“The Tar Heel state is ground zero in the intentional, surgical efforts by Republicans to suppress the voice of voters,” Rev. William Barber, president of the N.C. NAACP, said in a press release.
Allied Progress, a nonprofit organization that works to hold special interest groups accountable, released a report Oct. 26 calling out election officials for allowing partisanship and racial animus to influence their policy decisions.
Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress, said he thinks there are good Republicans and Democrats, both of which can administer free and fair elections.
“But when an election official expresses a partisan motivation for changes to the system, whether it’s in how the election will be administered or what they’re going to do with early voting or what they’re going to do with voter registration — that’s when it becomes problematic,” he said.
The N.C. NAACP said voters’ registrations were cancelled after single mailings ware returned to the sender as undeliverable — which suggested a unconfirmed change in residence — and some residents were not notified that their voter registration was challenged.
The N.C. NAACP said the The National Voting Registration Act only allows states to cancel voter registrations if the voter confirms the change in residence in writing or if the voter, after receiving a notice, fails to respond or vote for two federal election cycles.
Frisch said there are local officials with partisan motivations or racial animus who have worked to cut down on early voting — which he said is particularly popular among African-Americans and Democrats.
