(Photo: Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
Last week, the State Board of Elections launched an ambitious effort to get 103,000 voters to add missing information to their registration record – a NC DMV (driver’s license) number or the last four digits of their Social Security number or a declaration that they have neither document.
The board says it will not purge a voter’s registration if they don’t provide the information, but it will require them to fill out extra paperwork and vote with a provisional ballot that may or may not count. That ambiguity and extra burden will cause many to just walk away without voting – and it’s a good reason to help people remove themselves from the board’s list.
Who are these voters and how can you help?
Briefly, the affected voters are disproportionately young, Black, and vote Democratic – although nearly half of them have never voted. A large majority registered when they were in their teens or twenties and provided minimal information at the time – which is why they’re on the board’s list.
Statewide, white registered voters outnumber non-whites by more than two to one, but voters of color actually outnumber whites on this list. And the partisan tilt among those on the list who have cast ballots is about 60%-40% in favor of Democrats, quite different from the state’s purple hue.
The full list of 103,000 voters is on the State Board’s website at this link – it’s searchable by name and can be filtered by county or downloaded. Names will be deleted as voters provide ID info or county election staff find a number in another document, such as an absentee ballot application.
The affected voters should contact their county board of elections listed here to provide information in person or by mail, or re-register online if they have a DMV ID (best option: open this link, scroll to bottom and “Continue as Guest”). Voters still on the list in early August will get a mailing from the board.
You can help by widely publicizing this website page with the searchable list and action steps: www.ncsbe.gov/registrationrepair. Check the list for family and friends, and promote the website on social media.
More than 27,000 of the 103,000 were among the 60,000 early voters in 2024 who NC Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin tried to disqualify by claiming they had “incomplete registrations.” (The other 33,000 Griffin-challenged voters gave an ID number when they registered but the number didn’t verify as theirs for various reasons, mostly data glitches and administrative error. That group and thousands of similar voters will be asked for an ID number in a later board mailing.)
The State Board says the missing information is required by state law and the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), but many registration forms failed to make that clear.
Actually, as county election officials attest, state law says the identity number must be “requested” but it is not required. If the number is missing or doesn’t verify, the voter can complete their registration by presenting one of the identification documents specified in HAVA when they first vote (for example, a photo ID or a utility bill, bank statement or government document with their name and address).
All 60,000 voters challenged by Jefferson Griffin provided a HAVA document when they first voted, which made their registration legal. Biased Republican state judges ignored that fact, but a federal judge finally quashed Griffin’s attempt to rewrite the rules in place for the 2024 election.
Going forward, the State Board of Elections says it will require voters who come to the polls with a missing ID number to furnish one and vote with a provisional ballot that may not count unless the number verifies. In a busy election, that means waiting in a second line for a clerk to explain a multi-part form to fill out and a ballot that may be canceled. Too many people will just leave, frustrated and effectively disenfranchised.
Hopefully, a judge will soon eliminate the board’s new provisional ballot requirement, especially because everyone must now present a type of HAVA ID to vote, namely a photo ID. Whether voters provide an ID number that verifies or not, they’re also providing a HAVA document at the polls, which resolves any identification issue. Let them vote a regular ballot as the law specifies.
[Editor’s note: Hall’s analysis of the list of 103,000 voters is based on matching it with other data files from the State Board of Elections.]