North Carolina Election Boards Remove Over 700,000 Ineligible Voters
North Carolina county election boards removed over 700,000 ineligible voters from the state’s rolls over the past year, election officials announced Thursday.
From the start of 2023 through August 2024, county boards of elections in North Carolina removed more than 747,000 ineligible registration records from the state’s voter rolls, the State Board of Elections said in an emailed release. North Carolina currently has nearly 7.7 million registered voters.
The announcement comes amid a pending lawsuit against the board from the Republican National Committee (RNC) over the state’s voter rolls. The complaint alleges the election board “allowed over 225,000 people to register to vote with registration forms that failed to collect certain required identification information before the registration forms were processed.”
The 700,000 ineligible voters were removed under North Carolina’s list maintenance process under state law, which requires removing ineligible voters from official lists and updating the addresses and other relevant data of eligible voters. The bulk of the removed voters — roughly 290,000 — moved within the state and were registered more than once.
The board noted that “the mere presence of ineligible individuals on the rolls does not mean voter fraud will occur. Evidence shows that voting in the name of another is exceedingly rare in North Carolina.” It also doesn’t mean eligible voters are being purged from the rolls, the board said.
Officials also pointed to the state’s photo ID law, which is being challenged in federal court and mandates that people voting in-person or via absentee present an approved form of photo ID, which can be a driver’s license or a student ID.
“We have extremely little evidence that individuals are voting in the names of others in North Carolina elections, and the voter photo ID requirement will help ensure this does not happen,” executive director Karen Brinson Bell said.