The State Board of Elections has reached a legal settlement with the United States Department of Justice in United States of America v. North Carolina State Board of Elections [read the consent judgement and order (PDF)].
On Monday, the settlement was signed by Chief United States District Judge Richard E. Myers II, making it official.
The agreement memorializes the State Board’s Registration Repair Project, which ensures that North Carolina complies with state and federal laws on voter registrations and minimizes inconvenience to the affected voters. Specifically, the project aims to collect identification numbers — driver’s license numbers or last four digits of Social Security numbers — from voters missing them on the state’s voter rolls. This information is used to verify voters’ identities.
“Even before the U.S. Department of Justice filed this lawsuit, I had made it a priority to come into compliance with the Help America Vote Act and ensure that all individuals on our voter rolls are properly registered,” said Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “I applaud the 100 county boards of elections and State Board staff, who have worked diligently on this project. In less than three months, we have reduced the number of voters on the registration repair list by 22%. Our plan is working, and this number will continue to drop as more voters become aware of this effort and fix their registrations.”
The bipartisan State Board unanimously approved the Registration Repair Project on June 24. Importantly, no voter is being removed from the voter rolls because of it.
Registration repair voters must cast provisional ballots until they fix their registrations. However, their ballot selections will count for all federal contests, unless the voter is ineligible for some other reason. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) prevents election officials from discounting votes cast in federal contests by these voters, who are already-registered voters, even if their registration records lack a driver’s license number or last four digits of their Social Security number.
For state and local contests, the only circumstances in which the provisional ballot should not count for registration repair voters are as follows:
- The voter did not provide their driver’s license number (DL#) or last four digits of their Social Security number (SSN4) or mark the checkbox indicating that they lack a DL#/SSN4 on their provisional ballot application. This should not occur if poll workers are properly instructing voters to complete this information on their application.
- The voter provided a DL# or SSN4 that did not validate against the corresponding government database, and there is no record that the voter has ever provided a HAVA ID between the time they first registered and the deadline to show HAVA ID in the current election. HAVA IDs include current and valid photo ID, such as a driver’s license. HAVA IDs also include a copy of a utility bill, bank statement, government paycheck or other government document that includes the voter’s name and current address.
- The voter checked the box on the voter registration application indicating they lack a DL# and SSN4, and the voter has never shown HAVA ID between the time they first registered and the deadline to show HAVA ID in the current election.
In all three scenarios above, county board of elections staff, while conducting provisional ballot research, must contact the voters by phone or email, where available, to encourage them to provide the required information before noon on the third business day after Election Day. If the information is provided by that deadline, the entire ballot will count. If not, then the ballot will be counted only in federal contests.
For more information, please see the following press releases: