Republicans in the North Carolina Senate passed a bill last night designed to fire up its base in the 2020 election. They called it “The Abortion Survivor Bill.” In reality, it’s a bill that does virtually nothing but gives GOP members of the legislature a reason to bash Democrats when they’re pandering to their evangelical base. 

Partisanship is one of the illnesses plaguing the U.S. body politic.

We see this every election cycle as millions of voters cast straight-ticket ballots for candidates just because of the capital letter before their name.

RALEIGH — The 2017-18 session of the N.C. General Assembly wrapped up Thursday, setting a record by overriding the 22nd and 23rd vetoes of the biennium.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper set a record of his own by rejecting 28 items of legislation during his first two years in office. Cooper easily surpassed Democrat Bev Perdue, who vetoed 20 bills over her four-year term.

Nobody was too surprised that the voter ID amendment passed in November. The argument for voter ID is easy. We need photo IDs to do a lot of things besides voting. We need them to get into bars. We need them to pick up prescriptions from pharmacies. To people who don’t live and breathe politics, a voter ID at the polls makes sense.

Back in the day, North Carolina had a long session of the legislature in odd-numbered years and short session of the legislature in even years. During the long session, the General Assembly passed a budget that would serve the state for two years. It was based on revenue projections. In the short session, which was supposed to last about three weeks, the legislature would reconvene to make adjustments to the budget based on actual revenue and changes in the projections.