Southern Voting Rights Project

Project Staff Positions and Contact Information
Tara Purohit, Director
Tara@southernstudies.org

History and Mission of the Project

HISTORY: The 2000 Elections revealed a multitude of problems with elections, such as poor voting equipment, confusing ballots, elimination of voter’s names from voter lists, intimidation of voters at the polls, and overall lack of funding for boards of elections. According to the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, in November 2000, between four and six million Americans who went to the polls were not counted in the presidential election. The Center for Policy Alternatives in Washington D.C., compiling statistics from Federal Election Reform reports, documented three principal reasons why millions are disenfranchised by voting systems on Election Day:

Voters' rights are not made clear to voters or election officials. In 2000, a million more votes might have been counted if voters had demanded, and precinct officials enforced, basic voter rights, including the right to cast a ballot if the voter is in line when the polls close, the right to ask for and receive help, the right to receive a provisional ballot if the voter’s name does not appear on the voter list, and the right to receive a replacement ballot if the voter wants to correct a mistake.
Most Americans use obsolete voting technology. According to Federal Election Reform reports, thirty-two percent of Americans vote using punch card machines, 16 percent use mechanical lever machines, 29 percent use optical scan technology, 12 percent use direct recording electric machines, 0.5 percent vote on paper ballots, and about 10 percent live in counties with mixed systems.
Education and training for Election Day poll workers are woefully inadequate. The 2000 election involved more than 100 million voters going to more than 190,000 polling places staffed by 1.4 million poll workers, many of them volunteers. Ongoing education and training is essential to proper administration of elections. This is difficult to ensure with our highly decentralized voting system.

MISSION: The Southern Voting Rights Project was created to research and document problems with North Carolina elections and to educate voters about the various issues related to election administration throughout the state.

Current Project Activities

HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT (HAVA): After the 2000 elections, Congress passed the Help America Vote, HAVA. The provisions of HAVA impact every aspect of the voting process from voting machines to voter registration and poll worker training. These new procedures and provisions were created to try and prevent the problems many states encountered during the 2000 election. The Southern Voting Rights project works with other groups and citizens to actively monitor the implementation of HAVA in North Carolina.

SAME-DAY REGISTRATION: The Southern Voting Rights participates in the Voting Integrity Partners (VIP) coalition along with several other organizations including North Carolina Fair Share and Democracy North Carolina. Currently, VIP is focusing on building grassroots and legislative support for a Same Day Registration (House Bill 756 and Senate Bill 745) bill now in the North Carolina General Assembly. This bill would allow voters to register and vote at the same time and place during the early voting period. Same day registration is a proven reform. In the six states with Election Day registration, their voter turnout is 6-10% higher than the national average. With 100,000 voters not registered in North Carolina, same day registration could have a strong impact on our voter participation.

Project Reports and Publications - Free
Your rights as a voter in North Carolina.

North Carolina Voter's Bill of Rights

Spanish: North Carolina Voter's Bill of Rights

Project Reports and Publications - Subscription

Resources and Links
U.S. Government
Federal Election Commission (FEC), http://www.fec.gov/
U.S. Department of Justice - Civil Rights Division, http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/

National Organizations and Resources:
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, http://www.maldef.org/
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF), http://www.ldfla.org/
Rock the Vote, http://www.rockthevote.org/index2.html
US Action, http://www.usaction.org/
Center for Policy Alternatives, http://www.cfpa.org/
Center for Voting and Democracy, http://www.fairvote.org/
Demos, http://www.demos-usa.org/
National Voting Rights Institute, http://www.nvri.org/
National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, http://www.bigvote.org/
People for the American Way, http://www.pfaw.org/

Resources
Youth Vote Coalition: http://www.youthvote.org
Project Vote Smart: http://www.vote-smart.org
Election Reform Project: http://www.electionline.org
Open Debates: http://www.opendebates.org
Sentencing Project: http://www.sentencingproject.org

Help America Vote Act (HAVA) resources and list:
American Association of People with Disabilities: http://www.aapd.com
Leadership Council on Civil Rights: http://www.civilrights.org
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund: http://naacpldf.org

NC State Organizations
Democracy North Carolina, http://www.democracy-nc.org
NC League of Women Voters, http://www.lwvnc.org/
NC State Board of Elections, http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/
NC Center for Voter Education, http://www.ncvotered.com/
NC Voters for Clean Elections, http://www.democracy-nc.org/nc/coalitions/ncvce.html

How to Get Involved/Stay Informed
North Carolina citizens wishing to volunteer for this project or receive more information should contact Tara Purohit, Director of the Southern Voting Rights Project at 919-419-8311 x 25.
Tara@southernstudies.org