Rev. William Barber steps down at NC-NAACP, to focus on 25-state/DC action in...
The Raleigh News and Observer reports this morning that in a conference call last night, Rev. Dr. William J Barber announced he will hand over his 12 year leadership of the North Carolina NAACP in June...
View ArticleAmerica's meth lab of democracy: North Carolina's plot to blow up early...
In 1932, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously described state governments as “laboratories of democracy,”in whicha single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory;...
View ArticleOn the heels of their Supreme Court loss, NC GOP vows to try harder to...
Rumors of the death of voter ID in North Carolina may have been greatly exaggerated.Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear NC GOP legislators’ appeal of a lower court decision striking down...
View ArticleData & Democracy 2018: organizing data science for progressive change...
DATA & DEMOCRACY 2018(A Conference Prospectus and Call For Expressions of Interest)WHAT WILL VOTING RIGHTS ACTIVISTS NEED FROM DATA SCIENCE VOLUNTEERS IN 2018?WHAT NON-PROFIT DATA SCIENCE...
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Harnessing the ghost in the machine: Data science for voting rights (for...
We at Insightus are currently busy organizing a conference, coming later this year to Durham, North Carolina, to bring activist defenders of voting rights from across the South together with...
View ArticleProject Vote is closing after 30+ years. Because voter suppression is a bit...
After fighting effectively for over 30 years to promote voter registration and states’ compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), Project Vote has announced that it will shut down as...
View ArticleJust three seats: this is Our Shot, North Carolina
xComing up this Sunday! Join us!!!! #ncpol#ncga#OurShotNC turning NC House blue again. Let's break the supermajority! pic.twitter.com/KpvSRVm19l— OurShotNC (@OurShotNC) May 29, 2017Three...
View ArticleYin and yang: Data science for voting rights (for dummies). Part 2
Last week, in Part 1 of this primer on the intersection between data science and voting rights activism, we ever-so-gently defined some key concepts — including data itself, data acquisition, data...
View ArticleThe Butcher's Bill: The wisdom of driving bad politics home
In the British army of the colonial era it was called the butcher’s bill: the after-action tally of troops killed in the last battle, or wounded, or missing in action. Essential information for...
View ArticleDHS withholding grants aimed at countering white supremacist violence
Buried in a Raleigh, NC News & Observer article today (in the Education section, no less):In January, the Department of Homeland Security announced 31 winners in a controversial grant program to...
View ArticleOutgunned NC Gov. Cooper turns tables on GOP state legislators' next...
Learned helplessness (noun) [psychiatry]: a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed. It is thought to be one...
View ArticleFederal court to gerrymandering North Carolina legislators: Put up or shut up.
As reported in depth here Thursday, events are now rapidly unfolding in the previously long, slow, grinding war against gerrymandering in North Carolina, as friends of democracy press their sudden...
View ArticleFrom 'shut it down' to 'business as usual,' battle lines firming in NC's...
Plaintiffs, defendants, and activists are all drawing their battle lines in the latest skirmish here in the Tar Heel state’s Seven Year War on voting, Covington v. North Carolina.Covington, you will...
View ArticleGuess what it really took to stop that bad guy with a gun
While much — way too much — is being made of the political leanings of yesterday’s Alexandria shooter by those who seek to capitalize on a national tragedy by engaging in their own brand of ‘identity...
View ArticleInsightus exclusive: has GOP been leaking your information for way, WAY...
Some of us at Insightus sat down together this morning to draft a blog post aimed at clarifying, for non-techies, precisely what kind of information is and is not contained in the massive leak of the...
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Soo-eee! Mapping the racist pork barrel politics in North Carolina...
North Carolina’s new Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, finds himself in yet another tussle with the state’s Republican-controlled General Assembly — this time over the crazy state budget for 2017-2019...
View ArticleI've just answered Kris Kobach's request. Have you?
Kris Kobach, vice chair of the new Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, wants to know what the Secretaries of State think undermine[s] the American people’s confidence in the...
View ArticleNAS versus FUD: The fix is in at the Kobach Commission...BUT THERE'S A WAY TO...
There’s no shortage of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) currently being sown by Kansas Kris Kobach’s new Presidential Advisory Commission on Elections Integrity. Consider, for instance, the fear...
View ArticleThe myth of guest workers' threat to US jobs is coming home to roost in Trump...
In September 2016, in the thick of candidate Trump’s superheated rhetoric regarding “bad hombres” coming to ravish our women-folk, the Republican-controlled congress found it politically expedient to...
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Democracy Doxxed: Did Kobach Commission leak of personal data violate Privacy...
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Elections Integrity, co-chaired by Mike Pence and Kris Kobach, wasted no time last week putting Americans on notice regarding exactly how it intends to exercise...
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