ACLU asks Arizona Supreme Court to extend 'curing' deadline after vote-count delays

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ACLU asks Arizona Supreme Court to extend 'curing' deadline after vote-count delays

2024-11-10 09:12 Last Updated At：09:20

PHOENIX (AP) — Voter rights groups on Saturday petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to extend the deadline for voters to fix problems with their mail-in ballots following delays in vote counting and notifying voters about problems.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Campaign Legal Center asked the state's high court in an emergency petition that the original 5 p.m. Sunday deadline be extended up to four days after a voter is sent notice of a problem.

The groups argued in the petition that “tens of thousands of Arizonans stand to be disenfranchised without any notice, let alone an opportunity to take action to ensure their ballots are counted.”

“Because these ballots have not even been processed, Respondents have not identified which ballots are defective and have not notified voters of the need to cure those defects,” the petition stated.

Arizona law says people who vote by mail should receive notice of problems with their ballots, such as a signature that doesn’t match the one on file, and get a chance to correct it in a process known as “curing.”

The groups' petition noted that as of Friday evening more than 250,000 mail-in ballots had not yet been verified by signature. The bulk of them were in Arizona's most populous county, Maricopa County.

Just under 200,000 early ballots remained to be processed as of Saturday, according to estimates on the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office website.

Taylor Kinnerup, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, said it takes pride in conducting “accurate and timely” signature verification, and that all signatures for the general election went through the process by the end of the day Friday, “giving voters with questioned signatures ample time to cure their signature.”

“As an administrative agency, our office is bound by the letter of the law which gives up to five calendar days following an election for a voter to cure their signature,” Kinnerup said. "Voters are contacted directly if their signature is questioned but can also choose to see if their ballot needs to be cured online at BeBallotReady.Vote.”

Gabriel Sandoval is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

British writer Samantha Harvey’s space-station novel 'Orbital' wins the Booker Prize for fiction

2024-11-13 11:18 Last Updated At：11:21

LONDON (AP) — British writer Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for fiction on Tuesday with “Orbital,” a short, wonder-filled novel set aboard the International Space Station that ponders the beauty and fragility of Earth.

Harvey was awarded the 50,000-pound ($64,000) prize for what she has called a “space pastoral” about six orbiting astronauts, which she began writing during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. The confined characters loop through 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over the course of a day, trapped in one another’s company and transfixed by the globe’s ever-changing vistas.

“To look at the Earth from space is like a child looking into a mirror and realizing for the first time that the person in the mirror is herself," said Harvey, who researched her novel by reading books by astronauts and watching the space station's live camera. "What we do to the Earth we do to ourselves.”

She said the novel “is not exactly about climate change, but implied in the view of the Earth is the fact of human-made climate change."

She dedicated the prize to everyone who speaks "for and not against the Earth, for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life."

“All the people who speak for and call for and work for peace — this is for you,” she said.

Writer and artist Edmund de Waal, who chaired the five-member judging panel, called “Orbital” a “miraculous novel” that “makes our world strange and new for us.”

Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, noted that “in a year of geopolitical crisis, likely to be the warmest year in recorded history,” the winning book was “hopeful, timely and timeless.”

Harvey, who has written four previous novels and a memoir about insomnia, is the first British writer since 2020 to win the Booker. The prize is open to English-language writers of any nationality and has a reputation for transforming writers’ careers. Previous winners include Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Hilary Mantel.

De Waal praised the “crystalline” writing and “capaciousness” of Harvey’s succinct novel — at 136 pages in its U.K. paperback edition, one of the shortest-ever Booker winners.

“This is a book that repays slow reading,” he said.

He said the judges spent a full day picking their winner and came to a unanimous conclusion. Harvey beat five other finalists from Canada, the United States, Australia and the Netherlands, chosen from among 156 novels submitted by publishers.

American writer Percival Everett had been the bookies’ favorite to win with “James,” which reimagines Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” from the point of view of its main Black character, the enslaved man Jim.

The other finalists were American writer Rachel Kushner’s spy story “Creation Lake”; Canadian Anne Michaels’ poetic novel “Held”; Charlotte Wood’s Australian saga “Stone Yard Devotional”; and “The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden, the first Dutch author to be shortlisted for the Booker.

Harvey is the first female Booker winner since 2019, though one of five women on this year’s shortlist, the largest number in the prize’s 55-year history. De Waal said issues such as the gender or nationality of the authors were “background noise” that did not influence the judges.

“There was absolutely no question of box ticking or of agendas or of anything else. It was simply about the novel,” he said before the awards ceremony at Old Billingsgate, a grand former Victorian fish market in central London.

Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is open to novels originally written in English published in the U.K. or Ireland. Last year’s winner was Irish writer Paul Lynch for post-democratic dystopia “Prophet Song.”

Lynch handed Harvey her Booker trophy at the ceremony, warning her that her life was about to change dramatically because of the Booker publicity boost.

Harvey said she was “overwhelmed," but remained down-to-earth about spending her prize money.

She said she'd disburse “some of it on tax. I want to buy a new bike. And then the rest — I want to go to Japan.”