The NC State Board of Elections’ Rational Proposal to Update Voter Rolls

Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning.

In May, Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek assumed appointment authority for the five-member North Carolina State Board of Elections, power that previously rested with the governor. 

It was the culmination of a long-term effort by the state legislature to do away with single-party control of the state’s elections apparatus. Years of litigation, vetoes, and partisan bickering ultimately scuttled the legislature’s preference for an evenly divided Board. So instead, in late 2024, the General Assembly enacted a law to transfer appointment authority from the governor to the auditor. 

The startling doomsday prophecies came quickly.

The appointment power switch is “a troubling assault on democratic norms” that “threatens the very foundation of fair elections,” Democracy NC warned.

Common Cause said the switch is “aimed squarely at sabotaging free and fair elections in North Carolina” and “endangers the foundation of our democracy.”

NC Newsline, the Raleigh News & Observer and other outlets opined that the move was a premeditated attempt to steal an NC Supreme Court seat. 

Sabotaging elections. Endangering democracy itself. If a darker prediction exists of what was to come, it’s hard to conjure it.

The newly constituted Board of Elections, now with a 3-2 Republican majority, quickly faced a pressure test. On May 27, just three weeks after the new Board’s first meeting, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the Board over tens of thousands of voter registrations that, for two decades, lacked sufficient documentation. 

Now, almost two months later, we can ask ourselves: Has the new Board of Elections indeed “sabotaged” democracy?

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The current controversy centers on the voter registration form used by the Board of Elections from 2004 to 2024. During this time, both parties controlled the governor’s mansion and control over the state elections office via appointments. Per law, new voters are supposed to provide either their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number when registering to vote. There is a special procedure for the few voters who have neither.

“However, in years past, the state used a voter registration application with instructions that did not make clear that these numbers were required, leading some voters to register without providing a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number,” the State Board of Elections explained in a press release. “The registration application was corrected in January 2024.”

The pool of voters impacted by this Board of Elections error is estimated to be in the tens of thousands. They were among the groups of voters that Jefferson Griffin challenged in his unsuccessful legal action over the 2024 Supreme Court election results. Nobody has argued that the voters themselves are to blame for the error.

Still, the error remains: some voters in North Carolina do not appear to be properly registered. That is the grounds for the DOJ lawsuit. “Voters were then added to the State’s voter registration roll without the required information, and many of these voters remain on the registration rolls without it,” the DOJ wrote in a press release.

The newly-constituted Board of Elections, in its first months of existence, has had to navigate this cauldron – a Trump administration lawsuit combined with accusations of “sabotage” from left-wing activists.

The controversy came to a head at the Board’s meeting in late June. The potential consequences of miscalculation or error were extremely high. At the meeting, new executive director Sam Hayes presented to the Board a plan to remedy the situation. 

Hayes proposed contacting about 98,000 voters whose records “apparently lack” the required information. Voters who do not respond with either their driver’s license number of the last four digits of their social security number will still be allowed to cast ballots, but they’ll be provisional. The voters will also have a “flag” assigned to their record so that poll workers can inform them that they have missing information when they come in to vote.

The Board will also contact an additional 96,000 voters who have provided alternative documentation at the ballot box in the past, but for whom the Board still does not have a driver’s license or social security number on file. This group will continue to cast regular ballots. 

If that path forward sounds reasonable to you, it’s because it is. And every member of the Board – Republican and Democrat – agrees. The plan passed unanimously, an outcome that speaks to the Board’s functionality and professionalism in addressing a situation that could have been leveraged to spark further division. 

Still, potential obstacles remain. The Democratic National Committee last week threatened further legal action. And Democracy Docket, a litigation blog popular among Democrats and founded by longtime Democratic Party lawyer Marc Elias, accused the Board of Elections of “colluding” with the Trump administration in remedying the lawsuit.

That’s an intentional reference to a major 2020 blowup which saw state Republican leaders accuse the Board of Elections, then controlled by Democrats, of secretly negotiating – “colluding” – with Democratic Party lawyers, including Elias, to settle a lawsuit in a way that changed state voting laws. But the two episodes are not similar. In the 2020 matter, the “settlement” changed existing state law. In this matter, the State Board of Elections is trying to come into compliance with existing law.

The case is not closed, then, but the new Board of Elections has navigated the confused seas well thus far. 

Future controversies will no doubt arise, but predictions of democracy’s demise have not come to fruition.