He fought to get on the ballot, and then fought to get off the ballot. 

Now, after a favorable ruling from North Carolina’s highly politicized Supreme Court, anti-vax conspiracy theorist and Trump endorser Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will have his name removed from North Carolina ballots, costing counties large and small, rural and urban, thousands upon thousands of dollars and delaying the start of absentee voting in a crucial swing state. 

Macon County Commissioners already decided that the quarter-cent sales tax referendum would be back on the ballot this November, but at its May 14 meeting, the board expanded the opportunities for how that money can be spent if voters approve the measure. 

Swain County now knows who will appear on the November General Election Ballot for county commissioner. 

Election officials from across the region gathered in Haywood County last week to be among the first to witness public demonstrations of new state-certified voting systems designed to bolster both the efficiency and the security of the state’s elections. 

This fall, voters in North Carolina will be treated to a new choice at the polls come election day. 

A two-hour work session last week on alleged ballot tampering and security lapses during Cherokee’s 2017 elections yielded arguably more questions than answers. 

An audit investigating Birdtown’s disputed 2017 Tribal Council race has concluded that ballot tampering is the likely culprit, with alleged fraud concentrated in the early voting ballots. 

Disillusionment with the two-party American political system has been around for a long time, but with a polarizing President in the White House and gerrymandered districts that tend to push major party candidates towards more extreme primary election positions, it’s rarely been higher.

“The fastest growing group in North Carolina is neither Democrat nor Republican, but it’s unaffiliated,” said Dr. Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “There’s actually more unaffiliated voters than Republicans in the state right now.”