Deadline to file candidacy for municipal elections approaches

Update: Four more candidates have filed for Asheville elections: Richard Liston, 2013 mayoral candidate John Miall, Holly Shriner and Dee Williams. And Rachel Halbert Allen filed for Black Mountain Alderman. By Thursday afternoon, 12 candidates had officially thrown their hats into the ring for the Asheville City Council elections this fall. In the surrounding Buncombe communities, an additional 20 candidates […]

Redistrict­ing, gerrymande­ring and power

“Let’s be candid: this is all about power.” Those were the words of Bob Orr, executive director of North Carolinians for Constitutional Law and a former North Carolina gubernatorial candidate and Supreme Court Judge. Orr was one of three speakers to address the 50 to 60 people who attended the free screening of the documentary film, Gerrymandering, at UNC Asheville’s Reuter Center June 16.

Painting by the numbers

It’s all over but the yard signs—those leftover bits of red, white and blue that still speckle the landscape in the wake of North Carolina’s May 6 primary. After crisscrossing the state, tailed by the national media and closely scrutinized by hometown crowds, the presidential candidates and their entourages have moved on. And though the […]

Vote smart

Who will govern Buncombe County’s 665.99 square miles and 222,174-and-growing population for the next four years? Six Republicans and eight Democrats are contending for four seats on the five-member Board of Commissioners in the May 6 primary. (The chairmanship is not at issue in the primary, because only Democrat David Gantt has filed to run […]

Count me in

“Out of a potential total of 37,425 votes, 35,802 were recorded. But some voters may have made fewer than the maximum three choices for candidates, officials said.” — “Voting Machines Banned,” Asheville Citizen-Times, Dec. 20, 2007 Some? What sort of a numerical or statistical benchmark is “some”? Few things in our democratic system have more […]