The General Election is Tuesday, Nov. 3, and there are plenty of ways to vote early, or vote from the comfort of one’s own home, but there are a lot of deadlines and procedural steps that voters need to be aware of, to ensure their vote counts. Here’s a quick rundown on available options and processes for voting. 

After eight years in office, Burnsville Republican Rep. Michele Presnell will probably be better remembered for the things she didn’t do than the things she did. 

The major party candidates seeking the NC11 congressional seat recently left vacant by former Rep. Mark Meadows spent much of the first two debates attacking each other and defending themselves against those attacks, but now that controversial tweets by one of them have resurfaced, there’s even more focus on how the current partisan discord is turning modern political discourse into a war of words that can never be won. 

Congressional candidates’ claims rated for truthfulness

By Sally Kestin and Peter H. Lewis
AVL Watchdog

In their first public face-off, the candidates vying for the increasingly competitive 11th district congressional seat, Republican Madison Cawthorn and Democrat Moe Davis, touted their differences on just about all issues and hurled accusations, with each calling the other “fast and loose” with the facts. Who was telling the truth? AVL Watchdog fact-checked some of the claims made at the Sept. 4-5 debates at Western Carolina University and rated them as true, false or misleading.

Congressional candidates Moe Davis and Madison Cawthorn clashed last week in a pair of debates spanning two days and three hours, covering everything from health care and economics to gun rights and race relations. 

Updated 9/11/20, 12:30 p.m.

While N.C. Congressional District 11 candidates Moe Davis and Madison Cawthorn got into a heated debate inside during the “Best in the West” online events Sept. 4-5, the excitement overflowed outside of the venue as well. 

By Sally Kestin, Tom Fiedler and Peter H. Lewis | AVL Watchdog | Conservative congressional candidate Madison Cawthorn, scheduled to speak Wednesday at the GOP national convention, traveled to Texas last month to visit a private border wall and echoed discredited child sex trafficking claims promoted by the extremist conspiracy theory movement.

Even Hollywood screenwriters would be hard-pressed to craft a more quintessentially American story.

Rallies expressing support for law enforcement officers and agencies are starting to become commonplace in Western North Carolina, but as the election draws near, Republican candidates are asserting more and more ownership of the “back the badge” movement. 

Cawthorn rejected from Naval Academy

By Tom Fiedler

AVL Watchdog

The narrative created by Republican congressional-candidate Madison Cawthorn paints a picture of a bright, young man headed to the U.S. Naval Academy until he was severely injured in an auto crash.