With less than two weeks before the 2016 election, Project Vote is pleased to announce an important victory for voters in North Carolina.
As you know, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires states to offer voter registration services through motor vehicle offices and public assistance agencies. Over the past few years, however, North Carolina citizens who registered to vote at DMVs have been turning up at the polls and discovering that they were never added to the voter rolls.
One of our individual plaintiffs, Sherry Holverson, was robbed of her opportunity to vote in the 2014 election, after a DMV office failed to properly process her registration.
“You do everything right and it doesn’t make a difference,” said Sherry, who has been nicknamed “Auntie Sam” because of her own history of helping individuals in her community register and vote. “People have fought to obtain the right to vote, fought to register, and now–even when those battles have been won–you have the state failing to put people on the rolls. The voices of the citizens of North Carolina should not be silenced due to state error.”
Project Vote and our partners sued the state in December on behalf of Sherry and several other institutional and individual plaintiffs. And in March—after many more such North Carolina residents were turned away from the polls during the state’s primary—we asked for the court for a preliminary injunction to protect eligible voters in the November election.
Yesterday, a District Court judge agreed with us, and ordered the state to instruct county boards of election that people not on the rolls, who show up on Election Day and indicate that they registered at a DMV any time since June of 2015, should be allowed to cast a provisional ballot that counts. (Read the press release about the court order here.)
The lawsuit itself will continue: there are other issues to resolve, including broader problems with the state’s NVRA compliance at DMV offices and public assistance agencies. But we are optimistic: in her ruling yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Biggs rejected the state’s motion to dismiss, and indicated that she is likely to agree with us on the vast majority of our legal claims when the case goes to trial.
In the meantime, we’re glad that people who tried in good faith to register to vote at DMV offices will be able to cast a ballot this November. We’ll keep you posted on the rest.
