The Democratic National Committee is threatening to sue the North Carolina board of elections if they go forward with plans to purge almost 100,000 voters from the rolls.
The state elections board – with a new Republican majority – voted at its 24 June meeting to require registered voters to cast provisional ballots if they have not provided their driver’s license number, last four digits of their social security number or an identification number supplied by the state.
The board’s move comes after the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit requiring voter information under the Help America Vote Act that it alleged had been missing in the state. The North Carolina court of appeals ordered the board to seek the information from voters before allowing them to vote in future elections.
Sam Hayes, executive director of the state board of elections, said in a statement accompanying the vote that the goal is to bring North Carolina “into compliance with the law”.
“We are making this process as simple and straightforward as possible for the affected voters,” he said.
But Democratic leaders claim the order and the board’s response to it is unconstitutional, and argue the change has partisan purposes.
“Republicans who have taken over the North Carolina state board of elections are colluding with President Trump’s justice department to take away the voting rights of 98,000 North Carolinians,” said Dan Freeman, litigation director at the Democratic National Committee. “So the DNC has put the state board of elections on notice: we will fight to protect the rights of registered voters to cast ballots that count.”
The DNC asserts that this move violates the National Voter Registration Act, it said in a notice to sue sent to the board on Friday.
“Critically, even if a voter on this list casts a provisional ballot and provides their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number, their ballot will only be counted if the numbers provided are deemed ‘correct’,” the letter states. “By requiring voters to cast provisional ballots that may not be counted, the plan effectively removes registrants from the official list of eligible voters.”
The NVRA requires political parties to provide 90 days’ notice of their intent to sue if a state enacts policies parties believe violate the law.
North Carolina is a perennial battleground state with close contests both in presidential races and state races. Donald Trump won North Carolina by about 183,000 votes in November, but five of the 10 statewide executive offices are held by Democrats, including the governor, lieutenant governor and secretary of state. A bitterly close 734-vote win by Democrat Allison Riggs in November for a state supreme court seat devolved into lawsuits and a Republican attempt to throw out thousands of ballots. Her opponent, Jefferson Griffin, only conceded the race in May.
A consolidated federal trial hearing a challenge to the state’s 2020 redistricting was heard last week by a three-judge panel in Winston-Salem. The NAACP and other voting rights groups accuse the GOP-dominated legislature of violating federal law and the US constitution with electoral maps redrawn in October 2023 that improperly reduce the voting power of racial minorities.
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Republican lawmakers argue that their maps were drawn to give them partisan advantage – which is legal – and that race was not a consideration in their decision making. The trial consolidates complaints about both state legislative district lines and congressional district lines. Earlier rulings narrowed the scope of the state district dispute to a handful of state senate districts.
Under the new district maps, Republicans turned a 7-7 tie in their congressional delegation into a 10-4 majority in November, providing three vital pickups for Republicans who now hold only a 220-212 majority. The court could force the state to redraw maps for the 2026 congressional and state contests, creating an outsized impact on the balance of power in Washington.
The three-judge panel said it would not issue a final decision before August and instructed both parties to submit final documents in the case by 5 August.
