---
title: "Organizers Court the Black Voters the Parties Forget, With the Midterms Weeks Away"
description: "New data show the share of Americans living under the most restrictive voting laws who are Black has nearly doubled in five years"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-10-13T11:00:00Z
modified: 2026-10-13T18:05:50Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/organizers-court-the-black-voters-the-parties-forget-with-th-43de39
language: en
tags: ["politics", "elections", "voting-rights", "democracy", "mississippi", "us"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Organizers Court the Black Voters the Parties Forget, With the Midterms Weeks Away

*New data show the share of Americans living under the most restrictive voting laws who are Black has nearly doubled in five years*

By rews desk · October 13, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/organizers-court-the-black-voters-the-parties-forget-with-th-43de39

## In brief

- Organizers are targeting students, first-time voters and the formerly incarcerated in the South before the midterms
- A comedian-led SPLC tour is visiting five Mississippi campuses including Coahoma Community College
- 86 million eligible voters, about a third of the country, live in states that tightened voting laws over five years
- The Black share of those in the most restrictive states nearly doubled, from 27% to over 48%
- A North Carolina group pairs legal aid with voter work for people with felony convictions

With Election Day weeks away, organizers across the South are courting the voters the political parties rarely reach: college students, first-time voters and people with felony convictions, as [Capital B reported](https://capitalbnews.org/black-voters-voting-rights-outreach-south/) on Tuesday.

The outreach takes several forms. A five-stop campus tour in Mississippi is led by Rita Brent, an Emmy-winning comedian from Jackson, working with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Other groups have transformed campus spaces into art installations with voter registration on-site. And in North Carolina, a legal-services group is building turnout among formerly incarcerated people.

At Coahoma Community College in Clarksdale last month, students played a game called Levels and heard the history of the ballot at a tour town hall. Among them was Kamora Greggs, a 19-year-old health and kinesiology major and first-time voter, who had just visited home in Jackson, three hours away, where her mother told her to vote. “And don’t have anybody change your mind about what you want to do,” Ms. Greggs recalled her saying. “It really impacted me and made me want to actually get out there and spread the word and make sure other people my age know that it’s a good idea to get registered to vote,” she said of the event.

![Three students gather at an outdoor campus table, where a seated student gestures toward two standing students beside papers and a slotted box.](https://rews.cc/img/9311b0752af385488100e557ebc28e129b6a90c0.webp)

“To witness young people who are not only civically engaged but genuinely concerned about the state of our communities, our country, and the world gives me tremendous hope,” Ms. Brent said.

Organizers told Capital B that since the weakening of the Voting Rights Act, attention has shifted to the South, a region shaped by decades of suppression, gerrymandering and court fights like Louisiana v. Callais. In Mississippi, an appeals court recently declined to overturn a lifetime voting ban for certain felony convictions written into the state constitution, under which nearly 60 percent of those stripped of the ballot are Black. The state offers neither early voting nor drop boxes.

Over the past five years, 86 million eligible voters, about a third of the country, have come under states that passed more restrictive voting and election laws, according to a new report from the Movement Advancement Project, drawn from its years-long Democracy Maps tracking of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Thirteen states gave their legislatures power to interfere in local election administration, at least eight passed stricter voter ID laws and 16 banned drop boxes, more than triple the number in 2021.

![A hand holds a blank ballot beside a maze of dark blue walls, with a teal ballot box beyond the maze on a coral background.](https://rews.cc/img/ba3ea28c78f858205dc94597119581fb93015605.webp)

“It was really striking that we saw that the Americans who live in the states with the most restrictive voting laws are disproportionately Black,” said Brian Hinkle, the report’s author. “While that was also true in 2021, the proportion has nearly doubled in the last five years, from 27% to over 48%.” A voter in Atlanta and a voter in Denver, he added, “are going to head to the polls under fundamentally different sets of rules.”

“For folks to be working so adamantly to make people feel like their votes don’t matter, that’s a problem,” said Waikinya Clanton, the SPLC’s Mississippi director. “So many people have felt disillusioned by the fact that they don’t feel like their vote matters.”

Daryl Atkinson’s potential electorate is enormous. Nationally, an [estimated 19 million people](https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/directlyimpacted2025.html) live with felony convictions. In North Carolina, where his Second Chance Federation works, a person with a felony record can vote once a sentence or supervision ends, but only about half show up at the polls, Mr. Atkinson said, which is why the parties mostly ignore them. His group trades legal help, with a driver’s license or court fees, for engagement: showing up at a community event or working a phone bank. “We believe those people are sleeping giants to a more inclusive, vibrant, and multiracial democracy,” he said. “We engage our people around their most pressing legal needs. But we do that in a way that’s not charity.”

![A giant draped figure holds hands with three people walking across a rocky landscape toward a river and a large orange setting sun.](https://rews.cc/img/75c4e03c466260f5ed3cb798f2e568f8ffd7c989.webp)

Madison Nichols-Harris, 19, another Coahoma student, will cast her first ballot in November. She had heard “Just go vote” more times than she could count, without anyone explaining why it matters, and she blamed social media for some of her generation’s disengagement. A panelist’s account of how hard Black people and women fought for the franchise left her, she said, energized in a way she could not explain. “If we bring more conversations about voting and about what’s going on in the world today, I feel like it can change minds.”

The SPLC says it has doubled down on reaching young people with children’s books, workshops and games, aiming for engagement that outlasts a single Election Day. “Voter suppression impacts everything from your healthcare, your quality of education, to your roads, your bridges, your water that’s coming out of your faucet,” Ms. Clanton said. “All of that is connected to your vote.”

Ms. Greggs left the Clarksdale town hall planning to get more of her classmates involved before November.