Clack the Vote is BACK! The 2026 Non-Partisan Candidate Fair for Charlotte.

Every election year, CLGBTCC opens a room where the people asking for your vote have to answer for it in person. The Non-Partisan Candidate Fair is that room. It is your chance to meet the candidates running in this fall's Charlotte and Mecklenburg County elections, ask what matters to you, hear where they stand, and make an informed decision about the future of your community.

This is not a rally, and it is not an endorsement. No one on our stage is telling you who to vote for. We are in the business of one thing: helping you show up to the ballot informed, prepared, and unafraid to ask a hard question.

Why local elections are the ones that reach you

It is easy to get pulled toward the national headlines and forget that the decisions closest to your daily life get made close to home. School board policies, city council priorities, county services, and the people who run them are all on local ballots, and those races are often decided by a handful of votes.

How close? In a recent nearby mayoral race, the outcome came down to a tie and was settled by a coin flip. One more vote would have changed it outright.

We get so disillusioned by what is happening nationally that we forget how much power your vote has at the local level.

That is the whole reason this fair exists. When you can look a candidate in the eye and ask a direct question, a name on a ballot becomes a person with a record and a set of answers. That is how a vote gets informed.

What Clack the Vote is

The candidate fair is part of Clack the Vote, a non-partisan initiative built to mobilize and educate voters through the power of culture. It is a collaboration between the Carolinas LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce, the Freedom Center for Social Justice, and Charlotte Pride.

To clack a fan is to snap a hand fan hard enough to make a sharp, clapping sound. In queer and faith communities alike, that sound can be celebration or it can be protest. Clack the Vote borrows the gesture and points it at the ballot box, meeting people where they already gather.

The through line is simple. Queer people are everywhere, in every workplace, faith community, and neighborhood, and their right to participate should never be a partisan question.

We are not going to endorse one candidate over another. We are endorsing voting.

Why the Chamber does this

Equality and the economy are not separate conversations. When a community is targeted or made to feel unsafe, the harm shows up in workplaces, in tourism, and in the broader economy, and North Carolina has felt that cost before. A healthy economy depends on every community being able to participate fully, and that includes at the ballot.

So the Chamber treats voter education the way it treats any other form of professional and community development: as something practical you can act on. Meeting candidates, checking your registration, and understanding what is on your ballot are all part of showing up for the place you live and work.

What to expect at the fair

• Meet candidates running in this fall's Charlotte and Mecklenburg County elections
• Ask your own questions and hear where candidates stand on the issues that matter to you
• Learn what will actually be on your ballot, beyond the top of the ticket
• Connect with voter resources, including registration checks and voting guides
• Do it all in a welcoming, non-partisan, community-centered space

Frequently asked questions