Lawrence Park polling station will not be handicap accessible this election
The Erie County Voter Registration Office was just made aware that the handicap accessible ramp is under construction at Eastminster Presbyterian Church.
Schools across Erie celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week
In response, the office has come up with a different method for those who cannot walk up the stairs.
Disabled residents can vote curbside with an alternative ballot.
City of Erie administration calls out Daria Devlin for 'inaccurate statements regarding budget'
'It's much like voting by mail. so they'll be given a ballot and they can vote in the privacy of their car and then they'll package it up in the privacy envelope and put in a declaration envelope and sign and date it and hand it back to the poll worker,' said Tonia Fernandez, director of elections for Erie County.
Those unable to access the polling site will need to apply for the alternative ballots.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Committee backs bills to require paper ballots and prohibit ballot drop boxes
CHEYENNE — Legislators voted to sponsor bills addressing the state's use of paper ballots and ballot drop boxes during Friday's Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee meeting. The two bills, which would require paper ballots be the default voting method in each county and would prohibit the use of ballot drop boxes, are in alignment with legislation that Secretary of State Chuck Gray backed earlier this year. During the meeting, Gray repeatedly referred to President Trump's executive order 'Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,' saying these bills are essential to achieving the president's objectives. The bills also align with Gray's 'election integrity' agenda. Wyoming Republican Party Chairman Bryan Miller echoed Gray's concerns. 'National politics have driven a big distrust in the election system, and that distrust is very prevalent in Wyoming at the moment,' Miller said. 'Bottom line, the perception is the reality.' Though Gray and Miller insisted that these bills are essential to election security, opponents of the bills noted that they responded to perception, rather than addressing any documented errors. Wyoming League of Women Voters President Linda Barton told the committee that they should heavily consider the input of the county clerks, and avoid supporting legislation that takes away local control for the sake of national agendas. 'The bills before you today do not meet that standard,' Barton told the committee. 'Instead, they erect barriers; impose costly, unfunded mandates; reduce access, and risk undermining public trust in our elections.' Barton noted that voter access should be considered alongside election integrity. 'We must carefully consider the real-life effects on both election administration and voter access,' Barton said. 'For many Wyoming voters — shift workers, farmers, ranchers, people with health challenges, and those facing immediate harsh weather — barriers to voting are more than theoretical.' The committee was originally set to hear 11 bills Friday morning, but later voted to only work four for the sake of time. The committee also worked on two draft bills, one prohibiting 'ballot harvesting' and one addressing voter registration procedures, which will be revisited during their November meeting. Ballot harvesting refers to the practice of individuals collecting and submitting completed absentee or mail-in ballots on behalf of other voters, rather than the voters submitting their own ballots directly. Paper ballots The committee voted to sponsor the draft bill on pen and paper ballots, which would require counties to use pen and paper as the default method to mark ballots for Wyoming elections, with exceptions for people with disabilities. Laramie County is the only county in the state that doesn't currently provide pen and paper ballots as a default measure. Instead, the county uses an 'express voting' system as its default. Voters insert a card into a machine, select their candidates on a touchscreen and receive a printed ballot with a list of their votes. Gray specifically took issue with the barcodes produced during the process, which encodes the voters' selections. 'Relying on barcodes decreases the trust in our elections, because electors cannot verify that the barcodes on their ballots correspond with the candidates they voted for,' Gray said. 'This bill will increase confidence in our elections, because voters will trust that their ballot was counted accurately when they fill them out with pen and paper.' These electronic voting systems are largely used to increase accessibility for voters who may not be able to fill out a paper ballot without assistance. Gray noted that, further down the line, he would support accessing options that are still accessible, but do not include barcodes. There have been no documented cases of inconsistencies between barcodes and printed votes in Wyoming, Platte County Clerk Malcolm Ervin told the committee. There has been, however, one documented case in 2023, in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where the voter's selection shown on the machine-generated code differed from the selections that appeared on the human-readable printout, Ervin said. Further investigation showed that the code accurately reflected the voter's choices, but a programming error had caused the text version to be incorrect. The votes were tabulated correctly based on the code. 'That same coding error is not exclusive to the express vote,' Ervin said. 'It could happen on the paper ballot, as well.' These errors have strengthened the argument for testing counting systems prior to an election, as opposed to restricting methods of voting, Ervin said. The other issue with the bill is how difficult it would be for Laramie County to comply with the bill by the 2026 election cycle. Laramie County is the largest county in the state, home to 16% of the voting population. In an email correspondence presented to the committee by Mary Lankford, a lobbyist for the County Clerks Association of Wyoming, Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee wrote that the bill would 'completely upend Laramie County's elections, a recipe for disaster for Wyoming's largest county that could impact elections across the state.' According to Lee, Laramie County would have to completely change its operational plans and would have to acquire additional voting equipment. That equipment would also have to be installed and tested by the vendor prior to undergoing additional required logic and accuracy tests. 'Laramie County does not have the staff, money or time to make such a drastic change in voting operations,' Lee wrote. The committee voted amend the bill's effective date to 'effective immediately' and then voted to sponsor the draft bill, with Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, and co-chair Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, opposed. Ballot boxes The committee also voted to sponsor a bill that would prohibit the use of drop boxes for the delivery of ballots. Instead, absentee ballots would have to be mailed in or delivered by hand. 'I remain convinced that the use of unstaffed and unattended ballot drop boxes is not secure or the best means for our state,' Gray told the committee, referencing a few instances in which ballot boxes were tampered with, including recent arson cases in Oregon. One of the major concerns with prohibiting the use of ballot boxes is limiting voter access. Many blue-collar workers in Wyoming have jobs that require long hours, Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, told the committee. 'My concern all along with this bill was the fact that it was eliminating the ability of a working man or woman to come into town at 7 o'clock at night and drop their ballot off,' Landen said. Gray responded to Landen's concern, saying that the working man was a priority of himself and Trump. 'Working people support these measures,' Gray said. 'There's no question about that.' He offered no supporting evidence to back up that assertion, however. Yin also pointed out that mailing ballots would effectively send them out of the state, as Wyoming no longer has a local U.S. Postal Service distribution center. The nearest distribution center is in Denver, Colorado, or Salt Lake City, Utah. 'It goes out of the state and then it comes back,' Yin said. 'And so how do I know that my ballot is more secured in the postal collection box than a box that's in the county courthouse in my county and will never leave the county?' Gray noted that election-related mail should not leave the state. The committee rejected an amendment to allow voters to deliver their ballots to a drop box in a county or other governmental entity's building; the box would be accessible from the building's exterior. The amendment would have required the drop box to remain under constant video surveillance, and only a county clerk or their designee would have access to the secured receptacle. The committee amended the bill's effective date to 'effective immediately' and then voted to sponsor the draft bill, with Landen, Yin and Case opposed. Solve the daily Crossword
CBS News
34 minutes ago
- CBS News
Gov. Josh Shapiro says Trump's push to end mail-in voting won't affect Pennsylvania elections
Gov. Josh Shapiro said Tuesday that President Trump's promise to end mail-in voting before the 2026 midterm elections won't affect elections in Pennsylvania. On Monday, Mr. Trump said he planned to sign an executive order "to end mail-in ballots, because they're corrupt," but Shapiro said his comments were unconstitutional. "Donald Trump can sign whatever executive order he wants; it will have absolutely no bearing on our elections here in Pennsylvania, and we will once again have free and fair, safe and secure elections led by Democratic and Republican clerks of elections in each of our 67 counties," Shapiro said at an unrelated event. During a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Oval Office on Monday, Mr. Trump said that he wanted to ban mail-in voting, however, the Constitution doesn't give him the power to do so. According to Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution, states have the power to regulate elections, not the president. That can only be changed by Congress. Mr. Trump has claimed that mail-in voting is susceptible to voter fraud and that mail-in ballots can be tampered with or enable people to vote multiple times. Pennsylvania enacted mail-in voting in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election, which Mr. Trump lost to former President Joe Biden. The U.S. Census Bureau said that nearly a third of ballots nationwide were cast by mail in the 2024 election, which Mr. Trump won over former Vice President Kamala Harris. The Committee of Seventy, a nonprofit government watchdog organization in Philadelphia, called Mr. Trump's comments dangerous. "It seems clear that these efforts by the federal government are an attempt to sow doubt in our elections ahead of the 2026 midterms," The Committee of Seventy wrote in a statement in part. "Whether the intention is to lay the groundwork for rejecting results in the event of a loss, or to exploit states where one party controls all branches of government to push a federal agenda, the facts are the facts: our elections are secure, mail-in voting is secure, and election administration must remain in the hands of the states." In the 2024 election, Mr. Trump claimed there was "massive cheating" in Philadelphia, which was false, according to election officials. He didn't provide any evidence for his claim. Mr. Trump attempted to challenge the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania numerous times after he lost the state to Biden, but the courts found his claims were baseless. "For him to try and put more misinformation out there to stoke more division and fear amongst people who want to exercise their constitutional right to pick the leaders in their communities, in their commonwealth, that is just cynical and wrong," Shapiro Doan contributed to this report.
Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
‘Tired of Democracy dying': Newsom redistricting push getting pushback for disenfranchising Californians
California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom's redistricting effort is receiving pushback from Republicans in the state assembly who are accusing the Democrats of keeping them in the dark and of "disenfranchising Californians." GOP Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo, vice chair of the California State Assembly Committee on Elections, slammed Democrats for giving her "barely 24 hours" to examine the redistricting bill before a Tuesday hearing – while Democrats, she claimed, had advance notice. Macedo vowed to defeat the redistricting push, saying, "We are in the super-minority, but we are effective, and we will defeat this." She added that by the time she received the bill's language as vice chair of the elections committee, several Democratic co-authors signed on. That, she argued, meant Democrats had a first look, while she had "barely 24 hours before committee tomorrow to prepare." Macedo warned that witnesses appearing at Tuesday's hearing could face legal consequences if they refused to answer her questions. "Let me warn anybody who will be testifying tomorrow. If you don't answer my questions tomorrow, attorneys will be making sure you answer them in a courtroom," she said, adding, "You can run, but you cannot hide." Despite Democrats dominating California politics, Macedo pledged, "We are not backing down from this fight." "You are disenfranchising Californians, and we are tired of democracy dying here," she said. "We will fight back." She added that if Republicans are not able to stop the redistricting plans in the assembly, then their victory will be "in a courtroom or it will be at the ballot box." Four GOP state lawmakers have filed a lawsuit in California's Supreme Court to stop the Democrat-controlled legislature from holding a vote by the end of this week to advance the redistricting push. Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, one of the four Republicans behind the suit, told Fox News Digital that she joined the lawsuit because "Californians have already spoken clearly at the ballot box." "In 2008, voters approved Proposition 11 to take redistricting power away from politicians and give it to an independent citizens' commission," she said. "Two years later, with Proposition 20, voters doubled down and expanded that power to include congressional districts, passing it by a decisive 61% to 39%. Governor Newsom's plan is a direct attempt to undo that mandate and put politicians back in control. I'm standing up because this isn't about partisan advantage; it's about respecting the will of the voters who demanded fairness and transparency." Newsom announced he would advance a redistricting map in California to counter the Texas redistricting bill being pushed by President Donald Trump. On Friday, California Democrats and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) released a new district map that would likely eliminate five GOP congressional seats, theoretically nullifying the five additional seats Republicans would gain if Texas' redistricting push is successful. The California legislature introduced a constitutional amendment on Monday to be brought to a referendum vote in November. If passed by California voters, the amendment would allow the legislature to temporarily suspend its nonpartisan districting commission and move forward with its redistricting plans as laid out by the DCCC. Newsom's office declined Fox News Digital's request for comment, with a spokesperson saying he would "point you to the Legislature given this is about the legislative process." Fox News Digital also reached out to the office of Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, a Democrat, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
