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The run up to midterm elections has sparked many heated legal and ideological arguments over voting procedures and requirements. To understand the debate, I went to Charlotte, North Carolina for a live community conversation around these voting laws. The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed a North Carolina law to go into effect that eliminates same-day voter registration and reduces the number of early voting days.

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Civil rights activist Charles Jones began the discussion when he shared a few of his personal experiences. Travis Dove/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Travis Dove/NPR

Civil rights activist Charles Jones began the discussion when he shared a few of his personal experiences.

Travis Dove/NPR

We heard from 77-year-old Charles Jones. He was heavily involved in voter registration efforts during the civil rights movement in 1960s. Jones shared a poignant story about a meeting he helped organize in Terrell County, Georgia to help African-Americans get comfortable with voting. The sheriff - also the local Ku Klux Klan leader - interrupted the meeting, but Jones emphasized the importance of standing up for yourself and making your voice heard.

"We have the option to help define our own lives," Jones said. "Involve yourself in learning from a factual base. Don't let anybody tell you what you ought to be doing, ought to be thinking."

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Hans von Spakovsky, manager for Election Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and also a former member of the Federal Election Commission. Travis Dove/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Travis Dove/NPR

Hans von Spakovsky, manager for Election Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and also a former member of the Federal Election Commission.

Travis Dove/NPR

Hans von Spakovsky is the manager of the Election Reform Initiative at the Heritage Foundation, and the co-author of Who's Counting?: How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk. He says the biggest reasons people fail to vote are not restrictive voter laws, but apathy and dissatisfaction with the candidates.

"The Census Bureau does a survey of non-voters and the biggest reason people don't vote has nothing to do with procedural issues...how you register, it's because they are not interested in politics, and they don't think their vote will make a difference, and they don't think that the candidates will really do anything for them," he said.

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Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Travis Dove/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Travis Dove/NPR

Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

Travis Dove/NPR

Janai Nelson is the Deputy Director and Associate Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She talked about how minority communities and low-income Americans are most affected by more restrictive voting laws.

"I fear that we're at critical stage in our current history where we risk turning back the hands on the clock and going back to a time where we are - for a variety of reasons - restricting the people who can vote in this country," she said.

We wanted the conversation to go beyond the McGlohon Theater in Charlotte. We held our social media chat - in collaboration with member station WFAE and La Noticia, North Carolina's oldest Spanish speaking newspaper - in English and Spanish. You can follow that conversation here:

[View the story "NPR Presents: Michel Martin, Voting Rights or Wrongs?" on Storify]

Texas politics is about to take another big step to the right. While nobody outside Texas would describe Gov. Rick Perry or Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst as moderate Republicans, their likely replacements are considerably more conservative — especially in the powerful lieutenant governor's office.

The eyes watching Texas have mostly focused on the governor's race between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott. But the contest between former conservative radio talk show host Dan Patrick and state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte from San Antonio likely will be of more political consequence.

Texas has what's known as a "weak governor" system, which Rick Perry overcame only because of his historically long occupation of the chair. But lieutenant governor is president of the Texas Senate and Republican Dan Patrick will lead an unprecedentedly conservative Senate, which is mirrored by an equally conservative Texas House.

As a former conservative shock jock, Patrick's politics fit that vein. He wants to teach creationism in public schools, end popular election of U.S. senators, and outlaw abortion including cases of rape. But what's got establishment Republicans particularly concerned is Patrick's plan to do away with the state's property taxes. Texas already doesn't have income taxes. That means property taxes and sales taxes are high to compensate. If Texas were to stop collecting property taxes too, the state's school system — and indeed many elements of local government — would have to be drastically cut back while sales tax would soar.

The regressive consequence could be similar to what has happened in Kansas under the leadership of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.

But Texas is not Kansas. If it were a sovereign nation, it would have the 14th largest economy in the world. For decades, the conservative Dallas Morning News editorial board has been the voice of the state's Republican business establishment. It tends to endorse a Democrat only when it feels the GOP candidate is refusing to serve the state's business interests. And in the lieutenant's governor's race, the News endorsed Van de Putte, Patrick's opponent.

In its endorsement editorial the News said of Patrick, "Some of his ideas are singularly disruptive. Taken together they could destabilize state government, the enemy of sound business practices." The News called a vote for Patrick, "reckless" and described Patrick's primary m.o. for governing Texas as "fear and division."

Compared to some of the other more liberal newspapers' descriptions of Patrick's politics, the News' editorial language was toned down. Be that as it may, the latest poll has him leading Van de Putte by 17 percentage points. It's very likely Dan Patrick is Texas's future.

And that is expected to intensify the ongoing power struggle between Tea Party Republicans like Patrick and the state's business elite. But in Texas, after this election the Tea Party wing may well have the votes. Still don't count out the state's millionaires and billionaires, there are many. It is apt to become a test case of conservative politics — big money's self-interest vs. grass roots right wing ideology, Texas style.

2014 elections

Texas

Gary Morse, a visionary property developer, transformed a Florida mobile home park into the nation's largest retirement community. The billionaire died Wednesday at the age of 77.

Under Morse's direction, The Villages, northwest of Orlando, redefined retirement living. It's a community that is remarkable most of all for its size — home to nearly 100,000 residents living in dozens of communities, spread over an area the size of Manhattan.

In a state known for diversity, The Villages, according to the 2010 census, is more than 96 percent non-Hispanic white. And there are twice as many Republicans as Democrats living there — a fact not lost on those running for national office, like former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In 2008, tens of thousands of residents turned out for her in a huge rally.

Nearly four years later, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney burst into song, holding an impromptu sing-along in The Villages of "America the Beautiful."

The people who live in The Villages say the attention from politicians is nice, but there's something else, they say, that makes the place special.

Bill Gottschalk, president of the homeowners association, sums it up in two words: "the lifestyle." What drew him to The Villages, he says, was the golf, the recreation and the active town centers. "The entertainment at the town squares was just outstanding."

Around the Nation

The Villages: Florida's Disney World For Retirees

Around the Nation

Community Helped Change How We See Retirement

In the early 1980s, when Morse took over the community from his father, it was a mobile home park known as Orange Blossom Gardens. Over the years, he transformed it into The Villages, upgrading from mobile homes to homes built on the site.

Morse was a prominent Republican fundraiser, giving millions of dollars over the years to candidates like George W. Bush, for whom he was a member of the Electoral College.

You didn't see Morse around The Villages much and he rarely gave interviews. Gottschalk never met him, but he still feels the loss. "I believe that one of the best things that Gary leaves behind is a wonderful community that we call home," he says.

The Villages continues to be a family-run business; Morse's children are now in charge of what the company calls "Florida's friendliest retirement hometown."

seniors

retirement

Florida

Countless episodes of The Simpsons are built around goofball dad Homer's inability to understand anything online, including starting a home business with no declared purpose: Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net.

His reasoning: "Everybody's making money off the Internet, except us!"

It looks like the people who make The Simpsons have solved that problem with Simpsons World; a website and app devoted to all 552+ episodes of the show, packed with extras like specially curated episode playlists and behind the scenes tidbits.

But platforms like Simpsons World aren't just cool clubhouses for superfans. They're also redefining a part of television that's been around since the earliest days of the medium: the TV rerun.

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Simpsons World allows viewers with a cable subscription to access every episode and watch special playlists. Fox hide caption

itoggle caption Fox

Simpsons World allows viewers with a cable subscription to access every episode and watch special playlists.

Fox

When Homer Simpson built a website, it was a horribly cacophonous mess of material stolen from other websites. "You'd think all the noises would be annoying," he says, practically reading the viewers' minds. "But they're not."

Um, right. Fortunately, FX Networks did a bit better when they built Simpsons World, which allows viewers with a cable subscription to access every episode, watch special playlists, look up the popularity of each episode and more. Next year, more features are coming, including social media sharing and the ability to create your own playlists.

And they're already learning from users. When the site debuted last week, it embedded four minutes of commercials in every episode. After an online backlash, they've cut that total down to one minute for the next six months.

Chuck Saftler, chief operating officer for FX, says the company dreamed up Simpsons World as they were negotiating to buy rights for all Simpsons episodes to bolster their new cable channel, called FXX.

"We realized that we were in a very changing time in terms of how television is consumed," he says. "Buying [cable TV rights alone] for something close to 10 years didn't seem intuitively correct."

So FX spent a reported $750 million to also lock up what are called "non-linear rights" — basically the ability to stream and digitally distribute the episodes — after promising the rights holders that they wouldn't just put the Simpsons into a generic video-on-demand menu.

Using an exhaustive book episode guide by Simpsons creator Matt Groening as an inspiration, the Simpsons World app and website was born.

Saftler says the company wanted to satisfy two kinds of viewers; old fashioned TV fans watching the show on cable and people who watch shows on whatever device is available.

"I do believe there are going to be a number of viewers that still want to have episodes served up live and have that 'lean back,' decompressed experience," he says. "But I also believe that there are viewers that want to have that 'lean forward,' where they curate their own experience."

But now that fans can "curate" their own TV playlists online, why wouldn't most people watch exactly what they want, exactly when they want to watch it?

“ Choice is good, but too much choice is paralyzing. If you go there not knowing what you're looking for, it can be paralyzing.

- Chuck Saftler, chief operating officer for FX

Saftler offers a simple answer: "Choice is good, but too much choice is paralyzing," he says. "If you go there not knowing what you're looking for, it can be paralyzing."

It's an interesting paradox. Even in today's on-demand media culture, viewers still sometimes want the option of watching what someone else has chosen for them.

And The Simpsons isn't the only show giving viewers this kind of choice.

Earlier this year, the creators of South Park cut a deal with Hulu worth a reported $80 million, selling streaming rights to all 240+ episodes of the show for the Hulu Plus subscription site.

Fans can also visit SouthParkStudios.com to see a smaller collection of about 30 episodes (including new episodes one day after they air on Comedy Central), read a wiki and blogs, create an avatar of themselves in the South Park animation style and more.

Media

HBO GO Available To Non-Cable Subscribers In 2015

Earlier this week, Hulu also announced plans to add episodes of Viacom-owned series such as Ren & Stimpy and The Daily Show to their libraries. Given recent announcements of stand-alone digital services from HBO and CBS, there's now a host of online platforms using libraries of TV reruns to build an audience that's independent from cable TV or broadcasters or even television sets.

This is quite a long way from where TV reruns started.

Rebroadcasts of old shows have always been moneymakers for the TV business. Decades ago, reruns of shows like Leave it to Beaver and Gilligan's Island were appointment viewing for kids after school, turning the shows into treasured icons for a generation and keeping young fans watching television.

Later, as cable channels began to evolve, they used reruns to fill 24-hour schedules and build their identity before developing original shows. Both TNT and A&E used old Law & Order episodes that way, sometimes airing the shows four times a day.

Now reruns provide the same service for online platforms like Netflix, Hulu and Simpsons World.

It's another interesting paradox; once again, TV reruns have brought viewers' love for old shows together with new technology to shape TV's future.