Fla. County to Extend Early Voting

A judge extended early voting hours in one Florida county on Sunday after the state Democratic Party sued in an effort to give people more time at the polls.

Some voters had faced waits several hours long on Saturday, the last scheduled day of early voting. The judge ruled on a lawsuit filed late Saturday in Orange County after an early voting site was shut down for several hours. The Winter Park library was evacuated when a suspicious package ' a cooler ' was found outside. It was later detonated by a local bomb squad.

Bill Cowles, the Orange County elections supervisor, said that voters who show up on Sunday will be asked to use a provisional ballot. The extra hours will be offered at only the Winter Park library.

A Republican Party spokesman said the party was not challenging the decision. Brian Burgess said state law requires provisional ballots to be used whenever a court orders an extension of voting hours.

The Democratic state party also filed a federal lawsuit Sunday morning seeking more voting time in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

Voting in Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach County didn't wrap up until early Sunday morning because voters standing in line when the polls closed were allowed to vote.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and other Democrats asked Gov. Rick Scott this past week to use his emergency powers to extend early voting. The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature last year cut the number of days available for early voting from a maximum of 14 days to eight days.

Scott and state election officials, however, turned down the extension requests. Secretary of State Ken Detzner maintained that there was not a true emergency that justified the extension. Chris Cate, a spokesman for Detzner, said that the state did not plan to appeal the decision to reopen the Winter Park location.

The federal lawsuit says counties should offer absentee ballot voting at local election offices if early voting cannot be extended. Both Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties said they planned to do that.

"I decided to open because we are allowed to do so," said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher.

Bucher noted that voting in her county did not wrap up until 2:30 a.m. Sunday. Her office started accepting absentee ballots at 9 a.m.

Christina White, deputy supervisor with Miami-Dade County, said the county also decided to accept absentee ballots for four hours on Sunday at its main office.

"We are hoping that (the Democratic Party) is happy with that," White said.

Broward County is also allowing voters to pick up absentee ballots on Sunday, but only if they made an appointment in advance.

Absentee ballot voting differs from early voting in that voters must fill out their ballot, place it an envelope and then sign it. The ballot envelopes are opened later and then fed into voting machines.

During early voting, voters place their ballots directly into the voting machines.

The Orange County lawsuit asked that early voting be extended at Winter Park and that the court ask local television and radio stations to let voters know about it.

The lawsuit included sworn statements from several voters who said they waited in line for hours and were turned away because voting was suspended at the site. A volunteer with the campaign of President Barack Obama said that the crowd of voters dwindled from 300 to just 40 after voting was halted.

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Nor'easter Following in Superstorm Sandy's Path

Commuters streaming into New York City on Monday endured long waits and crowded trains, giving the recovering transit system a stress test a week after Superstorm Sandy ravaged the eastern third of the country, with New York and New Jersey bearing the brunt of the destruction.

Trains were so crowded Monday on the Long Island Rail Road that dozens of people missed their trains. With PATH trains between New Jersey and Manhattan still out, lines for the ferry in Jersey City quickly stretched to several hundred people by daybreak.

One commuter in line pleaded into his cellphone, "Can I please work from home? This is outrageous," but many more took the complicated commute as just another challenge after a difficult week.

"There's not much we can do. We'll get there whatever time we can, and our jobs have to understand. It's better late than absent," said Louis Holmes of Bayonne, as he waited to board a ferry in Jersey City to his job as a security guard at Manhattan's Sept. 11 memorial site.

The good news in New York City was that, unlike last week, service on key subway lines connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn under the East River had been restored. But officials warned that other water-logged tunnels still weren't ready for Monday's rush hour and that fewer-than-normal trains were running ' a recipe for a difficult commute.

On Long Island, Janice Gholson could not get off her train from Ronkonkoma and Wyandanch because of overcrowding, and ended up overshooting her stop.

"I've never taken the train before. There were people blocking the doorway so I got stuck on the train," she said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the subway to work Monday. He was joined by many of the students returning to class in the nation's largest school system. About 90 percent of the 1,700 schools reopened for the first time since Sandy hit last Monday, the mayor said.

At Public School 2 in Chinatown, the playground was once again full of the sounds of children laughing and shouting as they played basketball before school started. Samantha Martin, a fifth-grader at P.S. 75 on the Upper West Side, made it to school from the Bronx with time to spare on the subway.

"It was packed but I'm happy. Home is boring!" Martin said.

The longer commute times were actually a lesser problem for many families who left homes and apartments that have been without power for almost a week. In Westchester County, Liliana Matos said dropping her boys off at Colonial School in Pelham gave her a chance to "call Con Ed and get on their backs" about the loss of power. For the last three days, they have been staying at a hotel because the house is too cold.

In Jersey City, investment advisor Barbara Colucci, was traveling from a house without power and the family's car was low on fuel because of persistent gasoline shortages.

"I can't wait until the PATH and light rail are up and running again, but first I'd like power in my house quite honestly," she said. "We're sleeping on air mattresses but we have heat so we can't complain but I'd like to get back to a bed ' it's been awhile ' and back to a regular commute."

Repair crews have been laboring around-the-clock in response to the worst natural disaster in the transit system's 108-year history, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota said Sunday.

Obama, Romney Deliver Closing Arguments

The candidates will spend the final 24 hours of this long presidential race bouncing around the country, rallying supporters at 14 scheduled events across nine battleground states.

President Obama is set to hit urban centers in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa, with Bruce Springsteen tagging along as his opening act. Jay-Z is scheduled to join the campaign at a mid-afternoon gathering in the Buckeye State.

Like the president, Mitt Romney will make one last play for Ohio, arriving in Columbus four hours after Obama leaves for Iowa. It will be the Republican's third stop in a day that sees him track north from Florida -- where the wait to register an early vote this weekend lasted as long as six hours -- to Virginia, ending the night with one last rally in New Hampshire.

If the Romney ticket doesn't win enough votes to unseat President Obama on Tuesday night, it won't be because Paul Ryan was a lazy campaigner. The vice presidential candidate will make five stops Monday, in five different states, covering four time zones. He closes out the election season back home, with a late night rally in Milwaukee, Wis.

While the candidates push their supporters to the polls and smile for the cameras in what they expect to be packed arenas, parks, and airplane hangars ' at least seven of the events will be hosted at airports - there have been some rumblings from Republicans, GOP strategist Karl Rove among them, that Romney's campaign might have been dealt an insurmountable blow by Superstorm Sandy.

"The hurricane is what broke Romney's [post-debate] momentum," former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said on CNN Sunday morning. "Any day that the news media is not talking about jobs and the economy, taxes and spending, deficit and debt, 'Obamacare' and energy, is a good day for Barack Obama."

The Romney campaign, though, insists it is traveling steadily along a well-charted course to victory on Tuesday.

"I don't look at what happened with the storm and how it affected so many people through a political lens," Romney adviser Kevin Madden said Sunday. "We are focused on what we can do to make sure that the enthusiasm that we have seen in states that it's part of helping our get out the vote efforts in all these key battlegrounds and then just focusing on the message. So I wouldn't entertain the same notion that those folks did."

And in Cleveland Sunday, Romney made one last argument for dismissing President Obama from office after a single term.

"He promised to do so very much, but, frankly, he fell so very short," Romney said. "He promised to be a post-partisan president, but he's been most partisan; he's been divisive, blaming, attacking, dividing. And by the way, it's not only Republicans that he refused to listen to; he also refused to listen to independent voices."

Obama seems to have taken on a more fatalistic approach, telling 14,000 supporters in New Hampshire Sunday that the election was in their hands, joking that he'd be little more than a "prop" the rest of the way.

"It's now up to you," he said, former President Bill Clinton once more on hand to warm up the chilly crowd. "That's how a Democracy works, right? That ultimately, it's up to you. You have the power. You are shaping the decisions for this country for decades to come. Right now. In the next two days."

But that doesn't mean the Democrats are done trying to convince voters how to exercise that power. ABC News obtained a set of talking points distributed by the party to surrogates for their last round of chatter with the press.

Among the lines you can expect to hear today: "We know and trust President Obama. We know what he believes, where he stands, and that he's willing to make tough decisions even when they're not politically convenient. We know he'll fight for middle-class families every single day, as hard as he knows how."

They've also been asked to deliver one last round of attacks on the Republican challenger.

According to the memo, "Gov. Romney has been using his talents as a salesman to dress up the same policies that failed our country and crashed our economy, and offers them up as change."

Marathon Canceled Too Late for Many

Fresh off his flight from San Francisco Friday afternoon, Leland Kim had just picked up his numbered marathon bib and registration packet at the Javits Center and was headed to the ING New York City Marathon Expo.

Then he got a text message from a friend: "We're so sorry the marathon got canceled."

Confused, Kim asked someone working at the expo about it, and was told the marathon was still going on. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had been saying so all week. And Kim had already spoken to runners who'd come from New Zealand, Argentina, Russia and Ireland.

But Sharon McNary, a seasoned runner from Pasadena, Calif. , soon saw people at the Javits expo walking with their heads bowed, talking into cell phones and texting as rumors of a cancellation circulated.

Although no official email came from the New York Road Runners, the official organizers of the race, those at the expo soon realized the rumors were true. Presenters folded up their booths and went home, said McNary.

"There were a few people who were expressing their anger pretty loudly, but for the most part, I think people understood that the timing was just not right for it," McNary said.

Earlier this week, Kim and his partner kept their eyes on the news as they watched superstorm Sandy unfold, wondering whether their eight months of training for their first marathon would be for naught.

The 26.2-mile race seemed unfathomable last winter, when a 3-mile run was exhausting. But this week, with the finish line in sight, they listened to Bloomberg say over and over again that the race was on. Even Friday morning, when they left for the airport, they were certain they would be running together through New York's five boroughs.

And then that text message from a friend came.

"I felt like it was kind of taken away from us at the last minute," Kim said. "I would have understood if, shortly after the hurricane, it was canceled. ' We definitely saw the devastation, and we definitely were concerned for the people that were affected by this not only in New York but in other parts of the East Coast."

He did not get an official cancellation email from the New York Road Runners until Saturday at 11:51 a.m., more than 12 hours after the mayor and race CEO Mary Wittenberg announced the race was off.

Robert Brink, a marathoner from Manhattan who was still without power, said he still hadn't gotten the official cancellation notice.

"I can't believe they still haven't sent out emails as far as I can tell," Brink said. "Especially for foreigners. I'm sure there's probably going to be some people who are flying out here who still think it's on."

The New York Road Runners did not immediately respond to a request from ABCNews.com for comment, but its email's auto reply still begins with "Thank you for your message. We are in full execution mode for the 2012 ING New York City Marathon."

Brink said he feels bad for out-of-state runners who went through the "roller coaster" of canceling and rescheduling flights as the storm moved up the Atlantic coast. Because the race was still on, they had to find a way to New York despite the frozen air traffic, only to find out that the race had been canceled once they arrived.

"I totally understand it should have been canceled because it's not right if there's people hurting," he said. "But my first reaction was, look, you made the call to go through with it. At this point, assuming no one's going to die by holding it, you just kind of have to live with that choice."

Transgender Student in Women's Locker Room Raises Uproar

                                                                                                         (Image Credit: Getty)Image Credit: Getty Images

The decision to allow a transgender 45-year-old college student who identifies as a woman but has male genitalia to use the women's locker room has raised a fracas among  parents and faith-based organizations, who say children as young as 6 years old use the locker room.

The locker room at Evergreen College in Olympia, Wash., is shared with  the Capital High School swim club and a children's swim academy, along with the students at Evergreen.

'The college has to follow state law,'  Evergreen spokesman Jason Wettstein told ABC News affiliate KOMO. 'The college cannot discriminate based on the basis of gender identity. Gender identity is one of the protected things in discrimination law in this state.'

But according to parents, the fact that the student has exposed her male genitalia, in one instance in the sauna, is cause for concern.

'[A mother] reported her daughter was upset because she observed a person at the women's locker room naked and displaying male genitalia,' said a police report filed in September by a mother on behalf of her 17-year-old daughter.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based religious liberties group, sent a letter to Evergreen College on Friday, warning it that  the decision to allow the transgender student to continue using the locker room could put the school in jeopardy.

'The fact that this individual was sitting in plain view of young girls changing into their swimsuits puts you and Evergreen on notice of possible future harm,' David Hacker, senior legal counsel, wrote.

The college has installed privacy curtains, and said it would not change its policy for now.

 

 
 

 

Shuttle Prototype Suffers Storm Damage

The flying machine that ushered in NASA's space shuttle program has suffered storm damage in New York City.

Shuttle prototype Enterprise weathered Superstorm Sandy this week at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, but it sustained minor damage to its vertical stabilizer, or tail. A small piece of foam came off, said a museum spokesman.

The damage was confirmed Friday by both the museum and NASA as shuttle Atlantis concluded its journey to retirement at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

Enterprise will be repaired at the earliest opportunity, the Intrepid museum said in a statement. The museum remains closed because of storm damage.

"Enterprise remains safely in place and partially covered by the fabric of the damaged pavilion, which was left in place as a protective measure," said museum director Susan Marenoff-Zausner.

Enterprise was used for atmospheric drop tests over Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1977, four years before the first shuttle launch. It was never designed for space travel.

This past spring, the Smithsonian Institution turned the Enterprise over to the Intrepid, at NASA's instruction. The Smithsonian needed to make room at its display hangar in Virginia for the retired space shuttle Discovery.

Enterprise was flown atop a modified jumbo jet to New York in April and moved to the Intrepid museum in June.

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Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum: http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/

Screams of Joy as Power Restored

Screams of joy erupted through the canyons of lower Manhattan today when the lights came back on through a large section of the city, four days after Sandy's flood waters knocked out power to the city's financial district.

The power surge will allow greater movement of the city's crippled subway system and was a major step in the recovery from the killer storm, whose death toll had topped 90, according to the Associated Press.

When traffic lights came on, screams of joy could be heard in Soho, Chelsea and other Manhattan neighborhoods that have had to go without heat, light, elevators and restaurants since Monday.

Increasingly impatient Sandy survivors got another glimmer of hope when New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that a flotilla of ships and barges began unloading gasoline in an effort to reduce long lines of gas-desperate motorists.

"The issue of gasoline has created concern and anxiety and practical problems all throughout the region," Cuomo said at a news conference today. "People can't get gas. It's slowed down the delivery of service, it's increased the stress level all across the region."

Hurricane Sandy: Full Coverage

Some gas stations in New York and hard hit New Jersey have fuel in the ground, but are unable to pump it without power. Others have power but have no gas due to shortages and difficulties in transporting the fuel.

At the gas stations that do have power, police have been keeping order at hours-long lines, but the fight for fuel has been getting nasty. Authorities say a motorist was arrested after he tried to cut in line at a gas station in Queens Thursday and allegedly pointed a pistol at another motorist who complained, according to the Associated Press.

The man was identified as Sean Bailey, 35, and he faces charges of menacing and criminal possession of a weapon.

Cuomo said that debris in New York's harbor, much of it ship containers blown into the water and lurking below the surface, had posed a threat to navigation until they were cleaned up. The port was reopened Thursday.

In addition, Sandy's flooding damaged some pumping equipment used to move the gas.

"There should be a real change in conditions and people should see it quickly," Cuomo said.

Despite the good news, millions still shivered in dark and unheated homes. Their anger forced New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to cancel Sunday's New York City Marathon after city officials and those suffering from Sandy's wrath argued that the marathon would detract from recovery efforts.

Those still waiting for electricity were further daunted by the news that temperatures are expected to dip into the 30s this weekend with a possible Nor'easter on the way.

Some parts of the region hammered by Sandy feel they have been left behind in the rush to restore power to Manhattan.

Staten Island was one of the hardest-hit communities in New York City. More than 80,000 residents are still without power, many are homeless, and at least 19 people died there because of the storm.