The New York Times blows a hole in the myth that the US Chamber of Commerce represents hundreds of thousands of Main Street businesses across America; in fact, only a handful of big corporations are bankrolling the lobby group and its gigantic electioneering operation. NYT researchers pierced the secrecy around the Chamber’s donors, at least [...]
A hat tip to Art Pope’s Civitas Institute for providing two practical, fairly objective services without overt ideological interpretation (no doubt they’re offered this year because the GOP is promoting Early Voting, but anyone can use these tools). One service tracks the use of absentee voting; caution: counts of mail-in ballots and in-person ballots cast [...]
Talk about a conspiracy. The New York Times and Think Progress provide the details of an ongoing series of twice-yearly, four-day strategy sessions held by a Who’s Who of hard-line “free enterprise” champions, billionaire businessmen, front-group consultants, and Glenn Beck provocateurs – all hosted by the super-secretive Koch brothers. The end of the posting on [...]
Who makes up the largest group of the early-early voters this year? In 2008, black Democratic women were the largest demographic group during the first 3 days (and all 17 days) of the early voting period. Their enthusiasm and organizing paved the way for the Obama victory. By sharp contrast, white Republican men are the [...]
(Posting delayed due to dead computer.) With Early Voting off to a roaring start, here’s a link to an all-purpose resource for North Carolina elections that we encourage others to post on their sites: http://www.NCElectionConnection.com/. It connects you to your Early Voting sites, a view of your sample ballot, the location of your precinct polling place on [...]
Ninety-seven cents of every dollar the Civitas Institute spends comes from Art Pope via the Pope Foundation, according to a new report by Facing South. So does four dollars out of every five that John Hood and the John Locke Foundation spend to promote the Art Pope brand of me-first, libertarian conservatism. This is the [...]
The Instant Runoff Voting method will be used in three Superior Court races this year -- and in a 13-candidate tussle for a seat on the NC Court of Appeals. Ironically, there’s more attention on the IRV process than on these little-known candidates. Two recent pieces include this op-ed piece by Damon Circosta of the [...]
The NC Voters from Clean Elections coalition released its 2010 scorecard that evaluates the support of state legislators for “voter-owned” public financing and related campaign reform measures. NCVCE points out that more legislators received perfect scores in 2010 than in previous reports. Meanwhile, three more judicial candidates have demonstrated enough public support to qualify for [...]
Early voting begins Thursday in North Carolina. Two short video messages, pro-Tea Party and anti-Tea Party, are each designed to get their side to the polls with a message that says, “Aren’t you scared by what’s happening in America? Get out and vote!”
Continuing the theme from the last couple of days, the Institute for Southern Studies has an eye-popping feature about Art Pope. Among other nuggets: Pope basically owns the Civitas Institute, the source of those so-called non-biased polls you see in the press; an amazing 99% of Civitas’ income comes from Pope through his foundation! Pope’s [...]