If you want to run in a North Carolina US Senate primary, don’t register to vote at a UPS Store. That’s what the State Board of Elections ruled Wednesday in the case of Margot Dupre, a Republican US Senate candidate.
Dupre moved to the state in mid-2024. Since, she’s been living either in her “glamper,” hotels or AirBnBs as she travels across the state to campaign, she said. It’s not her first rodeo; Dupre unsuccessfully ran for US Senate in Colorado in 2020 and a US House seat in Idaho in 2024. Now, she is registered to vote in Charlotte, at an address that coincides with a UPS Store.
However, under North Carolina law, voters have to register to vote where they physically live, and a mailbox in a UPS Store is not a home. For those without a traditional residence like a house or apartment, their residence is where they usually go to sleep at night, whether that’s a street corner, parking lot or other location.
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But for those with a nomadic lifestyle, like Dupre, it’s a bit of a tougher question.
Dupre’s case highlights a broader issue that’s caught the attention of voter integrity activists and State Auditor Dave Boliek — voters using nonresidential addresses when registering to vote.
Debating Dupre
Over the course of a three-hour meeting, State Board members debated whether Dupre met the residency requirements to run in a party primary. For her to remain on the ballot, they would have to determine that she abandoned her out-of-state residence, established a new residence in North Carolina and intended to remain in the state on a relatively long-term basis.
They settled on a series of facts, based on testimony from Dupre and her challenger, Jerry Reinoehl.
Dupre owns a house in Ocala, Fla., where several of her adult children and horses live. Dupre also owns property in other states. She and her husband are jointly listed on the homestead exemption for property taxes on the Florida home. Due to the colder weather, Dupre returned her camper van to that address, she said. She maintains a real estate license in Florida, as well as Idaho. She does not have a real estate license in North Carolina, because her business here is not real estate, but instead running for office, she said.
On Aug. 29, 2025, she registered to vote in Charlotte using a UPS Store address. Before then, she voted in the April 2025 Florida primary election. She did not vote in the 2025 municipal elections in Charlotte; she said she was too busy to pay attention. According to her testimony, she is seeking a place to build a home along the Broad River, but hasn’t found one yet. Dupre has not obtained a North Carolina driver’s license — due to a year-long delay in appointments, she said.
The board and challengers peppered Dupre with questions about her travels and where she returns to at the end of the day. She responded that she does not return to one place.
“I’m moving around. In fact, this February, I’ll be in a different area because of it being too cold,” she testified.
In a 3-1 vote (Republican Board Chair Francis De Luca was absent due to family commitments), the board decided that she did not meet residency requirements. The majority was not convinced Dupre had actually abandoned her Florida residence and established an intent to set roots in North Carolina.
Board Democrat Siobhan Millen was the sole minority vote. The case wasn’t clear-cut enough for her to deny Dupre’s spot in the Republican primary, she said.
Dupre still has options, if she wishes to stay in the race. She can appeal the ruling, or start the petition process to get on the ballot as an unaffiliated or write-in candidate. Dupre wasn’t satisfied with the outcome.
“This is political nonsense,” she said. “We should let the voters decide on March 3.”
Bigger issue than Dupre, Boliek and others say
While the case of Dupre is unique, it brings to the forefront an issue the State Board may be looking deeper into soon.
In mid-January, State Auditor Dave Boliek sent a letter to the state elections board asking them to investigate voter registrations listing nonresidential addresses like P.O. boxes or campus mailrooms on their registration forms.
As of last year, Boliek is responsible for appointing election board members and overseeing the State Board’s budget.
It’s unclear how widespread the issue is, and he wants the state to work with county election boards to find out, he wrote. The State Board has not commented publicly about Boliek’s request yet.
Boliek is late to the game. Jay DeLancy, a Lee County Board of Elections member and founder of the Voter Integrity Project, has been concerned about this issue for years. DeLancy also testified against Dupre during Wednesday’s hearing in an attempt to prove she had not abandoned her Florida residence.
In Lee County, there is a traveling mailbox — or a “festering wound,” as DeLancy called it.
Quite a few registered voters use that mailbox as their registration address, while not physically living there. Whenever those voters have been challenged, they’ve been removed from the rolls, but it’s a constant effort, he said.
“And that’s just in our little county, one little mailbox place,” DeLancy said.
Reinoehl, the challenger, said 187 North Carolina UPS businesses offer mailbox services, and according to State Board voter rolls, many voters are claiming them as their residences. In fact, in the most recent report, nine other voters cited the same Charlotte UPS Store as Dupre as their voter residential address.
Why is residential address so important?
It’s not an arbitrary election rule; having an accurate residential address is key so that election officials and candidates can find voters, Wake County elections board Democrat Gerry Cohen said.
Election officials may need to contact voters if their vote was challenged, they need to update some piece of information or to send them mail in the state’s same-day registration mail verification process. Candidates need addresses for their get-out-the-vote campaigns.
It’s been an issue particularly on college campuses, Cohen said. About a decade ago, he noticed a policy change that, for whatever reason, caused many student voters to list a different campus address on their registrations instead of their actual dorm address, where they lived and went to sleep.
The result was a series of identical addresses. At Duke, election officials noticed many voter registrations listing 99 Science Drive as their residential address.
“Well, that meant nothing,” Cohen said. “Nobody could find that. You couldn’t be found there. If somebody was doing a get-out-the-vote event and went to 99 Science Drive, looking for the 1,000 people, all they’d find is a parking lot.”
The address issue also has real electoral consequences beyond just whether Dupre can run.
If a voter puts down a P.O. Box as their residence, how can an election board determine which school board or city council district they’re eligible to vote in, Republican State Board member Stacy “Four” Eggers asked.
County boards have worked around the issue. For example, in Wake County, election officials have a cheat sheet to associate student voter-provided addresses with the address they should use in the system.
Durham County Elections Director Derek Bowens said they work with schools to make sure they’re communicating the proper address listing policy with campus organizations that register students to vote.
The voter registration form spells out the requirements in detail. It specifies that the residential address cannot be a P.O. Box, and has a separate section for registrants’ mailing addresses for voters who may not receive mail at their residential address.
But “a serious percentage” of voters don’t follow the instructions, Cohen said.
“You’d be surprised how many people don’t fill out forms correctly,” he said. “I’m sorry to say this, but people just don’t complete it, or it’s not legible.”
But what about privacy?
Finding registered voters’ addresses is simple. All you need is their first and last names, and in the case of duplicate names, a few other basic pieces of personal information.
In 2008, voter registration information went online. Former State Board general counsel Josh Lawson told WFAE in 2016 that his office received many complaints about how easily accessible addresses were.
Exceptions exist for those enrolled in the Address Confidentiality Program, a North Carolina Department of Justice program that helps victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and human trafficking shield their addresses from public view.
But the General Assembly hasn’t shown an interest in broadening the scope of privacy for other voters, including for public officials concerned about being threatened.
Their reluctance makes sense. Lawmakers benefit from the public addresses for their campaign efforts, Cohen said.
If addresses were shielded more broadly, it would be a disaster, DeLancy said. The public needs to know who is on the voter rolls, he said. If they don’t know where they say they live, voter integrity activists like him have no way of verifying voters’ and candidates’ residences.
As for the situation with Dupre, DeLancy sees the board decision blocking her candidacy as a big win for election integrity. If she were allowed to register at a UPS Store without censure, it would have opened the door to widespread voter fraud, he said.
“When the loophole is fully scalable, where one person can do it, one thousand, ten thousand can do it, pretty soon you can impact a statewide election doing that with people from out of state, like she is,” he said.
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