N.C. Republicans file lawsuit, claims Elections Board fails to properly register voters

On Aug. 22, The North Carolina Republican Party and Republican National Committee jointly filed a lawsuit accusing the North Carolina State Board of Elections of allowing over 225,000 people to register to vote without providing proper proof of their identity. 

The lawsuit claims that by using voter registration forms that did not require proof of identity — such as a driver’s license or the last four digits of a social security number — the NCSBE violated the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which mandates that voter registration applications include this information. 

According to the lawsuit, this opens the door for non-citizens to vote. The complaint asks a federal judge to revoke these people’s registrations, preventing them from voting in the 2024 election. 

“The State Board of Elections has a statutory duty to ensure only verified citizens can vote in North Carolina elections,” NCGOP Director of Communications Matt Mercer wrote in an email to The Daily Tar Heel. “Their refusal to take these steps and subsequent dismissal of legitimate concerns undermines election integrity and confidence in elections administration.”

The Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative Manager Hans von Spakovsky said that to have a fair and honest election, states should be complying with HAVA’s requirements. 

Spokovsky said he agreed with the goal of the lawsuit, and North Carolina should invalidate the voters with improper registration. 

“There’s no reason to fight this lawsuit,” he said. “They ought to just agree to take whatever steps are necessary to remedy this, and that would simply mean them taking the over 200,000 people who registered without them verifying the registrations and doing that.” 

Policy Director for Common Cause NC Ann Webb said if the board were to invalidate the votes, it would violate federal law.

“The North Carolina GOP and the National GOP are aware that there is federal law prohibiting the State Board of Elections from implementing any new list maintenance policies in the period right before an election, and we are now in that period,” she said.

She added that there is no evidence behind the claim made in the lawsuit proving that 225,000 non-citizens are registered to vote. 

The North Carolina lawsuits coincide with others filed by Republicans in battleground states across the country asking for voters to be removed from the rolls, including Michigan and Nevada. 

Webb said the plaintiffs are filing the lawsuit now despite being aware that its request would violate federal law as a part of a larger effort to spread disinformation about non-citizens being registered to vote. 

According to Katelin Kaiser, the policy director at Democracy North Carolina, the lawsuit is a way of manipulating voter’s understandings of election security and undermine the authority of the board. 

After election day, the NCSBE is required to go through the process of verifying ballots and make sure only eligible voters casted them, she said. 

“Within this, there can be candidates who can challenge those election results based off of irregularities in the election,” Kaiser said. “And this would be an opportunity for candidates, as well as county board of elections members, to call into question accurate results of the election based off of the baseless and unverified claims on this lawsuit.”

She added that the rhetoric of the lawsuit sends a dangerous message by targeting immigrants — a type of thinking that is not new. 

“This is absolutely part of a national trend to use fear of non-citizen voting and anti-immigrant sentiment in particular to undermine trust in this election,” Webb said. “That is harmful to our democracy, and it's harmful to the immigrant communities that bring vibrancy and economic contributions to our state.”

Webb said immigrants have been used time and time again as a scapegoat and for fear mongering in a variety of different ways, the most recent of which being claims that non-citizens voting are impacting the outcome of elections. She also said if a court were to order the votes to be purged from the rolls, the implications would be sweeping. 

“What we're looking at is the potential for massive disenfranchisement that could certainly have a significant impact on the outcome of upcoming elections,” Webb said. “I think regardless of whether the lawsuit is successful, the filing of the lawsuit also serves to disenfranchise voters who may now feel uncertain or afraid about the status of their registration, who may be naturalized citizens and concerned about how they're going to be treated at the polls. And that is a huge concern.”

@sarahhclements

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