News & Views

Common Cause policy director Ann Webb (Courtesy photo)

In 2009, as voting by mail, became more and more a part of North Carolina elections, lawmakers of both parties unanimously agreed that mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day would still be counted if they arrived at county boards of elections within three days afterward.

Under a new law passed by Republican majorities at the North Carolina legislature last year, however, the grace period was ended – even though official election results aren’t tallied and posted until several days after the election.

The result: a lot of mailed ballots will now not be counted. Indeed, a report by Common Cause of North Carolina found that the new law disenfranchised hundreds of voters unnecessarily in the March primary and recently NC Newsline  sat down to learn more of the troubling details of this situation with Common Cause Policy Director Ann Webb.

SEANC Executive Director Ardis Watkins (Courtesy photo)

As a growing list of reports has documented in recent months, several North Carolina state government agencies are struggling mightily to recruit and retain employees. The Department of Health and Human services reports a 25% vacancy rate and in some prisons, the numbers are even higher than that. And not surprisingly, these kinds of worker shortages are having big and negative impacts on both the workers who remain and the quality of public services.

The explanations for this worrisome situation are numerous, but as NC Newsline learned in a recent conversation with the executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, Ardis Watkins, no factor looms larger than low salaries and tough working conditions that are directly attributable to the shortsighted budgeting policies that Republican legislative leaders have been pursuing for the last several years.

National economy reporter Casey Quinlan

By just about any key measure, the U.S. economy is in remarkably good shape. Jobs are plentiful, wages are up, inflation has leveled off and by all indications, we’ve avoided the recession that some analysts had feared was looming. That said, things are far from perfect. High prices for essentials like housing and food continue to have a big and negative impacts on many households and surveys show that average American consumers remain concerned and less confident about the future than might be expected.

So what’s going on here, what are the reasons for optimism and concern, and what are policymakers trying to do to address the situation? Last week, NC Newsline sat down with States Newsroom national economy reporter Casey Quinlan to find out.

Rep. Julie von Haefen

Last week, the United States Supreme Court heard is first major abortion case since it issued the 2022 Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade. At issue this time is mifepristone – a safe and effective medication that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration a quarter century ago and that today is used in a large majority of the nation’s abortions.

The arguments in the case drew advocates and elected officials from across the country to Washington, including Wake County State Rep. Julie von Haefen. Von Haefen, who was a signatory to a “friend of the court” brief in the case and had a chance to address a group of pro-choice advocates, returned to North Carolina the following day and sat down with NC Newsline for a chat to discuss both the abortion pill case as well as some other issues likely to be discussed in Raleigh later this month as the legislature’s 2024 short session gets underway.

Dr. Scott Brennen of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center on Technology Policy

Artificial intelligence or AI. It’s a topic that generates a lot of talk, a lot of hope, and a lot of concerns these days.

On the positive side, AI has the potential to aid in solving an array of vexing societal problems and to help average people work better and faster in numerous ways.

On the other hand, of course, AI also raises real concerns – both with respect to the ability of humans to control and manage it and the possibility that it will be abused by bad actors in order to mislead people with false or phony communications. This latter concern is of particular relevance as Americans prepare to vote in the 2024 election. Fortunately, a lot of smart people are paying close attention to these kinds of issues and recently NC Newsline caught up with one of them for a special extended conversation on the topic, the head of online expression policy at the UNC-Chapel Hill Center on Technology Policy – Dr. Scott Brennen.

In Part One of our conversation, we delved into the subject of artificial intelligence (or AI) and some of the good and bad things it can do when it comes to communication.  In Part Two of our chat, we continued this discussion with a special focus on political communication – both with respect to the 2024 election and more generally. And as Brennen told me, while he remains optimistic that phony AI messaging poses only a limited risk to the national election, there are risks and some important steps that elected officials can and should consider taking to help preserve the health of our democracy.

Read: The new political ad machine: Policy frameworks for political ads in an age of AI

Erica Palmer Smith (File photo)

Finding affordable childcare: it’s a huge challenge in North Carolina. While our state has one of the nation’s highest rates of working parents with young children, 44% of the state’s families live in a “childcare desert” where there are more than three times as many children as licensed childcare slots.

What’s more, things could get much worse very soon. Thanks to actions of Republicans in Congress, federal subsidies that helped keep childcare facilities afloat during the pandemic have ended, and while the state legislature came up with a temporary fix last year, those funds will run out in June. Unless action is taken before then, thousands of facilities could be in grave jeopardy.

Thankfully, children’s advocates are lobbying lawmakers for a permanent fix and recently NC Newsline caught up with one of the leaders of that effort, the executive director of the group NC Child, Erica Palmer Smith.

Sophia Resnick (Courtesy Photo)

It’s been almost two years now since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a half century of precedent by overturning the Roe v. Wade decision and ending the constitutional right to abortion care. And as had been expected, the ruling has produced a convoluted patchwork of laws that’s left women in many states – particularly women of low-income – in incredibly difficult straits.

What’s more a new case that will come before the court in the coming days involving the abortion pill mifepristone could make the situation even more dire. Recently, in order to get a better understanding of the state of reproductive rights in 2024 and what the future might hold if the Court were to side once again with abortion opponents, NC Newsline caught up with States Newsroom national reproductive rights reporter Sofia Resnick.

You can follow Resnick’s in-depth reporting here.

Documentary producer Cristin Severance with Fon and Kimberly Dockery (pictured right) discuss how a gun that was wrongfully taken by a minor forever changed their world. (Photo: Courtesy WRAL)

Firearms are the leading cause of death when it comes to kids. And a  brand-new WRAL documentary looks at why kids are dying from guns in North Carolina. It’s called “Unsafe: North Carolina kids dying from gun violence” and WRAL-TV investigative documentary reporter Cristin Severance produced and hosts the doc. The documentary highlights the tragic death of 8-year-old Jenesis Dockery, who died four days shy of her 9th birthday after being shot by her babysitter’s 11 year-old-son.  The UnSafe documentary will also explore one proven solution to stopping these tragedies.

Severance previews the documentary for NC Newsline. Watch and share this very special documentary that’s now available online.

UNC System President Peter Hans (Courtesy Photo)

In Part One of our recent extended conversation with the University of North Carolina System president Peter Hans, we discussed some of the successes UNC campuses have had in keeping tuition and fees relatively affordable, while also dealing with some of the tough realities posed by shifting demographics that have lowered the number of college applicants seeking enrollment across the U.S. and forced some schools to make cuts to programming. In Part Two of our conversation, we explored some of the more controversial topics that have been front and center during Hans’s tenure in office.

Dr. Michelle L Malkin (Photo: Courtesy ECU)

Legalized sports gambling arrived in North Carolina this past week, just in time for college basketball’s March Madness. And while many are treating this news as a ho-hum development, there are a lot of observers and experts who have some profound concerns.

Michelle L. Malkin is an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at East Carolina University in Greenville and the director of ECU’s new Gambling Research and Policy Initiative. Malkin told NC Newsline that while there are safety advantages that legal and regulated gambling provides over illegal and unregulated gambling, there are also reasons to be concerned that the new system will entrap a large number of people in highly addictive behavior.