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The North Carolina Board of Elections went against the request of thousands of voters Friday when they voted 3-2 to certify a barcode elections system susceptible to hacking. Chairman Damon Circosta, a Democrat who was recently appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper, was the tiebreaker, voting with Republicans to give counties the option to use barcode technology on ballots despite concerns from a standing room only full of voters who disagreed.

The last time the Earth experienced a July this hot was well, we don’t know for sure. Such extremes occurred long before humans began keeping records.  Two-thousand nineteen will go down as the year of climatic rage: of heat, of floods, of drought, of carbon dioxide, whose atmospheric levels are the highest in three million years.

When North Carolina officials put a stop, at least for the time being, to a badly mishandled contracting process for a new K-3 reading test operator Tuesday, it’s as if they read the writing on the wall.

Medicaid expansion is not just a moral imperative — it could provide a much-needed tonic for the fiscal ailments that many rural hospitals face in North Carolina. Legislative leaders’ refusal to expand Medicaid has deprived hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians of lifesaving medical care and has left rural hospitals dangling in the fiscal winds.

Ag Commissioner Troxler opts in; 770 workers under Treasurer Folwell, Labor Commissioner Berry will not benefit Beginning next month, new parents working for the state will be able to take up to eight weeks of paid parental leave.

Before the State Board of Education approved its new five-year strategic plan, SBE member James E. Ford was asked to clarify the meaning of the word "equity," which is a reoccurring theme throughout the document. That proved easy work for Ford, who co-chaired the SBE Strategic Planning Committee. He’s also a professional consultant on issues of equity in education who just released a major report on the subject.

If there is a single brightest and most hopeful bit of news on the North Carolina public policy horizon these days, it has to be that our state could, at very long last, be on the verge of ending partisan gerrymandering. With a three-judge panel set to rule in the Common Cause v. Lewis litigation any day (a case in which much of the key evidence offered by legislative defendants was thrown out for being not credible), good government advocates are having to work hard to avoid a sense of giddy optimism about where the case is headed.

Last week Robin Jordan shared her experience at a field hearing on Medicaid expansion organized by N.C. Senator Paul Lowe (D-Forsyth) and Rep. Evelyn Terry (D-Forsyth). It wasn’t her perspective as a registered nurse she shared Friday at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem. It was her experience as a mother.

Every year, North Carolina removes registered voters from its voter rolls as part of a maintenance routine required by state and federal laws. The removal is often referred to as “purging,” but North Carolina State Board of Elections spokesman Pat Gannon said the term is “an overused, inaccurate and misleading way to describe maintenance of the voter rolls.” Below is information from the State Board about its voter list maintenance process in 2017 and 2018, as well as nationwide voter “purge” data from the Brennan Center for Justice.

Thirty-two seconds. That’s how long it took for the madman responsible for the carnage in Dayton, Ohio to shoot 26 people, killing nine, including his sister, and wounding 17 more before he was killed by police.

Numerous questions remain, however, about the treatment of dozens of other trans inmates Kanautica Zayre-Brown made history Thursday. When the Department of Public Safety moved her from Warren Correctional Institution in Manson to Anson Correctional Institution in Polkton, she became the first transgender prisoner in North Carolina to be transferred from a prison designated for one gender to one designated for another.

It can’t have escaped many folks’ notice – even those, bless their hearts, for whom the really big news involves the onset of football season – that our political systems these days feature a whole lot of wheel-spinning and gear-grinding in the face of epic challenges. Psychopaths toting massacre-model firearms stalk public gathering places and wreak carnage on innocent people who happened to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time...

The Trump Administration’s new public charge rule will do more to keep families separated than it will to discourage immigrants from using public benefits by implementing a “wealth test” and defining the type of foreigner they’re willing to let stay in this country.

Today we wait. We wait for the judges, who retired to their chambers weeks ago in the Common Cause v. Lewis case, a case that asserts political gerrymandering is a betrayal of the “equal protection” provision of the North Carolina constitution.

GIBSONVILLE -- The tobacco fields near East Guilford High School are reminders of times bygone when getting into trouble at school meant a trip to the principal’s office, and maybe a phone call to a child’s parents. A paddling by the principal, now banned in most places, and a severe scolding at home were about the worst outcomes for a student who misbehaved.