8A — THE OBSERVER
TuESday, OcTOBER 13, 2020
NATION
Technical problems arise as early voting starts in Georgia
The Associated Press
ATLANTA — Long
lines of people eager to
cast ballots formed as early
in-person voting began in
Georgia on Monday, Oct.
12, and problems soon
developed in the state’s
most populous county.
Election officials in
Fulton County were aware
of an issue with the elec-
tronic pollbooks used to
check voters in at State
Farm Arena, where the
Atlanta Hawks NBA team
plays, county spokeswoman
Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez
said. Technicians were on
site working to resolve it,
she said.
The line began moving
when the arena opened for
voting at 8 a.m. and some
voters were able to cast
their ballots, but things
ground to a halt a short time
later when the pollbooks
Sen. Graham
leads
Barrett court
hearings
By Laurie Kellman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Sen.
Lindsey Graham of South
Carolina is wielding the
gavel in the performance of
his political life.
Once a biting critic of
President Donald Trump,
the Senate Judiciary
Committee chairman on
Monday, Oct. 12, launched
confirmation hearings for
Judge Amy Coney Barrett
in a bid to seal a 6-to-3 con-
servative majority on the
Supreme Court. Hanging
in the balance could be the
future of government health
care during a coronavirus
pandemic that’s claimed
more than 214,000 Amer-
ican lives. And Graham’s
own career appears in jeop-
ardy like never before.
For Graham, the Repub-
lican Senate majority and
Trump himself, the hear-
ings three weeks before
Election Day could be a last
stand. The proceedings are
a display for voters of what
it means to control the pres-
idency and the Senate. But
they also are a real-time test
of whether that’s enough to
counter a jaw-dropping $57
million fundraising haul
by Graham’s Democratic
opponent in the South Caro-
lina race, Jaime Harrison.
“Senator, how good is
your word?” Harrison, 44,
asked at a recent debate.
Graham’s answer is
complicated by his whipsaw
shifts, particularly where
Trump is concerned. He’s
been friend and foe of
the belligerent president.
Now, they play golf. He
once vowed to oppose any
Supreme Court confirma-
tion hearings in presiden-
tial election years. This
week, he is chairing Bar-
rett’s, and predicting she’ll
be confirmed to the high
court this month to replace
the late Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg.
With early voting
underway in South Caro-
lina and many other states,
Graham, 65, mounted the
dais Monday amid his
opponent’s withering fund-
raising, his own state-
ments as one of the Sen-
ate’s most visible members,
and Trump’s weak standing
against Democrat Joe Biden
in the final stretch of the
campaign.
The days leading up to
the Barrett hearings were
particularly challenging for
Graham. On Friday, during
a debate forum with Har-
rison — who is Black —
Graham denied there was
systemic racism in South
Carolina.
“If you’re a young
African American, an
immigrant, you can go any-
where in this state. You just
need to be conservative, not
liberal,” Graham said.
Then Harrison’s cam-
paign on Sunday rocked
the political world with
its fundraising haul, pro-
pelled by contributions
from around the country.
stopped working with hun-
dreds of people waiting. By
mid-morning, the problem
appeared to have been
resolved and the lines had
cleared at the arena, which
is the largest early voting
site in the state with 300
voting machines.
Some people lined up
before dawn to be among
the first to participate in
early in-person voting,
which runs through Oct. 30
in Georgia. While voters
must vote at their assigned
polling place on Election
Day, they can vote at any
voting site in the county
where they live during early
voting.
With record turnout
expected for this year’s
presidential election and
fears about exposure to the
coronavirus, election offi-
cials and advocacy groups
have been encouraging
Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
People wait in line to vote Monday, Oct. 12, 2020, in Decatur, Georgia.
people to vote early, either
in person or by absentee
ballot.
Problems with the elec-
tronic pollbooks were one
of the issues that contrib-
uted to hourslong lines in
Georgia during the June
primary election, along
with high turnout, consol-
idated polling places and
shortages of poll workers.
With Georgia emerging
as a potential battleground
state, surrogates from both
the Republican and Dem-
ocratic presidential cam-
paigns were scheduled to
travel to the state Monday.
Jill Biden, wife of
former vice president and
Democratic presidential
nominee Joe Biden, was
scheduled to appear at an
event in DeKalb County
with prominent state
Democrats before trav-
eling to Columbus to meet
with military and veteran
families.
Meanwhile, Presi-
dent Donald Trump’s son,
Donald Trump Jr. was set
to travel to Savannah near
the coast and Kennesaw,
just outside Atlanta, to rally
Republican voters.
Facebook bans Holocaust denial, distortion posts
Associated Press
Facebook is banning
posts that deny or distort
the Holocaust and will
start directing people to
authoritative sources if
they search for information
about the Nazi genocide.
Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg announced the
new policy Monday, Oct.
12, the latest attempt by
the company to take action
against conspiracy theories
and misinformation ahead
of the U.S. presidential
election.
The decision comes
amid a push by Holocaust
survivors around the world
who lent their voices to a
campaign targeting Zuck-
erberg, urging him to take
action to remove Holo-
caust denial posts from the
social media site. Coor-
dinated by the Confer-
ence on Jewish Material
Claims Against Germany,
the #NoDenyingIt cam-
paign used Facebook itself
to make the survivors’
entreaties to Zuckerberg
heard, posting one video
per day urging him to
remove Holocaust-denying
groups, pages and posts as
hate speech.
The Anti-Defamation
League has reported that
incidents of white suprem-
acist propaganda dis-
tributed across the U.S.
jumped by more than 120%
between 2018 and last year.
Tech companies began
promising to take a firmer
stand against accounts
used to promote hate and
violence after a 2017 rally
in Charlottesville, Vir-
ginia., where a self-de-
scribed white suprema-
cist drove into a crowd of
counterprotesters.
Zuckerberg said in
a blog post Monday he
believe the new policy
strikes the “right bal-
ance” in drawing the lines
between what is and isn’t
acceptable speech.
“I’ve struggled with
the tension between
standing for free expres-
sion and the harm caused
by minimizing or denying
the horror of the Holo-
caust,” he wrote. “My own
thinking has evolved as
I’ve seen data showing an
increase in anti-Semitic
violence.”
Zuckerberg had raised
the ire in 2018 when he
said that posts denying the
Nazi annihilation of 6 mil-
lion Jews would not neces-
sarily be removed. He said
he did not think Holocaust
deniers were “intention-
ally” getting it wrong, and
that as long as posts were
not calling for harm or
violence.
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541-239-3782
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