State Board of Elections chairman Larry Leake said the board would still like to talk to Ruffin Poole, a patronage boss, lawyer and aide to former Gov. Mike Easley.

The N.C. Court of Appeals was considering Friday a judge's order granting Poole the right to not testify to the board.

The Board of Elections members are, from left, Anita Earls, Bob Cordle, Larry Leake, Charles Winfree and Bill Peaslee.

Staff photo by Shawn Rocco.

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan has submitted recommendations for two federal judgeships in North Carolina.

Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, has submitted three names to President Barack Obama to be a U.S. District Court judge in the Eastern District and three names to considered for a judgeship in the Middle District.

Hagan's nominees for the Eastern District are: Allen Cobb, senior resident Superior Court Judge for New Hanover and Pender counties; Jennifer May-Parker, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District handing criminal appellate cases; and Quentin Sumner, senior resident Superior Court Judge in Nash County.

Hagan's nominees for the Middle District are: Catherine Eagles, senior resident Superior Court Judge in Guilford County; Anita Earls, executive director for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham; and Edwin Wilson, senior resident Superior Court Judge in Rockingham County.

Gov. Beverly Perdue appointed members to the State Board of Elections on Monday.

Perdue was required by law to appoint members from lists submitted by the state political parties. The board includes three Democrats and two Republicans who serve four year terms.

Perdue reappointed Democrats Larry Leake of Mars Hill and Robert Cordle of Charlotte, as well as Republican Charles Winfree of Greensboro. New appointees were Democrat Anita Earls of Durham and Republican William Peaslee of Raleigh.

They replace Democrat Genevieve Sims and Republican Lorraine Shinn.

Earls is executive director and founder of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a position she has held since September 2007. From 2003 to 2007, she was director of advocacy at the UNC Center for Civil Rights. Earls also served as deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice from 1998 to 2000.

She received a law degree from Yale University and an undergraduate degree from Williams College.

Peaslee runs a general practice law firm in Cary. He was political director, special legal counsel and chief of staff of the state Republican Party until 2006.

Peaslee received a law degree from Campbell University and an undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill.

The State Board of Elections supervises and regulates primary and general elections in North Carolina.

The N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law will consider redistricting.

The think tank will examine the constitutional and practical implications of Congressional redistricting at a May 7 program.

Former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr and N.C. Coalition for Lobbying and Government Reform director Jane Pinsky will use the program to advocate for a nonpartisan independent redistricting commission.

A panel will include legislative drafting director Gerry Cohen, Southern Coalition for Social Justice director Anita Earls, UNC-Chapel Hill law professor Robert Joyce, Common Cause director Bob Phillips, and attorneys Thomas Farr and Carl Thurman III.

Recent decisions by the North Carolina and U.S. supreme courts have thrown some kinks in redistricting plans.

"A truly independent redistricting commission may be just the answer to provide constitutional districts for the future," said Orr in a statement.

The program will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Raleigh Country Club. 

U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan may help name two federal judges.

The first-term Democratic senator will likely give advice to President Obama, who may fill at least two of the four vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, reports former Domester David Ingram, now of the Legal Times.

She met with several possible nominees for the 4th Circuit a few weeks ago, but she does not appear to have moved quickly to set up an internal system for recommending anyone, says Burley Mitchell Jr., a former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court and a partner in the Raleigh office of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice.

"She’s just gotten there," Mitchell says. "I don’t think that they've even worked out any of the mechanisms."

Hagan's office declined to comment on the process. Possible nominees include UNC-Chapel Hill law professor S. Elizabeth Gibson, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Rich Leonard and N.C. Appeals Court Judge Jim Wynn.

Others who are interested include U.S. District Court Judge James Beaty Jr.; private lawyers James Cooney III, Douglas Kingsbery and Robert Spearman; Southern Coalition for Social Justice director Anita Earls, N.C. Appeals Judge Martha Geer and N.C. Supreme Court Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson.

Delegates cast their votes for their preferred Democrat on paper ballots this morning, said Anita Earls of Durham.

Whether those votes end up meaning anything come roll-call time is uncertain.

“What they’re going to do for the camera, I don’t know,” she said.

Earls, a civil rights lawyer, went to Denver hoping to find substance in a convention city full of parties and fundraisiers. And she found it.

Among other things, The Nation is holding panel discussions every day, and Barack Obama's campaign sent a surrogate to the North Carolina delegate breakfast to talk about energy policy, she said.

And even the parties can be good for exchanging ideas. Earls met a lawyer from Georgia who does the same kind of work as she does at a party Tuesday night sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

“You can go to the parties and just drink, or you can talk to people,” said Earls, 48, an Obama delegate.

Plenty of delegates attend conventions over and over, but Earls sees Denver as her one shot. She wants to figure out how to get more first-timers at the next convention to, as she says, “pass the torch around.”

“You can bring more people into politics if we try to open it up more,” she said.

Elections will continue as scheduled in North Carolina following a federal court's ruling on a lawsuit that said the way the current legislative district lines have been drawn are unconstitutional.

An attorney for the NAACP, which challenged the lawsuit, said the court made the ruling late yesterday evening, Titan Barksdale reports.

In November, a group of Republicans filed a lawsuit that seeks to stop the 2008 elections if the state House and Senate districts are not redrawn. The suit says the current legislative districts are unconstitutional because several counties have been wrongly combined to form voting districts. The suit also said that incorrect census data were used to create the districts.

NAACP attorneys were allowed to challenge the suit in January.  The NAACP said that if the suit were successful, it could weaken black voting strength in North Carolina and jeopardize the seats of 16 black legislators in districts across the state.

Federal judges provided little explanation for the ruling. Anita Earls, an attorney representing the NAACP, said a lengthier ruling will soon be handed down.

Is 40 percent enough to give minority voters a voice? 

That was the question before the state Supreme Court in Pender County vs. Bartlett.

In drawing House District 18, the state legislature decided that a district with a significant population of black voters could still fall under the Voting Rights Act.

That 1965 law, aimed at correcting past discrimination, has long allowed for states to draw unusually shaped legislative districts in order to create a majority of black voters.

In an amicus brief, the UNC Center for Civil Rights argued that racism has ebbed enough that minority voters don't need to be an absolute majority to have a voice.

But the state Supreme Court took a more restrictive view, arguing that gerrymandering is only acceptable to create an actual majority.

Anita Earls, director of advocacy for the Center for Civil Rights, said the decision could affect some rural counties with significant minority populations after the 2010 redistricting.