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State: No perjury charges if mail voters claim COVID risk
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By JONATHAN MATTISE Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee authorities cannot pursue perjury charges against voters who seek mail ballots by concluding on their own that they, or someone in their care, have a health condition that increases their risk for COVID-19, an attorney for the state said in court Thursday.

The comment by Deputy Attorney General Janet Kleinfelter came during questioning by Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle as the state and the groups that sued over absentee ballot access continued to argue about transparency in the state's vote-by-mail eligibility parameters. 

Earlier this month, Tennessee's Supreme Court sided with the state by overturning a vote-by-mail option ordered by Lyle for all eligible voters. Afterward, the state removed mentions of COVID-19 from the absentee ballot application. 

The plaintiffs argue the form doesn't follow the Supreme Court's order, which requires instructions for people with underlying health conditions to vote by mail. The state counters that underlying conditions are mentioned on its website and it has sent out news releases to publicize the change, which requires voters to check existing boxes on the form for either illness or caretaking. 

The state did change its form in another way. A new section on the absentee application offers a reward of up to $1,000 for reporting voter fraud that leads to a conviction. 

Additionally, the absentee application continues to requires voters to attest to the information they provide under the penalty of perjury. 

Kleinfelter said the mention of the reward is needed "because there are other instances of voter fraud." As for medical excuses to vote absentee, Kleinfelter said the state did away with a required doctor's note in 1972 and it has been the honor system since. 

"If the individual believes that they fit in that category then the state could not prosecute because we could not prove the elements of the crime," Kleinfelter said.

Whether an absentee vote should count or not could be the subject of an election challenge, if someone were to file one, Kleinfelter said.

The judge is now considering what authority she has after the Supreme Court ruling, as the plaintiffs request changes to the absentee voting application and other information sent out to inform voters of the underlying conditions reason to vote absentee.

The state first spelled out the exemption for those with underlying health conditions during a Supreme Court hearing earlier this month.

Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett has pointed to guidance from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention in advising voters about underlying conditions. The CDC says conditions that increase the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 range from cancer to obesity, while those that might increase the risk range from asthma to smoking.

His office has also said, "if a voter is too ill to go to shopping centers, Walmart, Home Depot, or other public places then they are probably too ill to go the polls and conversely, if you are going to those other places then common sense would indicate the voter is well enough to go to their polling place."

Under its excuse-based system, Tennessee typically requires voters to fit into one of more than a dozen categories to vote by mail, ranging from being 60 or older to being sick. The last day to request an absentee ballot for the November election is Oct. 27.

Omicron may be headed for a rapid drop in US and Britain
Coronavirus
Coronavirus

Scientists are seeing signals that COVID-19's alarming omicron wave may have peaked in Britain and is about to do the same in the U.S., at which point cases may start dropping off dramatically.

The reason: The variant has proved so wildly contagious that it may already be running out of people to infect, just a month and a half after it was first detected in South Africa.

"It's going to come down as fast as it went up," said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.

At the same time, experts warn that much is still uncertain about how the next phase of the pandemic might unfold. The plateauing or ebbing in the two countries is not happening everywhere at the same time or at the same pace. And weeks or months of misery still lie ahead for patients and overwhelmed hospitals even if the drop-off comes to pass.

"There are still a lot of people who will get infected as we descend the slope on the backside," said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, which predicts that reported cases will peak within the week.

The University of Washington's own highly influential model says the number of daily reported cases in the U.S. will crest at 1.2 million by Jan. 19 and will then fall sharply "simply because everybody who could be infected will be infected," according to Mokdad.

In fact, he said, by the university's complex calculations, the true number of new daily infections in the U.S. — an estimate that includes people who were never tested — has already peaked, hitting 6 million on Jan. 6.

In Britain, meanwhile, new COVID-19 cases dropped to about 140,000 a day in the last week, after skyrocketing to more than 200,000 a day earlier this month, according to government data.

Kevin McConway, a retired professor of applied statistics at Britain's Open University, said that while cases are still rising in places such as southwest England and the West Midlands, the outbreak may have peaked in London.

The figures have raised hopes that the two countries are about to witness what happened in South Africa, where the wave crested at record highs and then fell significantly about a month later.

"We are seeing a definite falling-off of cases in the U.K., but I'd like to see them fall much further before we know if what happened in South Africa will happen here," said Dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain's University of East Anglia.

Differences between Britain and South Africa, including Britain's older population and the tendency of its people to spend more time indoors in the winter, could mean a bumpier outbreak for the country and other nations like it.

On the other hand, British authorities' decision to adopt minimal restrictions against omicron could enable the virus to rip through the population and run its course much faster than it might in Western European countries that have imposed tougher COVID-19 controls, such as France, Spain and Italy.

Shabir Mahdi, dean of health sciences at South Africa's University of Witwatersrand, said European countries that impose lockdowns won't necessarily come through the omicron wave with fewer infections; the cases may just be spread out over a longer period of time.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization said there have been 7 million new COVID-19 cases across Europe in the past week, calling it a "tidal wave sweeping across the region." WHO cited modeling from Mokdad's group that predicts half of Europe's population will be infected with omicron within about eight weeks. 

By that time, however, Hunter and others expect the world to be past the omicron surge. 

"There will probably be some ups and downs along the way, but I would hope that by Easter, we will be out of this," Hunter said. 

Still, the sheer numbers of people infected could prove overwhelming to fragile health systems, said Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. 

"The next few weeks are going to be brutal because in absolute numbers, there are so many people being infected that it will spill over into ICUs," Jha said.

Mokdad likewise warned in the U.S.: "It's going to be a tough two or three weeks. We have to make hard decisions to let certain essential workers continue working, knowing they could be infectious."

Omicron could one day be seen as a turning point in the pandemic, said Meyers, at the University of Texas. Immunity from all the new infections, along with new drugs and continued vaccination, could render the coronavirus something with which we can more easily coexist.

"At the end of this wave, far more people will have been infected by some variant of COVID," Meyers said. "At some point, we'll be able to draw a line — and omicron may be that point — where we transition from what is a catastrophic global threat to something that's a much more manageable disease."

That's one plausible future, she said, but there is also the possibility of a new variant — one that is far worse than omicron — arising.