Your right to vote could be challenged at the polls. Find out how to avoid registration ‘gotchas.’

Registering to vote in North Carolina – and staying registered – is more tricky than it should be.

Don’t believe it? Take this quick quiz to see how likely you might be to run afoul of a voter registration snafu this year.

Yes or No: After completing your voter registration form you can email it, fax it, turn it in by hand or snail-mail it to your county board of elections.

Answer: Maybe yes, maybe no. Yes, you can submit it any of those ways if you’re changing your name or if you’ve moved to a new address in the same county. But no, you can’t email or fax the form if you’re registering for the first time in your county, or if you’re changing your party affiliation. Get this wrong and your application will be ignored.

Yes or No: You must fill in both the “residential address” and the “mailing address” sections of North Carolina’s voter registration form.

Answer: Again, maybe yes, maybe no. Your mailing address is required if you receive mail at an address different from your street address (typical of college students living in campus dorms). Unless you read the fine print you wouldn’t know that, because this is the only required section of the application that isn’t printed in red to indicate required information. Get this wrong, as many young first-timers do, and your voter registration may be denied without notice.

‘Gotchas’ like these impact significant numbers of would-be voters. In 2016, some 42,000 North Carolina election day voters (one out of every 39) were surprised to learn that problems with their voter registrations would deny them the opportunity to vote a regular ballot. State law offers such problem voters the opportunity to cast ‘provisional’ ballots, but those are counted only if case-by-case reviews find clear evidence of bureaucratic error – which is often impossible to determine. In 2016, fewer than one in four of those problem provisionals were counted.

Some of the denied voters were Republicans (33 percent), others Democrats (35 percent), but all had one thing in common: they were all disenfranchised through the combined effects of a hodge-podge of voter registration laws, board of elections procedures, a badly-designed voter registration form and a confusing board of elections web site.

North Carolina voters can protect themselves from some, but not all, of these ‘gotchas’ by diligently exercising extraordinary efforts.

1. Instead of voting on election day, vote early. During the state’s 18-day early voting period (October 17 through November 3) poll workers will accept and process your voter registration update right on the spot if there’s a problem with your registration. Typical of our state’s bewilderingly inconsistent election laws, such ‘one-stop’ registration is not permitted on election day itself.

2. Always provide all of the ‘optional’ information on your voter registration form, particularly your mailing address, your phone number, and your email address. With this information on file, your county board of elections might contact you if there’s a problem (but don’t count on it; they’re not obliged to).

3. Double-check your completed voter registration form for errors like transposed digits in your house number or zip code, or a misspelled street name. Such all-too-human mistakes leave many additional voters disenfranchised on election day.

4. Try to avoid submitting your voter registration application at the DMV. Convenient as it may be, it’s just too risky. Voter registration forms lost by the DMV are an irritating North Carolina tradition, like tick bites.

5. Check your voter status frequently during election years to catch any problems while you still have time to correct them. The State Board of Elections’ voter search page is on the web here.

6. Consider signing up at NCGoVote.org for our free, non-commercial, nonpartisan Reg Watch service, which alerts you instantly by email if any of the most common problems develop with your voter registration.