state board of elections

If there was an award for petulance in the NC House there would be many contenders. The top place might likely be shared by Stephen LaRoque and Justin Burr, and not simply on account of their contempt for the trials of low-wealth citizens. LaRoque is on a crusade to redefine the NAACP as racist. Burr for example, has been contemptuous of the Racial Justice Act, and of opposition to various election law “reforms”. Burr reached a peak of pique when he ran roughshod over Verla Insko in a committee considering the abortion bill.

Burr’s juvenile physique has been tempered this session by the maintenance of a close haircut that is oddly suggestive of an outbreak of lice in the boys' dormitory. Burr grandiosely thinks he needs to educate Judge Howard Manning and Governor Bev Perdue on the need for low-income parents to pay 10% of that paltry income towards constitutionally required Pre-K education.

Did you read the story about the Triangle having one of the top 5 longest commuting times in the country? That did not happen by accident. Poor planning and the sprawling municipalities that resulted contributed. More so, lack of mass transit options including buses and light rail.

Does that make you want to cast a vote in the November election?

If you are not registered at your current address in your current county, make it easy on yourself and update your voter registration record. Do it TODAY. See my previous article on "How to vote" here.

Tired of the behind the scenes votes on the state budget and a lack of transparency on drawing the districts? The 2010 Census is over. New Congressional and Legislative Districts will be decided by a new General Assembly beginning in January, 2011.

This November 2010 the election for North Carolina Appeals will be decided by a rarely used election method, instant runoff voting. See 13 candidates file for open NC appeals court job AP News August 31, 2010.

And we still don't know how it will be counted.

There's a huge opportunity for legal challenges with this contest, for many reasons, because IRV has to be centrally tallied, and because of issues with counting on touchscreen ballots v certified systems and no such thing as certified IRV software that can tally a statewide contest. (more on that once procedures are announced).

Its really hard to stop misinformation once it becomes viral, even when the paper originating it later runs your op/ed correcting the misinformation. Even when I called the reporter originating the story but he wouldn't listen to what I had to say. So here's my blog on the issue with detailed documentation:

I blogged this on August 6, and my op/ed "Handle ballots with care" ran in the Raleigh N&O on August 13, the misinformation is still running in some papers today.

NC Ballot Printing mess-politics or excuse to gut Public Confidence in Elections Act?

Is anyone able to do a live blog from Asheville today from the State Board of Elections Meeting? I think it would make for quite riveting reading.

Especially about those pesky reports on airplane chartered flights? Not to mention instant run-off voting in the state-wide race for NC Supreme Court justice this fall!

Ever since the State Board of Elections gave Art Pope a "get out of jail free" card a few years back, the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of the Board have baffled me. At the time, the electioneering complaints against Pope by Richard Morgan were dismissed without even the illusion of serious consideration.

What has ensued since then brings to mind a slow-motion train wreck, a crushing tale of incompetence, conflicts of interest, questionable judgment, and now, good-old fashioned cronyism.

Brunette raised questions this week about my conflict-of-interest perceptions involving the Strachs. She wove in a gender theme, which doesn't seem relevant to me, but the broader issue of couples and conflicts seems worth exploring. Two themes come immediately to mind: transparency and risk.

Steve Harrison's post about Kim Strach deserves more than a passing mention. It deserves a full-fledged investigation into the possibility of collusion between Kim Strach and Tom Fetzer's NCGOP. As I wrote back in June:

Does anybody besides me think it's unseemly that the NC GOP's legal counsel, Phil Strach, is married to Kim Strach, deputy director of the Campaign Finance Division of the North Carolina's Board of Elections? Could that explain why Fetzer always seems to have the inside track when it comes to getting his way with the SBOE? I'm still waiting for the N&O to write that "strange bedfellows" story.

Why this perverted situation has been allowed to go on over the past year is mind-boggling, and we'll probably never know how much damage has been done. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find out.

A coalition of civil rights and public policy advocacy groups from across the political spectrum has joined the North Carolina Libertarian and Green parties in their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state's election laws.

You might have missed it -- the media largely has -- but in the final hours of testimony yesterday at the N.C. State Board of Elections' hearings into former Gov. Michael Easley (D), Democratic attorneys unleashed an unexpected bombshell: Testimony from a former IRS criminal investigator that at least three Republican candidates for governor failed to disclose dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of campaign flights in 2004 and 2008, the very charge that helped launch the investigation into Easley.