When the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution gave women the right to vote in 1920, it was without the help of North Carolina legislators.

The women's suffrage amendment, also known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, had been ratified by 35 of the necessary 36 states when 63 of the 120 North Carolina House members signed a telegram sent to the Tennessee legislature urging them to vote NO.

 We, the undersigned members of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of North Carolina, constituting a majority of said body, send greetings to the General Assembly of Tennessee, and assure you that we will not ratify the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, interfering with the sovereignty of Tennessee and other States of the Union. We most respectfully request that this measure be not forced upon the people of North Carolina.

Two days later, Tennessee did ratify the amendment, and women's right to vote became law. The North Carolina House went on to reject the amendment, but the Senate tabled their vote. And there it sat for the next fifty years.

Goldsboro's Gertrude Weil had been in the forefront of the suffragette movement and was undeterred by the struggle.

Her father had arrived in Goldsboro from Germany shortly after the Civil War. She was born in 1879 in the West Chestnut Street house her father had built and where she would live her entire life.

Her parents infused her with a sense of social responsibility  that was strengthened by her education at Horace Mann, an exclusive prep school in New York City, and Smith College in Northampton, Mass. In 1901, Miss Weil became the first North Carolina graduate of Smith.

She believed that racism and poverty had deep roots. It was the job of an activist not only to help solve individual injustices, but to attack the roots of social ills. -- The News & Observer 3/16/1984

In 1965, N&O writer Betsy Marsh interviewed Miss Weil about the many awards and honors she had received and found her characteristically modest.

Back in the early years of the 1900s Miss Weil became active in efforts to get the vote for women. She has been credited with initiating the suffrage movement in North Carolina, but she insists she was only a small part of it.

The legislature failed to ratify the amendment, and the opportunity for North Carolina to make suffrage for women the law of the land slipped by. "Only one more state was needed to make it law," said Miss Weil. "The honor went to Tennessee." -- The News & Observer 3/14/1965

North Carolina finally did ratify the amendment on May 6, 1971, just 24 days  before Miss Weil's death at age 91. 

See more photos and writings of Gertrude Weil at the Jewish Women's Archive.

Rep. Justin Burr's attempt to change the make up of the Stanly County Board of Elections did not survive the legislative session.

Burr, an Albemarle Republican, stripped a statewide elections bill that had passed the Senate and replaced it with a local bill that directs how appointments would be made for Stanly County boards. It would have required two of the three members of the county elections board be chosen based on which party had the highest percentage of registered voters in the county. Current law requires they be chosen based upon the political party that controls the governor's office.

The legislation would have made Stanly County's board majority Republican while a Democratic governor runs state government.

But after Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, cried foul, saying the bill opens a "Pandora's Box" for other county boards to follow suit, Burr's bill got rejected by the Senate.

The compromise legislation that emerged Saturday morning jettisoned any language pertaining to the Stanly County election board. It has now passed both chambers, and is now law. Since it is a local bill, it is not subject to a governor's veto.

Recreational sports are more than fun and games.

A crucial part of any recreational sports organization is good
leadership, especially from those who step up to help lead their fellow
competitors and make leagues run smoothly.

The Capital Area USBC Association
is seeking bowlers to step up to serve on its board of directors or to
run for positions with the Capital Area USBC Youth Committee,
association representative Marion Boissiere said.

The filing period is over. See who's running.

Durham County Board of Elections Director Mike Ashe wore a U.S. flag necktie to work Monday.
"We're open for business," he said. "We're doing great. We've got plenty of precinct officials, plenty of ballots ... and enough money to do our job."

That job, by the way, does not include enforcing rules on campaign signs. That comes under the city-county planning department, which decrees that they can't go out or up until 45 days before the election.

That would be late August this time around. Here are some more election rules, as Ashe explained them to Bull's Eye this morning:

• On the ballot, candidates are listed in alphabetical order. In general elections, it's regular old ABCD etc. In primaries, though, the starting point moves through the alphabet from one election to the next. This year, the order is CDEF ... XYZAB such that a candidate named "Charlie" would be listed ahead of "Abel" and "Baker."
• Under elections law, every candidate must have an organization to receive and spend money, and file an organizational report with the Board of Elections. Organizations may be created ahead of filing — most office-holders keep them active between elections — but have to be created and reported within 10 days of filing.
• The first financial reports from 2009 candidates are due Sept. 1; reports are posted at the county Board of Elections Web site.
• To file the required financial reports, a candidate or campaign treasurer has to take a 45-minute training course, which can be done online or at the state elections office in Raleigh.
• Before 2006, candidates were free to spend leftover campaign funds any way they liked — say, on fishing boats or new houses. Now, the law spells out what's a legitimate use and what's not.

See photos of the continuing protests in Iran following presidential elections.

See photos from street violence and protests following the controversial results of elections in Iran.

According to Mike Ashe, Durham County's elections director, "a new election cycle" gets started tomorrow.

Yes, we just had an election. In Durham, though, there's an election every year, and Ashe is hosting a lunchtime get-together for political-party chairpeople, their colleagues and the board of elections staff, to talk about appointing precinct officials.

"We are all working together to provide fair and honest elections," Ashe said in an emailed invitation to the press.

Durham voters are electing a mayor and three City Council members this fall. So far, the only candidate to make an official announcement is mayoral hopeful Steven Williams.

However, incumbent Mayor Bill Bell has indicated he plans to run for a fifth two-year term; incumbent council members Cora Cole-McFadden and Howard Clement have also said they will stand for re-election for their Ward 1 and 2 seats and Ward 3 incumbent Mike Woodard shows no sign of planning to quit after a single term.

Candidate filing opens at noon July 3 and closes at noon July 17. The primary election is Oct. 6 and general election Nov. 3.

For Bull Citizens' ready reference, the city attorney's Web site has a FAQ on how municipal elections are done and changes proposed for them.

See www.durhamnc.gov/departments/attorney/pdf/election_faq.pdf.

The Durham city council has set April 6 for a public hearing on the way it is elected.

"Let the public discourse begin," said elections director Mike Ashe.

By voting Monday night to hold the public hearing, the council began the process that could change Durham's council elections from a non-partisan primary and general election system to a non-partisan pluraity system.

That means holding one election instead of two — or three, when a runoff primary is needed.

Durham County Board of Elections chairman Ronald Gregory requested the change in a February letter to council members and Mayor Bill Bell.

According to Ashe, the switch would save taxpayers between $170,000 and $180,000 per municipal election year.

"This is purely a way to save money we don't have right now," Ashe told council members Monday.

"We don't believe this helps or hurts anyone, any group, any candidate," he said.

Read more about it in Wednesday's News & Observer.