ELECTION PROTECTION AND ADMINISTRATION
Who Are North Carolina's 1.5 Million Missing Voters?
More than 1.5 million North Carolinians are considered “missing voters,” individuals who are eligible to vote but either aren’t registered to vote or aren’t participating in elections, according to “North Carolina’s Missing Voters,” a joint report released by Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) and Dēmos, a national nonprofit public policy organization.
Recent elections in North Carolina have been marred by false allegations of voter fraud based on the claim that the state’s voter rolls are bloated with “ineligible” voters.
But the real threat to our democracy is just the opposite: too many people don’t register to vote and don’t show up at the polls. As a result, public officials are chosen by a fraction of the electorate and legislative bodies are not truly representative of the people.
In the report, SCSJ and Dēmos found these 1.5 million missing voters, nearly 20% of the state’s estimated 8 million eligible voters, are more likely to be young, Black, or Latino, according to public data analysis — an indication of how barriers to the ballot disproportionately silence and harm communities of color.
These missing voters include:
- At least 500,000 people who are eligible to vote but not registered to vote; and
- Nearly 1 million infrequent voters who are registered to vote but haven’t participated in the last two federal elections.