In the midst of Super PAC spending and candidates hustling big-dollar donors, here’s a positive story from North Carolina: Candidates are actually agreeing to accept strict campaign spending limits and to rely only on small donations and a public grant authorized by hundreds of registered voters! Today, the State Board of Elections sent notices to [...]
What’s the gap between registered voters by gender in North Carolina? Among whites, 53.5% of registered voters are women and 46.5% are men – a 7 percentage point gap, according to Democracy NC’s analysis of election data. For African Americans, the gap is much larger: 58% of registered black voters are women and only 42% [...]
US Supreme Court decisions hit home today in two ways (not counting the Court-blessed, corporate-funded slug fest now going on between surrogates of North Carolina’s Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates). A lower court today ruled that the rescue funds provision of NC’s public campaign financing programs are illegal, because of the US Supreme Court’s decision [...]
The New Yorker this week has an in-depth account of the manipulations and blunders that inflated a narrow issue before the US Supreme Court into the now infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision. The majority opinion didn’t need to make sense – it had 5 of the 9 votes, enough to win; the [...]
Earlier this week, James O’Keefe of Project Veritas released a 10-minute video allegedly documenting voter fraud in North Carolina, featuring two examples of non-citizens who voted in past elections. O’Keefe gained national attention for his cleverly edited videos attacking ACORN, and some in the NC media were ready to gobble up his latest offering. Fortunately, [...]
A father in coastal Carteret County writes about his daughter’s hectic week of a senior prom, body piercing, and first time voting - a glimpse into the promising world ahead for us and the value of good parenting. Tucked inside Brad Rich’s story is something else, too: His daughter, Summer, was handed the wrong ballot [...]
Two national stories with NC connections: One, from the Los Angeles Times, dissects the damnable lies spewed forth in political advertisements sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. It’s not an accident that the deceitful ads attack alternative energy production as well as President Obama; the biggest backers of AFP are oil and gas mega-billionaires David and [...]
Consider yourself deputized as an on-the-ground “voter protection” advocate in today’s primary election! You can help prevent confusion and mistakes at the polls that could cost people their vote. There are four ways to protect yourself and others: 1. Be prepared. Preview your ballot before you vote by clicking here. Use the same link to find [...]
The State Board of Elections posted a database of voters participating in One-Stop Early Voting. Here are some observations about who voted during the Early Voting phase of the 2012 primary election. See data for all 100 counties on this spread-sheet: http://democracyncarchive.org/downloads/EarlyVoteRegisTurnoutPrim2012.xls ● One-Stop Early Voting ended Saturday, May 5th, with a record turnout of North Carolina [...]
Wal-Mart is in the middle of a scandal involving allegations of massive bribery in Mexico – and the company is depending on the goodwill built through its generous donations to Congressional leaders of both parties to weather the storm; in other words, it’s using another form of bribery that has become standard practice for major [...]