Stating that “churches are an unconstitutionally hostile environment for nonreligious voters,” the North Carolina State Board of Elections has been asked by the American Humanist Association (AHA) to cease allowing the use of churches as polling places.

The AHA’s legal department, the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, sent a letter on May 31, 2012, to State Board of Elections Executive Director Gary O. Bartlett saying that state and federal law requires that “appropriate polling places must be neutral civic locations, welcoming to all voters,” and “the use of churches as polling places is, in addition to being a violation of state law, unconstitutional.”