You may have received an email which says that if you wear an Obama button or t-shirt to the polls on election day, you will be turned away without being able to vote. In North Carolina, this is false.
I called the Durham County Board of Elections to check. She said that poll workers are not allowed to wear anything that promotes a candidate, but voters can wear whatever they want.* A voter cannot campaign within 50 feet of the polling place; "campaign" means talking to other voters about a candidate or trying to hand out literature. Wearing something with the candidate's name is not campaigning.
This confirms my experience as a poll worker in May. I remembered seeing people on primary day who were festooned with Obama gear -- a shirt, several buttons and a hat on one person -- and no one was challenged. It's probably explained in detail in the poll workers' handbook but I'm too lazy to dig it out. If you want to be sure of your own state, call your local board of elections.
As Georg pointed out, it's interesting (and by interesting I mean shameful) that in a year when record numbers of new voters are expected, emails "warning" of phony limitations on voting rights are already circulating. Who wants to take bets on how long before cards are mailed to African American neighborhoods saying that if they have outstanding traffic tickets and try to vote, they will be arrested?
*I say "anything they want" but I'm not actually sure what would happen if a voter showed up wearing a sandwich board or one of Ray U.'s sign contraptions. Would that be allowed? I'll ask at poll worker training.
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