Republican lawmakers have postponed hearing a bill that would ban organizations from registering voters at voter registration drives. The bill was removed as crowds rallied at the legislature in opposition to the bill.
House Bill 127, filed by Representative Harry Warren (R-Rowan), would make it a class 2 misdemeanor for voter registration drives to hand out registration forms. Voter registration drives, which are commonly held at political rallies, universities, and churches, assist residents with registering to vote by distributing the registration form and then delivering the completed form to the appropriate election officials.
Under this bill, these drives, which are used by both democrats and republicans, will only be able to distribute sample voter registration forms.
Warren states that the bill’s purpose is to protect people’s private information and protect against identity theft. However, the Center for Public Integrity, while looking into similar laws across the country that limit registration drives, argues “there’s no broader indication of widespread fraud in voter registration drives across the country.”
Anne Webb of Common Cause North Carolina, a voting-rights group, believes this will disenfranchise voters. “It’s an extreme bill that will prevent community organizations from supporting other community members directly in registering to vote, and that can only be viewed as an effort to make it harder to access voting,” Webb said.
She goes on to say that the bill will disproportionately harm some of the state’s most vulnerable voters. Katelin Kaiser, a policy director for another voters’ rights group, Democracy NC, agrees with Webb’s sentiment.
“We know from census data from 2022 that black registrants are nearly twice as likely to report registering through community-based registration programs as white voters,” said Kaiser. “We also know the student population is going to be highly impacted.”
Warren believes that requiring people to submit their own voter registration would make them more likely to vote. Critics, on the other hand, see it as a barrier.
You cannot vote if you are not registered to vote, except in North Dakota, so registration drives have helped voters from every background and political affiliation register so they may express their constitutional right to vote. Removing this ability could mean the loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of potential voters.
“Access to voter registration is something that has been addressed in federal law, and it has been protected under the First Amendment,” Webb said. “We will absolutely be looking very carefully at the implications of this bill for the rights of voters in North Carolina.”
The bill, which was removed from the calendar for House State and Local Government on June 2, has not yet been rescheduled for another hearing.
