Thursday, August 24, 2023
North Carolina Asian Americans Together is adamantly opposed to Senate Bill 747 and urges Governor Cooper to veto this harmful bill.
Senate Bill 747, if enacted, threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Asian American voters across North Carolina, as well as other voters across the state.
This bill, if enacted, would discount any mail-in ballots received after 7:30 p.m. on Election Day – even if they were postmarked and sent at a date prior to the election. Over 13,000 mail-in ballots would have been disregarded in the 2020 election under these circumstances. Asian American voters have utilized absentee and early voting more than any other racial demographic over the last three elections — especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when anti-Asian hate was at its peak.
This bill also opens up our elections to increased outside interference and prevents non-profit grant funding for local election centers that has historically been used to provide a safe and accessible polling location. Additionally, it lays the groundwork for discriminatory signature matching programs, which would heavily disadvantage voters who don’t speak English as a first language, including many members of our community.
We ask Governor Cooper to protect the rights of all of our community members and veto Senate Bill 747 to ensure that we can all freely and fairly exercise our right to vote.
I’m not Asian American, but I was really glad to read your statement in response to senate bill 747. The hate crimes committed against Asian Americans in response to the Covid have been deplorable. I’m a poll worker in Durham, NC, not yet scheduled to work but I will go through the training, which I am sure to find very enlightening. The state has a little upwards of a year to prepare for the “important” election, and to my mind the governors’ race is exceedingly important, so I think the sooner groups coordinate and implement creative ways to fight this voter suppression the better. Thanks, Sarah Packard