RALEIGH — The North Carolina State Board of Elections has been sued twice in a week over the state’s voter rolls and registrations.
The North Carolina Republican Party (NCGOP) and Republican National Committee (RNC) first filed a lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) over enforcement Section 44 of Session law 2023-140 that requires election officials to conduct voter list maintenance based on information about noncitizens who seek to be excused from jury duty.
“Only Americans should vote in American elections,” RNC Chair Michael Whatley said in a release. “If someone claims non-citizenship, they must be taken off the voter rolls — that’s the law. The NCSBE has chosen to blatantly ignore the law, undermine basic election safeguards, and neglect a fundamental principle of our election integrity. The RNC and NCGOP defended this law in court, and now we will make sure the NCSBE follows and enforces these critical safeguards in The Old North State.”
The lawsuit claims the NCSBE is refusing to implement Section 44 before the Nov. 5 election despite the law taking effect July 1. The RNC’s press release says the “NCSBE has made zero effort to implement the law before the November election.”
The complaint cites a February 2024 report estimating approximately 325,000 “unauthorized” immigrants in North Carolina out of 501,000 foreign-born noncitizens in the state.
The NCGOP and RNC’s complaint also alleges the NCSBE has violated public records law by failing to respond to requests.
“To date, other than the emails opening the two matters, Plaintiffs have received no communication, nor any production of documents, regarding the public records requests from the NCSBE,” the NCGOP and RNC lawsuit states.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to order the NCSBE to fully respond to their public records requests and develop and implement plans to comply with Section 44.
The NCGOP/RNC’s first lawsuit came after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unsigned 5-4 ruling allowing an Arizona law to implement proof of citizenship requirement in order to register to vote. The RNC had filed a brief in support of the Arizona law. The high court rejected a portion of an RNC request that would have required voters who registered using the standard federal form to provide proof of citizenship before voting for president, either in person or by mail.
The NCGOP and RNC filed a second lawsuit against the NCBSE on Aug. 26. That lawsuit alleges the NCSBE violated federal and state law by accepting over 225,000 voter registration forms that did not collect required identification information (driver’s license number or last 4 digits of SSN) as mandated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
Per the Aug. 26 lawsuit, the NCSBE admitted to using noncompliant voter registration forms but has refused to take corrective action to identify and remove potentially ineligible voters from the rolls.
“The NCSBE has once again failed in its mandate to keep non-citizens off the voter rolls, fueling distrust and jeopardizing our elections,” said RNC Chairman Michael Whatley in a press release. “We are committed to the basic principle — and commonsense law — that only Americans decide American elections. Deliberately failing to follow the law, right before our country’s most important election, is inexcusable. We will fight every day to ensure that NCSBE follows the law, cleans the voter rolls, and protects the vote for North Carolinians.”
“This State Board continually has problems ensuring voter rolls only have verified citizens,” said NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons. “This lawsuit will remedy their ongoing refusal to collect the required information from those who want to take part in North Carolina elections. Accountability and fidelity to following the rule of law is long overdue for the most partisan Elections Board in state history.”
Per the lawsuit, the NCSBE admitted to using noncompliant voter registration forms but has refused to take corrective action to identify and remove potentially ineligible voters from the rolls.
The lawsuit seeks a writ of mandamus and injunction ordering the NCSBE to implement practices ensuring compliance with HAVA and state law and ensure future compliance for voter registration and list maintenance.
Additionally the NCGOP and RNC request the NCSBE to identify and remove ineligible registrants from voter rolls by Sept. 6. The lawsuit also wants the NCSBE to require provisional ballots from affected registrants if removal isn’t feasible.
The day after the second lawsuit was filed, the NCSBE issued a press release of “8 reminders” when registering to vote.
“Now is the time to use the State Board’s Voter Search tool to check your registration and make sure it’s up to date. If you’re eligible to vote but not registered, now is the time to submit an application and make your voice heard in 2024. It’s quick and easy,” NCSBE Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell said in the press release.
The release included a section on the requirements for registering to vote, stating, “To be eligible to register to vote, you must be a U.S. citizen; live in the county where you are registering for at least 30 days prior to Election Day; be at least 18 years old by the date of the general election; and not be serving a felony sentence, including any probation, post-release supervision, or parole.”
North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton called the lawsuits attempting to keep noncitizens from voting “disingenuous attempts to sow doubts” about election integrity in an Aug. 27 press release.
“These Republican lawsuits are the latest in a series of disingenuous attempts to sow doubts about the integrity of the election system, and to suppress voter turnout in the 2024 election,” Clayton said.
“Despite being well aware of the procedures the State Board of Elections maintains to keep our elections secure, the Republican Party waited until just days before voting begins in North Carolina to file yet another frivolous lawsuit attempting to burden North Carolinians’ right to vote,” said Clayton. “North Carolina Democrats will remain relentless in our efforts to ensure that every eligible voter has the information they need to access the ballot box during the 2024 voting period and beyond.”
The NCSBE responded to some of the claims.
“Assertions in the lawsuit that the State Board is refusing to comply with Section 44 of Session Law 2023-140 are categorically false,” a statement from the NCSBE said about the first lawsuit. “We ask that the NCGOP and RNC immediately rescind their press releases on this topic, as they will undermine voter confidence on an entirely false premise.”
The statement on the first lawsuit went on to say Superior court clerks provided the NCSBE with lists of individuals excused from jury duty due to non-citizenship. These lists were compared with voter rolls, resulting in 9 matches statewide.
“If a check of state and federal databases shows any of those 9 individuals have not obtained citizenship, the State Board will send them letters informing the registrants of the agency’s findings and invite them, if not U.S. citizens, to cancel their registrations to comply with the law,” the NCSBE statement said of the matches found.
The NCSBE due to federal law, full removal from voter rolls can’t occur within 90 days of a federal election, which was on Aug. 7, and starting 2025, this data will be part of regular list maintenance by county election boards.
“The State Board has been transparent about this process from the very beginning. Agency staff briefed Republican legislative leadership staff of its compliance plans as early as last November,” the NCSBE statement says. “The State Board informed all election officials, Republican and Democratic, of this program at its publicly open statewide elections conference at the beginning of this month. And agency staff have been traveling the state over the past month, informing clerks of court at their regional conferences of how this program must be carried out this year to comply with federal law. These clerks are both Republicans and Democrats.”
The NCSBE also said “the request for agency records here was not denied,” and the agency responds to numerous requests on a daily basis, adding “Plaintiffs are required to follow up and attempt to resolve their request for records before they sue a state agency. To our knowledge, there was no attempt to follow up on this request.”
The NCSBE said of the second complaint that it “asks for an impossible solution.”
“Despite being aware of their alleged claims months ago, the plaintiffs have waited until two weeks before the start of voting to seek a court-ordered program to remove thousands of existing registered voters,” per statement by the NCSBE. “Federal law itself prevents such removal programs if they take place after the 90th day before a federal election, which was August 7. So, the lawsuit is asking for a rapid-fire voter removal program that violates federal law.”
The NCSBE statement on the second lawsuit said the filing “misunderstands the data and vastly overstates any alleged problems with voter registrations.
The NCSBE statement explained in more detail that voters without driver’s license or Social Security numbers in the database aren’t necessarily improperly registered:
If a voter does not have a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number populated in the voter registration database, that does not necessarily mean that they were allowed to register improperly. Federal law allows voters who lack one of these numbers to nonetheless be registered. State law also allows a registrant whose information fails to exactly match with the DMV or Social Security databases to be verified by showing another type of ID before voting. Such database match problems are well documented, especially with the Social Security Administration.
A common reason is a variation between married and maiden names in different government databases. These voters are also included in the plaintiffs’ alleged figures. And even if voters failed to provide either their driver’s license or last-four digits of their Social Security numbers when they registered, just like voters whose information did not match between databases, those voters would have been required to show another type of ID before voting. Finally, there are plenty of voters who registered before the federal law changed in 2005 to require the submission of a driver’s license number of last-four of a Social Security number.
The result, per the statement on the second case is that “all these voters will be asked to show photo ID again when they vote this year.”
