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
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Arts &
pages
9-13
ENTERTAINMENT
C LASSIFIEDS
C ALENDAR
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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