USPS told to deliver ballots in time to be counted in Mich., Wis.
SALEM, Ore. — A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Postal Service to take “extraordinary measures” to deliver ballots in time to be counted in Wisconsin and around Detroit, including using a priority mail service.
Chief U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, issued the order Friday after being presented with data showing on-time delivery of ballots sent by voters was too slow in Michigan and Wisconsin, both considered battleground states in Tuesday’s election.
Delivery of ballots in the USPS’ Detroit district, for example, has dipped as low as 57% over the past week, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office said Saturday.
National on-time delivery has been at 93% or higher, said the statement from Ferguson, who leads a coalition of 14 states that filed a lawsuit Aug. 18 over changes to the Postal Service
Bastian, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said that starting Sunday and continuing through Nov. 10, the USPS must report to his court the prior day’s “all clear” status for each facility and processing center in the Detroit area and a district covering most of Wisconsin.
If the USPS identifies any incoming ballots in its “all clear” sweeps of these facilities, it must make every effort to deliver those ballots by 8 p.m. local time on Election Day, including by using Priority Mail Express or other extraordinary measures, Bastian said.
Priority Mail Express is an overnight service that costs a minimum of $26.35 per envelope, according to the USPS.com website.
Asked for comment on the judge’s order, Postal Service spokesman Dave Partenheimer referred to a fact sheet posted Saturday that says as of Friday, Postal Service employees are authorized to use the Express Mail network to speed completed ballots to their intended destinations.
A get-out-the vote rally in the swing state of North Carolina on Saturday ended with police using pepper spray on some participants and making several arrests.
Multiple people were arrested outside Alamance County’s courthouse and police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd, news outlets reported.
Police did not immediately comment.
Voting rally arrests:
A tropical depression has formed in the central Caribbean Sea and forecasters say it is expected.tobecome a hurricane in the coming days as it approaches Central America.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Tropical Depression 29 emerged Saturday afternoon about 315 miles southeast of Kingston, Jamaica.
The Miami-based center said the storm system is forecast to become a hurricane in a couple of days as it approaches Nicaragua and Honduras.
Forecasters said that if the depression becomes a named storm as expected, it would be named Eta as the 28th named Atlantic storm this season — tying the 2005 record for named storms.
Tropical weather:
A Greek Orthodox priest was
Priest shot in France:
shot Saturday while he was closing his church in the French city of Lyon, and authorities locked down part of the city to hunt for the assailant, authorities said.
The priest, a Greek citizen, was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after being shot twice in the abdomen, a police official told The Associated Press. The attacker was alone and fired a hunting rifle, said the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.
The reason for the shooting was unclear. It happened two days after an Islamic extremist knife attack at a Catholic church in the French city of Nice that killed three people, and amid ongoing geopolitical tensions caricatures mocking the Muslim Prophet Muhammad published in satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Quake rescue: Three children and their mother were rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building in western Turkey on Saturday, less than 24 hours after a powerful earthquake in the Aegean Sea killed at least 39 people and injured more than 800 others.
The quake that struck Turkey’s Aegean coast and north of the Greek island of Samos registered a magnitude that Turkish authorities put at 6.6 while other seismology institutes said it measured 6.9. It toppled buildings in Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, and triggered a small tsunami in the Seferihisar district and on the Greek island. Hundreds of aftershocks followed.
At least 37 people were killed in Izmir, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said from a crisis coordination center.
The health minister as well as rescue worker Ahmet Yavuz told HaberTurk television hours later that one of the rescued children had died.
Wisconsin police shooting:
An attorney for a Wisconsin police officer who has fatally shot three people since 2015 says his client shouldn’t be disciplined or fired simply because city officials are worried he might do it again.
Wauwatosa Officer Joseph Mensah, who is Black, has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in all three cases.
The most recent shooting took place in February, when Mensah shot an armed teenager outside a mall. The decision not to charge him in that shooting sparked several nights of protests in the Milwaukee suburb, some of which turned violent.
The city’s police commission suspended Mensah in July and is expected to decide his fate this month. Former federal prosecutor Steven Biskupic issued a report in October saying Mensah should be fired because the risk that he would kill a fourth person and expose the city to liability was too great.
The officer’s attorney, Jon Cermele, filed documents with the commission last week arguing that state law doesn’t allow the panel to fire an officer because of something that might occur in the future. Terminating him would create an “illogical and artificial rule” that officers can use deadly force a certain number of times.
“In each of the cases identified, Officer Mensah was simply responding to risks he faced,” Cermele wrote.
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict:
Armenia’s leader urged Russia on Saturday to consider providing security help to end over a month of fighting over NagornoKarabakh, and both sides in the hostilities accused each other of breaking a mutual pledge not to target residential areas hours after it was made.
The fighting is the biggest escalation in decades between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the separatist territory. As Azerbaijani troops pushed into Nagorno-Karabakh, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to quickly discuss possible security aid to Armenia.
There was no immediate response from the Kremlin.