Issue Position: Voting Rights

Issue Position

Voting Rights

Free and Fair Elections.

Throughout our history, people have fought and died for the right of every eligible citizen, regardless of race, gender, or status, to vote in free and fair elections. Our electoral environment must be a reflection of those courageous efforts: an expansion of voting opportunity, ease of accessibility, and inclusiveness of all voters. Unfortunately, rather than being a shining example of voting progress, North Carolina Republicans have instead sent our state back to an embarrassing era of restriction and discrimination.

North Carolina Republicans have enacted the most restrictive voting law in the country. By reducing early voting, eliminating same-day registration, and mandating strict photo identification, Republicans have done everything in their power to limit voting rights to those that they favor.

Take a look at the facts: in 2012, North Carolina featured over 2.5 million early voters, 150,000 same-day voting registrants, and 318,000 voters without "proper" state-issued identification. In each of these categories, as a percentage of the population, Democratic voters and African-Americans disproportionately constituted those numbers. And don't just take my word for it -- the law's discriminatory intent has spurned the United States Department of Justice to challenge the law as a violation of the Federal Voting Rights Act.

Let's face it -- at best, this Republican voter restriction law is purely a political power grab; at worst, it is textbook discrimination against a targeted minority. If there was ever a setting to resurrect the term "voter suppression" for the modern era, that setting is right now, in our own state, and within the Republican Party.

Graig will fight for the restoration of voting rights in North Carolina. This fight is not borne out of ambition or a legislative agenda. It is borne out of the grief and disappointment of seeing a new generation of our neighbors, friends, and families being deprived of their vote. Graig looks forward to the day when all NC citizens can be confident in their right to vote.

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