ELECTION RESULTS: Triad voters pass NC constitutional amendment, say no to sales tax increase for public education

On Tuesday evening, results showed that NC voters voted to pass the constitutional amendment that was on the ballot while Guilford County voters voted against a sales tax increase that would have been used to raise pay for educators and school staff.

At the state level, the constitutional amendment would change wording to note that only a citizen of the US who is at least 18 years old shall be entitled to vote at any election.

The wording of the change is as follows: “Constitutional amendment to provide that only a citizen of the United States who is 18 years of age and otherwise possessing the qualifications for voting shall be entitled to vote at any election in this State.”

Critics of the amendment noted that protections already exist barring anyone who is not a citizen from voting.

The bill, HB1074, was a Republican-backed measure that would replace the part of the Constitution that states that “every person born in the United States and every person who has been naturalized” is entitled to vote. Several human-rights and immigrant-rights groups including the NC Justice Center, Democracy NC and El Pueblo have spoken out against the amendment.

More than 77 percent of voters voted in favor of the change to the state constitution.

At the local level, Guilford County voters failed to pass a quarter-cent sales tax increase that would have raised around $25 million per year for education — raising pay for teachers, bus drivers and other school staff by raising the sales tax rate from 6.75 percent to 7 percent. 

But when voters stepped into the voting booth to fill out their ballots, they didn’t see any specific language on the page indicating that this is what the tax increase was for.

The wording for the referendum was as follows: “Local sales and use tax at the rate of one-quarter percent (0.25%) in addition to all other State and local sales and use taxes.”

According to a report by WXII, Skip Alston explained that “efforts to change state law to include more information on the referendum were blocked by the North Carolina Senate.”

“That didn’t allow us to be able to put that language on the ballot, what this quarter, since sales tax, would be going towards,” Alston told WXII.

More than 60 percent of voters voted against the sales tax increase.