North Carolina agrees to turn over voter records in settlement

RALEIGH, N.C. (CN) — A federal judge approved a proposed agreement between the federal government and North Carolina Monday, ending a legal case over the state’s use of unclear voter registration forms.

U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II signed the parties’ joint agreement, which requires the state to produce several reports detailing compliance with federal voting laws, obtain missing voter information, and turn over the state’s voter records to the federal government “upon request.”

The agreement aims “to ensure that the remedy complies fully with federal law, minimizes any inconvenience to voters, and ensures that each affected voter’s ballot will be counted for federal offices if the voter is otherwise eligible to vote under North Carolina law,” the parties said in their request for the order.

The federal government sued North Carolina and its elections board in May, alleging violations of the Help America Vote Act by failing to properly rectify errors in voter registration records. The elections board used a registration form that failed to clearly require a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. Those details are needed to confirm eligibility.

The missing information in the state’s vote database fueled a months-long 2024 election dispute over a state Supreme Court associate justice seat, with Judge Jefferson Griffin arguing tens of thousands of voters may have been ineligible in his race. Elections board attorneys blamed clerical errors and database mismatches for the gaps.

The state has been working to update the voter information of the over 103,000 voters and has begun mailing voters letters with directions on updating their data online and by mail. Since the process began in July, over 22,000 voters have successfully updated their voter data, but over 80,000 still remain. Another batch of mailers will be sent in December to voters who have not yet responded.

Voters who do not update their records by the next federal election must cast a provisional ballot and show additional identifying information at the polls, though they won’t be removed from the state’s voting rolls. Some state ballots may not count if information is missing, but votes for federal races will still be counted if the voter is otherwise eligible.

Many will only learn they’re on the list when they try to vote, said Ann Webb, policy director at North Carolina Common Cause. The plan runs through the 2026 elections.

“That’s sort of the number one concern we have for that group of 80,000 voters and the people who know them and hear about their experiences,” she said. “The requirement that they vote provisionally is definitely going to disrupt their voting process.”

Jean-Patrick Grillet, election protection research manager for Democracy North Carolina, called the settlement a “coordinated attack on voters and the fundamental right to vote.”

He said other countries make voting easy, but the settlement shifts the burden onto voters to update records. Some registered through drives and either didn’t want to share their Social Security information or didn’t have it memorized at the time.

“The whole way that they have structured this conversation and the way that we talked about it has got us all focused on the individual missing identifying information, which is not at all the problem. Which is just evidenced by how often these people have voted in the past, the fact that their ballots have always counted,” he said. “The problem here is that we have a government actively selling doubt and discord among its population.”

Voting fraud is a non-issue in North Carolina, he said.

The agreement requires North Carolina to turn over records on its compliance with the Help America Vote Act and, if requested, an electronic copy of its voter file, including names, birth dates, addresses and a voter’s driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. The government said the data will be “kept securely and treated consistently with the Privacy Act.”

Judge Myers also rejected bids by several groups to intervene, including the Democratic National Committee, which had warned in a July letter that it planned to sue if the state removed voters from the rolls, saying a settlement would impact its members.

DNC Litigation Director Dan Freeman called the settlement successful.

“The DOJ and the North Carolina State Board of Elections have accepted the DNC’s demand that they not discard votes cast by over 80,000 registered voters in federal elections,” Freeman said in a statement. “Though there is still work to be done to ensure that North Carolina voters’ voices are heard in state and local elections, this is a huge victory for the DNC and, more importantly, our democracy.”

Both Webb and Grillet said they wished the court had heard from voting organizations over the impact the agreement will have on the voting population.

Around the same time the government filed suit, the Department of Justice began asking states to provide voter registration lists to the federal government. 21 states have received requests, and another five have been contacted for information on election officials, election processes and voters.

In July, a White House consultant asked county clerks in Colorado if they would allow federal officials or a third party to inspect voting machines, which caused concerns on the local level over potential federal interference in the upcoming 2026 midterms. In Missouri, a DOJ official contacted county clerks asking to “access, physically inspect and perhaps take physical custody” of election equipment used in the November 2020 election.

President Donald Trump has continued to emphasize that the results of the 2020 election were fraudulent and has vowed to eliminate voting machines and mail-in ballots, which he called a “scam” on Truth Social.

A representative for the state board did not reply to a request for comment.

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