North Carolina removed more than 700,000 ineligible voters from its list of registered voters just weeks before the 2024 election.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections announced that it found 747,000 ineligible people on its voter rolls over the past 20 months. The findings come after the board faces a lawsuit from the Republican National Committee (RNC) over the state’s voter rolls. According to the complaint, 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.”
Some registered voters were removed because they were not U.S. citizens. This is significant because North Carolina is considered a must-win state heading into November.
BREAKING: North Carolina's state election board has removed 747,000 ineligible voters from its rolls over the past twenty months, representing about 10% of all registrations. Removals were because voters died, failed to vote the last two cycles, moved out of state, committed…
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 26, 2024
This comes after the Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party filed two lawsuits accusing the state’s board of elections of failing to check jury questionnaires to identify non-citizens.
“The NCSBE has once again failed in its mandate to keep non-citizens off the voter rolls, fueling distrust and jeopardizing our elections. We are committed to the basic principle — and commonsense law — that only Americans decide American elections,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said. “Deliberately failing to follow the law right before our country’s most important election is inexcusable.”
The lawsuit pointed out that North Carolina voter registration forms did not include driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers.
“By failing to collect certain statutorily required information prior to registering these applicants to vote, Defendants placed the integrity of the state’s elections into jeopardy,” the GOP lawmakers stated.
BREAKING: The North Carolina Election Board just revealed that they have removed 750,000 names from the voter rolls, including 130,000 dead people and 290,000 registrations that were duplicates
— George (@BehizyTweets) September 26, 2024
This comes after Republicans filed a lawsuit, showing 225,000 names were unlawfully… pic.twitter.com/sU98iLraiT
Other factors that prompted a sweep of the voter rolls included those who had been determined to be deceased, had duplicate registrations after moving out of the state, or had accumulated “inactive status.” Others include those who had been convicted of a felony.
In 2023, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) found that more than 1,400 registrants on North Carolina's voter rolls had been flagged as potential foreign nationals thanks to the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993-- known as “Motor Voter." This has made it easier for states to register foreign nationals to vote despite not being U.S. citizens.
"It is extremely difficult to prevent and remove foreign national registrations because of the NVRA’s mandates. The entire problem was hidden from the public — including the documentary proof of alien registration — for years," the PILF wrote.
In modern U.S. history, only one Democrat— former President Obama in 2008— has won North Carolina. According to recent polls, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are neck and neck in the race. A FiveThirtyEight poll found Trump has 47.7 percent of the state’s support, while Harris has 47.6 percent.