In the spotlight: early voting in Florida
Early voting for the US presidential election began in Florida on October 19, 2020. Douglas R. Clifford / Tampa Bay Times via AP
Text by: Christophe Paget Follow
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In the United States, early voting began this Monday, October 19 in Florida, the largest of the key states in the presidential election, where Donald Trump and Joe Biden are neck and neck in the polls.
This Monday "
this typical wet day in South Florida did not discourage voters
", tells us the
Miami Herald
: they "
arrived at the polls before dawn
", wearing "
ponchos - and masks - and holding umbrellas
”, and,“
from Miami to Saint Petersburg
”, even before the polling stations opened at 7 am, posted on social networks photos of these lines which sometimes circled the block. .
El Nuevo Herald
, the newspaper in Spanish from Florida, specifies that "
as during the primaries in August
" precautions were taken against the coronavirus: in Miami-Dade county, "
the staff had equipped themselves with disinfectant and demanded the wearing of masks to enter the polling stations
", while promising, underlines the daily,"
to give masks to those who did not have any or to allow them to fill out their ballots from outside
".
Voting "
in person
" versus voting by mail
In total, we learn from the
Miami Herald
, more than 40,000 people voted on Monday, October 19 in Miami Dade, or 5,000 more than in November 2016. Before election day, it was in all more than three million people are expected to vote “
in person
” in Florida - with two and a half million already having done so by mail.
So why this choice of live voting?
"
I want to be sure that my vote is legal and that it will count,
" said Yensis Martinez, voting for Donald Trump yesterday.
The outgoing president has, recalls the
Miami Herald
, questioned the legitimacy of the postal vote.
Moreover, according to the Democratic Party of Florida, reports the
Washington Post
, the Democrats are in the lead in the postal vote in this state: more than a million against 620,000 for the Republicans - who claim that the beginning of this “in person” vote marks the start of a Republican push.
But, says the paper, while it is true that Americans are voting in record numbers
right now
, "
many of the rules governing which votes will be counted and which will not be counted as yet. political and legal disputes
”.
Doctor Fauci once again targeted by Donald Trump
Epidemiologists quoted by the
Boston Globe
say the next six to twelve weeks should be "
the darkest of the whole pandemic
" in the United States, which has already
claimed
119,000 lives.
This is the moment that Donald Trump chose to attack once again Dr. Anthony Fauci, a highly respected member of his own crisis cell on the coronavirus.
"
Fauci and all his idiots,
" hammered the president during a meeting in Arizona on Monday, believing it to be a "
disaster
".
Attacks all the more serious as Donald Trump implied without any proof, reports the
Washington Post,
"
that Fauci's advice to respond to the pandemic is so bad that it has caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people
".
So why these attacks, wonders the
Boston Globe
.
"
There's always a logical trumpienne his outbursts on Twitter
," notes the paper, explains: "
I
t was angry.
Fauci told the
60 Minutes
show
that the White House was preventing him from doing certain television interviews, and that he was not surprised that the president had contracted Covid-19
”.
In short, "
as an anxious nation turns its eyes to Trump, it looks elsewhere to find someone - anyone - to blame for the pandemic that is sapping its hopes for a second term
."
First day of protests in Bogota
On Sunday, thousands of indigenous people walked to the Colombian capital to protest the violence of which they are victims.
And after having covered 600 kilometers, they continued to walk this Monday in the streets of Bogota: they were 8,000 to march yesterday, from the Sports Palace to the Bolivar square, reports
El Espectador
.
El Tiempo
publishes a whole gallery of commented photos of the demonstration: a "
peaceful
"
march
, largely in green and red, in the colors of the CRIC, the movement of the natives of the Cauca department, from which the majority of the demonstrators come.
Under the photo of a young woman waving a white scarf, the newspaper notes that during the march "
some locals leaned over their balconies to show their support for the natives
" and underlines that "
if no one knows yet how long the group of natives will remain in the capital
”, the mayor, who received their leaders yesterday,“
promised to help them
”.
A debate with the president
Because the Minga, the gathering of these natives, came to Bogota to see Ivan Duque, but so far the president has turned a deaf ear.
"
Minga and Duque
: a bogged down meeting
?
"Wonders
El Espectador
title.
What poses a problem for the government, explains the newspaper, “
is the willingness of the Minga to have a political debate with the president
”.
"
No ultimatum
" asks the government, which believes that in any case it is first necessary to define "
rules and protocols on the topics discussed during a possible meeting
".
And the Minister of the Interior has estimated on several occasions that "
this mobilization was in fact political
".
But in an editorial entitled “
Minga and pseudodemocracy
”,
El Espectador
recalls that the Minga is mobilizing to “
protest against the massacres, the assassinations of union officials, the demonization of popular struggles.
What a strange democracy
”, exclaims the editorialist,“
that Colombian democracy, which stigmatizes social protest and refuses that one of the most important aspects of the democratic game is political debate and contradiction
”.
In Canada, the city of Abestos will change its name
After a referendum, it will become “
Val-des-sources
”.
You can read it in
La Presse
and it is "
a historic moment
", explains the mayor.
In fact Abestos means asbestos, and "
the city wants to get rid of the negative connotations of this name
", especially since it has finished with the asbestos industry since the mine closed in 2012.
This change of name is not without a twinge of heart for some residents.
One of them nevertheless evokes in
La Presse
, laughing, his vacation in Cuba in 1981, "
where a waitress fell back
" when he told her that she came from Abestos - asbestos: "
she didn't tell me about the rest of my vacation
!
"
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