Elections

Here's an important message:

EVERY VOTE MUST COUNT!

Please join us – Democracy North Carolina, NC Fair Share, Raleigh NOW, Planned Parenthood, & NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina – in standing up for voter's rights!

On Wednesday, March 2nd the Wake County Superior Court will decide the fate of more than 11,000 provisional ballots cast by North Carolinians on Election Day. In the still-undecided election for Superintendent of Public Instruction, the court is considering throwing out 11,310 provisional ballots, despite a provisional ballot law passed in NC two years ago to protect against this kind of voter disenfranchisement. More than 11,000 North Carolinians could lose their voice in matters that directly affect them as tax-paying citizens in North Carolina – representation in our state government! We must act now!

Show your support by participating in any or all of the following activities on March 2nd:

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday, February 05, 2005

The spring of 1969 was a heady time for the U.S. left. Halfway between the violence of the Democratic convention in Chicago and the peace-and-love of Woodstock, it was a time when millions joined protests against the Vietnam War while increasing militancy turned the movement for civil rights into one for Black Power.

In Chapel Hill, a highly contentious mayoral race was at times overshadowed by striking cafeteria workers at UNC. Nonetheless, a coalition of blacks, liberal civil rights supporters, anti-war activists and those galvanized by the 1968 campaigns of Eugene McCarthy for president and Reginald Hawkins for governor waged an unprecedented campaign to elect Howard Lee as the first black mayor of Chapel Hill (or of a white-majority Southern town since Reconstruction).

In doing so and by also electing a liberal slate to the then-Board of Aldermen, voters swept out an old guard that had dragged its feet on civil rights, on establishing a public transit system and on support for the efforts of the Inter-Church Council.

Today's Herald reported that a group from rural Orange County led by farmer Bob Strayhorn and state Rep. Bill Faison is pushing the BOCC to consider district representation. They point out that a large segment of Orange County voters feels that they are not represented under the current system. A petition to that effect with 1252 signatures was delivered to the commissioners.

This has been raised before but the commissioners were unwilling to act. My own thinking is that we should provide voting and representation systems that allow maximum representation of points of view while maintaining one-person/one-vote and effective government.

Cumulative voting could be another option to attain the same ends. Cumulative voting would allow a variety of constituencies to identify themselves and seek better representation. But there are problems with it.