Welcome to the open thread for the Carrboro Board of Aldermen Special Election candidate forum happening on April 6, 2014. Comments on this post will open at that time.

There are three candidates for one seat: 

• Bethany Chaney
• Talal Asad
• Theresa Watson

You can observe the forum at http://orangepolitics.org/elections-2014/forums/cboa.

We hope you'll use this open thread to post your thoughts and reactions. Also, if you want to propose additional discussion topics, you can reach the editors during the forum via Twitter, Facebook, or the contact page. The forum moderator will have final say in question selection.

This piece originally ran in the Daily Tar Heel as a guest editorial on April 1st.  

I believe everyone should vote, and I believe voting should be easy and convenient. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the recent direction that we are going in North Carolina. Last year, the N.C. General Assembly severely restricted the ability of residents to vote. It cut the number of days of early voting, limited the ability of out-of-state students to cast ballots and did away with one-stop registration during early voting.