Same-day registration a hit in North Carolina
This year was the first "big election" test of North Carolina's new same-day registration and voting law, and results show it was a huge success.
The law, which passed last year, allows voters to register and vote at over 200 one-stop voting centers across the state after the voter registration deadline has passed and up until a few days before the election.
This year, over 22,000 North Carolinians took advantage of one-stop registration and voting, according to an analysis by the New York think tank Demos. As a result, many who might have been locked out of the process were able to participate, Demos said in a statement:
African Americans comprised 44 percent of the Same Day registrants and voters on May 6; whites made up 45 percent of the total. Thousands of other previously registered North Carolinians who had moved from their previous home counties were able to update their voter registration records and cast valid ballots. Absent Same Day Registration, tens of thousands of eligible North Carolina voters would not have been able to participate in this year's presidential primary.
(H/T to reader PW)
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Chris Kromm
Chris Kromm is executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and publisher of the Institute's online magazine, Facing South.