Weekly Wrap: Election is nigh

About a quarter of North Carolina's registered voters have already cast ballots during the early voting period, despite many living slightly farther away from a polling site.

WRAL News crunched numbers comparing the location of polling sites this year with 2014 after concerns that a new law standardizing early voting hours would lead to a decline in available voting sites in cash-strapped rural counties. The number of sites has dropped by 17 percent statewide, and WRAL's analysis found that rural voters are indeed having to travel a bit farther to cast a ballot this election.

Candidates are doing their best to reach the voters, spending $25.5 million on broadcast television ads since April – not to mention more on cable TV ads, mailers and online ads. The 9th Congressional District race is by far the most expensive, but state legislative races are piling up the ads as well. So far, about 69,000 campaign ads have aired in North Carolina.

Tom Steyer, the billionaire Democratic activist who is pushing a proposal to impeach President Donald Trump, swung through the state as part of a get-out-the-vote effort he is bankrolling. During his visit, he met with Gov. Roy Cooper and reportedly discussed the election and climate change. Cooper on Monday signed an executive order calling on the state to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2025.

Outside of the election, Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey says he turned $240,000 over to the U.S. Marshals Service. The money was put into his campaign account by the state Republican Party after Durham investor Greg Lindberg made a major donation to the state party. Lindberg is under federal investigation, and Causey previously returned a campaign donation from him because the state Department of Insurance regulated some of Lindberg's businesses.

A three-judge panel has ruled that four House districts in Wake County are unconstitutional, and it ordered the General Assembly to redraw them by July 1. The districts were changed as part of a larger redraw to fix illegal racial gerrymandering in dozens of legislative districts two years ago, but the judges said the four House districts didn't need to be changed, and doing so violates a provision in the state constitution.

Finally, Dr. Bill Roper, the chief executive of UNC Health Care, has been named as interim president of the 17-campus University of North Carolina system. President Margaret Spellings is stepping down early next year.