The election board in the battleground state of North Carolina said Thursday that it removed nearly three-quarters of a million registered voters from its records over the past 20 months.
An average of 1,200 voters were taken off the list every day from the start of 2023 through August 2024, the board said.
Those removed may have moved to a different county or state, died, been convicted of a felony or had even requested to be removed, among other reasons.
“List maintenance is one of the primary responsibilities of election officials across North Carolina, and we take this responsibility seriously,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a press release.
Absentee ballots are prepared to be mailed at the Wake County Board of Elections on September 17, 2024 in Raleigh, North Carolina. The state’s Board of Elections said Thursday that it had removed thousands of ineligible people from its rolls over the past 20 months.
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The action in North Carolina mirrors that seen in many other states in the run-up to election day. In August, Texas removed 1 million people from its list, while in Oregon only 1,200 were taken off the state’s rolls.
Republicans at state and national levels have raised concerns about voter fraud, claiming non-citizens were eligible to vote, with a lawsuit filed by the GOP alleging just that in North Carolina a few weeks ago.
“Unfortunately, there is a lot of false information out there about our voter rolls and the efforts we undertake to keep them up to date,” Brinson Bell added. “As we conduct these processes, we also must comply with state and federal laws and be careful not to remove any eligible voters.”
That issue did arise in Arizona, where a clerical error on citizenship status left nearly 100,000 voters in limbo over whether they would be allowed to vote in state-level elections.
Concerns over voter fraud were misplaced, North Carolina’s Board of Elections said Thursday, saying voters “die every day” but it can take weeks for records to reach officials. Others also move out of state without canceling their registration.
Out of 4.8 million voters in the state in 2016, only two individual cases of relatives voting on behalf of a deceased loved one were found.
“We have extremely little evidence that individuals are voting in the names of others in North Carolina elections, and the voter photo ID requirement will help ensure this does not happen,” Brinson Bell said, referring to new requirements that came into play since the 2020 election.
North Carolina remains a key battleground state and its registered voter population grew by 4.3 percent in the past four years. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have been neck and neck in recent polling.
