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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 2, 2016)
November 2, 2016 Page 3 INSIDE The Week in Review page 2 This page Sponsored by: High Turnout Expected Voting deadline Tuesday, Nov. 8 at 8 p.m. C ervante P oPe t he P ortland o bserver The final countdown is on to elect a new president and decide the many local and state issues facing voters. In Oregon, ballots must be mailed in time to reach county elections offices by the voter deadline, which Tuesday, Nov. 8 at 8 p.m. If the ballots are not in the mail by Friday, voters are advised to hand deliver them before the deadline at an official county ballot drop off box or the county elections office. The Multnomah County Elec- tions Office expects this election to have the highest voter turnout in history. In preparation, the office by O PINION pages 6-7 has taken steps to make the voting process easier. In the event that a voter hasn’t received their ballot yet or needs a replacement, the Order Ahead Replacement Ballot Service was created to streamline the course. The Elections Office has even extended its usual hours for serv- ing the public. Instead of closing at 5 p.m., the office will be open until 7 p.m. weekdays from now until Election Day, with the office also opening on Saturday, Nov. 5 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Voters are instructed to use only black or blue ball point pens when marking ballots. Using a felt tip pen or marker, for example, tends to bleed through the paper and leave unintentional marks on the ballot, elections officials warn. It will only take one first-class stamp to get the ballot from your home to the elections office, and voters now have the option of tracking their ballot like a pack- age. Multnomah County voters can sign up to receive alerts, such as once their ballot has been re- ceived or if any additional infor- mation is required for processing, by going to multco.us/elections/ track-your-ballot. For other questions and infor- mation about the election, visit mcelections.org or call the elec- tions office at 503-988-3720. Oregon Civil Rights Lawyer Sues M ETRO page 11 Arts & pages 9-13 ENTERTAINMENT C LASSIFIEDS C ALENDAR page 14 page 15 Discrimination claim rooted in racial profiling by white co-workers Oregon’s top civil rights lawyer has filed a federal lawsuit against his boss and others in the state De- partment of Justice over allegations of racial profiling after learning that his colleagues surveilled his Twitter account because one of his posts turned up in a search for the Black Lives Matter hashtag. Erious Johnson, the department’s civil rights director, said in the Oct. 26 lawsuit that the January 2015 tweet included a picture of the logo of the hip-hop group Public Enemy. The logo depicts a black man in sil- houette in the crosshairs of a gun, but a state investigator mistook the black man for a police officer and wrote to his supervisor that Johnson could be a threat to police, court papers say. That mistake led Johnson’s col- leagues within the department to compile a report on him and comb through his Twitter posts — all with- out his knowledge and while he con- tinued to work alongside them, ac- cording to the lawsuit filed in Eugene. In a separate civil rights com- plaint filed with the state earlier this year, Johnson said the surveillance wouldn’t have happened “had I not been a black male” and “had my Twitter activity involved matters other than the lives and experiences of black people.” “I have been subjected to racial Erious Johnson discrimination and a hostile work environment for engaging in pro- tected social media activity,” John- son wrote in his four-page com- plaint. He also noted: “All of the indi- viduals involved in perpetrating said racial discrimination and hos- tile work environment are Cauca- sian.” An outside investigation or- dered by state Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum earlier this year found that the surveillance activity violated state law and department policies. Rosenblum is running for re-election on Nov. 8. In a statement late Wednesday, spokeswoman Kristina Edmunson said Rosenblum considers Johnson a “valued member of her inner-cir- cle staff” and had fired the state in- vestigator who conducted the social media investigation. Two other agency officials in- volved in the scandal have been replaced and anti-bias training will begin in a week, Edmunson said. The incident began when the state investigator used a new computer program to search for social media posts in the Salem, Oregon area that included the hashtag Black Lives Matter and (expletive) the police. The investigator had received the new program and was testing it out, said Johnson’s civil rights attorney, Beth Creighton. Johnson was only informed of the surveillance in October in a meeting with Rosenblum, who had become aware of the situation two weeks earlier and realized her in- vestigators had overstepped. “It’s an incredible sense of be- trayal. Now he’s wondering what else they’re looking into and who he can trust,” said Creighton, his attor- ney. “It’s a really important thing to be able to trust people when you’re working in that kind of environment and advocating on civil rights issues in the state.” Johnson has continued to work at the state Department of Justice, Creighton said. --Associated Press
