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John, can I tell you a secret?
Even as an elected official, sometimes I walk into the voting booth on election day, get toward the bottom of my ballot, and sit there and think, “I wish I knew more about any of these names.”
We elect a lot of offices in North Carolina—a legacy of the progressive, fusionist politics of the early 20th century that believed electing everything from coroner to dogcatcher made our government more accountable.
And there’s certainly an argument for that, but it also means that a lot of the time, it can be genuinely hard to know who to vote for, especially in a lot of the local races where candidates may not even have the funding to do much more than put out a few yard signs to get their names out in front of the public.
It leads to an effect called “voter dropoff”, where the further down the ballot your race is, the less likely it becomes that any given voter will even bother making their voice heard.
A good illustration of this was here in Mecklenburg County in 2020, where nearly 570,000 total votes were cast—but when you look at the data, by the time you get to the very bottom of the ballot (Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisor, if you’re curious), only 300,000 of those voters were still filling in bubbles.
A graph showing 2020 vote totals by office in Mecklenburg County, NC [[link removed]]
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s almost half of all voters who basically gave up before they reached the end of the ballot.
Voter dropoff and our long ballot is just one of a lot of reasons why it can be hard to run for office in North Carolina— and it tends to be a bigger problem for Democrats than for Republicans.
In 2020, just in Mecklenburg County, one of our bluest Democratic strongholds, about 10,000 of the folks who voted for Governor dropped off before they got to the judicial races. As a result, Cheri Beasley lost on the same ballot that carried Roy Cooper to victory—by just 401 votes statewide.
John, I can’t help but wonder what our state might look like today if even a few more of those 10,000 voters in Mecklenburg had actually voted for somebody for Chief Justice.
But here’s the other side of this coin: we can combat voter dropoff by running strong candidates at the top of the ticket who will work hard to support other Democrats up and down the ballot.
By speaking to the issues that everyday North Carolinians really care about and by showing them that Democrats will build a state government that actually gives a damn about them, we can excite voters and encourage them to turn out for every race—even the ones they might have to do a little hunting for.
But running that kind of comprehensive campaign isn’t cheap. There’s a reason why we haven’t seen many of our candidates leverage that kind of strategy before, and it isn’t because they wouldn’t like to. It’s because finite resources mean making tough decisions about who and what to prioritize.
That’s why I’m going all-in on gathering as much grassroots fundraising support as I possibly can, as early as I possibly can—because when we have more, we can do more. If we reach the ambitious goals we’ve set, then we can run the kind of campaign that will not only flip the Treasurer’s office, but will help elect other Democrats up and down the ballot right alongside me.
So if you believe that we shouldn’t have to pick and choose—if you believe we should have the resources we need to fight for every single voter and make sure they vote their entire ballot—then I hope I can count on you to make a contribution to my campaign. As we saw in 2020, voter dropoff can have real, material consequences for our state, but with your support, I know we can overcome it. [[link removed]]
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Thanks for sticking with me,
Wesley Harris
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Wesley Harris is a North Carolina native and the only PhD economist in the General Assembly. First elected in 2018, he has been fighting hard for the residents of southern Mecklenburg County and working to make our state the best place in the country to live, work, and start a family. Now, Wesley is running for Treasurer to make an investment in our state's greatest asset, its people. Together, Wesley believes that we can unlock the potential of our people and build opportunity for every North Carolinian.
www.harrisfornc.com [[link removed]]
Paid for by Wesley Harris for NC
Wesley Harris for NC
P.O. Box 77764
Charlotte, NC 28271
United States
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