The US Department of Justice sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections on Wednesday over alleged violations of the Help America Vote Act or HAVA.
The lawsuit addresses the same issue that was at the heart of the Jefferson Griffin election protests and a separate ongoing election lawsuit scheduled for a 2026 trial. But this time, the outcome could be different.
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According to the DOJ complaint, the state elections board failed to maintain accurate voter registration rolls in its statewide computerized database, and then neglected to fully fix the issue when confronted about it.
How did we get here?
For years, a faulty voter registration form used the wrong color-coding. At the top, it said all boxes outlined in red were required, while those outlined in black were optional.
While the section asking registrants to provide a driver’s license or the last four digits of their Social Security number, if they had one, or check a box if they didn’t to get a unique voter identification number, was supposed to be outlined in red, it wasn’t.
After a 2023 complaint, the board acknowledged the mistake and fixed the form, but denied requests to individually contact all registered voters who lacked an identifying number to verify their eligibility.
Ever since, the board has been the subject of litigation over this decision.
First, the Republican National Committee and North Carolina Republican Party sued the board last August, claiming that the state had processed more than 225,000 voter registration applications without collecting the required numbers. The Republican litigants asked courts to remove these voters from the rolls or require them to vote on provisional ballots.
A federal district court judge denied their request, ruling that there would be no relief for the 2024 election, and instead scheduled a trial for February 2026.
Second, Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin’s largest election protest challenged over 60,000 voters in the 2024 election who he alleged were illegally registered without providing a driver’s license or social security number.
That time, the North Carolina Supreme Court dismissed the incomplete voter registration protest, on the grounds that the state elections board was to blame, not the voters.
Now, the DOJ is stepping in. They’re asking for the court to order the state board to contact all registered voters who do not have an identifying number listed on the official voter roll within 30 days of a court order. The state board would be responsible for filling in the blanks, and also updating voter registration and training materials for election officials to ensure future HAVA compliance.
Differing perspectives on HAVA compliance
With the 2024 election in the rearview mirror and a new, Republican elections board in place, the case may shake out a bit differently than before.
Newly instated State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes, for one, said fixing voter registration record issues is the top issue he wants to address as the state’s chief election official.
“I have said all along that we’re going to follow the law here, and we’re going to do things the right way, and now is a good time to start going forward again with a new board, a new (executive director),” Hayes said in an interview with Carolina Public Press.
“And so I don’t think there’s any bigger priority than confidence in our elections, and curing these deficiencies will go a long way toward instilling that confidence.”
He cast blame on the previous board for its inaction on the issue.
Former executive director Karen Brinson Bell has a different outlook. There’s a “complete lack of understanding” on the issue, she said.
At the time of the 2023 complaint, the state board was already working on updating the voter registration form to make it more user friendly, she said. The instruction to provide a driver’s license or Social Security number or check a box was still there in text, even though the color coding was off.
When registrants did not provide the required information, they had to present additional HAVA-approved identifying documentation the next time they showed up to the polls to prove their eligibility. That could be a driver’s license or other government document showing the voter’s name and address.
When this happened, county election officials checked that a voter provided HAVA documentation, but did not record the specific type of identification or any numbers. The federal law didn’t require that, Bell said.
So, just because someone’s Social Security number or driver’s license isn’t in the database doesn’t mean it wasn’t provided, she said.
Various other reasons exist for why a voter may have a blank on their official voter registration record, but still be eligible, Bell said.
For example, some people were registered so long ago that providing those numbers wasn’t required at the time. Some voters have the required number listed in their paper record but not in their digital record. For others, their driver’s license or Social Security number didn’t validate with the DMV or Social Security Administration database through no fault of their own.
The Social Security system requires exact matches, and has a hard time with hyphenated names, names with apostrophes and names so long that they exceed the system’s character limit, Bell said. A quick skim through Griffin’s protest lists reveals many such cases.
“Before anyone goes out there making these claims, understand the process, understand the compliance, and understand that these laws are written in favor of the voters, and that’s what we work for,” Bell said.
“I stand by the fact that we have a verified, audited, well-maintained process in North Carolina.”
Common Cause North Carolina Policy Director Ann Webb has no issue with making sure the state is compliant with HAVA, but worries the method the DOJ is asking for won’t be fair to voters. Thirty days isn’t much time to get the job done, she said.
“It’s very unclear in this lawsuit what the consequences would be if the voter wasn’t able to respond or wasn’t properly contacted in that time period,” Webb said.
“So, if the result is that nonresponse means removal from the voter rolls, we are extremely concerned about the impact of that on voters.”
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