RALEIGH — North Carolina’s top Republican lawmakers praised the announcement of a Trump administration lawsuit filed against the State Board of Elections last week.
In a May 27 press release, the Department of Justice announced it was suing the State Board of Elections (NCSBE) over its “failure to maintain an accurate voter list in violation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).”
The move was praised by GOP leaders in the state.
“If we don’t have clean voter rolls, we don’t have fair elections,” House Speaker Destin Hall (R-Granite Falls) said in a post on X. “North Carolina must lead on election integrity. No excuses.”
Hall added that he was confident the NCSBE would cooperate with the DOJ.
“It is far past time for the @NCSBE to clean up the voter rolls,” Senate Leader Phil Berger (R-Eden) wrote in an X post. “This is a commonsense way to increase voter confidence, and why I believe shifting the Board to the Auditor’s Office was the right thing for NC.”
The DOJ complaint took aim at voter registrations that it says don’t comply with the law.
“In violation of HAVA’s mandate and clear Congressional intent, the State of North Carolina used a state voter registration form that did not explicitly require a voter to provide a driver’s license or the last four digits of a social security number,” the lawsuit states.
The DOJ’s complaint referred to a past “administrative complaint” that raised the issues with voter registrations having noncompliance issues and noted the NCSBE “only took limited actions to prevent future violations from reoccurring” by adopting a new voter registration form highlighting the required information.
New NCSBE Executive Director Sam Hayes said in a statement to North State Journal that the NCSBE was only recently notified of the lawsuit. He said he was still reviewing the complaint, “but the failure to collect the information required by HAVA has been well documented.”
“Rest assured that I am committed to bringing North Carolina into compliance with federal law,’ Hayes said.
The recent North Carolina Supreme Court race between Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin and Associate Justice Allison Riggs stretched into May after Griffin raised concerns about NCSBE’s failures under HAVA. Griffin’s protests met legal challenges, and two days after a U.S. district court ruling, he conceded the race.
NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons issued a similar statement to that of Hall and Berger.
“We are in full support of this effort to clean up North Carolina’s voter rolls and finally fix the problems that have plagued the @NCSBE for years,” Simmons wrote.
North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton’s response drew a connection to the HAVA issue raised during the state Supreme Court race court case.
“The DOJ lawsuit comes with no shock as we’ve seen Republicans be complicit with stealing elections by throwing out military ballots!” Clayton wrote in a thread on X. “The Republican interpretation of HAVA (help americans vote act) is wrong and none of these changes to the voter registration process are required.
“North Carolina Democrats will remain vigilant in our fight against Trump and the Republican Party’s agenda to deny democracy in this country. We will be prepared to re-register voters, litigate this fight in the courts, and win by a greater margin in ’26 than we did in ’24.”
