In the weeks before North Carolina’s primary, two things happened that many voters never heard about, and together, they tell you everything you need to know about the state of voting rights in this state.
First, just weeks before the primary election, the State Board of Elections (SBE) sent approximately 241,000 letters to registered voters, a list overrepresented by Black and brown voters, suggesting that their registrations may be invalid and causing concerns among voters that they could be turned away at the polls. Next, we were faced with the elimination of Sunday voting in multiple counties and the closure of Early Voting sites on multiple college campuses– including the nation’s largest HBCU.
Taken separately, each of these situations can be explained away as “administrative error” or “logistics changes.” However, when you look at these things together and view them against the arc of North Carolina’s past and recent electoral history, they reveal what organizations like Forward Justice see as deliberate, strategic, and familiar patterns of making it harder for Black voters to participate in our democracy.
We have been here before.
In 2016, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down North Carolina’s monster voter suppression law in NAACP v. McCrory. The court found that the legislature had targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision.” That phrase has haunted organizers, attorneys, and everyday North Carolina voters ever since. To be clear – the tactics have not stopped, they have evolved. Literacy tests became restrictive voter ID laws, racial gerrymandering became “partisan” gerrymandering, and poll taxes became polling place closures. Through all of this, the target remains the same: Black, brown, and low-income voters.
In 2025, our legislature once again wielded their scalpels in another attempt to dilute and silence the Black vote; this time attacking Eastern North Carolina’s historical Black Belt communities by redrawing Congressional District 1 (“CD1”) and Congressional District 3 (“CD3”). I am a resident of CD1, where the proportion of Black voters was originally about 40%. Under the new maps, that representation dropped to 32%. Advocates immediately sued in opposition, but the maps were upheld by N.C. Courts. Though they hide behind the term “partisan” in their reasoning for redistricting, it is clear that the true goal was to minimize the voice of Black voters.
Think about what the 241,000-letter campaign accomplished, regardless of intent. It created doubt, fear, and communicated to hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom had been registered and voted in North Carolina elections for decades, that maybe they were not really voters after all. The letter came on the heels of a highly publicized election challenge based on voter registration data and the NCSBE’s own Registration Repair Project, causing additional anxiety and confusion for voters.
For communities that have spent generations fighting for voting rights, access, and equity, that doubt is not just a minor clerical inconvenience; it is a weapon. Confusion and fear suppress turnout just as effectively as a locked polling place door. You do not have to stop people from voting if you can convince them they are not allowed to try.
For decades, voters have tried to participate in a democratic process that would give them a voice and leverage in a country that has consistently turned a deaf ear to their needs. Enacting a voter ID law, citing identity concerns, all while intentionally excluding forms of ID commonly held by Black and Brown communities, or increasing the scrutiny on absentee ballots for “security” purposes, while dismissing thousands of ballots for minor discrepancies, are prime examples. At every step of the way, voters were met with schemes and plots wrapped in a bow to silence their voices and strip their power.
This is why organizations like Forward Justice exist, alongside our partners across the voting rights ecosystem. Not because we assume bad faith in every administrative decision, but because the history of this state—the documented history, affirmed by federal courts—demands that we watch, analyze, and stay ready to act. The Fourth Circuit called it surgical precision, but it’s something advocates have described for years. Our job is to make sure that when these patterns reassert themselves in new forms, they meet precise, sharp, and strategic resistance.
In the days leading up to the primary, our team worked alongside partner organizations to provide emergency voter assistance, connect justice-involved voters with legal resources, and monitor the provisional ballot process. The moment called for us to show up, so that is exactly what we did. When people faced aggressive electioneering, we contacted election officials to ensure that conduct guidelines were enforced to protect the safety and comfort of voters. When we were notified of police traffic stops set up outside a polling place in a diverse community, we deployed staff to the area to investigate and determine appropriate advocacy or de-escalation measures.
While we will continue to fight, one thing is certain: we should not have to fight this battle every single cycle. The fact that we do, and the fact that each election brings new variations on the same old theme, is itself an indictment of the system. North Carolina has extraordinary Black political organizing, powerful civic energy, and deep voting rights legal infrastructure. All of that exists because the alternative is yielding the field to those who would rather Black voters stay home.
So yes, North Carolina tried to make Black, brown, poor, and young adult voters invisible before the primary through confusion, bureaucratic ambiguity, and challenges designed to exhaust and intimidate. And we fought back the way we always fight back: following the lead of organizers, through legal channels, community partners, information, and with the stubborn conviction that the right to vote is not something that can be taken away.
As we move toward November, perhaps one of the most consequential elections in recent history, we will be ready, we will be watching, and we are not going anywhere.
Ashley Mitchell is a native of Elizabeth City, NC, and a graduate of Wake Forest University and the North Carolina Central University School of Law. As a staff attorney for Forward Justice (FJ), Attorney Mitchell acts as Voting Rights Counsel on various election-related litigation and works closely with FJ’s organizing and communications teams on strategy around research, community outreach, and advocacy efforts. Since the 2020 election season, Attorney Mitchell has been instrumental in leading work with voting rights partners to protect and expand voting rights across North Carolina – specifically in Rural Black, Brown, and low-income communities.
SEE ALSO:
Lessons From North Carolina: A Canary In The Democracy Coal Mine
North Carolina And Texas Primaries Show People’s Appetite For Democracy
