During the first week of early voting in North Carolina, civil rights groups operating voter intimidation hotlines in the state received more than a dozen alarming calls from voters and residents about the distribution of Spanish-language signs at polling places warning non-residents not to vote. it is already illegal and rare.
More than 500 of these bright yellow signs have been placed across the state by the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, an organization affiliated with the Election Integrity Network, a coalition of conservatives “dedicated to securing the legality of every American vote.” .
The Election Integrity Network is led by Cleta Mitchell, a once-liberal Democratic lawmaker in Oklahoma who has built a vast conservative apparatus that promotes falsehoods about non-citizen voting. Mitchell, a lawyer, also played a key role in overturning Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.
In North Carolina, signs read in Spanish: “WARNING: If you are not a citizen of the United States of America, you cannot vote in elections. It’s illegal! It’s a crime. 18 US Code § 611. You can be deported. Don’t do it!”
Kathleen Roblez, a senior voting rights counsel and litigation manager at Forward Justice, a legal organization that helps operate one of the voter intimidation hotlines, said they recently received a call from a poll worker in Durham County, who reported seeing the sign outside her polling location and expressed concern about possible voter intimidation of Latino voters.
By Friday, the organization had received similar reports from people in eight provinces. Earlier this week, Forward Justice sent a letter to the North Carolina State Board of Elections calling for the signs to be removed because they constitute “unlawful voter intimidation.”
The letter was co-signed by nearly two dozen organizations, including the North Carolina chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This is clearly not very welcoming, especially to someone who is a new American voter” and to those who are monolingual Spanish speakers or speak Spanish as their first language, said Jaclyn Maffetore, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of North Carolina.
While the state Board of Elections has not responded to the letter, it has said they do not have the authority to remove the signs from polling places because they “accurately reflect the law” and there is no evidence that eligible voters are misusing the signs understand.
But in practice, the signals have the “practical effect of intimidation” not only of people new to the electorate, but also of voters in households where the immigration status of each family member varies, Maffetore said. “In our opinion, the signals are unnecessary.”
It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections in North Carolina and at the federal level — and illegal voting rarely happens.
Nationally, a study of the 2016 election conducted by the Brennan Center found that of the 23.5 million votes cast, election officials found only about 30 instances of potential voting by noncitizens. Data from the research organization Cato Institute and conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation also show that the number of non-citizens who voted illegally in the US in subsequent elections was negligible.
In North Carolina, a 2016 election audit of state elections found that illegal voting by noncitizens is extremely rare. 41 cases were identified in elections involving nearly 4.8 million voters. When election officials removed 747,000 ineligible registrations from their voter rolls last month, only nine noncitizens were identified as registered voters.
These numbers seem to indicate that the North Carolina Election Integrity Team’s signals are mainly seen by “people who have the right to vote, are legally registered U.S. citizens who are going to vote and happen to speak Spanish,” Maffetore said.
A warning to voters – but only in Spanish
Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, emphasized that illegal voting by noncitizens is more common than it actually is, citing sporadic cases that fit into a broader political strategy by Republicans to make election integrity a cornerstone of their message campaign.
Womack, who is also chairman of the Lee County Republican Party, said the bright yellow signs his groups have posted around the state “contain nothing threatening,” adding that they are intended to protect noncitizens and “dissuade them from to deter from committing a crime. “
In response to criticism from groups who say the signs are intended to unfairly target Latino voters in general because they are only in Spanish, Womack said the organization did not have enough money to print the signs in multiple languages. That’s why they preferred to distribute them in Spanish, based on Homeland Security data showing that “more than 70% of all immigrants are fluent in Spanish.”
Womack believes the signs are proving to be effective and says he has received reports from volunteers at several polling places “where apparently Latina voters have stopped, read the sign and left” the polling place.
“We don’t know if it was because they chose not to commit a crime or if they just wanted to read the sign,” he said. When asked if this meant Spanish-speaking Latino voters might be distracted from voting, Womack responded, “I cannot confirm the veracity of the reports … I am hopeful that it will help educate and inform.”
“We must not provoke, interrogate or intimidate any voter,” Womack added.
Roblez and Maffetore urged voters to contact their respective organizations or call a hotline if they encounter problems at polling places and report any concerns.
Early voting in North Carolina ends on November 2.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
