomo cracked a joke during his live broadcast about a Florida man who died from the coronavirus after he went to Florida for spring break.

Cuomo thought it was so funny he laughed at it again when he was leaving the room, “And now he’s dead!”

Not only was his joke tasteless it was complete rubbish.

The young man in Florida who said, “If I get corona, I get corona.” later reportedly came down with the disease.

But he did not die.

Very few healthy individuals under 30 have died from the coronavirus.

It’s just not true.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/now-dead-sick-governor-cuomo-jokes-young-man-died-coronavirus-repeats-video/

https://twitter.com/CuomoWatch/status/1321472985463738369

Federal court says California can’t use sentencing workaround to prevent deportations

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected California lawmakers’ attempt to spare hundreds of low-level offenders from deportation by shortening their maximum sentences by a day.

Federal law requires deportation of unauthorized immigrants convicted of crimes that the law classifies as “base, vile or depraved,” including most theft offenses, and that are punishable by a year or more behind bars. Immigrants convicted of lesser crimes can still be deported but can argue for exemptions based on factors such as family hardship.

The law’s impact in California was narrowed in 2015 when a new state law took effect that reduced the maximum sentence for misdemeanors to 364 days. In a followup bill, effective in 2017, legislators said the one-day reduction would apply retroactively to sentences imposed before 2015, allowing defendants in those cases to challenge their deportations as well.

But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said Wednesday that U.S. immigration officials were not bound by the retroactive change in California law and could deport defendants who were convicted of misdemeanor thefts and comparable crimes before 2015.

Congress’ authority over immigration law “cannot be manipulated after the fact by state laws modifying sentences that at the time of conviction permitted removal” or barred challenges to deportation orders, Judge Ronald Gould said in the 3-0 ruling, which upheld an immigration court’s 2018 decision.

The ruling will lead to the deportations of “hundreds if not thousands of non-citizens” convicted of relatively minor crimes, with actual sentences much shorter than a year, said Stacy Tolchin, a lawyer in the case.

“It is incredibly disappointing and shows that much of immigration law is just arbitrary and irrational,” Tolchin said.

Another attorney, Rose Cahn of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, said the ruling also applies to green-card holders, legal U.S. residents with work permits. While protected from deportation for most minor offenses, they can be deported for thefts and comparable crimes punishable by a sentence of a year or more, Cahn said. Those would include pre-2015 misdemeanor thefts in California under Wednesday’s ruling.

The case involved two men living in Southern California. One, Eduardo Velasquez-Rios, entered the United States illegally at an unspecified date and pleaded guilty in 2002 to misdemeanor forgery, the court said. He was sentenced to 12 days in jail. The second man, Sanjay Desai, a citizen of India, entered the U.S. legally in 2000 but overstayed his visa and was later convicted of misdemeanor grand theft and sentenced to 13 days in jail, the court said.

Immigration officials moved to deport both men in the early 2010s and said the defendants could not challenge the orders because their crimes carried maximum sentences of a year in jail, even though they served much less. Their cases were still pending when California changed its law in 2017 to reduce the maximum terms retroactively for both crimes to 364 days, but the appeals court said the law that applies to deportations is the one that was in effect at the time of conviction.

The Supreme Court has advised lower courts to interpret federal laws “to achieve national uniformity,” Gould said in Wednesday’s ruling, and that goal would be thwarted if the courts applied various state laws “in a patchwork fashion to determine the immigration consequences of a particular offense.”

While states can pass laws affecting the health and welfare of their own residents, Gould said, “Congress possesses sweeping authority over immigration policy.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Federal-court-says-California-can-t-use-15682364.php

‘Ripe for error’: Ballot signature verification is flawed — and a big factor in the election

Mail-in ballots are pouring in by the millions to election offices across the country, getting stacked and prepared for processing. But before the count comes the signature test.

Election workers eyeball voter signatures on ballots one by one, comparing the loop of an “L” or the squiggle of an “S” against other samples of that person’s writing.

When performed by professionals in criminal cases or legal proceedings, signature verification can take hours. But election employees in many states must do the job in as little as five seconds.

In an election marked by uncertainty amid the pandemic, the signature verification process represents one of the biggest unknowns: whether a system riddled with vulnerabilities will work on such a massive scale.

In 2016, mismatched signatures were the most common reason that mail ballots were rejected, according to federal officials. With record numbers of people voting by mail this cycle, ballots thrown out for signature problems and other issues have the potential to decide races where the margin of victory is slim.

Candidates could mount legal battles over the verification process to challenge election outcomes. President Trump has repeatedly asserted, with no evidence, that mail-in voting is rife with fraud.

Rejected mail-in ballots have been a significant factor in recent elections.

This year a New York congresswoman won a primary by 3,200 votes, a margin smaller than the number of mail-in ballots disqualified in that election. In 2018 in Florida, the number of mail ballots tossed was greater than the 10,033 votes that secured one candidate a U.S. Senate seat.

More than 45 million Americans have already returned mail ballots, according to the U.S. Elections Project. That includes nearly 5 million voters in the battlefield states of Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where elections workers will have to verify, process and count ballots in a matter of days.

More than 25 states have taken steps to broaden access to mail voting during the pandemic, including investing in technology and staff.

Some also have created processes for voters to fix signature problems if their ballots are challenged — which should lead to a lower rate of rejection, experts say.

But experts say mail voters are far more likely to be disenfranchised than those who vote in person.

That’s particularly true for young people, who are more likely to experiment with various handwriting styles; the elderly, whose signatures sometimes change with age; people with disabilities; and those voting by mail for the first time — a category that this year includes millions of Americans.

People tasked with verifying signatures often receive little or no instruction. According to one study, those without formal training are more likely to flag a genuine signature as a fake rather than identify false signatures as real.

“It is just ripe for error,” said Linton Mohammed, a forensic document examiner in California who has been an expert witness in lawsuits over ballot signature rules.

Voters whose ballots are rejected aren’t always given the opportunity to correct, or cure, the issue. In states like Mississippi, West Virginia and Wisconsin, ballots aren’t counted until the day of the election, so voters there will have little, if any, time to correct errors.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-10-28/2020-election-voter-signature-verification

Double-voting probed in Monte Sereno: What stops someone from casting ballots in two states?

Authorities are looking into accusations that a Monte Sereno city councilwoman illegally voted twice in California and Oregon for years, raising the question of how could someone repeatedly cast ballots in two states?

The alleged fraud comes to light during a year where election integrity already is under scrutiny. President Trump has been criticized for suggesting, without evidence, that mail-in ballots used across the country as the coronavirus pandemic rages are vulnerable to such fraud.

But while election experts acknowledge that policing the one-person, one-vote principal across state lines is difficult, they say violations are rare.

“Is it happening frequently? No, I don’t think so,” said Kim Alexander, founder and president of the California Voter Foundation, a Sacramento nonprofit dedicated to improving the voting process. “This is definitely a situation where voters are policing themselves. The burden is on the voter to adhere to the law and the penalty to not adhere to the law is a felony. I think that does effectively deter pretty much most people.”

In Monte Sereno, the double-voting allegations against Rowena C. Turner, 71, came as the former teacher and marketing manager for several Silicon Valley technology companies seeks re-election to the city council she joined in 2016. She has lived in the small, upscale residential community in the South Bay since 1986.

Records from the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters office show she has been a registered voter in the county since at least 1990, when she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, and cast mail or absentee ballots in elections from 1992 through the upcoming Nov. 3 election.

However, in Josephine County, Oregon, where Turner in 1999 bought property in Grants Pass, elections records show she also registered to vote there that year, again as a Republican, as the state became the first in the country to conduct elections entirely by mail. She voted in more than a dozen Oregon elections from 2004 through the 2020 primary held there May 19.

The records from the two counties indicate Turner cast ballots in both states in five general and two primary elections in both places: The 2010, 2012 and 2014 general elections, the 2016 primary and general elections, the 2018 general and 2020 primary.

The allegations against Turner came to a head at last week’s Monte Sereno council meeting, at the insistence of a councilman who supports her re-election opponents in a four-way race for two seats.

“Those are issues the council member should answer,” Councilman Javed I. Ellahie said. “We should not be burying them under the rug.”

Turner said at the council meeting that she has retained a lawyer “and cannot make any public statements.” She did not respond to requests for comment from the Bay Area News Group.

The offices of both the Santa Clara County District Attorney and the California Secretary of State, which oversees elections, confirmed they are looking into the matter.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/10/28/double-voting-probed-in-monte-sereno-what-stops-someone-from-casting-ballots-in-two-states/

because it works so well in SF?!? Insanity.

A new push for supervised drug use spaces emerges in Seattle budget talks

After a stalled push to set up a site where residents can safely use drugs in Seattle, advocates and some City Council members want to move forward with a new approach in 2021 budget talks.

This time, there would be no new, brick-and-mortar supervised consumption “site,” also known as a safe-injection site or Community Health Engagement Location, where drug users could smoke or inject with sterile tools, medical supervision and overdose-reversing medication on hand. Instead, drug users could access the same supervision and amenities at existing social service and health care locations where they already seek other services.

The new proposal still faces many of the same potential legal and public sentiment obstacles that have plagued the project for the last three years. However, it could overcome a financial one.

A regional opioid task force recommended in 2016 that Seattle and King County establish two supervised consumption sites with the goal of preventing overdoses and bettering health outcomes for drug users. King County Executive Dow Constantine and former Seattle Mayor Ed Murray endorsed the recommendation the following year.

Since then, plans to open those sites have been tempered by cities banning the locations, a challenge from a ballot initiative that was blocked by a court ruling, threats of federal litigation and questions about what it would take to fully fund a location.

Enthusiasm from supporters has persevered.

Advocates are pitching the new proposal as something that could be more cost-effective and take place in locations that already see the impacts of public drug use. A group of advocates, health care providers and social service workers that grew out of the 2016 task force also repeated the call for supervised consumption spaces in a larger list of recommendations published this year.

The newest plan, proposed by advocates in a Sept. 22 committee meeting and briefly discussed in a budget session last week, would transfer the $1.4 million the city already set aside for a supervised consumption site in previous years to the city’s Human Services Department, which would then work with Public Health – Seattle & King County to contract with nonprofits to provide the service at their locations.

“If you have loved ones who are in the throes of addiction, you want them to get better. You want them to have the support and the resources to fight their addictions, but what you’re most afraid of is if they’re going to die,” said Councilmember Lisa Herbold, who proposed the budget action.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/a-new-push-for-supervised-drug-use-spaces-emerges-in-seattle-budget-talks/