Supreme Court Blocks Curbside Voting, Loosening Of ID Requirements For Absentee Ballots
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday halted plans to provide curbside voting in the July 14 primary runoff and to ease ID requirements to vote by absentee ballot.
The state went to the Supreme Court asking that it stay a lower court judge’s ruling that eased some voting practices in an attempt to lessen the potential exposure to the coronavirus, particularly among older people.
That ruling was issued last month by U.S. District Court Judge Abdul K. Kallon, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block the ruling last week.
Thursday, the high court issued a temporary stay in the case on a 5-4 vote, but it still will have to decide whether to take up the case in full.
Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill announced the decision on Twitter Thursday evening.
Kallon had based his original ruling on the threat of coronavirus, saying that the “burdens imposed by the challenged election laws on voters at high risk of severe complications or death from COVID-19 are not justified by the state’s interests in enforcing the laws.”
His ruling would have allowed local voting officials to offer curbside voting at polling places if they chose to do so. It also would have allowed voting officials in Jefferson, Mobile and Lee counties to waive requirements that people voting by absentee ballot mail in a copy of an ID card with a photo, as well as have their ballots witnessed and notarized.
The suit was filed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program.
YouTube agrees to pay Trump $24 million to settle lawsuit over Jan. 6 suspension
YouTube is the latest social media company to pay Trump tens of millions of dollars to resolve lawsuits brought before he returned to power. The money will fund a new ballroom at the White House.
From painting to producing: Birmingham DJ Andrea Really releases first album
Birmingham DJ Andrea Really wasn't always a music producer. She used to be a prolific painter. But when her art studio burned down in 2017, she pivoted careers. Really spoke with WBHM about that journey upon the release of her first album this summer, called Zeitgeist.
A year after Helene, a group of raft guides embarks on a river clean-up mission
A popular rafting river in the Appalachian mountains is still closed a year after Hurricane Helene, because there's just too much debris. Now, rafting guides have come together to help clean it up.
Lesotho’s Famo music: from shepherd songs to gang wars
In Lesotho, a style of traditional accordion music called Famo has become entangled with deadly gang rivalries. Once the soundtrack of shepherds and migrant workers, today it's linked to killings, government bans — and a fight over cultural identity.
Comic Cristela Alonzo grew up in fear of border patrol. ICE has ‘brought it all back’
For the first seven years of her life, Alonzo lived in an abandoned diner in a south Texas border town. Her new Netflix stand-up special is called Upper Classy.
Compass-Anywhere real estate merger could squeeze small brokerages
The deal, announced earlier this week, would combine the two largest U.S. residential brokerages by sales volume.