North Carolina Woman Faces Jail Time For Voting. Here's Why.

NORTH CAROLINA — A Hoke County woman is facing two felony charges and the prospect of spending more than three years behind bars for voting in the 2016 election. Why? She was on probation at the time she cast her vote.

Prosecutors have accused Lanisha Bratcher, 32, of illegally voting while on probation for a felony assault charge, which is against the law in North Carolina. Bratcher contends that she didn't know that voting while on probation was illegal. The case highlights the need for improving voting rights education for those in the court system and, argues her attorney, is an example of continued racial disenfranchisement in the state, according to a recent report in The Guardian.

Bratcher first learned of the charges levied against her more than two years after polls closed. In July 2019, there was a knock on her door, and when her partner opened it, officers "burst into their North Carolina home 'like the Dukes of Hazzard'" with a warrant for her arrest, she told the Guardian.

Bratcher was one of four Hoke County voters investigated for suspected illegal voting in the 2016 election. All four defendants are Black.

Prosecutors charged her with a Class I felony for illegally voting while serving a criminal sentence. In North Carolina, a misdemeanor conviction does not affect voting eligibility, but a felony conviction does. Convicted felons are not legally allowed to vote until they complete all the terms of their sentence, including any probation or parole, according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement.

The punishment for attempting to register to vote or casting a ballot while serving a sentence is considered a felony, and does not require evidence that the accused knowingly intended to violate the law.

“I had no intention to trick anybody or be malicious or any kind of way,” Bratcher told The Guardian. “If you expect us to know that we should know we should not do something, then we should not be on the list or even allowed to do it.”

According to the North Carolina election board, there's reason to believe many felons do not know they're breaking the law when they participate in elections due to the lack of standardized communication.

In interviews with the Hoke county defendants accused of voter fraud, election officials noted that most admitted to voting while on probation, parole or supervised release; however, "the interviews also established a wide pattern of defendants who stated they were never informed of their loss of voting rights upon conviction and sentencing," the voting board told the district attorney.

Prosecutors ratcheted up the charges against Bratcher in recent weeks, replacing the initial charge with two grand jury felony indictments accusing her of lying on both her voter registration and early voting form, the Guardian said. If convicted, she faces 19 months in prison on each charge.

The core of North Carolina's "strict liability" felony charge for voting while serving a criminal sentence has a dark past.

It's a late 19th century, post-Civil War era law that was originally designed to curtail the African-American vote, Catawba College history professor Gary Freeze told The Guardian. "White supremacists did not want [another] reform effort – hence the severe penalty for those who could be proven to be voting with a criminal background,” he said.

According to data provided to the newspaper by state election officials, 441 felons were accused of voting in the 2016 election in North Carolina, 68 percent of whom were African American.

Bratcher's attorney, John Carella, argues that the prosecution of the law is a Jim Crow-eara tactic still being used to intimidate Black voters.

“In response to being made aware of the explicitly white supremacist history of the law and the unconstitutional way in which it was applied, the DA decided, rather than to dismiss or back off those charges, to essentially double down with more felonies and try to prevent that history and that unconstitutional challenge from being aired in court,” he told The Guardian.

Bratcher's case offers a stark contrast to the handling of a massive voter fraud case that prompted an election do-over for the 2018 election for North Carolina's 9th district Congressional seat.

In what was one of the more dramatic races in the state's 2018 midterm election, Republican candidate Mark Harris declared victory with fewer than 1,000 votes separating him from his Democratic challenger Dan McCready. State election officials, however, refused to certify the results due to patterns of irregularities and fraudulent activities related to absentee mail ballots. The case led to charges against a political operative hired by Harris who is accused of vote manipulation in Harris' favor.

A week after Bratcher was indicted, the Atlanta Black Star reported, Harris — who is white — was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing.