The State Auditor’s office issued a report criticizing the State Board of Elections’ failure to process campaign finance reports in a timely manner and hold late report filers accountable. Democracy NC has identified similar problems, including our May report pointing out that 42% of the campaign reports for the legislative winners in 2010 had not [...]
The ACLU has produced a graphic map that illustrates the wide variety of state laws that allow (or don’t allow) people with felony convictions to register and vote. An estimated 5.3 million Americans are currently disfranchised due to excessively restrictive laws. The voting rights of people with the same sentence for the same crime are [...]
The New Yorker’s profile of Art Pope last week helped pull back the curtain to reveal more about the 40 million dollar man prodding the right-wing’s recent successes in North Carolina. Rachel Maddow/MSNBC followed with a long segment that put his 2010 electoral victories in a national context for 2012 (jump ahead 7 minutes for [...]
Here’s a newspaper report of a woman in Tennessee who has voted more than 60 years but who lacks a government photo ID and couldn’t get a “free” one from the state after many hours of ridiculous hassle. It’s a very thorough story, and it will be repeated in NC many times if the Republicans [...]
The NC Center for Voter Education has produced a handy, on-line voter guide for local elections in more than three dozen cities. If you live in Chapel Hill or Mint Hill, Waynesville or Morrisville, Raleigh, Concord, Durham or Greenville, etc., you can see what the candidates for city council and other offices are saying about [...]
Following up Friday’s LOD, here’s the link to the in-depth profile of Art Pope, his mind, money and rise to power. The New Yorker is known for its long and comprehensive pieces, and this one lives up to the reputation. It’s titled “State for Sale.” See also links to the analysis by the Institute for [...]
The Oct. 10 edition of The New Yorker magazine features an in-depth look at North Carolina’s most politically powerful unelected individual – J. Arthur “Art” Pope, chain-store retailer and Republican patron. One measure of Pope’s power comes from an accounting of his political spending in a set of two charts prepared by Democracy North Carolina [...]
Two national campaign reform groups are asking the IRS to take away the tax-exempt status of 501(c)(4) organizations that are electioneering shells, not genuine “social welfare” organizations as required by law. The letter challenges four Republican- and Democratic-leaning non-profits. Democracy NC has promoted this approach to cope with the expanded use of non-profits after the [...]
The US Census Bureau is out with its biennial post-election survey of who voted - and who didn't. You can see breakdowns of voting in the 2010 election by race, gender, education level, occupation, and so forth, often by state. For example, nationally, people in families that earned $100,000 or more were twice as likely to [...]
For North Carolinians concerned about the maze of bills in the General Assembly designed to make voting harder, here’s a link to a Democracy NC factsheet that provides an update of each bill’s status. The NC General Assembly is set to reconvene in November, when it could take up any of these bills – or [...]