Politics

August 4, 2015 - More than 100 companies have severed ties with the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council, but documents show 54 companies still sponsoring the conservative policy group's annual meeting this summer, including top energy companies and businesses in the South.

July 24, 2015 - This week during the federal trial over North Carolina's restrictive voting law, the state elections chief testified that more than 96,000 citizens would have been blocked from voting in 2012 if the law had been in place then. Meanwhile, another expert testified that there had been a total of two cases of voter fraud in the state from 2000 to 2014.

July 17, 2015 - North Carolina's strict voter ID requirements were recently relaxed by state lawmakers, but voter ID still technically stands as the law of the land. What's next for the voter ID debate in the state?

July 17, 2015 - A new report examines the well-being of state democracies and finds that seven of the nation's 10 least healthy are in the South. We take a look at barriers to voting across the region.

July 14, 2015 - As voting rights supporters rallied for the opening of the federal trial over North Carolina's restrictive election law, they got words of encouragement from David Goodman, brother of a civil rights volunteer murdered in Mississippi in 1964.

July 12, 2015 - A federal trial starts this week over a restrictive voting law North Carolina lawmakers passed two years ago after the Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. People from across North Carolina and beyond will gather outside the courthouse in Winston-Salem to pray, educate and march for voting rights at a moment organizers liken to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches.

July 10, 2015 - Wealthy special interests are increasingly spending money to influence state judicial races, threatening the independence of judges and damaging public confidence in the integrity of the courts.