North Carolina’s early voting locations operated on college campuses disproportionately favor Democrats in violation of state statute, new research suggests. A report from the nonpartisan think tank Verity Vote analyzed North Carolina’s early voting locations (One Stop Voting), campus voter registration, and early ballots cast. Data reveals noncompliance with a North Carolina statutory requirement for neutrality in early voting venues.

College students disproportionately favor one political party. That is not breaking news. Edison Research polling shows a 28-point margin for Democrats among young people. A 2022 study by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology found that Democrats outnumber Republicans on college campuses by a 55-23 margin nationwide. While the size of the partisan advantage for Democrats among college students has grown significantly in the last decade, the fact that it exists has been well-documented since the 1960s. College faculty and staff also disproportionately favor one party. A 2020 study of more than 20,000 faculty members found 48.4 percent were registered Democrats and only 5.7 percent were registered Republicans.

North Carolina statute §163‑227.6 prohibits the use of early voting sites that disproportionately favor any party or candidate. The requirement for election officials to select early voting locations that confer no partisan political advantage is being violated in more than a dozen counties across the state of North Carolina.  

More North Carolinians choose to vote early rather than on Election Day. In 2022, more than 53 percent of ballots were cast at One Stop Voting locations. Therefore, decisions related to these locations can significantly

A member of the Meta Oversight Board said in a recent livestream that Meta places “international human rights norms” above the First Amendment when it considers free speech issues. This admission is especially concerning considering a recent revelation that the FBI and CISA have renewed collaboration with social media companies to censor posts they label “disinformation.”

“As Meta became more global, it realized what an outlier the United States was, and could not simply default back to U.S. First Amendment jurisprudence,” said Kenji Yoshino, a member of the Meta Oversight Board, an independent entity that advises the platform. “Our baseline here is not the U.S. Constitution and free speech, but rather international human rights norms.”

Meta’s Censorship in Theory

Yoshino, a board member for the left-wing William J. Brennan Center for Justice, made this comment in a livestream with fellow Meta Oversight Board member and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Michael McConnell. The National Constitution Center hosted the online panel on April 29, and its CEO Jeffrey Rosen moderated the discussion about ways Meta shapes content during elections.

Meta originally sought to follow the First Amendment, Yoshino said. But as Meta expanded across the world, he noted, it shifted its content policies beyond the First Amendment.

McConnell disagreed with Yoshino’s reasoning and said the more important distinction is the First Amendment’s application to private entities. But he admitted he agrees with Meta’s ability to censor content. “Even within the United States, private companies are free to not convey speech

In an environment of endless protest from the left, trans activists have moved from public disruption to simply disabling systems they do not like. On May 1, 2024, Utah launched a reporting form to enforce H.B. 257, a law signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in January that protects sex-designated spaces such as restrooms or locker rooms from intrusions by members of the opposite sex. The state auditor is required to investigate these reports, but within a week, the office received around 10,000 false complaints from trans activists attempting to overwhelm the system to make reporting and enforcement impossible.

Prominent trans activist Erin Reed argued, “If there are 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 form responses that are entered in, it’s going to be much harder for the auditor’s office to sift through every one of them and find the one legitimate trans person who was caught using a bathroom.” The enforcement, which only addresses the failure of government entities enforcing the new law, includes reporting the failure of government entities to contact law enforcement when a criminal complaint is filed (for instance, a complaint of men caught spying on women or girls in restrooms).

Utah Auditor John Dougall noted that while many complaints were easy to screen (e.g., those listing him in the complaint), others “appear credible at first glance and take much longer to filter out. His staff has spent the last week sorting through thousands of well-crafted complaints citing fake names or locations.” Activists have engaged in this behavior in other