Misty Anne Crooks

Since 2013, voting access in North Carolina has become a major political battleground. A right-wing state legislature has been successful in instituting numerous vote restriction measures, despite successful challenges in federal courts. Meanwhile, the state has seen a resurgence of activism around race-based voter suppression. In a historical context in which voting has always existed alongside racialized voter suppression, this project asks what voting does in US socio-political life. I take voting as an assemblage that includes legal, technical, and procedural facets as well as affective attachments and discourses. I trace the realms, factors, and forces that produce voting and how these relations in turn produce effects across social realms. I pay particular attention to the discourses and strategies of Black political groups as an important lens onto the constitution of political life and access. I will do 12 months of fieldwork in North Carolina during and following the 2020 election year. This will include volunteering with voting rights organizations, attendance at government meetings, and interviews with people on both sides of the debate as well as poll workers.