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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The hostility of too many Tea Party fans toward people who don’t look and act like them is alarming - and dangerous. It flows from a sense of beleaguered superiority and it can produce explosive reactions when these true believers are prodded with wild claims that “our culture” (values, family, country, God, etc.) is under [...]
Rotten news and better news from the NC General Assembly: The bad news is that a bunch of NC lobbyists are giving up to $2,500 each for a state legislator’s campaign fundraising event. That’s especially odd because North Carolina law specifically prohibits a lobbyist from giving state legislators campaign donations. It doesn’t matter if the [...]
The racial bias of too many elected white judges and state legislators continues to undermine America’s promise of fair courts and representative government. The opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is the occasion of a series of essays by the American Constitution Society, including one by Sherrilyn Ifill about elected judges in [...]
Here’s an important announcement if you’re connected to a NC high school – as a student, parent, teacher, staff member or administrator. County boards of elections are gearing up to fulfill a new requirement that they conduct voter registration drives in all high schools during September, which is Citizens Awareness Month in North Carolina. Some [...]
People with only a hammer see everything as a nail. Three voters caught trying to vote twice in the 2008 presidential election are now being prosecuted by the Wake County district attorney; they were jailed with a felony charge and $10,000 bond. The NC Republican Party and other advocates for a photo ID requirement are delighted [...]