North Carolina Agrees to Fix Voter Registration Issues

North Carolina officials will seek to collect information required under federal law from registered voters under a settlement approved by a federal judge on Sept. 8.

State officials acknowledged in the settlement that they were using a voter registration list “that includes records that do not comply with the requirements for federal elections.”

Specifically, they had not collected from some voters a driver’s license number or another identifying number, as required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

The settlement states that the North Carolina State Board of Elections cannot accept or process any voter registration applications “unless it includes a driver’s license number, for persons who have [a] current and valid driver’s license number; or the last four digits of the Social Security number, for persons who do not have a driver’s license number and have a Social Security number.”

For applicants who have neither a driver’s license nor a Social Security number, officials must assign a unique identifier as required by the law, according to the settlement.

State officials have also identified which voters have already been registered and will be contacting them to try to figure out whether they have a driver’s license or Social Security number.

The agreement settles litigation filed by the Department of Justice in May.

In that lawsuit, federal officials said North Carolina’s failure to adhere to the Help America Vote Act left a “significant number of voters” without an identifying number.

In a recent filing discussing the settlement when it was proposed, federal and state officials said the proposal was “fair, adequate, and reasonable because it remedies the allegations in the Complaint.”

Sam Hayes, executive director of the board, said in a statement on Monday that he had already prioritized bringing the state into compliance with the federal law before the federal government sued the board.

He said the settlement memorializes the board’s Registration Repair Project, which is focused on collecting the required information from registered voters.

“I applaud the 100 county boards of elections and State Board staff, who have worked diligently on this project,” he said. “In less than three months, we have reduced the number of voters on the registration repair list by 22 percent. Our plan is working, and this number will continue to drop as more voters become aware of this effort and fix their registrations.”

Voters who have missing records can still cast provisional ballots until their registrations are fixed, and the votes will still count due to the National Voter Registration Act, unless they are found ineligible for some other reason, state officials said.