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The demand for mail-in ballots is surging. Election workers need training. And polling booths might have to be outfitted with protective shields during the COVID-19 pandemic.As officials prepare for the Nov. 3 election, one certainty is clear: It’s coming with a big price tag.“Election officials don’t have nearly the resources to make the preparations and changes they need to make to run an election in a pandemic,” said Wendy Weiser, head of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “We are seeing this all over the place.”The pandemic has sent state and local officials scrambling to prepare for an election like few others, an extraordinary endeavor during a presidential contest, as virus cases continue to rise across much of the U.S.COVID-related worries are bringing demands for steps to make sure elections that are just four months away are safe. But long-promised federal aid to help cash-starved states cope is stalled on Capitol Hill.The money would help pay for transforming the age-old voting process into a pandemic-ready system. Central to that is the costs for printing mail-in ballots and postage. There are also costs to ensure in-person voting is safe with personal protective equipment, or PPE, for poll workers, who tend to be older and more at risk of getting sick from the virus, and training for new workers. Pricey machines are needed to quickly count the vote.Complicating matters is President Donald Trump’s aversion to mail-in balloting. With worrisome regularity, he derides the process as rigged, even though there’s no evidence of fraud and his own reelection team is adapting to the new reality of widespread mail-in voting.“As cases of coronavirus in this country rise, it’s vital that all voters be able to cast their ballots from home, to cast their ballots by mail,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.A huge COVID response bill passed by the House in May contains a whopping .6 billion to help states with their elections, but the Senate won’t turn to the measure until late July. Republicans fought a 0 million installment of election aid this March before agreeing to it.But key Senate Republicans seem likely to support more election funding, despite Trump’s opposition, and are even offering to lower a requirement that states put up “matching” funds to qualify for the federal cash.“I’m prepared not only to look at more money for the states to use as they see fit for elections this year, but also to even consider whatever kind of matching requirement we have,” said Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chairman of the Senate panel with responsibility for the issue. “We can continue to work toward an election that produces a result that people have confidence in and done in a way that everybody that wants to vote, gets to vote.”The pandemic erupted this spring in the middle of state primaries, forcing many officials to delay their elections by days, weeks and even months. They had to deal with a wave of poll worker cancellations, polling place changes and an explosion of absentee ballots.Voting rights groups are particularly concerned with the consolidations of polling places that contributed to long lines in Milwaukee, Atlanta and Las Vegas. They fear a repeat in November.As negotiations on the next COVID relief bill begin on Capitol Hill, the final figure for elections is sure to end up much less than the .6 billion envisioned by the House. That figure followed the recommendations of the Brennan Center to prepare for an influx of absentee ballots while providing more early voting options and protecting neighborhood polling places.Even before the pandemic, election offices typically work under tight budgets. Iowa Secretary of State Paul D. Pate, who serves as president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said the group has been calling on the federal government to provide a steady source of funds, particularly to help address ongoing costs of protecting the nation’s election systems from cyberthreats.For Georgia’s primary last month, election officials spent .1 million of the roughly .9 million the state has received in federal funds. The money was used to send absentee ballot applications to 6.9 million active registered voters and print absentee ballots for county election offices. Some of it also was used to purchase PPE and secure drop-off boxes for counties.Meanwhile, the state elections division has seen a ,000 reduction for the current budget year as Georgia — like the rest of the nation — deals with a decline in revenues due to the pandemic.The state’s remaining federal funds will be used to help cover the costs of developing an online system for voters to request absentee ballots, a less expensive option than sending ballot applications to every voter, and exploring whether installing plexiglass dividers around voting machines could allow more voters in a polling place at one time.In Colorado, which is already a universal vote-by-mail state, the Denver election office has had to reduce its budget by 7.5%, which amounts to nearly 0,000. Jocelyn Bucaro, Denver’s elections director, said the federal funds sent earlier this year helped with purchasing PPE and other pandemic-related supplies.Iowa similarly spent its federal dollars on mail-in ballots and pandemic supplies, Pate said.Vote-by-mail veterans and vendors of the equipment, software, ballots and envelopes that will be needed in November say the window to buy them is quickly closing.“Right now, what I’m seeing in most places is just this kind of indecision. What are we supposed to be planning? Vote by mail or in-person or combination?” said Jeff Ellington, president of Runbeck Election Services, which prints ballots and the special envelopes used to mail them and also supplies high-volume envelope sorters.“Decisions just need to be made so people can start to put a plan into place,” he said.BlueCrest, a Pitney Bowes spinoff, sells high-volume sorting machines that handle up to 50,000 ballot envelopes per hour. That’s the kind of crunch big counties can expect to face on Nov. 3 in states including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Rick Becerra, a vice president at the company, said he’s been talking to officials. The machines average 5,000 each.“I tell them the time is now,” he said.___Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report. 6414

The coronavirus pandemic has already caused depleted toilet paper shelves and concerns about meat shortages, but now it’s also to blame for some other, maybe more surprising shortages across the country.Coca-Cola announced at the beginning of July that it was stopping production on Odwalla Juice at the end of the month. On a call with investors, James Quincey, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of The Coca-Cola Co. said of Odwalla, “In the case of a brand like Odwalla and its chilled direct store delivery, which has struggled over the last several years, we started to stop operations effective July 31. This gives us the flexibility to support our investments in brands like Minute Maid and Simply.”And if you thought you were imagining fewer types of Coke products on store shelves, there’s a good chance you weren’t. A representative from the soft drink giant said in an email, “We continue to see high demand for products consumed at home. We are implementing contingency plans as best we can to get the products people want to store shelves. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work through these unprecedented times,” going on to say, “we are focusing on the availability of our most popular brands.”“Coke is facing is a different sort of thing right now; it's something that's a shift in demand, which is temporary, and they're not in position to respond to it other than to…put all of their eggs into the baskets that are going out the door fastest,” said William Dickens, University Distinguished Professor and chair of the economics department at Northeastern University.Another issue for Coke likely ties into another shortage – aluminum cans.According to Robert Budway, the president of the Can Manufacturers Institute, the aluminium can industry was seeing demand increase even before the pandemic began because cans are more environmentally friendly than plastic bottles, and the demand has only gone up.“Can manufacturers are fully focused on filling the extraordinary demand from all sectors of the industry’s customer base,” said Budway in a statement. He also said that although there is enough aluminum, can makers have announced the construction of several new plants in the United States and Canada, but they will take between 12 and 18 months to build.Chains like Taco Bell announced they’re trimming the menu too, removing things like the 7-Layer Burrito and Nachos Supreme. And Red Robin Gourmet Burgers ditched a third of its menu.The national burger chain cut 55 items, and a representative pointed to what they told their investors about the changes saying the cuts have resulted in “faster cook times, higher quality food” and say it’s reduced waste.“Sure,” said Dickens. “But why wouldn't they have done it before this, if it made such a big difference? The best explanation is that now they're in a different circumstance, and they just can't afford to produce the type of variety that they did before because they aren't having as many people coming in.”Dickens said everything, each menu item and each flavor of soda, has a specific cost to make. For a business to be profitable, it has to sell a certain number of each offering.So it makes sense that less popular items might hit the road right now.“As for menus and shortages…I think we may very well see more firms follow suit. I know my favorite restaurant is only offering a couple of items compared to what it used to. So I know it's a phenomenon that's out there,” said Dickens. “It's more profitable for [restaurants] to focus on a couple of items that they know that they're going to sell a lot of.”He went on to say what we can expect to see in the next month or year largely depends on how things go with COVID-19 and the subsequent handling of the economy.“I guess my biggest fear is that we're mishandling the economy,” said Dickens.He said that the United States’ economy hasn’t shrunk as much as it might have since the pandemic hit because Congress authorized an extra 0 per week for unemployment benefits. He said that the people who are getting those benefits are also then spending that money on things like food and drink.With the final unemployment supplements already distributed, Dickens predicts people will have less money to spend, which in turn will mean less money in the economy overall, more job layoffs – and a deeper recession. He said that could ultimately mean more shortages – and more businesses closing for good.“We should not let the smart things that were done fade away too early, and this is clearly too early since a large part of the country is still seeing growing numbers of cases,” said Dickens. “They're probably going to have to take action to pull back from re-opening and people are gonna need economic support.” 4769

The end of net neutrality is now scheduled for next month.The Federal Communications Commission said in a notice filed Thursday that new rules repealing the net neutrality protections are set to take effect 30 days from this Friday, or June 11."Now, on June 11, these unnecessary and harmful internet regulations will be repealed and the bipartisan, light-touch approach that served the online world well for nearly 20 years will be restored," Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC, said in a statement Thursday.The Republican-led FCC voted along party lines in December to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality rules, which were intended to prevent internet providers from blocking, speeding up, or slowing down access to specific online services.The FCC previously said that parts of the repeal order would take effect on April 23. The rest of the order required the approval of the Office of Management and Budget, which the FCC says it received earlier this month.The new timeline comes as net neutrality advocates make a last ditch effort to undo the repeal.Related: Trump administration sends mixed messages on big mediaSenate Democrats are currently pushing for a vote on a bill to overturn the decision as soon as next week. Even if the resolution passes the Senate, it still faces an uphill battle in the House.Gigi Sohn, a counselor to former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, recently told CNN that the future of net neutrality will likely "stay murky" through the remainder of this calendar year, "at the very least."More than 20 states have filed a lawsuit to stop the net neutrality repeal. Several states, including New Jersey, Washington, Oregon and California, have gone so far as to push legislation to enforce the principles of net neutrality within their borders.This local legislation could lead to a legal showdown, however.A spokeswoman for the FCC previously directed CNNMoney to a section of the final order for net neutrality, in which the FCC asserts authority to prevent states from pursuing laws inconsistent with the net neutrality repeal."You do have a number of states who have passed rules and they haven't really implemented them because if they do they will be sued by the operators."It's patently illegal for the states to make their own internet policy," says Roslyn Layton, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who served on President Trump's transition team for the FCC.Layton expects telecommunications companies will sue the states if they try to enforce the protections.  2527

The decision to reintroduce gray wolves in Colorado will be decided by the people, and both sides of the issue say the decision will impact the entire country.“Only in 2020, the weird year that we are having would Colorado be voting to introduce a species that’s already here in Colorado,” said Shawn Martini, the vice president of advocacy for the Colorado Farm Bureau.“The western part of Colorado is primarily owned, and majority-owned, by the people as public lands,” said Rob Edward, who is part of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project. “We all have interests on what happens on our public lands.”For centuries, the gray wolf roamed North America in large populations. But in the 1900s, the wolves were nearly hunted out of existence.The wild wolves haven’t lived in Colorado since 1940, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service classified the animal as an endangered species in 1978.“They are the missing link in the Rocky Mountain chain,” Edward said. “From the high arctic to New Mexico, we can re-establish a population of wolves again by reintroducing wolves to western Colorado. The presence of wolves on those wild landscapes is important for the long-term health of those landscapes.”With Proposition 114 in Colorado, the people will be able to vote in November on whether this will become a reality. This is something that has never happened in the nation’s history.“Wolves are already all over the place,” Martini said. “They’ve come down from Wyoming and Montana through a natural process. We’re asking voters to say no to this ballot initiative, because it makes something a natural process into a political one.”Having people vote on this is something Martini is strongly against.“So, this the first time a species would be introduced into a state via a ballot measure,” Martini said. “The reason it’s never been done before because it’s a really bad idea to make a scientific process a political one. The Colorado Parks and Wildlife and biologists should be the ones making this decision, not voters who don’t always have access to the info and are not biologists and who don’t do this for a living.”The main reason wolf advocates like Edwards want to re-introduce wolves to the area is that they believe it could improve the ecosystem. In 1995, the gray wolf was reintroduced into the greater Yellowstone ecosystem to help manage the high population of elk. But that decision wasn’t voted on by the people.Biologists came up with a plan and brought it to Congress. After years of public comment, the secretary of the interior finally signed off on the project.“Colorado is not Yellowstone,” Martini said. “Yellowstone is subject to a ton of environmental regulations, so the people managing the area don’t have the same tools as Colorado does.”Regardless of what side people are on this issue, both sides agree that this a historic ballot measure that could change the course of the country ecologically and politically. 2941

The first cruise in the Caribbean since the start of the pandemic is reporting a COVID-19 case.A passenger aboard SeaDream Yacht Club’s SeaDream 1 received a preliminary positive COVID-19 test.According to passengers, the captain informed them about the preliminary positive test over the ship’s intercom system while they were anchored off the coast of Grenadines.The vessel is now headed back to Barbados, where it is based.The SeaDream is carrying 53 passengers and 66 crew, with the majority of passengers hailing from the U.S. according to Sue Bryant, who is aboard the ship and is a cruise editor for The Times and The Sunday Times in Britain.The SeaDream is the first vessel to resume sailing in the Caribbean since earlier this year when coronavirus pandemic concerns docked the cruise industry following high profile infections.Passengers were tested both in advance of traveling, before boarding, and again a few days into the trip.The SeaDream has a capacity of about 110 guests and 95 crewmembers. It also sails outside of U.S. waters. This puts it below the 250 guests threshold and outside the area under the CDC’s orders about cruising. 1159

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