North Carolina State Board of Elections officials respond to local Latino committee petition

The North Carolina State Board of Elections has replied to a petition from the Latino Civic Engagement Committee — the organization asking that Latino voter turnout data be readily available during elections.

State Board of Elections officials say they’re planning to move forward with including Hispanic demographics in their daily voter report.

Patrick Gannon, the public information director for the board, says the organization will also encourage counties to add ethnicity to their unofficial voter turnouts, but he says they can’t control their course of action and how they publicize voter information.

He says, "The data has always been there. It's just, you know, how we've provided it to the public in a more digestible form. But anybody, for many years, could go into our absentee file and pull that data about ethnicity, about race, about gender and other demographics as well."

Gannon explains this information won’t be available for the 2023 municipal elections, but the board is planning to add ethnicity to their daily voter document that will be published during the 2024 general election. 

This story was produced by a partnership between WFDD and La Noticia. You can read this story in Spanish at La Noticia.

Eileen Rodriguez is a reporter for both WFDD and La Noticia through Report for America, where she covers COVID-19's impact in the Latino Communities.

Periodista de La Noticia y 88.5 WFDD, Eileen Rodríguez reporta el impacto de COVID-19 en la comunidad Latina en Carolina del Norte. Rodríguez es miembro del cuerpo de periodistas de Report for America 2021-2022