The generally conservative 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected challenges to North Carolina's full public financing program for judicial elections and upheld the law that put Clean Elections-style financing of judicial races on the map.  This is great news for North Carolina and the popular public financing program, which this year has been expanded to include three Council of State positions (the state Cabinet).

Hearings on a new full public financing program for elections in Chapel Hill, North Carolina are getting underway after a long effort by town council member Mark Kleinschmidt to get attention to the issue.  The North Carolina Assembly has opened the door for Chapel Hill to pursue this on a pilot basis, we'll see if it goes all the way.

North Carolina's Independent Weekly covers the full public financing pilot program that applies to three Council of State races this year, and talks to candidates about how their run with public funding will diverge from the traditional campaign model.

A group of Clean Elections supporters in Greensboro, North Carolina are organizing to bring full public financing of elections to their city, following in the path of Albuquerque, New Mexico and Portland, Oregon, as well as public financing programs for North Carolina's judicial races and three Council of State races, as well as a new program in the works for Chapel Hill. As the cost of running for office escalates, there is concern that running for office is becoming prohibitively expensive for would-be candidates.

Joel Burgess at the Asheville Citizen-Times writes about how expensive it's getting to run for a City Council seat, and about the law recently passed in North Carolina allowing Chapel Hill to pursue a Clean Elections public financing option for its races to control costs and open the door for people without access to wealth to run for office.

The West Virginia judge who raised eyebrows for vacationing with the CEO of an energy company he'd just decided in favor of (a CEO known for using campaign contributions to influence the outcome of judicial races) has indicated he would support public financing of judicial races, but he has some concerns.