REPUBLICAN MEMBERS RESIGN FROM NC BOARD OF ELECTIONS: The two Republican members of the North Carolina State Board of Elections resigned Wednesday night, citing their concerns over a legal settlement that addresses several voting issues. David Black and Ken Raymond’s resignations come 41 days before the Nov. 3 general election. There are five members on the board. The remaining three members are Democrats. All members, including Black and Raymond, had agreed to the proposed settlement. The settlement, if approved by a judge, would create new rules to make it easier for people to fix mistakes on their mail-in ballots. It also would extend the amount of time after the election that absentee ballots could come in and still be counted.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article245964685.html

COOPER SPANKS FOREST OVER VOUCHERS IN ONLINE EDUCATION FORUM: “I think Lt. Gov. Forest really has one goal for our public schools: starve them for funding and then use those tax dollars to help rich people send their kids to private schools using vouchers,” Cooper said. He was referring to Forest’s support for the Republican-led legislature’s opportunity scholarships program, which provides families with vouchers for private school. “School vouchers are wrong. They hurt our public schools. I think he’s satisfied with teacher pay and per pupil funding and he’ll rubber stamp anything that the legislative leadership tells him to do or say,” Cooper said. Cooper also brought up one of the policies he is known for pushing — Medicaid expansion — which, along with the amount of teacher raises, was at the center of the 2019 state budget fight.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article245893730.html

FROM TRUMP, NO RESPECT FOR RUTH BADER GINSBURG, OR THE RULES: Rules are for fools. To the cheaters go the spoils. That’s President Donald Trump’s credo. And he hasn’t been proven wrong yet. Technically, yes, it’s Trump’s right to nominate a new Supreme Court justice as soon as he wants and for as long as he’s in office — and he indeed signaled in a tweet Saturday morning that he wanted to move forward “without delay.” McConnell, for his part, can absolutely try to hustle that nominee through Senate confirmation. But McConnell would be violating his own code, the one he adopted after Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. McConnell then decreed that with an election just nine months away, President Barack Obama should not be allowed to fill a court vacancy. The American people should first be allowed to speak through their presidential ballots in early November. Now an election is little more than one month away. And that code — poof! — is gone. McConnell’s quickness to abandon it arises principally from his own unscrupulousness but owes something as well to his confidence about Trump’s ethically inverted inclinations, which are that it matters only whether you win or lose, not how you play the game.
https://www.wral.com/from-trump-no-respect-for-ruth-bader-ginsburg-or-the-rules/19294753/

ASHEVILLE NURSES VOTE TO UNIONIZE AT MISSION HOSPITAL: Nurses at a hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, have voted to unionize and gain the power to bargain over their benefits and working conditions. The Citizen-Times reported a ballot count on Thursday morning showed that there were roughly twice as many “yes” votes by Mission Hospital nurses than there were votes against forming a union. The vote concluded a year-long effort by nurses and union representatives to organize. It also comes less than two years after HCA Healthcare bought the hospital as part of a $1.5 billion sale. The 1,600 registered nurses who work at Mission Hospital and the St. Joseph campus will be represented by National Nurses United, the nation’s largest nurses’ union. The hospital had opposed the union effort. It said a union would ultimately hurt the hospital’s quality of care and could cause its labor costs to “increase materially.”
https://www.wral.com/nurses-vote-to-unionize-at-mission-hospital-in-asheville/19290926/

COURT RULES GERRYMANDERING NOT SUFFICIENT TO BLOCK VOTER ID AND TAX CAP: "We conclude that the Superior Court erred in holding that our General Assembly lost its power granted by our state constitution ... simply because a federal court had determined that the maps contained too many majority-minority districts, such that some members elected to that body were from districts that were illegally gerrymandered based on race," Judge Chris Dillon wrote for the majority. "It is simply beyond our power to thwart the otherwise lawful exercise of constitutional power by our legislative branch to pass bills proposing amendments." Judge Donna Stroud wrote in a concurring opinion that declaring the General Assembly invalid because of some gerrymandered districts wouldn't allow any legislative action – even drawing new voting districts – which would create chaos.
https://www.wral.com/nc-appeals-court-upholds-voter-id-tax-cap-amendments/19287208/