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-Land of the Free

Over 60,000 voters on NC rolls are dead, registered twice or enrolled in other state, report warns

2022-04-02

[JustTheNews] With midterms elections in North Carolina starting in about six weeks, more than 60,000 registered voters in the state are dead, registered in another state or registered twice under variations of their name, according to a new watchdog report.

The report released Tuesday by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm focused on election integrity, in one example found 7,933 North Carolinians are still registered to vote after having died in 2020.

"North Carolina officials need to use the time they still have to prepare voter rolls for the midterm elections," foundation President J. Christian Adams said. "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."

Primary balloting in the state begins May 17.

The foundation's audit began in late 2019 with the tracking of a sample of registered voters that matched the Social Security Death Index – to see how long it usually took the state's Board of Elections to remove them from the voter roll after they were listed as deceased.

About 12,940 deceased registrants were found in spring 2020. And according to the index, 95% of them died before 2020. The 7,933 deceased voters still on the roll show that some of the registrants, but not all, have been removed.

The foundation found two instances in which registered voters were dead for about 20 years but not removed from the voter roll until 2021.

A total of 42,984 registered voters in North Carolina left the state and established or renewed their out-of-state voter registration before the 2020 Election.

The foundation used the U.S. Postal Service's National Change of Address system and the organization's national voter database to track voters who moved from North Carolina to another state and determine if they registered there before November 2020.

In North Carolina, a residents loses residential status if they take steps to vote in another state. Thus, while it isn't illegal under state or federal law to be registered to vote in two different places, North Carolina considers "a subsequent registration a disqualifying action," according to the foundation.

To be sure, the names of dead people not being purged from voter rolls and people being registered in two states has always been a challenge for election officials. But numerous statewide audits after the 2020 elections have shed new light on challenges related to voter roll integrity.

About 87% of "interstate duplicate residents cast ballots outside of North Carolina in 2020," whereas just 8% cast ballots in North Carolina, and the rest didn't vote in 2020, the foundation also found.

While election officials are in charge of tracking residents who fail to fix their registration status, North Carolina is not part of any state-sharing agreements or interstate compacts to "track voters" who move to or die in other states, the report states.

There are also 13,525 North Carolina voters who were registered twice at the same address but sometimes with different variations of their names.

In 60% of these cases, age, residence and name were exactly the same.

Eighteen percent of the time, both age and residence matched, but the one name just had the middle initial, whereas the other registration spelled out the middle name. In 15% of cases, the age and residence were the same, but the confusion of maiden and married last names allowed for two different registrations.

Other duplicate registrations with the same age and address included spelling or punctuation errors.

The foundation learned from county officials that the faulty copies can occur when a person registers to vote through different avenues, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles vs. a third-party voter drive "and omits personal identifying information," like the optional last four digits of their Social Security number.

Posted by:Skidmark

#6 For perspective, Judicial Watch press release dated 17. February, 2022:

Judicial Watch Settles North Carolina Voter Roll Lawsuit after State Removes over 430,000 Inactive Names from Rolls

‘[T]he total number of inactive registrations reported by North Carolina dropped from about 1.2 million in 2019, to about 765,000 in 2021 (a 36% drop).’

In June 2019, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released data showing that voter registration rates in a significant proportion of North Carolina’s 100 counties were close to, at or above 100% of their age-eligible citizenry – statistics considered by the courts to be a strong indication that a jurisdiction is not taking the steps required by law to remove ineligible registrants. Judicial Watch’s analysis also showed that at the time of the EAC report the entire State of North Carolina had a registration rate close to 100% of its age-eligible citizenry.

In the settlement, Judicial Watch told the court:

[T]he total number of inactive registrations reported by North Carolina dropped from about 1.2 million in 2019, to about 765,000 in 2021 (a 36% drop). The statewide percentage of inactive registrations dropped from 17% in 2019, which the complaint alleged to be a national outlier, to 10% in 2021, which is close to the median state inactive rate. The number of registrations removed for failure to respond to an address confirmation notice and vote in two consecutive elections has increased, from about 220,000 for the period reported in 2019, to about 590,000 for the period reported in 2021 (a 168% increase).

With respect to the two North Carolina counties, Judicial told the court:

Data for Mecklenburg County and Guilford County also showed improvement. From 2019 to 2021, the percentage of inactive registrations reported in Mecklenburg County dropped from 15.5% to 13%, and in Guilford County from 19% to 11%. The number of registrations removed for failure to respond to an address confirmation notice and vote in two elections increased during that same period, from roughly 21,000 to 51,000 in Mecklenburg County, and from 7,000 to 33,000 in Guilford County (a 142% and 372% increase, respectively).

(In 2020, Judicial Watch also sued Pennsylvania, and Colorado for failing to clean their voter rolls.)

“This is a win for the voters of North Carolina – because clean voter rolls help pave the way to cleaner elections,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “North Carolina follows Judicial Watch voter roll clean-up successes in California, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. And we are right now prepping lawsuits against other states to force them to clean up their rolls.”

In November 2021, Judicial Watch sent letters to election officials in 14 counties and five states—Arkansas, California, Illinois, New York, and Oregon—notifying them of evident violations of the NVRA.

Posted by: trailing wife 2022-04-02 18:35

#5 Simple.
Make it a CRIME punishable by X years of mandatory jail time and a $$,$$$ fine. When found to have multiple registrations to vote in 1 or more locations during a State or Federal election.

What was I thinking??? Many states already have such laws they just don't use or enforce them.

Posted by: NN2N1 2022-04-02 16:55

#4 Insisting on picture ID, like a local driver's license would also cut down on fraud. It should cut down on dead people voting in most cases.
Of course, y brother is a junior. Our dad passed away about 16 years ago. I would not put it past my brother to vote for him, at least for the first few years.

Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2022-04-02 16:52

#3 ...You would think that a voter roll accurate to about 95-98% (it's doable) would be a point of pride with a state.

You'd think.

Mike

Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2022-04-02 15:52

#2 Does Your Vote Count? A Look into the Electoral College, How It Works + How Votes Are Allocated By State

Posted by: Skidmark 2022-04-02 10:17

#1 Probably a fairly typical number; by itself it does nothing, but it does increase the risk of vote fraud.

Posted by: Glenmore 2022-04-02 09:54

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