✅Santana: Amidst Record Voter Turnout, Orange County DA Probes His Own Party Over Ballot Harvesting —Voice of OC
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer is on the hunt for Republican ballots.
Over the weekend, Spizter’s Republican Party colleagues came under direct fire from State Attorney General Xavier Bacerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla, both top Democrats, for the party’s approach to ballot harvesting, across the state and in Spitzer’s own backyard.
On Monday, Spitzer announced he was launching an investigation.
Voter turnout as of the second week of voting is going viral.
OC Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley announced in a recent tweet that there had been a 450 percent increase in the amount of ballots returned the first week of voting, going from the last tally of 11,000 to over 60,000 ballots.
Most of those ballots, according to local election tallies, are Democratic with 32,788 Democrat ballots already returned compared to 19,027 ballots cast by Republicans this first week of voting in Orange County.
“It’s a lot easier to vote at home,” said Kelley, who wonders if the surge is the result of coronavirus concerns about voting in person combined with deep interest in this election.
Kelley called 65,000 ballots returned in the first week, “unheard of” saying other counties are seeing similar rates of early ballot returns.
That kind of Blue wave phenomenon has also put a laser focus on Republican ballot harvesting efforts, trying to keep up.
A series of viral tweets, along with reports to state and local elections officials about private, ballot drop off sites being utilized by GOP officials over the weekend, prompted top state elections officials to hold an abrupt press conference Monday, announcing a cease and desist letter to state Republican Party leaders and county chairs, like Orange County Republican Party Chairman Fred Whitaker.
The letter called on California Republican leaders to “cease and desist the coordination, use and/or fast or misleading promotion of unauthorized and non-official vote by mail drop boxes.”
. . .
[Orange County Democratic Party Chairwoman Ada] Briceรฑo and other Democratic Party activists suspect that Republican leaders are trying to create confusion about the use of ballot box drop offs because they are getting beaten so soundly at the polls and trying to create confusion around the new laws on ballot drop off.
“Orange County has a strong record of voter suppression,” said Briceรฑo noting prior instances where Republican Party leaders had to pay out nearly half a million dollar in legal settlements over allegations they used poll guards in 1998 to suppress Latino voters….
✅California tells Republicans ‘cease and desist’ with unofficial ballot drop boxes, but GOP remains defiant -- Republicans are responding by concurrently slamming California’s permissive ballot collection laws and also claiming protection under that law. Brooke Staggs, Alicia Robinson in the
Orange County Register Lara Korte and Kate Irby in the
Sacramento Bee$ Ben Christopher
CalMatters John Myers, Stephanie Lai in the
Los Angeles Times$ Amy Taxin and Adam Beam
Associated Press Colby Bermel Politico Alexei Koseff in the
San Francisco Chronicle$ -- 10/13/20 Katie Shepherd in the
Washington Post$ -- 10/13/20
✅‘Unconscionable.’ How a surge in domestic violence is saving the bail bond industry -- Roughly 42% of all of the people who bonded out of jail since April were released while facing at least one charge related to domestic violence. At least 569 alleged abusers — in some cases, the partners they are accused of beating — paid cash bail to get out of Sacramento jails, a review of county data shows. Jason Pohl in the
Sacramento Bee$ -- 10/12/20
Government officials say the receptacles are illegal and could lead to voter fraud, but the party says it will continue the practice.
—NYT
“Never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy for responding to an outbreak, let alone a pandemic,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
—WashPo
Colleges are giving out prizes, such as T-shirts, football tickets and gift cards, as incentives for students to get tested for the coronavirus or regularly screened for symptoms.
—Inside Higher Ed
—Inside Higher Ed
The Cornish College of the Arts Board of Trustees approved a resolution to declare a financial emergency and financial exigency following a dramatic drop in enrollment this fall.
“While this is a sobering moment in the life of the college, we are not about to shut our doors and go home,” Raymond Tymas-Jones, the college's president, said in a press release.
“The Declaration of Emergency and Exigency is a necessary next step toward our economic recovery and our transition to a new, more sustainable, business model. At over 100 years strong, Cornish has persevered through tough times before and I am confident we will do so again.”
The pandemic caused a significant enrollment decline for the college, which is located in Seattle. That, in addition to years of deficit spending, left the college unable to weather the pandemic's budget effects without intervention, according to the press release.
Finances are already strained — and yet public colleges await budget-busting cuts.
—CHE
—CHE
—CHE
