Sydney Meeks, NextGen regional organizing director, and Logan Parke, Chapel Hill field organizer, talk to a UNC-CH student during a National Voter Registration Day campus visit. (Photo by Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline)
Groups conducting voter registration drives will have to print their own registration forms, the North Carolina State Board of Elections decided last week, ending its years-long practice of providing such forms themselves.
The board will no longer provide the printed applications to voter registration organizations because of “significant and ongoing costs,” State Board spokesman Patrick Gannon wrote in an emailed statement. After the current printed supply is depleted, he said, the board will cease to provide them.
In 2024, the State Board of Elections provided nearly 1.3 million voter registration applications to voter drive organizations and government agencies, costing the state more than $269,000 in printing costs, Gannon said.
“The physical forms were never intended to be in endless supply,” spokesman Patrick Gannon told NC Newsline in a statement. “The agency will exhaust its current supply by sending them to organizations that have already ordered them.”
Gannon wrote that the Republican-majority board will continue to provide printed forms to individual voters, county boards of elections and other government agencies that provide voter registration services.
“Nothing about this temporary tightening of our practice surrounding voter registration drives changes the fact that any North Carolina citizen who wants a voter registration application will always be able to get one simply by contacting their county board of elections or the State Board,” said Sam Hayes, the board’s executive director.
The NC Board of Elections discusses a resolution on county boards on July 21, 2025 (Photo: Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline)
In 2025, some Republican lawmakers backed a bill to criminalize voter registration drives by private groups. A hearing on House Bill 127 was indefinitely postponed after critics pointed out it violated the federal National Voter Registration Act.
Some voting rights activists say reducing access to the necessary forms might be a roundabout way to accomplish the same goal.
Melissa Price Kromm, executive director of pro-democracy organization North Carolina For The People, said in an interview Tuesday that the decision impairs access to voting for those in rural communities and older adults who often take advantage of voter registration drives, as well as North Carolinians without a driver’s license who cannot register online.
“It’s incredibly important that we have full access for voters, and this kind of, ‘Well, we’re not going to provide it. We don’t have the resources to provide it’ – whatever their argument is, is incredibly suspicious,” Price Kromm said. “I would like them to frankly address what the budgetary reason for this is.”
Price Kromm pointed to the more than 241,000 letters sent to voters in February that the State Board of Elections said had unvalidated identification numbers in their voter files. “Is that why the state doesn’t have sufficient funds to print voter registration forms?” she asked.
Gannon did not respond to an inquiry regarding the cost of those letters or the source of the budgetary shortfall that prompted the decision to halt printing for voter drives.
Some county boards may not be able to afford to print enough applications to meet the needs of residents, Price Kromm said, adding that her coalition has heard from some smaller rural counties that were surprised to have to shoulder those costs. “It’s literally just passing the buck,” she said of the state board’s decision.
The board is in the process of drafting new administrative rules that could allow them to continue providing printed registration forms to “organizations that comply with all requirements for voter registration drives,” Gannon wrote. He did not respond to a request for comment on what those requirements might entail.
Brooks Fuller, a policy director for Common Cause of North Carolina, said that aspect of the statement “turns my antenna on to see what they are considering.”
“The best practice here is of course to make voter registration forms [available] to any group who is permitted to engage in voter registration drives, to make them freely and robustly available and not have the access to the paper form be managed in that way by the state,” Fuller said.
Voter registration applications are available on the State Board of Elections website in English and Spanish. Residents with a North Carolina license or state-issued ID can also register online through the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles website.
The decision to rein in the distribution of the registration forms comes ahead of tightly contested midterm elections in North Carolina, with the state’s 2026 U.S. Senate election expected to be among the most expensive in the country.
Hence then, the article about nc board of elections will no longer provide forms to voter registration drives was published today ( ) and is available on NC news line ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( NC Board of Elections will no longer provide forms to voter registration drives )
Also on site :
- Money Talks: This Season on ‘Industry’
- OSRS Leagues 6: Demonic Pacts release date, rewards and what to expect
- ‘I graduated with £84k student loan debt – I’ve applied for 60 jobs but can only get a part-time shop role’