RALEIGH — During its April meeting, the North Carolina State Board of Elections moved ahead with a memorandum of agreement to utilize the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. That agreement has already yielded results: Approximately 34,000 deceased individuals were identified on the state’s voter rolls.
“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections (NCSBE), said in a statement. “The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this.
“Our goal is to use every available and legal tool at our disposal to achieve the most accurate voter rolls possible. Now, we must roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work … of verifying that every person registered to vote in North Carolina is eligible. Our team, along with our state and federal (partners) will do what’s necessary to meet this responsibility.”
The NCSBE added nearly 7.4 million voter records to the SAVE system on April 17. The results received were just a total number, and the NCSBE is awaiting more details on the 34,000 identified by the SAVE system, according to an NCSBE spokesperson.
According to the NCSBE’s press release, the comparison criteria used for a SAVE database search include voters’ names and dates of birth. It also uses the last four digits of Social Security numbers sent to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which runs a cross-check on those numbers with the Social Security Administration.
The NCSBE gets information on voters who die from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services on a weekly basis, with that data processed at the county level.
The SAVE database can flag if a person is deceased in federal records, which the NCSBE says helps identify related North Carolina voters who registered in the state at some point but might have moved and died in another state.
