Link-of-the-Day – Page 22 – Democracy North Carolina

LOD: Harrassing Voters

A Raleigh-based group called Voter Integrity Project is forcing election officials to spend hundreds of hours researching the status of voters the group claims are not alive or not citizens. VIP’s first mass action challenged the registrations of over 500 voters whose names matched people who indicated they were not citizens in their response to [...]

By Bob Hall| 2012-08-13T08:24:42-04:00 August 13th, 2012|Civic Engagement, Link-of-the-Day, Voting Rights|1 Comment

LOD: Early Voting Shouldn’t Be Partisan

Early Voting is very popular in North Carolina and the evidence shows it doesn’t inherently favor Democrats or Republicans (see reports here and here). But in the current hyper-partisan environment, disputes over the location and hours of Early Voting sites are too often turning into a power struggle instead of a rational discussion about sensible [...]

By Bob Hall| 2017-01-03T12:05:26-05:00 August 9th, 2012|Civic Engagement, Get Out the Vote, Link-of-the-Day, Media Feed & Press Releases, Voting Rights|0 Comments

LOD: Growing Latino Vote in NC

A report released today reveals that North Carolina has 115,000 registered Latino voters or nearly 25,000 more than the official count at the State Board of Elections (which only began asking voters their ethnicity in 2002). That's a 35% increase over the number in October 2008. In addition, the report says another 100,000 unregistered Latino [...]

By Bob Hall| 2012-08-08T13:36:22-04:00 August 8th, 2012|Civic Engagement, Get Out the Vote, Link-of-the-Day, Media Feed & Press Releases, Voting Rights, Youth Vote|3 Comments

LOD: Super PACs & Über-Fat Cats

Here’s another report about the tiny number of über-fat cats bankrolling the Super PACs. The Washington Post reports: “Just 47 people account for more than half (57.1 percent) of the $230 million raised by super PACs from individual donors, according to the study by U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and Demos, two liberal research and [...]

By Bob Hall| 2012-08-02T12:10:47-04:00 August 2nd, 2012|Citizens United Case, Link-of-the-Day, Money in Politics, Pay to Play|0 Comments

LOD: High Road, Low Road

Here are two NC stories of groups setting out to exert power – one taking the hard road of community organizing and grassroots democracy, the other using their big-money connections to buy an election. The first story describes how and why Stokes County neighbors came together to wage an impressive campaign against the prospect of [...]

By Bob Hall| 2012-07-30T22:43:36-04:00 July 30th, 2012|Civic Engagement, Environmental Issues, Judicial Elections, Link-of-the-Day, Money in Politics, Pay to Play|0 Comments

LOD: Inside View of Outside Money

Because the State Board of Elections is starved for funds, the public gets a poor view of how money flows into our elections: Who is giving and spending what for whose benefit? While other states have searchable databases of donors, the backlog for processing campaign disclosure reports in NC is measured in years. (See, for [...]

By Bob Hall| 2017-01-03T12:05:26-05:00 July 27th, 2012|Disclosure, Link-of-the-Day, Media Feed & Press Releases, Money in Politics|0 Comments

LOD: WhichWayNC.com

Students at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication have created an interactive flow chart of the money in NC political campaigns with annotated descriptions of key terms. Visualize rivers of money. They’ve also just posted a series of articles about NC campaign finances on their WhichWayNC website and blog. Did you know that [...]

By Bob Hall| 2017-01-03T12:05:27-05:00 July 26th, 2012|Citizens United Case, Disclosure, Ethics, Link-of-the-Day, Money in Politics, Pay to Play|1 Comment

LOD: Off With Runoffs?

Only 3.6% of registered North Carolina voters cast ballots in the runoff election on July 17. That's about one-tenth of the already miserable turnout rate for the May primary - 34.7%. FairVote's analysis of the runoff notes that more North Carolinians believe in fairies and vampires than voted in July. The losers in the primary received far more votes [...]

By Bob Hall| 2012-07-25T19:17:19-04:00 July 25th, 2012|Civic Engagement, Get Out the Vote, Link-of-the-Day, Voting Rights|0 Comments

LOD: Too Much to Swallow

Remember the mega-millions poured into making the healthcare debate in Congress so sickening? Well, the lobbying surrounding the 2012 Farm Bill has even more big-money spending from outfits that will make you gag. According to Think Progress, the new Farm Bill “would, among other things, deprive millions of Americans of food stamps, gut food safety [...]

By Bob Hall| 2017-01-03T12:05:27-05:00 July 23rd, 2012|Link-of-the-Day, Lobbying, Money in Politics, Pay to Play|1 Comment

LOD: The Missing 200,000

Facing South this week includes a report from the Sentencing Project about the number of citizens in each state who are disenfranchised because of a felony conviction. North Carolina bars people who are serving a felony sentence from voting, but they automatically regain their voting rights as soon as they finish their sentence, including probation [...]

By Bob Hall| 2017-01-03T12:05:27-05:00 July 20th, 2012|Civic Engagement, Link-of-the-Day, Voting Rights|4 Comments