Thanks to a unique law in North Carolina, more than 100,000 16 and 17 year olds have preregistered to vote over the past 32 months and about 63,000 of them will be 18 and automatically fully registered by November 6, 2012. In many tight races, these young voters could make a big difference; and an [...]
Voters in Wake County and elsewhere are getting letters saying they’re suspected of being dead, thanks to North Carolina’s version of True the Vote, the Tea Party-inspired voter purging outfit. WRAL has a chilling account, with links to earlier stories, about this latest chapter in the sometimes useful but mostly destructive work of the NC Voter Integrity [...]
The Nation magazine has the definitive article about the impact of Citizens United on US elections – including the gusher flow of Middle East oil money through trade groups green-lighted by the Supreme Court’s political decision. The article is by Lee Fang, the writer who broke the story about the cabal of millionaires recruited to [...]
The New York Times reports on the myriad lawsuits underway and yet to be filed that could determine the outcome of the 2012 election, with who knows how much delay after November 6. Are you ready for another 5-4 presidential election by the US Supreme Court? The intensity of a tight election can bring out [...]
North Carolina election officials don’t like the method Americans for Prosperity is using to solicit voters to request absentee ballots. The group has sent hundreds of thousands of mailers to registered voters with instructions for requesting a ballot by mail, but the request form is pre-addressed to AFP’s office in Raleigh rather than to the [...]
The Center for Public Integrity has a useful new report about the role of outside money in the North Carolina governor’s contest. It picks up on a theme raised by Democracy North Carolina in a formal complaint to the State Board of Elections in 2008 – namely, that national Republican and Democratic groups were pumping [...]
For anyone thinking the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is no longer needed, consider the crucial role it has played in beating back measures to make voting harder in several states covered by VRA’s Section 5 pre-clearance provision. Without such protection, a federal judge might listen to evidence of the clear discriminatory impact of a [...]
Labor Day brings a special report from the NC Justice Center entitled The State of Working North Carolina, 2012. The executive summary explains: “North Carolina working families lost financial ground and experienced diminished opportunities through the decade of the 2000s due to several economic trends, including a dramatic increase in income inequality and the decline of [...]
You expect judges to follow the rules, especially when it comes to public accountability. Unfortunately, it looks like NC Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby selected a campaign treasurer who is having a hard time abiding by simple campaign finance disclosure regulations. For months, the State Board of Elections has struggled to get the Newby campaign [...]
You may not think of the United Steel Workers Union as a likely place to learn about the dangers of voter suppression measures around the nation, but they’ve gotten involved big time in the past couple of years. Their special website has a load of information, including the latest news stories from around the country, [...]