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The North Carolina State Board of Elections identified approximately 34,000 dead people on the state’s voter rolls following a comprehensive data comparison with a federal database.
Earlier this month, the NCSBE submitted over 7.3 million voter records to the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database as part of an initiative to strengthen the accuracy and integrity of the state’s voter registration list. The NCSBE clarified that the identification of deceased individuals on the state’s voter rolls does not necessarily indicate illegal votes were cast.
“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” Sam Hayes, the executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a press release.
“The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this. Our goal is to use every available and legal tool at our disposal to achieve the most accurate voter rolls possible,” he continued. “Now, we must roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work to act of verifying that every person registered to vote in North Carolina is eligible. Our team, along with our state and federal will do what’s necessary to meet this responsibility.”
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The discovery came amid the agency’s ongoing effort to verify the citizenship status of voters, which the NCSBE voted along party lines earlier this month to do after facing lawsuits from the Trump administration for allegedly failing to maintain an accurate voter list.
The NCSBE said it will work with county boards of elections to remove the names from the voter rolls.
Federal law requires states to remove from their voter rolls people who are ineligible for reasons such as being deceased and North Carolina already has a process of biennial list maintenance to remove ineligible voters from its roles, according to Dr. Andy Jackson, Director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation, who indicated that the state removed 500,000 ineligible voters through this program in 2025.
However, as Jackson points out for deceased voters, it can take 8 to 10 years for their names to be removed.
“Working with the SAVE database has already helped improve” North Carolina’s list maintenance system, Jackson added, calling the system “crucial.”
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The second Trump administration has increased oversight and investigations into election integrity matters, including through updates to the SAVE program last year.
The Trump administration has also launched a nationwide push to obtain full statewide voter-registration lists and list-maintenance records, suing those states failing to comply. The Justice Department has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia to try to force the release of the data, according to the Associated Press.
The Republican National Committee’s official election integrity account on X said that the findings in North Carolina “is EXACTLY” why the Trump administration is forcing states to clean up their voter rolls.
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“Turns out checking state voter rolls against federal records actually helps keep them more accurate. Who knew?” quipped Ohio Secretary of State and candidate for Ohio Auditor of State Frank LaRose.
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