Advocacy groups from across North Carolina sent a letter Tuesday to the North Carolina State Board of Elections to remove Spanish-language signs that tell noncitizens not to vote.
The letter states the signs target Latino voters and "serve no purpose but to intimidate legally qualified voters from engaging in our political process." Leaders are also asking the NCSBE to release a statement in Spanish letting Spanish-language voters know that they can vote if they are citizens.
So far, the signs have been spotted in Durham, Orange, Granville, Pitt and Mecklenburg counties.
The yellow signs were placed by the North Carolina Election Integrity Team, a nonprofit that combs public voting records to try and find people ineligible to vote in North Carolina.
In a previous interview with WFAE, NCEIT leader Jim Womack said the signs were created in Spanish because the majority of noncitizens are Spanish-speaking.
Federal law states that no person should threaten or intimidate someone for voting or attempting to vote. The NCSBE has also said that voting sites should be welcoming to all eligible voters.
Last month, when the North Carolina Board of Elections removed close to 750,000 records from the state’s voter rolls, only nine noncitizens were identified as registered voters. There are close to 7.8 million people registered to vote in the state.
