Amber Pflughoeft beamed with pride as she filled out her ballot for the first time last month.

A 20-year-old who’d been fighting bone cancer for a decade, she was fascinated with politics, her mother Tiffany Pflughoeft remembered. And after spending the last midterm election in the hospital following a bone marrow transplant, she was determined to vote this year.

But just a few days after she mailed in her ballot, Amber’s condition took a sudden turn for the worse. She went back to the hospital and died in late September.

Now, her ballot will be thrown out under Wisconsin election law. She is one of several dozen Wisconsinites whose votes will be canceled because they passed away after voting early, according to state Elections Commission data provided to CNN through a public records request.

“She was so excited about it,” Tiffany said this week. “She died on a Monday, but on Saturday, when she could still talk, she was telling all the nurses and doctors, ‘I voted.'”

“We never realized it wouldn’t count,” she said.

States around the country are divided on whether to count votes from people who cast an early ballot and then die before Election Day. At least a dozen states allow it, more than a dozen others reject those votes, and laws in other states are unclear, recent research from the National Conference of State Legislatures found.

Among the most crucial swing states, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania don’t count early ballots cast by voters who die before Election Day, while Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Ohio do, according to the NCSL and state elections officials.

This year, when record numbers of Americans are casting ballots early and coronavirus cases and deaths are spiking in some states, it’s not just a speculative question. The rules mean that even as Covid-19 has become the defining issue of the presidential race, voters who die in the pandemic won’t have their votes count in some states.

Coronavirus victim’s vote goes uncounted

Marvin Thielman, an 84-year-old retiree in Chilton, a town of about 4,000 people between Milwaukee and Green Bay, died of coronavirus this month after sending in his ballot by mail, according to state records and his family. Thielman was a strong supporter of President Donald Trump and made sure to fill out his ballot before he went to the hospital, his wife Mildred Thielman said.

“I can’t understand why it wouldn’t count,” Mildred said. “It was important to him.”

During the pandemic, the couple — high school sweethearts who had been together 62 years — had been careful about wearing masks and staying home as much as possible, Mildred said. But one morning last month, Marvin, who had a history of heart problems and diabetes, woke up yelling that he couldn’t breathe. Mildred took him to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with Covid-19 and stayed for the next three weeks. While they called and talked every day, she wasn’t able to see him in person again until the day before he died.

A former supervisor at Land O’Lakes, Marvin loved taking road trips, and the couple visited every state except Alaska, Mildred said. He read his local newspaper front to back every day, and especially enjoyed the sports section.

Despite his illness, Marvin didn’t blame Trump for his handling of the pandemic, and would have wanted his vote for the President to count, Mildred said.

“He believed Trump did what he could do, because it’s a worldwide problem,” she said. “Nobody can change what happened.”

As Trump and his allies have worked to spread fears about voter fraud, they’ve often raised the specter of nefarious actors using dead voters’ registration to cast ballots.

There have been isolated incidents of attempted fraud tied to dead voters. On Friday, elections officials in Broward County, Florida, said they had received about 50 fraudulent voter registration applications, most of which listed names of people who were verified as deceased, and all postmarked from Columbia, South Carolina, with no return address.

“Somebody went to great pains to exploit the system and it was caught,” Broward County elections spokesperson Steven Vancore said. “There appears to be no attempt that this person voted.”

Overall, voter fraud is exceedingly rare, according to experts who study it. A sweeping 2007 review by the Brennan Center for Justice found fraud incident rates of between 0.0003% and 0.0025%, and other studies have come to similar conclusions.

“Every study that’s attempted to come up with some measure for how often this happens has concluded it is extraordinarily rare for people to attempt to commit voter fraud,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center. “But rhetoric about fraud is generally used to justify anti-voter policies,” such as restrictive photo ID laws, increased purges of voter rolls, or restrictions on mail voting, he argued.

Many of the states that deny ballots cast by voters who die before Election Day regularly check death records to update their voter files and remove deceased voters. Still, ballots in those states could be mistakenly counted if election officials don’t realize a voter has died before Election Day. And once a ballot is processed and removed from an absentee voter’s envelope, it would likely become extremely difficult to track.Your first title is on usTry Audible free for 30 days. Listen to audiobooks, Originals, news, and moreAd By Audible See More

Wendy Underhill, the director of elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures who has studied the laws, said that states that accepted and rejected votes from voters who died both had fair reasonings.

“One view is Election Day is Election Day, and if you aren’t with us on Election Day, your vote doesn’t count. The other is that if you’re in the early voting window, then your vote does count,” she said. “States are going in both directions on that.”

Reid Magney, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that there was no ambiguity about the question in state law.

“While our hearts go out to people who have lost loved ones, Wisconsin law is clear that an absentee ballot cannot be counted if the voter has died before Election Day,” Magney said. “The law has not changed.”

‘Might have motivated her to hang in there’

For most family members CNN talked to, the idea that their loved one’s ballot wouldn’t count came as a total surprise. Marion Roos-Weis, 86, a resident of North Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, who died earlier this month, made a point of voting in every election, her daughter said.

“I’m sure she would be very, very frustrated to know her vote is not going to count now,” said her daughter Linda Roos-Stutz. “It might have motivated her to hang in there a little longer if she had known.”

Roos-Weis, who worked for years as a cafeteria worker and bookkeeper in the local school system and loved to bake and garden, typically voted Republican. But she was unhappy with the “disrespectful” way Trump talked about people, and was “very outspoken about racism and injustice,” her daughter said.

After leaving her absentee ballot on the table for weeks, she finally filled it out earlier this month, according to her daughter. She didn’t let her daughter see who she voted for, but the way she talked about her decision made Roos-Stutz believe she voted for former Vice President Joe Biden, she said.

“Frequently she’d say, ‘I want my old country back, I want my old world back,'” Roos-Stutz said.

Florence Sobralske, who died in early October at the age of 95, had volunteered as a poll worker in her central Wisconsin community of Berlin or the nearby town Aurora for many years, her daughter Mary Sobralske said.

“I don’t know if they had voter ID in those days, but she wouldn’t have had to check it — she knew everybody,” Mary said.

Florence, who raised six kids and once worked as a fur finisher, paid close attention to politics, talking admiringly of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the senator’s presidential bid earlier this year and denouncing Trump, Mary said. Her ballot arrived at her local elections office a few days before she died, according to the state records.

“She would have been very unhappy about it” if she knew her vote wouldn’t count, Mary said.

‘She wanted to make some kind of a difference’

Many of the voters who passed away in Wisconsin had been voting in every election for decades, their family members said. But Amber Pflughoeft, the 20-year-old cancer victim and a resident of the Milwaukee suburb West Bend, was an exception.

In preparation for her first presidential vote, Amber spent time studying Trump and Biden’s websites, and would debate politics with friends on Discord, a chat app.

She even had some experience participating in governing herself, going to Washington, DC, as part of a trip organized by a camp for kids who’ve been diagnosed with cancer, lobbying officials for more funding for childhood cancer rsesearch, her mother said.

While Amber shared a lot with her mom, there was one thing she didn’t tell her: who she voted for.

“She liked that the voting process was a secret, that it was something you had for yourself,” Tiffany said. “She wanted to make some kind of a difference with her vote, and it’s sad that she didn’t get to.”

CNN’s Curt Devine contributed to this report

via: https://www.kmov.com/news/a-20-year-old-woman-cast-her-ballot-early-before-dying-of-cancer-her-state/article_14dfb065-3f9f-5427-a689-3c6a12acf7a0.html

Photo Credit: CNN

Three children in Maine were given flu shots in school without the consent of their parents, a report said.

The students, who are enrolled in the Sanford School Department, received the vaccinations from Northern Light Home Care & Hospice, which is contracted by the district to administer the shots, the Portsmouth Herald reported.

The three students were vaccinated “without fully executed, or completely documented consent,” Jacqueline Welsh, community relations director for Northern Light Health, told the newspaper.

George Kimball, a father in the school district, told the Herald that his seventh-grade daughter received a flu shot without his consent.

Kimball said he indicated on the vaccination consent forms that he did not want his two kids to be vaccinated.

The father said a school nurse apologized to him for the mishap on Oct. 22 — the same day his daughter received the flu shot.

Sanford Superintendent of Schools Matthew Nelson acknowledged the issue, but told the newspaper an investigation determined that only two students were improperly vaccinated.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed that this happened,” Nelson said.

“We’re going to use this opportunity to review our protocols and see if any changes need to take place to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

via: https://nypost.com/2020/10/30/maine-children-given-flu-shots-at-school-without-parental-consent/

Photo Credit: REUTERS

A homeless man died more than a month after he was set on fire during a squabble over a scooter in Brooklyn, cops said Friday.

Patrick Winkler, 46, who lived at a Manhattan shelter, was arguing with a man he knew at Schenectady Avenue and Rutland Road in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens around 9:20 p.m. Sept. 16, police said.

Their dispute was related to a scooter, authorities said, but had no further details.

At some point during the argument, his rival set him on fire, using an accelerant, cops said.

Officers on patrol spotted the fire and used a fire extinguisher from their vehicle to douse the flames, cops said.

EMS rushed Winkler to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on Oct. 19, cops said.

The incident has since been ruled a homicide, and the suspect — said to live at a shelter in the area — remained at large Friday.

via: https://nypost.com/2020/10/30/nyc-homeless-man-dies-after-being-set-on-fire-during-argument/

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CHICAGO – The former Waukegan police officer who fatally shot a Black teen and wounded a Black woman last week turned on his body camera after the shooting, according to videos released by the northern Illinois city Wednesday afternoon.

Marcellis Stinnette, 19, was killed, and Tafara Williams, 20, was wounded on Oct. 20 when the car they were in allegedly reversed toward an officer, who fired into the car, according to police.

The officer, who was identified only as a Hispanic five-year member of the department, was terminated Friday night “for multiple policy and procedure violations,” Department Commander Edgar Navarro said.

Family members and attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci viewed videos of the incident at the Illinois State Police office in Des Plaines early Wednesday, and the city later released two building surveillance videos, two body cam videos and two dash cam videos. The videos do not capture the shooting but show the car reversing into a building.

“The body-worn camera of the officer involved was not activated to properly archive the time of the shooting. This was a breach of Waukegan Police Department policies, and one of the reasons for the officer’s termination,” Mayor Sam Cunningham said in a statement Wednesday.

Once the officer turns on the body camera, he appears to be standing several yards away from the crashed car. About 30 seconds in, he says “I was right behind you, and you almost tried to run me over.” Another officer can be seen running toward the car and its passengers, yelling, “Are you okay? What happened? Who shot you?” as Williams can be heard screaming for help.

A few seconds later, the officer who ran toward the car backs away and asks to several officers gathered at and arriving to scene, “Who shot them?”

The officer who is wearing the body camera says, “I did,” and the other officer responds, “You did?”

Lawyers for the family suggested in a press conference Wednesday it was suspicious that the officer turned the camera on after the shooting.

“What’s disturbing is that once that body camera went on, that false narrative came out,” Romanucci said. “This officer had his ‘oh crap’ moment after the shooting and pushed the button. ‘You tried to run me over,’ those were his first words.'”

The lawyers said the videos gave “no indication at all” that Williams and Stinnette were involved in any sort of crime and called their behavior “innocuous.” The videos showed no evidence that Williams tried to run the officer over, Crump said.

“It just is inexplicable why this officer shot and, why immediately after he shoots, turns on his body camera afterwards and says, ‘You tried to run me over,’ almost as if he knew he messed up,” Crump said.

The Waukegan Police Department and Williams, who spoke publicly for the first time Tuesday via Zoom at a press conference from her hospital bed, have offered two different pictures of what happened that night.

Last week, Department Commander Edgar Navarro said the incident happened just before midnight, when an officer approached a “suspicious” vehicle. As the officer was conducting his investigation, the vehicle fled and was spotted moments later by another officer, who got out of his car to approach the vehicle, Navarro said.

“That officer exited his vehicle, and the vehicle that he was investigating began to reverse towards the officer. The officer then pulled out his duty weapon and fired into the vehicle,” Navarro said.

The initial police report said the officer was “in fear for his safety.” He struck both Stinnette and Williams. They both were taken to the hospital, where Stinnette died. No firearms were found in the vehicle, Navarro said.

Navarro did not elaborate on why the vehicle was stopped in the first place, but body cam video reveals that the initial officer approaches the car to ask the passengers, “Are you the two that got in an accident?” The officer appears to know Stinnette and Williams by name and tells Stinnette he’s under arrest. When Williams asks why, the officer says “because I said so” and “he’s got a warrant.” The car then appears to speed away.

Waukegan police did not immediately say if there had been a warrant for Stinnette’s arrest. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office lists an active warrant for someone with the same last name.

Williams, the mother of two, said it all started after she had put her children to bed and went outside the house to sit in the driver’s seat of her car to smoke, with Stinnette in the passenger seat. That’s when an officer approached the car, called the two by name, and harassed Stinnette, Williams said.

Williams said she drove away slowly, and the officer did not follow, she said. When she turned a corner, Williams said she saw another officer.

“There was a crash and I lost control. The officer was shooting at us. The car ended up slamming into a building. I kept screaming ‘I don’t have a gun,’ but he kept shooting,” Williams said. “He told me to get out of the car. I had my hands up and I couldn’t move because I had been shot. Marcellis had his hands up. I kept asking him why he was shooting.”

Williams said her blood was “gushing” out of her body, but that the officers wouldn’t give them an ambulance until they got out of the car.

“I could hear Marcellis still breathing. I told them ‘please don’t shoot I have a baby, we have a baby, we don’t want to die.'”

Williams said an officer dragged her away from Stinnette and laid him on the ground and covered him with a blanket “while he was still breathing.” Williams said she asked the officers to take Stinnette in the ambulance first, but they didn’t.

“My heart is completely broken, not only because I watched someone I love get shot, be in complete pain and die, but also because our 7-month-old son will never know his father,” Williams said in a separate statement Tuesday.

Stinnette died of injuries from a gunshot wound, according to a preliminary autopsy report released last week.

Illinois State Police’s Public Integrity Task Force was investigating the incident, and the Waukegan Police Department had turned over all reports, body cam and dashcam videos, Navarro said.

Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Nerheim said last week he would review the state police investigation and make the “entire case file” available to the public once complete.

Family members and activists in Waukegan have held several marches and vigils in the past week, calling for justice for Stinnette and Williams. Tuesday night, the Rev. Al Sharpton joined Crump for a press conference.

Crump and Romanucci also represent the families of George Floyd, Daniel Prude, Byron Williams and others.

“Tafara is my child. My only baby,” Tina Johnson said through tears Tuesday. “I’m asking you to pray for her, and my grandson Marcellis Stinnette, Jr.”

With a population of more than 86,000, Waukegan is majority Hispanic or Latino and about a quarter non-Hispanic white and a quarter Black, according to the Census Bureau.

The city is about 15 miles south of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Jacob Blake, 29, was shot in the back multiple times as he was getting into a car, triggering unrest in the city and sparking protests around the nation.

via: https://currently.att.yahoo.com/att/cm/inexplicable-waukegan-police-officer-turned-194105976.html

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One Halloween enthusiast was determined to paint the town red this year — with fake blood, that is, and lots of it.

Unsatisfied with merely scaring kids with the old trick-or-treat standby, one Texas resident went overboard on Halloween gore, mounting a faux crime scene worthy of a particularly dark “CSI” episode. He successfully freaked out the nauseated East Dallas neighbors, who apparently have the police on speed dial.

Artist Steven Novak deployed a dummy with a pulverized head, one garbage-bag-wrapped dummy and one unlucky dummy whose noggin was nailed by a safe — with 20 gallons of blood to round out the scene.

“I’ve always been up to high jinks like flying ghosts or 7-foot-tall snow sculptures of myself, so if I was gonna do Halloween, it was obvious that it should be hyperreal,” Novak told the Dallas Observer. “No lights, fog machine, or camp … something that would really freak people out walking by in the dark. So I whipped up some dummies and slung 20 gallons of blood all over.”

The ghoulish Novak, who’s not winning any points for child sensitivity, added, “I’m most proud of the wheelbarrow tipped over by the street full of Hefty bags, looking like a failed attempt to dispose of the dismembered bodies in the middle of the night,” he said. “A kid walked by and asked me what happened to them; I said they ate too many Skittles.”

His rendition of a haunted house on steroids has earned him new fans: the approving Dallas Police Department. “Neighbors told me cop cars were in front of my house a lot during the day,” he told the Observer. “I was only home twice to receive them. They told me they thought it was cool and that they were only there because they were required to reply to complaints from the sergeant.”

Still, even with the manifold bloody bodies, it’s never enough for a true artist, who vowed to out-gore himself next Halloween. “Honestly, though, I think I could’ve used more. [My plans] were way worse on paper. Next year, though!”

via: https://nypost.com/2020/10/27/bloody-halloween-display-keeps-bringing-cops-to-artists-home/

Photo Credit: Steven Novak