North Carolina received a B-minus on campaign finance disclosure.

In a regular report card by the Campaign Disclosure Project, the state Board of Elections received higher marks on campaign finance laws and accessibility of its Web site. Last year, the state received a C-plus, and in 2003 it received a D-plus.

The state was graded well for requiring detailed information about contributors of more than $50, including occupation and employer data, as well as vendors used by candidates.

However, it received lower marks for its electronic filing program, which is required of statewide candidates who raise $5,000 or more but not legislative candidates.

A redesign of the Board of Elections Web site was praised.

"The site offers a fair amount of contextual information, such as detailed candidate lists and a thorough campaign finance manual explaining the state’s disclosure requirements and contribution limits," the group wrote.

North Carolina was ranked 23 of U.S. states. 

Election Day could be a nightmare, with voters facing three-hour waits at the polls unless election officials hire more staff and expand early voting sites, says Democracy North Carolina, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

A predicted record turnout will jam polls, and officials should take steps to avoid a crush in November, says Bob Hall, executive director of the group. During the May primary, 2.1 million voters cast ballots — double the previous record for a North Carolina primary.

The fall election season is complicated by a competitive presidential race, the wild card of same-day registration and voting and high interest among young and African-American voters.

In the 2004 election, 3.5 million North Carolinians cast votes but the total this fall could jump by as many as 1 million. A Democracy North Carolina analysis of newly registered voters showed that Democrats added eight times as many voters as Republicans so far this year. One-third of new voters are black, two out of five live in the state's most populous counties and 10,000 identify themselves as Hispanic.

The recently approved state budget included $2 million to help counties open more early voting sites. "Officials need to use all the resources available to hire more staff so poll workers get relief during the week, as well as open more sites so voters have relief from the stress of Election Day lines," Hall said in a news release.

Rep. Paul Luebke says he'll press for instant runoffs in 2009.

The Durham Democrat, who sponsored a pilot project for municipal elections in 2005, says that the concept was "scary" to a lot of legislators, but after elections in Cary and Hendersonville he thinks they may be more open to it.

"In 2009, if I'm back I expect to participate in a discussion about how we could use instant-runoff voting as a statewide policy," he said.

The city of Wilmington has asked for a local bill seeking authority to do instant runoffs this session, though it is currently stuck in a committee, he noted.  

Citing today's labor commissioner runoff, Luebke said that the traditional primary runoff method has its own risks, including extremely low turnout.

"It's really not a good idea to have so few people deciding these runoff races," he said. 

Bob Hall says instant-runoff voting could have saved the state millions.

The executive director of Democracy North Carolina says that North Carolina could have avoided today's primary runoff, which will cost from $3.5 to $5 million, by asking voters their second choice in the initial ballot.

"Today is really a case where we have this miserably low turnout, and it really is not democratic," he said.

Under instant-runoff voting, voters mark their first, second and third choices in a given race. If no candidate gets a majority in the initial round of voting, the second-choice votes of people who voted for the losing candidate are counted.

State Rep. Paul Luebke proposed a bill to allow the method in statewide party primaries and judicial races in the 2005 session, but it was scaled back to a pilot program for municipal elections. The towns of Cary and Hendersonville successfully used instant runoffs in the 2007 races.

Hall, a campaign finance reformer, said that instant runoffs also help candidates budget wisely.

"You don't have to worry about squirrelling away money for a possible runoff," he said. "And you don't have a situation where the candidate who can raise a lot of money real quick has an advantage."

The labor commissioner runoff will cost between $3.5 and $5 million.

The cost will be shared by each of the 100 counties participating in the runoff between John C. Brooks and Mary Fant Donnan, though some may pay more if other local races drive turnout, said State Board of Elections deputy director Johnnie Mclean.

In previous primary runoffs, turnout has been as low as 3 percent and as high as 16 percent, though Mclean estimates it will be at the lower end.

Under state law, the runner-up may request a runoff if no candidate receives more than 40 percent of the vote. Brooks, who received 24.4 percent of the vote in a four-way race, came in second to Donnan, who received 27.5 percent.

He said he requested a runoff because it is an "educational opportunity."

"The people of North Carolina would have known nothing more about the issues in the Department of Labor than the man in the moon," he said. "The opportunity to save billions of dollars for the people of North Carolina could have gone by, just like it did four years ago."

Brooks also dismissed the idea of instant-runoff voting, in which voters' second-choice picks are counted if no candidate gets a majority. The towns of Cary and Hendersonville held instant-runoff elections last fall under a pilot program.

Barack Obama's voter registration drive is getting a last-minute push.

The Democratic presidential candidate announced today the "Carolina Change Challenge" to encourage voters of all ages to register.

The challenge has a special focus on 17 year olds who will turn 18 by November. In North Carolina, those voters will also be able to cast ballots in the primary on May 6.

Over the weekend, all 20 Obama field offices sent out more than 1,000 volunteers to register "thousands and thousands" of new voters, according to Deputy National Campaign Manager Steve Hildebrand.

"We've registered Democrats, we've registered Republicans, we've registered independents," Steve said.

The top 10 volunteers and the top five high-school students who register the most voters will meet Obama during an upcoming visit.

As part of the campaign, actress and singer Tatyana Ali, best known for her role as Ashley on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," will campaign for Obama on college campuses across the state Wednesday and Thursday.

North Carolina residents can register by Friday, April 11, or register and vote at one-stop sites between April 17 and May 3.

Bob Crumley is requesting public records involving the creation of the state's e-mail deletion policy.

A press release calls the current e-mail policy "another example of Roy Cooper's failure of leadership."

An Asheboro attorney, Crumley is running for attorney general against Cooper.

Crumley says the current policy gives too much freedom to state employees in deciding whether to delete e-mails or save them.

He doesn't think the ability to destroy public records should be allowed without oversight, saying this ability is a violation of the state public records law.

Crumley is requesting "any and all public records related to the creation of this policy," but has not indicated what he hopes to find in the records.

As a first-term state senator, Beverly Perdue's bills focused on marine resources and the elderly.

During the state legislature's 1991-92 session, Perdue sponsored 23 successful bills, including three that created a Division of Human Resources grant to care for the elderly, allowed the division to charge fees for in-home services and funded a study commission on aging.

Other successes included sales tax refunds for regional solid waste management authorities and the repeal of a previous act to build a beach access facillity at Emerald Isle.

Perdue also sponsored several marine resources bills, including one that increased the fee for fisheries licenses. Related attempts to create a shellfish enhancement program and restrict leases for gathering shellfish were unsuccessful.

She also sponsored failed legislation that would change state election cycles so that statewide contests and presidential elections did not coincide.