10:39
Elections officials in Texas’ most populous county discovered 10,000 mail-in votes that were erroneously not included in the vote tally from last Tuesday’s primary.
Officials in Harris county said 10,000 ballots – 6,000 Democratic and 4,000 Republican – were scanned into its tabulation computer but not included in the unofficial results. The results will be added to the election results on Tuesday.
The results could sway the results of a local race for the state house, according to the Texas Tribune. Harold Dutton, a Democrat, currently leads Candis Houston, a primary challenger, by just 136 votes. The uncounted votes could also determine the second candidate to make it into a runoff for the Democratic primary for attorney general. Joe Jaworski, a former mayor of Galveston, leads civil rights attorney Lee Merritt by just over 1,400 votes.
It’s not clear what caused the error, but Harris county election officials said they were investigating. The office already faced scrutiny for reporting results late after the primary after there were more than 1,600 damaged ballot sheets. Some polls were short staffed on election day, leading to long lines.
09:44
On Monday night, the Senate unanimously passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. Such efforts had failed for more than a century.
Bobby Rush, the Illinois Democrat who introduced the measure in the House, said: “Despite more than 200 attempts to outlaw this heinous form of racial terror at the federal level, it has never before been done. Today, we corrected that historic injustice. Next stop: [Joe Biden’s] desk.”
The New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, Senate co-sponsor with Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican, said: “The time is past due to reckon with this dark chapter in our history and I’m proud of the bipartisan support to pass this important piece of legislation.”
Subject to Biden’s signature, the bill will make lynching a hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
The last time such a bill failed, Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, was the reason. This time round three House Republicans voted against it: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia.
The full story on events in the Senate on Monday is here.
Here, meanwhile, is an interview with Christine Turner, director of the Oscar-nominated short film Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day. You should read it:
