Wolf orders bond issue to help counties buy voting machines
By MARC LEVY Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Tom Wolf said Tuesday he is ordering a bond issue to help Pennsylvania’s counties pay for new voting machines ahead of 2020’s presidential election after a dispute between the Democrat and the Republican-controlled Legislature doomed legislation to help fund the machines.
The proposed bond issue of up to $90 million is designed to reimburse each county for 60% of their cost, according to Wolf’s administration, which provided little detail about the financing it will seek or the timeline for the move.
Wolf began pressing counties last year to replace their voting machines before 2020 after federal authorities warned Pennsylvania and at least 20 other states that Russian hackers targeted them during 2016’s presidential election.
That prompted a wide range of election integrity advocates and experts to urge states to switch to machines that produce an auditable paper trail.
Approval is required from the board of a state economic development financing agency that Wolf wants to use, and Republicans say they are researching what sort of legal authority the governor has to order the move.
Wolf suggested that legislative approval of the borrowing would be preferable and that Tuesday’s move is designed to at least give counties confidence that they won’t be left to pay a tab expected to exceed $100 million.
“It’s a proposal that we can move forward with, I think, and if there’s something that the Legislature wants to do that they think is better, again I’m all ears,” Wolf told reporters after an unrelated news conference in the Capitol. “But in the meantime, I think it’s important to show good faith and that’s what I’m doing here.”
Wolf’s administration has warned lawmakers that failing to replace Pennsylvania’s roughly 25,000 voting machines by next year’s elections could leave it as the only state without voter-verifiable paper systems, and certainly the only presidential battleground state in that position.
The money raised by the bond would have to be used for voting machines that have enhanced anti-hacking security, produce a paper record that allows a voter to double-check how their vote is recorded, and allow election officials to audit election results, Wolf’s administration said.
The so-called direct-recording electronic machines in wide use currently in Pennsylvania leave no paper trail and make it almost impossible to know if they’ve accurately recorded individual votes or if anyone tampered with the count.
Still, top Republican lawmakers resisted Wolf’s move to decertify voting machines, but then in late June they abruptly backed 11th-hour legislation that carried up to $90 million in borrowing authority to pay for new voting machines.
Wolf vetoed that measure Friday because Republicans packaged it with changes to election laws that Wolf said wouldn’t improve voting security or access, hadn’t been negotiated and didn’t include his priorities.
While Republicans bristled Tuesday at Wolf’s move to borrow without legislative approval, they also made no public pledge to advance standalone borrowing legislation.
As many as two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s counties could have new voting systems rolled out in this November’s election, and they are paying for it in the meantime with the property taxes that fund their operations, county officials say.
Wolf included one crucial change Tuesday in his stated intention to decertify voting systems, saying he would give counties that already use paper-based voting systems the opportunity to request an extension until June 2021 to select a new system. It wasn’t clear Tuesday whether that would ease complaints from counties being forced to switch.
Wolf’s administration has maintained that those machines are aging and will be more expensive in the future to replace.

US returns first group of asylum seekers to Nuevo Laredo
By JUAN ANTONIO CALDERON Associated Press
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AP) — The so-called Remain in Mexico program for U.S. asylum seekers expanded to another Mexican border city Tuesday with the arrival of a first group of migrants to Nuevo Laredo.
The 10 migrants had crossed the border to seek U.S. asylum Monday and will now have to wait in Mexico as their applications are processed.
Lucía Ascencio of Venezuela had waited for three months in Nuevo Laredo with her husband and two young sons just for the chance to make her asylum petition in Laredo, Texas. She was stunned by her return to Mexico as they walked from the bridge carrying plastic bags containing a bottle of water, a bottle of juice and an orange.
“We hadn’t thought that they were going to send us back,” she said. Her family was given a date in September to return for the next step in their process.
A spokeswoman with Mexico’s immigration agency confirmed that the first group of 10 returned Tuesday.
The U.S. program, known formally as the Migrant Protection Protocols, acts as a deterrent for applicants who previously were released into the U.S. with notices to appear in court.
The program was already operating in the Mexican border cities of Tijuana, Mexicali and Ciudad Juarez. More than 18,000 mostly Central American migrants had been returned to those cities through the first week in July, according Mexican officials.
Nuevo Laredo is in Tamaulipas state, which the U.S. State Department warns Americans not to visit due to kidnappings and other crimes.
The program’s expansion to Tamaulipas was announced after the U.S. and Mexico reached an agreement to avert threatened tariffs on Mexican exports last month.
The state is notorious for violent drug cartels that have controlled its border cities. But its long shared border with Texas also includes the busiest sector for U.S. Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions.
Migrant shelters in cities along Mexico’s northern border have been swamped for months. Like Ascencio, migrants who want to apply for U.S. asylum wait for months to get the opportunity. The Remain in Mexico cities are even more affected because the migrants are sent back to wait for a process that could last more than a year.
At the Casa AMAR migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, director Aaron Mendez said there was already a “humanitarian crisis” that the shelter lacked the resources to deal with.
“If they could have 50 shelters here in the city it still wouldn’t be enough,” Mendez said. Authorities had originally said 150 to 200 migrants could be returned to Nuevo Laredo daily.
On Monday, Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said that 327 migrants awaiting U.S. asylum hearings had found jobs in northern Mexico and that companies had offered 3,700 positions.
The federal government has pledged to assist border cities in accommodating the migrants, but details have been few and local shelters complain that the new government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has actually cut funding that they had received to support migrants. Ebrard said they had arranged with 16 shelters to provide places for migrants to stay, but that would only meet a fraction of the need.
Several civil rights organizations in the U.S. have sued the government over the Migrant Protection Protocols. Many migrants say they fear that staying in some Mexican border cities could jeopardize their personal safety.
___
Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.

DALLAS (AP) — H. Ross Perot, the colorful, self-made Texas billionaire who rose from a childhood of Depression-era poverty and twice ran for president as a third-party candidate, has died. He was 89. The cause of death was leukemia, a family spokesman said. Perot’s 1992 independent run for the White House drew 19% of the vote, among the highest totals ever for a third-party candidate. It featured folksy sayings, including one that became a national catchphrase: “It’s just that simple.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A parade of presidential contenders and other top Democrats demanded Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s labor secretary quit because he helped craft a secret 2008 plea deal that let a wealthy financier avoid prison after allegations of molesting teenage girls. Trump said he feels badly for Secretary Alexander Acosta but will look “very closely” at the issue.

LONDON (AP) — British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt says President Donald Trump’s remarks about Britain’s U.S. ambassador and Prime Minister Theresa May are “disrespectful and wrong.” Hunt tweeted that “allies need to treat each other with respect,” and said that “if I become PM our Ambassador stays.”

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Volkswagen is halting production of the last version of its classic Beetle model in July at its plant in Puebla, Mexico. It’s the end of the road for a vehicle that has symbolized many things over a history spanning the eight decades since 1938.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Tom Wolf says there’s a broad recognition that state government needs to help Pennsylvania’s counties pay for new voting machines, despite a disagreement between the Democrat and the Republican-controlled Legislature. Wolf made the comments Tuesday and says he’s sure the sides can come to an agreement. The Legislature approved $90 million in borrowing authority, but Wolf vetoed it because it included changes to election laws that Wolf says don’t help improve voting security or access.

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. (AP) — Authorities say portions of two sawn-off human legs found on a central Pennsylvania riverbank earlier this year are believed to have belonged to a woman, but she still hasn’t been identified. State police in Lycoming County said Tuesday that an “extensive examination” by a forensic anthropologist indicates the legs are those of an adult white female about 5 feet to 5-feet-6-inches tall. A fisherman found the legs May 11 along the Susquehanna River in Williamsport.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania is making its largest deposit into its budgetary reserve account in nearly two decades. Tuesday’s deposit of $317 million comes after strong corporate and sales tax collections drove the state past its revenue expectations by almost 3%. The 2019-20 fiscal year that began July 1 is projected to be another relatively strong year for tax collections. However, not everything’s rosy. Pennsylvania still had $67 billion in state pension debt and its working-age population is shrinking.

Pennsylvania is in the middle of an extreme heat wave with temperatures reaching upwards of 88 degrees in Beaver County today and throughout the week. The PA Health Department has some tips for staying safe and cool in the heat. Beaver County Radio News Intern Kristian Biega has more on the story. Click on ‘play’ to hear Kristian’s report…