North Carolina Voter Registration Opportunities and Plans
North Carolina is home to over 1.4 million unregistered eligible voters, and just over 817,000 are Black, Latinx, Asian American, Indigenous and People of Color. 71% of eligible voters of color in the state are active registrants, while 88% of eligible white voters are active registrants. Imagine’s grantees are working hard year after year to close this seventeen point gap. And as North Carolina continues to grow, diversify, and urbanize over the next decade, this work will take on even more importance.
North Carolina does not currently have automatic voter registration, which means that we have to invest more in finding unregistered voters and convincing them to fill out a form–it doesn’t just happen automatically when an eligible voter interacts with a state agency like the DMV. So many of the civic engagement and community organizations on the ground in North Carolina work to register voters at community events, in high-traffic areas like grocery stores, and on college campuses.
Our grantees have collected over 600,000 voter registration applications in North Carolina since 2012. They operate permanent offices, employing long-term, experienced staff that do civic engagement work year round. All new registrants are included in grantees’ get out the vote programs, ensuring they will receive the information they need to turn out and vote in the next election cycle.
Grantees have developed a robust and coordinated plan for 2024 that, if fully resourced early enough, will result in the collection of at least 190,000 voter registration applications.
We are prioritizing registering an additional 30,000-50,000 voters in Mecklenburg County. Our specific need is for early funds so that groups can continue their momentum and reach our goal.
Support Imagine’s grantees in conducting nonpartisan voter registration and get out the vote work in North Carolina by contributing today!
Organizations Conducting Voter Registration in North Carolina (partial list)
NC A. Philip Randolph Institute
NC League of Conservation Voters Foundation
Unifour One
NC Asian Americans Together
Action for the Climate Emergency