In the 11 years since I founded You Can Vote (YCV), I’ve learned that the pathway to civic engagement starts with voter registration. Voter registration serves as an on-ramp to civic life in America. It helps students and young people get involved in their communities, enables new citizens to become full participants in our democracy, and serves as a vital part of the re-entry process for North Carolina residents with past felony convictions. Voter registration is a fundamental part of our nation’s democracy and one that we should be expanding, not contracting.
A bill recently introduced in the North Carolina House of Representatives (House Bill 127) would make You Can Vote’s current work a crime. We would no longer be able to help voters get registered in the communities where they live, work, or attend school. We are frequently told by voters that they wouldn’t have voted if they hadn’t seen YCV at an event and gotten registered. This bill would also prevent us from assisting incarcerated voters, from working with high schools to register or pre-register young voters as soon as they gain eligibility, from making sure that college students are registered at the address where they intend to vote, and from being the trusted voter services provider that You Can Vote has become for over 650 community organizations across our state.
Voter registration rates are high in North Carolina because so many stakeholders are involved. According to Carolina Demography, North Carolina had about 8.5 million voting-eligible adults and 7.6 million registered voters as of September 28th, 2024. With an 89.4% registration rate, our state has one of the highest registration rates in the country. Yet, at any given time, approximately 1 million state residents are potentially eligible to vote but not yet registered, either because they just became eligible, just moved, or because they have faced barriers in the past.
You Can Vote is one of many organizations that reach out to these voters to assist them with the registration process. In addition to nonpartisan nonprofits like YCV, libraries, high schools, colleges, social service providers, advocacy groups, and political parties also get involved. Our collective goal should be to create seamless pathways to civic engagement so that every eligible citizen is registered at their current address and knows when, where, and how to cast their ballot. Having more groups involved means that more citizens have the opportunity to become voters.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections already has strict rules to protect voters’ privacy during the voter registration process. You Can Vote provides extensive training to our staff, volunteers, and partners annually to comply with state voter registration laws, including free best practice guides, FAQs, and tip sheets to ensure registration forms are filled out and submitted in accordance with the law. Rather than limiting access, the General Assembly could work to bring more citizens into the political process.
Here are three ways we could increase voter registration and engagement in North Carolina:
Expand Online Voter Registration to all NC residents. Currently, online voter registration is only available to preexisting customers of the NC DMV. New residents and young people without a NC ID or driver’s license cannot take advantage of this system. The current online registration process is run on an e-commerce platform designed to renew motor vehicle registrations and involves adding voter registration to a user’s cart, leading people to believe that they have to pay to register online. Pass Automatic Voter Registration. As the Brennan Center for Justice writes, “Automatic voter registration makes registering “opt-out” instead of “opt-in.” Eligible citizens who interact with government agencies, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, are registered to vote or have their existing registration information updated automatically, unless they actively decline.” Because this information is transmitted electronically through automated systems, it also saves state and local boards of elections money by removing the need for manual entry of data from paper registration forms and would cut down on human errors. Enact Same-Day Registration on Election Day. Currently only available during Early Voting, expanding the use of same-day registration would increase the number of voters able to make their voice heard. Citizens would simply bring the necessary documentation to their local polling place to get registered or update their address and have the opportunity to cast their ballots on the same day.Let’s hope lawmakers consider these facts and concerns and ultimately choose to focus on expanding opportunities to participate in our democracy, rather than limiting them.
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