I pity the poor souls who monitor the status of bills in the North Carolina General Assembly. The bills are tracked by the bill numbers in the House and Senate, changes made & date, exact wording, committees involved, prior related legislation, and whether it was eventually passed and made into law (and when it goes into effect.)

Just reading a few paragraphs about tracking HB 237 was enough to make my eyes cross. A lot has been written about the actions of lobbyists (paid) and advocacy groups (volunteers) and their effect on proposed legislation. Since most people have neither the time nor the interest to show up, much less testify before a committee, these folks do most of the dirty work --- depending upon how you may interpret that. Just who does represent us?

The News & Observer recently ran a long feature about the Directors of County Election Boards and the problems they face. The N&O also took the unprecedented step of listing the salaries of the directors in all 100 counties. In some small counties, they have no staff and must depend upon volunteers.

Two years ago, the gerrymandered districts for both federal and state candidates and the maps had to quickly be redrawn before elections. The candidates also had to choose which new district they wished to represent. The boundaries in the 2024 election stood and were used in the spring primaries. The new requirement for voter IDs was applied in the primaries, but it is being contested for the fall election in a lawsuit. There are also some Republican primary second run-off elections still to be held.

Our Elections Are Not Rigged, but our Electoral System is Broken.

In 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling reversing a 2002 law that had imposed restrictions on election spending by corporations, unions, and other public entities. The court reasoned that the 1st Amendment did not allow for any restrictions on free speech. Although these restrictions were limited to a narrow reach related to political speech by specific groups, the court ruled that no restrictions could be applied.

Citizens United was a conservative political action group that had been formed in response to the McCain-Feingold Act that imposed certain restrictions in 2002. A series of lawsuits followed that challenged those restrictions that eventually ended up in the Supreme Court.