Tag: state

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Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger investigating 250 cases connected to election

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday said his office is investigating more than 250 claims of voting irregularities connected with the November election.  

Speaking to reporters from the state Capitol Monday, Raffensperger said his office is investigating any credible claims that groups are working to register ineligible people to vote ahead of a high-profile runoff election for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats. He said his office’s 23 investigators are also continuing to look into allegations of problems with absentee ballots, as well as claims of people who voted twice, people who cast a ballot in a dead person’s name, and non-residents who voted in Georgia.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference on Monday, Nov. 30, 2020, in Atlanta.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference on Monday, Nov. 30, 2020, in Atlanta.
(AP)

Gabriel Sterling, a top official in Raffensperger’s office, said more than 250 cases have been opened, but there has been nothing so far that

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Nazi symbol found in training video used by Kentucky law enforcement, state confirms

Kentucky criminal justice trainers used a video featuring an “offensive” Nazi symbol as recently as September, state officials confirmed Monday.

Gov. Andy Beshear and the state Justice and Public Safety Cabinet on Monday confirmed the existence of a law enforcement training video that featured a white supremacy symbol. It was approved for training use in September.

The video was used by the Department of Criminal Justice Training, which provides training to every law enforcement agency in Kentucky, except for the Kentucky State Police and Lexington, Louisville and Bowling Green police departments.

The video’s existence was initially reported by the Manual RedEye, the student newspaper at DuPont Manual High School in Louisville. The training video, titled “911 Response to the Drug Epidemic,” was an hour long. It featured a clip taken from another source. That clip included a “Black Sun” Nazi symbol, according to RedEye reporter Satchel Walton.

The “Black

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Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs certifies general election results | Arizona’s Election Authority

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) — The Arizona 2020 general election results were certified Monday morning by Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. 

Hobbs certified results at the official canvass for federal, state, legislative offices, and statewide ballot measures with Chief Justice Robert Brutinel also in attendance and signing. Just ten days prior, Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to confirm that all ballots cast in the county were accounted for, and every valid vote will be in the final election results.



Maricopa County Board of Supervisors certify 2020 general election results

Once all remaining counties in the state certify their results, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Gov. Doug Ducey will make the final certification granting Arizona’s electoral votes to Joe Biden.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Governor Doug Ducey also signed off on the canvass, which will lead to the selection of the state’s electoral college voters. Because of Arizona’s Electoral College laws, all of the state’s 11 electoral votes

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Alleged arson fire destroys office of lawyer recently elected to KY state Senate

Police have charged a man with deliberately setting a fire that destroyed the law office of Kentucky Sen.-elect Johnnie L. Turner on Saturday.

There were apartments above Turner’s law office in the building in downtown Harlan, so the fire left six people without homes, according to Leslie Bledsoe, head of an organization called With Love From Harlan.

The charity was working Monday to find homes for the people — a single mother with one child and four other women — and to raise money to help them, Bledsoe said.

“Many of them left the building only with the clothes on their backs, and were thankful just to get out alive,” Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley said in a Facebook post.

Harlan police arrested Adam Mills, 22, on charges of first-degree arson, first degree wanton endangerment and fleeing from police.

Lt. Mitchell Alford said in an arrest citation that Mills,

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Attorney general opened investigation into state Rep. David Cook

CLOSE

Rep. David Cook asks a question during a hearing on HB 2540, January 29, 2019, in the Arizona House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources, Energy and Water at the Arizona State Capitol. (Photo: Mark Henle/The Republic)

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office opened an investigation into state Rep. David Cook, the Pinal County sheriff and others after allegations that the lawman called off plans to seize property belonging to the family of an agriculture industry lobbyist, according to a letter obtained by The Arizona Republic.

In the letter, a special agent from the Attorney General’s Office sought records in June from the Arizona House of Representatives’ ethics investigation into Cook, which revolved around claims Cook, R-Globe, intervened to stop the planned seizure and had a romantic relationship with the lobbyist, AnnaMarie Knorr, which Cook and Knorr have denied.

The chair of the investigation said it was at a minimum

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Public disclosure at Washington state agencies slows to a crawl in pandemic

For two months, Ailise Delaney waited for a police report, a simple and routinely accessible document she hoped would help a woman seek a protection order in a domestic violence case.

But a Seattle police account of what happened one night in June when they responded to a 911 call didn’t arrive in time, forcing Delaney, an attorney with the Eastside Legal Assistance Program, to move forward in court without it.

“Not even being given the option to present that to the court is really upsetting,” Delaney said. “And trying to explain to a client why we don’t have this information or why we won’t be able to get it is really difficult a lot of times.”

Under Washington state law, public agencies are required to provide an array of documents to anyone who requests them within certain timelines.

But during the coronavirus pandemic, wait times for public records at

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Texas first responders who die from COVID-19 denied state benefits

Law enforcement groups, surviving relatives call on Gov. Abbott to act, but he says law already allows money to flow.

The Texas prison system continues to lead the country in COVID-19 infection rates and prisoner deaths, but there’s another crisis unfolding as families of prison employees who have died are unable to get critical first-responder benefits. 

So far, 23 Texas correctional officers have died from COVID-19. Eric Johnson is one of them. 

The 37-year-old is survived by his wife, Charity, and four children in Madisonville, Texas. 

“It really has taken a toll on her and her kids,” said Johnson’s cousin, Shemeka Morning. “Charity misses her husband. All the kids miss him.”    

Johnson’s family say their grief is compounded by their struggle to get benefits that they say are due them.  

Although the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reported Johnson’s death as being in the line of

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Georgia recount signature-matching impossible despite demands from Trump, Republicans, says secretary of state

The Trump campaign and high-profile Republicans are demanding that signature-matching be a major part of the recount the president filed for in Georgia, where President-elect Joe Biden beat him by less than one half of a percentage point – but the secretary of state’s office is saying that ship has sailed. 

Because of rules designed to protect voter privacy, ballots in Georgia are separated from their outer envelopes – where the signature is – after they are initially verified. This makes it impossible to reconnect the ballots to their envelopes, and therefore impossible to re-do signature matching after ballots are counted.

“Today, the Trump campaign filed a petition for recount in Georgia,” the president’s legal team said in a statement Saturday. “President Trump and his campaign continue to insist on an honest recount in Georgia, which has to include signature-matching and other vital safeguards. Without signature-matching, this recount would be

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State to wait on Dwyer case outcome before fixing data retention law

The Department of Justice says it will wait until a key European decision on the case of convicted murderer Graham Dwyer is made before fixing Ireland’s data retention law.

Last week, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) indicated to the Irish Supreme Court that any decision it makes with regard to the mobile phone data used in part to incriminate Dwyer in 2015 is likely to be in his favour.

The case has dragged up a persistent problem which has dogged the State, Ireland’s compliance with European data laws, into the limelight, with thousands of criminal convictions secured using Ireland’s 2011 data retention Act potentially set to be appealed as a result.

That Act was rendered invalid in 2014 following a prior judgement made by the CJEU, in a case taken by advocacy group Digital Rights Ireland, which ruled that Irish law surrounding the retention of phone

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Trump’s election lawsuits prompt death threats against state officials

  • State officials are sounding the alarm on an uptick in death threats that they’ve received since the presidential election.
  • They work in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada — key states where President Donald Trump’s campaign is attempting to overturn the results.
  • Deadlines to certify election results are quickly approaching and each state will in the coming days declare President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of its Electoral College votes.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump is fueling a wave of hatred and violent threats toward local officials in key swing states where he’s challenging the 2020 election results.

“So this is fun…multiple attempted hacks of my emails, police protection around my home, the threats,” Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager for Georgia’s Secretary of State, wrote on Twitter on the weekend.

“But all is well,” he continued, “following the the law, following the process…doing

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