Activists have placed political signs in Spanish telling noncitizens they cannot vote at polling places across Charlotte and North Carolina.
The yellow signs at voting sites were placed by the North Carolina Election Integrity Team.
The signs say that it is a federal offense to vote as a noncitizen, and if one does vote, they could be deported. NCEIT says they created the signs in Spanish because the majority of noncitizens are Spanish-speaking.
The organization combs public voting records to try and find people ineligible to vote in North Carolina.
“North Carolina is woefully inadequate in its processing of non-citizens," Jim Womack, of the NCEIT, said. “They still haven’t started removing non-citizens from the voter rolls, which leaves us no recourse other than to monitor the voter lists and to advise citizens through these signs.”
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. As of Saturday, there were close to 7.8 million people registered to vote in the state.
The signs are factually accurate, but Hector Vaca, of ActionNC, says he thinks the signs are being used to scare Latino voters from the polls.
“It's definitely a targeted effort toward the non-English speaking community and toward the immigrant community," Vaca said. “It's very targeted. So, that's what leads me to believe that these signs are intended to intimidate.”
Vaca encourages those who see these signs to report them to election officials at the polling place.
