Voting rights group seeks to increase turnout among Black voters in North Carolina.

Turnout in eastern North Carolina could be critical to the outcome of the presidential election and other races on the ballot. All Americans Vote is in the process of registering thousands of voters in the area, many of whom are voting for the first time.

With under six weeks to go until Election Day and North Carolina increasingly looking like it could be the tipping point state to decide the presidency, all eyes are on the Tar Heel state.

It’s not just the presidency on the ballot, though. Voters in North Carolina will decide who they want to be their governor, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction, and represent them in Congress and at the local level. And this year, one group is focused on ensuring the state’s Black voters make their voices heard in the election. 

All Americans Vote (AAV) was founded by Tamer Mokhtar in 2018 with the goal of increasing turnout among minority and young voters. This election cycle, AAV is particularly focused on boosting turnout among Black voters and is in the process of registering thousands of voters in 17 eastern North Carolina counties.

“There’s a huge pocket of about 17 counties in that part of the state where the Black population is between 30% and 60% of the composition of each of those counties,” Mokhtar told Cardinal & Pine.

AAV is reaching voters in a multitude of ways, including door-to-door canvassing, voter registration checks by phone and text message, as well as through sweepstakes at events..

In total, the group has made a $2 million investment in their turnout program, with the hopes of netting around 26,000 new votes — a number big enough to swing key elections in a state where statewide offices have been decided by as little as 401 votes. 

According to Mokhtar, many of the people AAV is reaching in eastern North Carolina say it’s the first time they’ve been contacted about voting.

“Which is remarkable when you think about the margin of victory in North Carolina was 74,000 out of millions of votes cast, it was a tiny margin,” he said, speaking of  Joe Biden’s loss in  North Carolina by just over 1.3% in 2020.

What makes this initiative so unique and why it matters

Every election cycle, campaigns and organizations send organizers and volunteers into communities across the country, only to pack up and return during the midterm elections or the next presidential election.

“The knock on these types of initiatives is that people kind of parachute in after Labor Day, try and extract something from the community, and then they disappear the day after the election occurs,” Mokhtar explained.

He said that AAV is doing things differently. 

“What we did instead was we recognized that this opportunity exists to really get into the community, and we invested in organizers and hiring from within those communities, beginning in January of this year. So we’ve had folks on the ground, going to all kinds of events and getting to know the election administrators, getting to know community leaders,” he explained. 

By having a team on the ground nearly a year before the election, Mokhtar believes trust has been built, and now AAV’s volunteers and organizers can take the next step by turning the people they’ve registered out to vote.

“Those same folks who have been registering voters and talking to voters and knocking on doors, are able to make a respectful request to have people turn out to vote.”

Turn Up, Turn Out!

One component of AAV’s efforts is their Turn Up, Turn Out (TUTO) initiative. TUTO aims to boost turnout among Black and Brown voters through voter registration checks.

Through a series of sweepstakes that were held through events like the Dreamville concert in Raleigh earlier this year, the group conducted 12,451 registration checks, and registered 3,517 people to vote. Forty percent of those who participated in the sweepstakes were from North Carolina.

Entrants were able to participate through social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and by email.

“Essentially what we’re doing is we’re going to big centers of gravity where Black folks convene for festivals and concerts, cultural events, and just integrating incentives for people to check their voter registration status,” Mokhtar explained.

By agreeing to participate in the sweepstakes, entrants have an opportunity to win prizes, which include concert tickets.

“People can enter for a chance to win a VIP experience at one of these things,” he said. “Over 12,000, mostly young, almost entirely Black folks checked their voter registration status, and a dozen of them won a huge VIP experience where they enjoyed themselves.”

What it all means

Mokhtar emphasizes that AAV is dedicated to seeing the process through from start to finish, from the voter registration check to persuading people to turn out and vote. 

“As excited as we are about all these indicators that we’re seeing now, we understand that none of it matters if people aren’t actually voting. So we are 100% dedicated to this idea of pulling people through that process and hopefully leading them all the way to the polling center, where they can go and make sure that they are heard,” he said.

He says that his aim is to continue to evolve the TUTO program post-election, and that the results so far speak for themselves.

“As it pertains to single-event, Black voter registration, I haven’t seen anything in modern history that’s come even close,” Mokhtar said. “We had over 5,000 people in Philadelphia at the Roots Picnic come through, we had 3,000 people at the Broccoli City Festival (in Washington, D.C.), the Usher campaign that we’re doing now has something like 14,000 entrants.”