‘Political play’ or election integrity? Fact-checking GOP voter registration lawsuits in NC

In a pair of lawsuits filed last month, national and state Republicans seek to purge North Carolina’s voter rolls of hundreds of thousands of registrants they say were improperly allowed to register.

The complaints, filed in Wake County Superior Court by the Republican National Committee and the NC GOP, raise concerns about potential voting by noncitizens or otherwise ineligible voters who they argue could potentially sway the outcome of the November election.

But several of the GOP’s claims are misleading or exaggerated, and they seek a solution that is expressly prohibited by federal law.

Sam Oliker-Friedland, the executive director of the Institute For Responsive Government, which studies election policy, described the lawsuits as “frankly, a political play ... disguised as a legal strategy.”

The News & Observer examined the claims in the RNC’s lawsuits and how they fit into existing state and federal laws.

What do the lawsuits claim?

The first lawsuit claims that the North Carolina State Board of Elections failed to properly implement a process for removing noncitizens from the voting rolls.

A new law passed last year requires the board to work with state courts to inspect jury questionnaire responses. The name of any potential juror who is excused due to self-identifying as a noncitizen will be shared with the board, which is required to use that information to maintain the state’s voter rolls.

That part of the law did not take effect until July 1 of this year. The lawsuit claims that the board has not done enough to implement it and begin canceling the voter registrations of any noncitizens identified through the process.

The second lawsuit is more broad. It claims that the board improperly allowed 225,000 people to register to vote without providing the required identification information.

The RNC asks the court to order the state to remove all of those voters from the rolls, making them ineligible to vote just months before Election Day.

Can the State Board of Elections remove the disputed voters from the rolls?

Per federal law, no.

The National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from systematically removing registrants within 90 days before an election. That deadline passed on Aug. 7.

Outside of this period, the board is able to conduct large-scale list maintenance efforts. The RNC filed its lawsuits after the deadline had passed.

Are noncitizens able to vote in NC elections?

Per federal and state law, no.

Federal law makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote and North Carolina law requires citizenship in order to register to vote.

Noncitizen voting has emerged as a Republican talking point across the country, but there is no data to suggest that it poses a widespread issue.

The conservative Heritage Foundation conducted a nationwide study of elections between 2003 and 2023 and found only 24 instances of noncitizen voting.

A separate study conducted by the liberal Brennan Center found 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million votes in selected jurisdictions in the 2016 election.

Several safeguards prevent noncitizens from registering to vote, but even if they were able to do so, they would be required to show a photo ID at their polling place. If they did not provide one and instead submitted an ID exception form, county election officials would review their registration and potentially cancel their vote.

Has the State Board implemented the jury list law to remove noncitizens from the rolls?

Per the Administrative Office of the Courts and the State Board of Elections, yes.

Pat Gannon, a spokesperson for the board, said staff has worked with clerks of superior court across the state since the law went into effect on July 1. Using this process, the board has identified nine individuals on the voter rolls who asked to be excused from jury duty because they claimed they were not citizens.

He said that if a check of state and federal databases confirms that those individuals are indeed noncitizens, the board will send them letters informing them of their findings and asking them to cancel their voter registrations to comply with the law.

The board itself cannot legally remove those registrants at this time due to the deadline prescribed by the federal voter registration act.

Graham Wilson, a spokesperson for AOC, confirmed that the board worked with them and the clerks of court to implement this law.

Matt Mercer, communications director for the NC GOP, said that if the board had worked faster to implement the law, it would have been able to avoid the voter registration act deadline for removing voters.

Are there 225,000 ineligible voters on NC’s voter rolls?

Almost certainly not.

This number is derived from a subset of North Carolina voter registrations that do not include either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number.

The RNC’s lawsuit points out that, for a time, the state used a voter registration form that did not make it clear that one of these two forms of identification were required.

This, in and of itself, does not mean that all 225,000 of those registrants do not actually have one of those forms of identification, and there are myriad reasons why that data may not be included in the database.

The law that requires those forms of identification is the federal Help America Vote Act. That was passed in 2002, so some voters could have registered before it was in effect. It could also be a clerical error from a county election official who did not enter that information in the system even though it was included on the physical form. There are also documented match issues with Social Security numbers not validating when checked against the national databases for reasons that are not the registrant’s fault.

Regardless, even if one of these voters did not actually have a form of identification and were therefore ineligible to vote, they would be asked to show ID at the polling place.

However, the RNC’s lawsuit asks a court to order the board to immediately invalidate all 225,000 of these voters’ registrations. This, as mentioned earlier, is illegal under the National Voter Registration Act.

Oliker-Friedland said there are far too many safeguards in place to consider implementing a voter purge such as this.

“If they’re talking about 225,000 people disenfranchised for a clerical error that was not their fault, I think that would be a wild overreaction,” he said. “...It would just simply mean that people can’t vote because of paperwork, and that’s not a fair outcome.”

The deadline to register to vote in the 2024 election is Oct. 11.

Why did the RNC and NC GOP file these lawsuits?

It depends on who you ask.

The RNC and NC GOP say the lawsuits are intended to promote election integrity and reduce the chance of fraud.

“This state board continually has problems ensuring voter rolls only have verified citizens,” NC GOP Chair Jason Simmons said in a statement last month. “This lawsuit will remedy their ongoing refusal to collect the required information from those who want to take part in North Carolina elections.”

Civil rights groups immediately criticized the lawsuits as attempts to spread conspiracy theories and set the stage for claims of election interference.

“The NC GOP have again asked a state court for relief that would squarely violate federal law, on the basis of a conspiracy theory that North Carolina’s voter rolls contain hundreds of thousands of ineligible voters hiding in plain sight,” The Southern Coalition for Social Justice said in a statement. “These cases should be seen for what they are: bad-faith attempts to sow chaos and doubt at the expense of North Carolinians’ right to vote.”

The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP has filed a motion to intervene in the case.

“Marginalized voters throughout this state have been consistently targeted through the exploitation of our elections,” Deborah Maxwell, president of the NC NAACP said in a statement. “We stand behind the words of our mission statement to advance the political rights of Black and brown voters, and we refuse to allow eligible voters to be disenfranchised, which is what the North Carolina Republican Party’s and RNC’s actions threaten.”

Oliker-Friedland said the lawsuit fit a pattern that began in 2020 of “preparing arguments for baseless claims that the election was stolen.”

NC Reality Check is an N&O series holding those in power accountable and shining a light on public issues that affect the Triangle or North Carolina. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email [email protected]