Politics

October 10, 2013 - With elections fast approaching, officials in Florida and Virginia are hard at work striking names from their lists of eligible voters. But their efforts are the target of legal challenges by those who say questionable purge methods threaten to disenfranchise eligible voters.

October 10, 2013 - A student at a historically black North Carolina college who had his right to run for office challenged has won a city council seat, and students at another of the state's HBCUs marched to the polls en masse in a local election that represented a repudiation of right-wing attacks on public schools.

October 9, 2013 - How a Supreme Court decision striking aggregate campaign contribution limits would advance what one civil rights leader has called a "two-pronged attack on voter participation against regular people in America."

October 9, 2013 - Under fire for using his personal fortune to buy elections, North Carolina's leading conservative financier denies giving money to super PACs -- but campaign finance watchdogs say his denial amounts to playing word games while he's building a "government of the obscenely rich, by the obscenely rich, and for the obscenely rich."

October 7, 2013 - The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in an important case tomorrow about aggregate campaign contribution limits -- and it will make time to hear the even more extreme arguments of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that campaign contribution limits in general are a burden to free speech. What would happen to our democracy should McConnell prevail?

October 4, 2013 - The Department of Justice has asked a federal judge to delay its lawsuit against Texas over its voter ID law until Congress ends the current impasse and provides the department with funding for the new fiscal year. However, the shutdown isn't affecting the DOJ's suit against North Carolina's photo ID law -- at least not yet.

October 1, 2013 - The Justice Department wants to subject the entire state to preapproval for any elections changes under Section Three of the Voting Rights Act -- not just the 40 counties previously covered under the law's now-defunct Section Five.