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Tuesday, December 24, 2024

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American Airlines is boarding flights again, and the FAA lifts its nationwide ground-stop; Santa Cruz, CA wharf collapses in storm, tossing three people into water; Toxic 'forever chemicals' taint rural CA wells. Has Ohio lost its battleground state status? Opponents of factory farms regroup after mixed election results.

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Biden commutes the sentences of most federal death row inmates, the House Ethics Committee says former Rep. Gaetz may have committed statutory rape, and the national archivist won't certify the ERA without congressional approval.

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Rural folks could soon be shut out of loans for natural disasters if Project 2025 has its way, Taos, New Mexico weighs options for its housing shortage, and the top states providing America's Christmas trees revealed.

WA voting rights bill for people in prison would ‘restore humanity'

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Thursday, January 25, 2024   

Legislation in Olympia could give people in Washington prisons their voting rights.

House Bill 2030, known as the Free the Vote Act, would allow people to vote in elections - potentially granting that right to more than 14,000 people in the state's prisons.

Charles Longshore, a Skokomish tribal member, was convicted of second-degree murder in 2012 and is serving a 35-year sentence in a prison north of Olympia.

He said Black, indigenous and other people of color are disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration.

"We have been disenfranchised," said Longshore. "Our humanity has been taken, and primarily minority people are still continuing to be denied access to the polls."

Incarcerated people are allowed to vote in Maine, Vermont, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Republicans have expressed opposition to the bill - as well as Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs' office, which said voting rights shouldn't be given to people "who have not yet paid their debt to society."

Anthony Blankenship - a leadership team member with Free the Vote WA - said if people behind bars were able to vote, they would feel more connected with their communities, which would also make them less likely to reoffend.

"Building that sense of civic engagement, civic learning, and care about your community," said Blankenship, "is what we're hoping to do with this bill."

Longshore said it's hard to feel like a citizen when he doesn't have the right to vote.

"Our goal is to rehabilitate people and bring them home and make them better men or women than they were when they came in," said Longshore. "You can't do that without restoring their right to vote and making them whole and making us feel included and a part of the state."



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Juana Valle's well is one of 20 sites tested in California's San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast regions in the first round of preliminary sampling by University of California-Berkeley researchers and the Community Water Center. The results showed 96 parts per trillion of total PFAS in her water, including 32 parts per trillion of PFOS - both considered potentially hazardous amounts. (Hannah Norman/KFF Health News)

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