More than 747,000 registrants have been stripped from North Carolina’s voter rolls since the start of 2023 due to ineligibility, the state’s elections board announced on Sept. 26.
North Carolina’s county boards of elections ended the 20-month purge in August, removing an average of 1,200 names per day, according to a North Carolina State Board of Elections news release.
Voters can become ineligible for a variety of reasons. Possible reasons for removal from the rolls include death, relocation, continued inactivity, a felony conviction, a duplicate registration, lack of citizenship, a successful voter challenge, or their own request to be removed.
Nearly 290,000—a plurality—of the latest removals were duplicate registrations for voters who had moved elsewhere in the state. The other top reasons were for inactivity in the last two federal elections (246,311) and death (130,688).
The Tar Heel State currently has more than 7.7 million registered voters.
As one of a handful of swing states, North Carolina could be a deciding factor in the presidential election. With weeks still to go before Election Day, the state has already become a hotspot of election litigation.
In August, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the North Carolina Republican Party sued the state elections board over voter registration.
The lawsuit charges that the board violated the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) by neglecting to collect required identifying information from more than 225,000 voter registrants.
“By failing to collect certain statutorily required information prior to registering these applicants to vote, Defendants placed the integrity of the state’s elections into jeopardy,” the Aug. 23 complaint contends.
The GOP is also suing the board over its approval of the use of digital student IDs issued by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a valid form of voter ID.
Republicans argue that state law does not authorize the use of electronic identification as a form of voter ID. A state judge rejected that argument earlier this month, though the party has appealed the matter to the North Carolina Court of Appeals.
The elections board lost a legal battle with former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this month when the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered his name removed from the state’s ballot.
Kennedy suspended his campaign on Aug. 23, citing an uphill battle in the polls. He has since joined forces with the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.
