The freedom to vote has faced serious challenges in recent years. New voting restrictions, rampant disinformation, threats to voters and election officials, and even violent attempts to overturn election results have led to growing concern about the future of our democracy and election process.

Imagine that you are a basketball player. You show up at Cameron Indoor Stadium, the Dean Dome or PNC Arena and your opponent’s three-point line is about six feet closer to the hoop than yours is. You probably think, “OK that’s weird,” but then you go looking for the referee to tell them about the rigged lines. You find the referee sitting in your opponent’s locker room, smiling and laughing with one of the players.

Four out of five Americans, across the political spectrum, consistently support transparency when it comes to contributions to organizations that spend money on campaigns. Unfortunately, a growing number of states, now including North Carolina, are advancing so-called "donor privacy" bills to block public access to information about who is spending big money to secretly influence our vote and our government.

Kinston native Chris Suggs is fighting back against the six proposed constitutional amendments on the North Carolina ballot this fall because he’s no stranger to turning bad deals into better outcomes. In 2014, Chris met the poverty and violent crime hurting his hometown with opportunities for volunteerism.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution designed a system that helps insulate federal judges from political pressure. Federal judges are appointed and can only be removed by impeachment. Congress cannot even reduce their salaries. This gives judges the freedom to protect individual rights, even when their decisions might be unpopular with voters or politicians.

In the past few months, North Carolinians have seen our General Assembly make national news several times. At least a couple of those times were due to the continuing and shameless partisan assaults on the independence of our courts.

There are a lot of disturbing indicators these days about the future of American democracy and the growing power of a narrow class of one-percenters. For a classic, close-to-home example, however, North Carolinians need only to take a good look at what’s been happening to the state’s judiciary in recent years as conservative political forces and the politicians under their control have moved to assert more and more control.