Watchdog Reveals More Than 64,000 on NC's Voter Rolls Are Dead, Duplicated or Moved to Another State
With the primaries for the congressional mid-term elections in North Carolina scheduled for May 17, a new watchdog report has revealed that more than 64,000 registered voters in the Tar Heel State are either dead, registered in another state, or registered twice under variations of the same name.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) a nonprofit law firm dedicated to election integrity, released a research brief detailing errors in North Carolina's voter rolls. The foundation warned these errors must be fixed before the 2022 elections which include a U.S. Senate race that may be very close.
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In its brief, the foundation cited several examples of the still existing errors.
Deceased Registrants – 7,933 North Carolinians were still registered to vote long after their deaths in 2020. Some of these deceased registrants have been on the voter rolls for decades. The foundation gave two examples of deceased voters who have been dead for almost 25 years and 20 years respectively, yet still remained on voter rolls.
The Social Security Death Index revealed that 95 percent of the registrants passed away before the year 2020, according to PILF.
Interstate Duplicate Registrations – PILF also found 42,984 North Carolina voter registrants left the state and established or renewed their out-of-state voter registration before the 2020 Election. In this study, the foundation said it utilized the U.S. Postal Service National Change of Address (NCOA) system and the organization's national voter database to track those moving from their NC address to another state and determine if they established a subsequent registration before November 2020.
The foundation pointed out that while it's not illegal under state or federal law to be registered in two different places, some states like North Carolina will consider a subsequent registration a disqualifying action. It's up to election officials to keep track of the people who have moved.
Same-Address Duplicate Registrations – 13,525 North Carolinians managed to become registered twice in the state under variations of their names. PILF researchers noted that 60% of the duplicate registrations had exactly the same name, age, and address. In addition, 18% of the registrants had the middle name and middle initial match. The brief also revealed that 15% of the duplicate registrations were due to a maiden/married name match.
"North Carolina officials need to use the time they still have to prepare voter rolls for the midterm elections," said PILF President J. Christian Adams. "Time is running out. Silly, obvious errors in the voter roll can create opportunities for voter fraud and chaos in a close election. Correcting deceased and duplicate records now will help to preemptively address those risks."
