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Romanian court orders a recount of presidential election first round
Court Watch |
2024/11/28 19:01
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A top Romanian court on Thursday asked the official electoral authority to recount and verify all of the ballots cast in the first round of the presidential election, which was won by a far-right outsider candidate, sending shockwaves through the political establishment.
The Constitutional Court in Bucharest approved the recounting of the more than 9.4 million ballots, and said its decision was final. The Central Election Bureau is expected to meet on Thursday afternoon to discuss the request.
Calin Georgescu, a little-known, far-right populist and independent candidate, won the first round, beating the incumbent prime minister. Georgescu was due to face reformist Elena Lasconi, the leader of the Save Romania Union party, in a Dec. 8. runoff.
Georgescu’s unexpected success has prompted nightly protests by people concerned with previous remarks he made in praising Romanian fascist and nationalist leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and believe he poses a threat to democracy.
Without naming Georgescu, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis’ office said following a Supreme Council of National Defense meeting in Bucharest on Thursday that an analysis of documents revealed that “a presidential candidate benefited from massive exposure due to preferential treatment granted by the TikTok platform.”
Earlier this week, Romania’s National Audiovisual Council asked the European Commission to investigate TikTok’s role in the Nov. 24 vote. Pavel Popescu, the vice president of Romania’s media regulator Ancom, said he would request TikTok’s suspension in Romania if investigations find evidence of “manipulation of the electoral process.”
The vote recount was prompted by a complaint made by Cristian Terhes, a former presidential candidate of the Romanian National Conservative Party who garnered 1% of the vote. Terhes alleged that Lasconi’s party had urged people to vote before some diaspora polls had closed on Sunday, saying it violated electoral laws against campaign activities on polling day.
After Thursday’s court ruling, Terhes’ press office posted on Facebook that the court ordered the recount “due to indications of fraud,” and alleged that valid votes cast for Ludovic Orban — who had dropped out of the race but remained on the ballot — had been reassigned to Lasconi.
It is the first time in Romania’s 35-year post-communist history that the country’s most powerful party, the Social Democratic Party, did not have a candidate in the second round of a presidential race. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu resigned as party leader after he narrowly lost to Lasconi by just 2,740 votes. |
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Court backs Texas over razor wire installed on US-Mexico border
Legal Network |
2024/11/26 03:01
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A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled that Border Patrol agents cannot cut razor wire that Texas installed on the U.S.-Mexico border in the town of Eagle Pass, which has become the center of the state’s aggressive measures to curb migrant crossings.
The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a victory for Texas in a long-running rift over immigration policy with the Biden administration, which has also sought to remove floating barriers installed on the Rio Grande.
Texas has continued to install razor wire along its roughly 1,200-mile (1,900 kilometers) border with Mexico over the past year. In a 2-1 ruling, the court issued an injunction blocking Border Patrol agents from damaging the wire in Eagle Pass.
“We continue adding more razor wire border barrier,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott posted on the social platform X in response to the ruling. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
Some migrants have been injured by the sharp wire, and the Justice Department has argued the barrier impedes the U.S. government’s ability to patrol the border, including coming to the aid of migrants in need of help. Texas contended in the lawsuit originally filed last year that federal government was “undermining” the state’s border security efforts by cutting the razor wire.
The ruling comes ahead of President-elect Donald Trump returning to office and pledging a crackdown on immigration. Earlier this month, a Texas official offered a parcel of rural ranchland along the U.S.-Mexico border to use as a staging area for potential mass deportations.
Arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border have dropped 40% from an all-time high in December. U.S. officials mostly credit Mexican vigilance around rail yards and highway checkpoint. |
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New Hampshire courts hear 2 cases on transgender girls playing girls sports
Court Issues |
2024/11/22 14:21
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Two New Hampshire fathers who were barred from school district events for wearing pink wristbands marked “XX” to represent female chromosomes insisted at a federal court hearing Thursday that they didn’t set out to harass or otherwise target a transgender soccer player at the game they attended.
But a judge hearing the case suggested the message the parents sent may matter more than their intentions.
Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote sued the Bow school district after being banned from school grounds for wearing the wristbands at their daughters’ soccer game in September. The no-trespass orders have since expired, but a judge is deciding whether the plaintiffs should be allowed to wear the wristbands and carry signs at upcoming school events, including basketball games, swim meets and a music concert, while the case proceeds.
Testifying at Thursday’s hearing, both men said that they did not view the wristbands as a protest against Parker Tirrell, a transgender girl on the opposing team, but rather as a show of support for their daughters and their teammates. U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe questioned whether there is a meaningful distinction and whether their intentions matter.
“Sometimes the message you think you’re sending might not be the message that is being sent,” he said.
McAuliffe asked Foote whether it occurred to him that a transgender person might interpret the pink XX wristbands as an attempt to invalidate their existence.
“If he’s a trans female, pink might be a color he likes,” Foote said.
McAuliffe also noted that while both plaintiffs said they had no problem with transgender people outside the issue of sports, they repeatedly referred to the athlete in question as a boy.
“You seem to go out of your way to suggest there’s no such thing as a trans girl,” McAuliffe said. Foote disagreed, saying it was “like learning a new language” to refer to transgender people.
In a separate courtroom earlier Thursday, another judge held a hearing on a lawsuit brought by Parker Tirrell and another student challenging the state law that bans transgender athletes in grades 5 to 12 from teams that align with their gender identity. It requires schools to designate all teams as either girls, boys or coed, with eligibility determined based on students’ birth certificates “or other evidence.”
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty ruled earlier this year that the teens can try out for and play on girls school sports teams. The order only applies to those two individuals for now as they seek to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act on behalf of all transgender girl students in New Hampshire.
Lawyers for the teens said in court Thursday they hoped the matter could go to trial and be resolved before the start of the next school year in September. They said the teens’ school districts and others in the state have asked for guidance regarding the statute. Lawyers for the state said they needed more time to prepare.
Judge Talesha Saint-Marc suggested the timing of the trial was ambitious and asked that both sides talk further about scheduling. Gov. Chris Sununu, who signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act into law in July, has said it “ensures fairness and safety in women’s sports by maintaining integrity and competitive balance in athletic competitions.” About half of states have adopted similar measures.
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PA high court orders counties not to count disputed ballots in US Senate race
Court Watch |
2024/11/18 14:22
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Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court on Monday weighed in on a flashpoint amid ongoing vote counting in the U.S. Senate election between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick, ordering counties not to count mail-in ballots that lack a correct handwritten date on the return envelope.
The order is a win for McCormick and a loss for Casey as the campaigns prepare for a statewide recount and press counties for favorable ballot-counting decisions while election workers are sorting through thousands of provisional ballots.
McCormick’s campaign called it a “massive setback” for Casey.
The Democratic-majority high court’s order reiterates the position it took previously that the ballots shouldn’t be counted in the election, a decision that Republicans say several Democratic-controlled counties nevertheless challenged.
In a statement, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said a lack of legal clarity had surrounded the ballots, putting county officials in a position where they were “damned if they did and damned if they didn’t — likely facing legal action no matter which decision they made on counting.”
It comes amid a gust of fresh litigation in recent days filed by both campaigns, contesting the decisions of about a dozen counties over whether or not to count thousands of provisional ballots.
Casey’s campaign says the provisional ballots shouldn’t be rejected for garden-variety errors, like a polling place worker forgetting to sign it. Republicans say the law is clear that the ballots must be discarded.
The Associated Press called the race for McCormick last week, concluding that not enough ballots remained to be counted in areas Casey was winning for him to take the lead.
As of Monday, McCormick led by about 17,000 votes out of almost 7 million ballots counted — inside the 0.5% margin threshold to trigger an automatic statewide recount under Pennsylvania law.
Statewide, the number of mail-in ballots with wrong or missing dates on the return envelope could be in the thousands.
Republicans last week asked the court to bar counties from counting the ballots, saying those decisions violate both the court’s recent orders and its precedent in upholding the requirement in state law that a voter write the date on their mail-in ballot’s return envelope. |
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