News

Just 19 days remain until absentee, early, and in-person Election Day ballots will be tallied in one of the most contentious U.S. elections since 1876. Bitterly-divided partisan voters, having staked their poles-apart positions, will determine this country’s direction for the next four years, amidst an economic crisis fueled by an ongoing public health emergency.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The loss of oilfield jobs and related businesses—combined with the impact of COVID-19 shutdowns—began to take a dramatic toll on Hemphill County in August. Canadian saw its job count drop from 1,884 in August 2019, to 1,721 in August 2020—a decline of 8.7 percent, or 163 jobs. The national average is a loss of 6.4 percent of all jobs.

Hemphill County Hospital District reported 33 new positive COVID-19 tests in this county in the last seven days, from October 8-14, and seven positives in out-of-county residents. These numbers include the results of COVID-19 testing performed by HCH’s Laboratory Department.

The following questions were submitted by The Canadian Record to each City Council candidate, with an invitation to respond. They are published here as a public service by this newspaperto help each voter cast an informed ballot in the Nov. 3 General Election.

Hemphill County reached a new milestone this week. The hospital district reported on Wednesday that the number of positive coronavirus tests in this county had reached 100. Of those cases, over a quarter were deemed active cases at midweek, with 74 recovered, 1 still pending, and 774 negatives. No COVIDrelated deaths have been reported.

The number of new COVID-19 infections remained steady last week in rural America, but troubling levels of new infections placed an additional 68 rural counties on the White House red-zone list—an indication indicating that authorities in those counties need to do more to control the spread of the virus.

The Hemphill County Recreation Complex was a hive of activity this week as a public/private partnership of county employees and officials, and volunteers from local businesses, joined forces to give the popular duck ponds a proper grooming.

We spent a couple of hours last week catching up with County/District Clerk Lisa Johnson, who also serves as this county’s official voter registrar and is responsible for conducting countywide special and general elections, and for handling absentee voting. This year, Johnson’s task has grown to encompass the city council election. Originally scheduled for May 2, that election was postponed by gubernatorial executive order to safeguard the public during the coronavirus pandemic.