Here are an NBC-17 video report and the Associated Press news article about the rally today by Democracy North Carolina, other organizations and grassroots leaders protesting the “Out of Control” General Assembly. After the rally, people moved inside the legislative building and presented a petition against voter suppression to the legislative leadership. The petition included [...]
Early voting for the primary has begun – and so has the confusion caused by the new district maps drawn up after redistricting. Many voters have been placed in new districts, and about two million voters live in hundreds of precincts that are divided between two different state House, state Senate or Congressional districts. That [...]
Video: Fifty years of “participatory democracy” – from 1962 to 2012, from the Freedom Movement to Occupy Wall Street – as told by SDS co-founder Tom Hayden in a video interview today with Democracy Now. Hayden was the principal author of the “Port Huron Statement,” the 1962 manifesto of the white student movement; his cover article in this week’s [...]
Want to know where you can go to vote early for the NC primary election, beginning on April 19 – or see who will be on your ballot? The State Board of Elections has just posted the times and locations of Early Voting sites for all 100 counties. All counties have at least one site [...]
VIDEO: Former Marine Tim Thompson is nervous about his first protest, but nevertheless confronts elections officials in Tennessee on Super Tuesday and refuses to show the required picture ID in order to vote. He has the proper ID, but sacrifices his ability to vote on behalf of thousands of low-income, older, and college-age citizens [...]
The Obama Justice Department on Monday blocked implementation of the voter ID law adopted in Texas, using a similar rationale to their objection to the version passed in South Carolina: Research shows that people of color will be much more heavily impacted than whites by the state’s new restriction. The Charlotte Observer’s editorial praises the [...]
Advocates for requiring photo ID checks at the polls may delight in a news story breaking in Statesville, where a city council member is charged with voter fraud along with his sister and two of her family members. But all these voters cast ballots in their own names; requiring them to flash a photo document with [...]
The impact of last year’s crop of voter suppression laws is showing up in various states in bizarre and disastrous ways. The Colbert Report profiles a Florida teacher charged with voter fraud for registering her students and failing to get the forms to the elections agency within 48 hours instead of the old 10-day deadline. [...]
A quick look from the news: Here are two examples of splendid editorials from North Carolina papers – one from the Charlotte Observer about good ways to hold Super PACs accountable for their wacko ads, and one from the Winston-Salem Journal about the bad ways Speaker Thom Tillis’ behaves as a leader in government. And [...]
The NC General Assembly came back to town today, as demonstrators protested the leadership’s lousy record of out-of-control mischief and “madness against schools,” “madness against workers,” “madness against voting rights,” “madness for fracking,” etc. The Associated Press provides a good overview, and News 14 has this video of the demonstration. Protestors later went inside the [...]