Edwards stuck by point about Murdoch money

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CORRECTION

The Under the Dome column Monday incorrectly implied that touch-screen voting machines had failed in Buncombe County in a 2004 election. The elections director said the problem was caused by poll workers giving out incorrect ballots, not by the machines.

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Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is in a dust-up with Fox News, a favorite target of Democrats.

Edwards last week called for Democrats to oppose the merger of the News Corp., owned by British media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and the Dow Jones Co., which owns the Wall Street Journal.

"I don't want to see Rupert Murdoch, or anybody else for that matter, owning every newspaper in America," Edwards told CNN on Friday.

"What we have seen with the consolidation of the media is not healthy for this country. It stifles dissent. It stifles grassroots voices. We need divergent voices in this country."

Edwards also called on Democratic presidential candidates to not accept money from News Corp. executives, a slap at one of his rivals, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton who has accepted $20,000 from company executives.

But Murdoch struck back -- or at least one of his newspapers did.

The New York Post countered that Edwards had earned $800,000 from HarperCollins, one of Murdoch's companies. It reported that Edwards had received $500,000 as an advance for his book, "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives" and was also cut a check of $300,000 for expenses.

Edwards has reported $333,334 in royalties from his book. Edwards says he donated the proceeds to Habitat for Humanity, the International Rescue Committee and programs that help low-income children go to college.

"Every dime they gave me has gone to charity," Edwards said adding that it would be "absurd" to return the money paid to him by HarperCollins.

Edwards said someone had broached a confidentiality agreement about the money he received from the book.

Kudos for elections audits

North Carolina was praised last week for improving election accuracy.

A study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law and two other law schools found that a majority of states do not conduct post-election audits in a way that is helpful, with one exception:

"We are aware of only one state, North Carolina, that has collected and made public the most significant data from post-election audits for the purpose of improving future elections," the report said.

The report notes that UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Public Health audited elections in detail on 2006 primary and general elections, including information on electronic tallies and recounts and the accuracy of voting machines.

Not all was well in the state, however.

An appendix noted several problems with recent North Carolina elections, including touch-screen voting that failed in Buncombe County and lost votes for agriculture commissioner in Carteret County, both in 2004; and problems with voting machines in Robeson and Wayne counties in 2002.

Consensus from lawmakers

Legislators are frustrated, too.

That's one of the findings of a survey featured in the latest issue of Popular Government magazine. The survey included interviews with 53 past and present members of North Carolina's legislature. The interviews are a bit old, from 2004, but the findings may still be of interest to those dealing with the legislature today.

"The consensus was that the General Assembly is more divided, more partisan, more driven by campaign financing needs, and more vulnerable to special-interest influences than it was in the past," the article said. "These forces produce a more stressful institutional environment for so-called citizen legislators."