Articles
Attorney General Declines to Prosecute Mark Meadows for Voting Fraud
Last spring, former North Carolina Congressman and Trump administration official Mark Meadows faced allegations that he committed voter registration fraud: The allegation is that he registered to vote at a place he never maintained as a residence and then voted absentee by mail with that registration, committing both voter registration and election fraud. (Shortly after,...
Lame Duck North Carolina Supreme Court May Have Just Paved the Way for Redistricting Reversal
General Assembly leaders plan to redraw state legislative districts, but their plan might not comply with the North Carolina ConstitutionThe North Carolina Supreme Court has reopened the redistricting process with a recent ruling in Harper v. HallThe renewed redistricting process would likely result in the overturning of Harper v. Hall by a new Supreme Court...
Justice Berger Channels His Inner Scalia in Voter ID Dissent
The late United State Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was justifiably famous for his sharp dissents. Justice Phil Berger Jr. seems to have channeled his inner Scalia in his dissent in Holmes v. Moore, a case in which the lame-duck North Carolina Supreme Court voted 4-3 on party lines to overturn the state’s voter ID...
Allison Riggs Will Likely Have a Short and Unhappy Tenure on the Court of Appeals
Gov. Roy Cooper has announced that he will appoint progressive attorney Allison Riggs to the North Carolina Court of Appeal. Riggs will complete the term of Richard Dietz, who won election to the North Carolina Supreme Court last November as part of a Republican sweep of statewide judicial elections. Riggs has made a career of...
Allison Riggs’ Will Likely Have a Short and Unhappy Tenure on the Court of Appeals
Gov. Roy Cooper has announced that he will appoint progressive attorney Allison Riggs to the North Carolina Court of Appeal. Riggs will complete the term of Richard Dietz, who won election to the North Carolina Supreme Court last November as part of a Republican sweep of statewide judicial elections. Riggs has made a career of...
North Carolina Democratic Party Faces Further Division Following 2022 Election Results
The North Carolina Democratic party saw significant movement in their party leadership recently, with more likely to come. WRAL’s Paul Specht in a long-winded but excellent report, which I encourage everyone to read in earnest, discussed the departure of the state Democratic party executive director Meredith Cuomo and Democrats’ perspective of this year’s election. While...
Here Is a Novel Idea: Let the Constitution Decide Moore v. Harper
The U.S. Constitution grants state legislatures the power to regulate congressional redistrictingThere are different interpretations of how to define “state legislature”No matter which interpretation the U.S. Supreme Court uses in Moore v. Harper, the best and most likely outcome of the case is a narrow decision in favor of the North Carolina General AssemblyThe United...
What WRAL Gets Wrong About North Carolina’s Congressional Districts
WRAL recently came out with an editorial on Moore v. Harper, a United States Supreme Court case on who gets to draw North Carolina’s congressional districts. The editorial started with this gem: In January, when North Carolina’s U.S. House of Representatives members take their seats, the delegation will reflect the people of state [sic] it...
The Civitas Partisan Index Proved Highly Reliable in 2022
The Civitas Partisan Index (CPI) is a measure of the partisan tendencies of North Carolina legislative districtsThe CPI proved to have solid predictive data in 2022Several factors, most notably the red wave election in North Carolina, explain how Republicans won in several Democratic-leaning districts in the electionNorth Carolina’s 100 county boards of elections conducted their canvasses on...
A Decade of Voter Registration Changes in North Carolina
Boards of elections in all 100 North Carolina counties will soon begin their biennial list maintenance. They will collectively remove several hundred thousand inactive registrations from the voter rolls. Before that happens, there’s an opportunity to take stock of the changing voter registration data in our state. We will look at changes from November 28,...
Toxic Agenda: Elections in Crisis Part I
This article first appeared on www.nccivitas.org as part of the Toxic Agenda Series. The title of the series is: Toxic Agenda: What the Left Really Wants for North Carolina is a new series of articles from the Civitas Institute. Civitas believes that "While largely out of power for the last several years, North Carolina is just one...
Gov. Cooper Relies on Left-Wing Activists
(the article first appeared on www.nccivitas.org) More than 50 of Governor Roy Cooper’s appointments are either employed by or are board members of North Carolina progressive non-profits found in the online database Mapping the Left (MTL). MTL is a user-friendly online database/web page that identifies the vast network of left-wing groups and activists in North...
Implementing George Soros’ Agenda
(This article first appeared on www.nccivitas.org) State Board of Elections director recently announced intentions to introduce online voter registration SBE bureaucrats, however, do not have authority to make such significant changes to NC election laws Legislators need to push back against the George Soros backed elections agenda State election officials are once again pushing...
Democracy NC Hires New Leader
In January 2018, Tomas Lopez will replace Bob Hall as Executive Director of Democracy NC. Hall, who led the group since it launched in 1991, takes credit for a number of election changes including Sunday early voting, same-day registration, teenage pre-registration and the now defunct public financing of judicial elections. Hall has announced recently...
MTL: How Students Are Indoctrinated by the Progressive Machine
The newest Mapping the Left network is the Student/Youth Training Network. While this new network is not an 'education' network in the sense of public schools and higher education, it feeds on the liberal agenda pushed in public schools and colleges and universities across the state. The lessons learned in North Carolina's public schools and...
Bob Hall – A Liberal Attack Dog in Watchdogs Clothing
When WRAL reported on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to throw out North Carolina's congressional maps barely a month ahead of the 2016 Primary, the station's 'journalists' turned to their friends in three different organizations belonging to Blueprint NC (the 'eviscerate' group) for 'expert' analysis. Specifically, WRAL included quotes from three Blueprint NC...
Spotlighting Unions’ Power on the Left
It was natural to include unions in the Mapping the Left website. They are the quintessential leftist political machine. With virtually unlimited bank accounts, thanks to mandatory membership and dues, more lawyers than one would care to count, and the best community organizing structure (thanks to the cash), they are the model for the...
BIG SOLAR III: PAC Funnels Cronies’ Money to Candidates
In two previous articles (Part I, Part II), we examined how Republican political consultants in North Carolina have pushed the agenda of Big Solar – the solar power companies and their millionaire owners — in order to protect renewable power source mandates, thus driving up electricity bills and hampering the economy.In part one of this...
SPECIAL REPORT, PART II: Are Solar Lobbyists Trying to Hide Their Money Trail?
By Francis De Luca and Susan Myrick In part one of this series we reported on right-of-center political consultants who have created an innovative business model advising a growing number of Republican legislators to turn their backs on conservative, free-market principles to take up the cause of more government mandates, political favoritism and higher electric...
SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Conservatives’ Pushing Big Solar Funded by the Left
By Francis De Luca and Susan Myrick What do President Barack Obama and a growing number of Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly have in common? The answer – their love of major solar energy companies – Big Solar, for short. As for the President – everyone remembers Solyndra. Before going bankrupt in 2011,...
Mapping the Left – The Environmental Network
Environmentalists like to preach that all life is connected – but they themselves are connected in an intricate web of activists, groups, money and influence. And our revamped Mapping the Left site kicks off by unveiling a new network showing how these links are spread across North Carolina. As we at Civitas created the...
New Look, Continuing Mission: Mapping the Left
If you’re a frequent visitor to Mapping the Left (mappingtheleft.com) you have watched the website go through a transformation in the last few weeks. The look is new and mappingtheleft.com has been redesigned with advanced capabilities. You will notice faster and more powerful, yet simple, searches, updated data, profiles and new photos. We’ve even...
NC’s ‘Steyer’ Wants to Re-educate Conservatives
The physical resemblance is uncanny, but it’s not the only thing Jay Faison and Tom Steyer have in common. They both are wealthy political environmental activists who have decided they will spend their millions/billions to support the politics of environmentalism and the agenda of Big Solar – one influencing the power elite, the other unbelieving...
Mary Mountcastle and the Reynolds Family Connections
This is part two of a three-part series (click here for part 1) Susan Myrick It can be very difficult to grasp or visualize the vastness of the network of left-wing groups in North Carolina. But one way to start is with the key group on the left – and the family that dominates it....
