North Carolina’s election system is run by 100 county offices that oversee thousands of voting machines, train an army of poll workers, process millions of ballots, and solve a stream of problems that becomes a torrent on Election Day. It’s a system that needs regular maintenance tune ups, writes Damon Circosta of the NC Center [...]
A bipartisan group of election officials from more than 85 counties sent a letter to NC General Assembly leaders late last week, urging them to release $4 million designated for improving the administration of the 2012 elections. The funds come from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 and are in a NC bank [...]
Art Pope is going on the radio this Sunday for a two-hour faceoff with Chris Kromm, director of the Institute for Southern Studies and creator of ArtPopeExposed.com. Pope wants to answer his critics and respond to questions from the listening audience. The call-in show is on Raleigh’s Rush Radio 106.1 FM from 3 to 5 PM, but [...]
A press release today from Democracy North Carolina begins: Statements from election officials across the state provide new reasons for concern about the controversial district lines that zigzag through and split up hundreds of precincts to create the new district boundaries for state legislators and North Carolina’s 13 members of Congress. The election professionals are [...]
Nonprofit groups, including Democracy North Carolina, are asking a three-judge panel to push back the 2012 election schedule while the judges consider the merits of their challenge to the Republican redistricting plans for General Assembly and Congressional districts in North Carolina. Rather than use the plans in a May primary that could be postponed, it’s [...]
Gov. Perdue called the General Assembly back to town yesterday to give the legislature its constitutional opportunity to override her veto of the bill killing the Racial Justice Act. The state House couldn’t muster the votes to do that (at least 60% of those voting must approve), but rather than go home as promised in [...]
The US Justice Department refused to approve South Carolina’s strict photo ID requirement for voters, saying the evidence indicated that African Americans registered to vote in the state are 20% more likely not to have one of the required forms of ID than white voters. Federal approval or “pre-clearance” is required for election changes in [...]
Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., Republican member of Congress from eastern North Carolina, is again stepping up to sponsor legislation to reign in the power of big money in politics. In 2010, he co-sponsored the Fair Elections Now Act, which would provide a much-needed alternative path for candidates to finance their campaigns. Yesterday, he’s joined [...]
If the men on the US Supreme Court say that corporations are people, are you surprised that the biggest corporations look just like them? The Citizens United ruling makes perfect sense from the perspective of the good ole boy club. A new study says women hold less than one sixth of the seats on the [...]
The “Art Pope Exposed” teach-in went off without a hitch on Tuesday, except for the traffic jams, video difficulties, and a few Popers in the audience (their camera seemed to work fine). More than 250 people (100 in person, the rest via web streaming) participated in the event that ended with a rump workshop about [...]