Thursday, October 15, 2020
WASHINGTON – Voting rights groups who thought they had until Oct. 23 to register new voters were scrambling Wednesday after a federal court set a new registration deadline of 11:59 p.m. Thursday.
The ruling late Tuesday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stays a lower court’s order that extended the deadline from the original Oct. 5, after advocates claimed that the COVID-19 shutdown earlier this year prevented them from registering thousands of potential voters.
The appeals court said the lower court had no business extending the deadline – but also delayed its stay until Thursday to ensure that the thousands who have registered since Oct. 5 would not have their registrations thrown out.
Advocates said they were disappointed with the ruling. But they also claimed that they have been able to register thousands of new voters during the registration window since Oct. 5, and that they continue doing so until Thursday.
“Mi Familia Vota along with our partner organizations are going to continue to work tirelessly to ensure that we can register as many eligible voters as possible so they can participate in this Election,” said Yara Marin, the organization’s political director.
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
WASHINGTON – Native Americans in Arizona finally celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day as an official state holiday Monday – but it was a win with an asterisk.
After years of advocacy by tribal groups, Gov. Doug Ducey last month signed a proclamation making Oct. 12, 2020, a joint celebration of both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day, but just for this year.
“I’ve been working on this for years now and so when the governor signed the proclamation, … we were all taken aback,” said state Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai, D-Cameron, who first introduced a bill to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2013.
“And so we’re surprised and we’re very thankful,” she said, calling it a “step towards making it an official state forever holiday.”
Peshlakai said she will use the momentum and reintroduce her bill in January to make the change permanent – and do away with Columbus Day. “We’re in it for the long haul,” she said.
Tags: columbus day , Indigenous Peoples’ Day , politics , Image
With the election just days away, Cronkite News is taking a closer look at some of the measures on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Four years after Arizona voters rejected legalizing recreational marijuana, the issue is back, appearing on November’s ballot as Proposition 207.
Eleven states have legalized recreational marijuana. Arizona joins three others – Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota – with the question on the Nov. 3 ballot.
The Marijuana Legalization Initiative, also known as the Smart and Safe Arizona Act, would legally allow people 21 and older to possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana, although smoking it in public places and open spaces would be prohibited. Arizonans would be allowed to grow up to six plants in their personal residences, and anyone arrested for, charged with or convicted of less serious marijuana-related offenses would be allowed to petition to have their criminal records expunged beginning July 21, 2021. Those offenses include possession of 2.5 ounces of marijuana or less and possessing paraphernalia used to smoke marijuana.
Monday, October 12, 2020
With three seats up for grabs on the Tucson Unified School District’s school board, seven new candidates are vying for a chance to govern Tucson’s largest school district.
A local watchdog group that critically monitors the district, CARE 4 TUSD, hosted an online forum Thursday night for each candidate to outline their views on issues including reopening schools during the coronavirus pandemic, dwindling enrollment numbers and what they would cut from the district’s budget.
Although the current TUSD board has approved a new hybrid learning model, they have yet to vote on a date to return to in-person instruction.
The candidates running for three board positions include Ravi Grivois-Shah, Natalie Luna Rose, Nicolas Pierson, Adam Ragan, Sadie Shaw, Cindy Winston and write-in candidate Cristina Mennella.
Three volunteer, nonpartisan positions on the school board are opening when the terms of current board members Bruce Burke, Kristel Foster and Rachael Sedgwick expire in November.
While the candidates answered questions on a variety of topics at CARE 4 TUSD’s candidate forum, here are the highlights on what they had to say at the virtual gathering.
Meet the candidates
With the election just days away, Cronkite News is profiling candidates who will be on the Nov. 3 ballot. Read Martha McSally's interview here.
How would you rate Arizona’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and why?At first, the state responded well to the pandemic, said Kelly, who’s seeking public office for the first time.
“The governor was clearly looking at the data, and I think that’s incredibly important,” he said, adding that shutting down the economy was a hard decision but also the right decision.
However, the state stopped listening to the advice of public health officials and reopened too early, he said, calling the decision political rather than one rooted in facts, science and data. Kelly said politics need to be kept out of such decisions in the future.
“We’ve got a public health crisis that spurred an economic crisis, and I really feel that these things have been made worse by a crisis in leadership,” Kelly said.
If elected, what steps would you take to mitigate the impact of this disease?
With the election just days away, Cronkite News is profiling candidates who will be on the Nov. 3 ballot. Read Mark Kelly's interview here.
McSally touted the Senate measures she has supported, including the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The act’s Paycheck Protection Program, she said, has reinforced Arizona’s economy, saving 1 million jobs and aiding 86,000 businesses.
“We’ve not dealt with something like this in an entire century,” McSally said. “We pray we won’t have to for another century.”
She praised the government’s urgency in reacting to the pandemic.
“My approach in the CARES Act was to get relief out there as quickly as possible to frontline health care heroes,” McSally said, “to get them everything they needed: PPE (personal protective equipment) and investments and treatments and cures and vaccines.”
If elected, what steps would you take to mitigate the impact of this disease?
