Of the 4.76 million voters who cast ballots in North Carolina’s 2016 election, 41 were noncitizens.
In a 2017 post-election audit, State Board of Elections auditors found that while these noncitizens came from 28 different countries, they had one thing in common: they were in the United States legally. But while they were granted the right to reside in the country through a green card, visa or another pathway, they did not have the right to vote in US elections.
Many said they didn’t realize they couldn’t vote. One noncitizen voter was married to a US citizen, and believed that qualified her. Others were misinformed by election officials or voter registration drive workers.
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Together, the confirmed noncitizen voters made up 0.0008% of the electorate. Once their ballots were removed, no election outcome changed.
Despite the relatively small number of confirmed noncitizen voters in North Carolina and across the country, a decade later, concerns about noncitizen voting and registration remain at the forefront of national and state election policy — and political rhetoric.
On the federal level, lawmakers are debating the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require all voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship — like a birth certificate or US passport — in order to register to vote.
In North Carolina, the State Board is planning to use the Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system — a collection of federal databases — on a broad scale to determine how many noncitizens are on the voter rolls.
The board voted Thursday along party lines to approve the process that North Carolina will use to challenge voters whom the SAVE system identifies as potential noncitizens.
State election staff will begin uploading portions of North Carolina’s voter roll — including voters’ names, birthdates and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers — as early as Friday afternoon.
However, no voter identified as a potential noncitizen can be removed from the rolls until the Rules Review Commission approves the process, which could happen in June or later.
How does NC make sure noncitizens don’t vote?
If it wasn’t clear before, it is after a successful 2024 constitutional referendum: Only US citizens are allowed to vote in North Carolina elections.
Election officials enforce that requirement during the voter registration process. The first question on the voter registration form every applicant must sign, under penalty of perjury, is “Are you a citizen of the United States of America?”
If not, the form instructs applicants to not submit the form. They are not qualified to vote.
Again, at the bottom of the form, right above the signature line, each registrant must attest to having reviewed the form and being a US citizen.
Once registered, voters can be challenged on grounds they are noncitizens — but that’s “incredibly rare,” former State Board attorney Paul Cox said.
Post-election audits, like the 2017 one, show that some noncitizens still might be improperly registered to vote and cast a ballot.
The source of many of those noncitizen registrations appears to be the Division of Motor Vehicles, said Jim Womack, founder of the conservative North Carolina Election Integrity Team.
Noncitizens can obtain driver’s licenses under certain circumstances, and may be asked whether they want to register to vote while taking care of other DMV business.
“A lot of times, the DMV makes a mistake and adds them to the voter list,” Womack said. “And if they’re not very fluent in English or not paying careful attention, they may get added to the voter list, even though they’re not trying to break the law.”
Once voters are on the rolls, it becomes a lot harder to get them off, he added. Womack suggested a comprehensive audit of the DMV’s voter registration processes to ensure things run more smoothly.
Is it worth the effort?
Even if only a handful of noncitizens are voting, proponents of efforts like the SAVE Act and SAVE system, including Womack, argue that each one of those votes dilutes the vote of a US citizen.
During the Thursday meeting, Republican board member Stacy “Four” Eggers said the alternative to using the SAVE system is to not verify citizenship, which is a nonstarter.
“What I hear from my colleagues on the other side of the fence is that we should trust in human nature and that people will just simply do the right thing,” he said. “And that’s a nice thought, but it is not something that is a reality that we can go through.”
Critics say the cost of rooting out the tiny number of noncitizens comes at a steep price: the almost-certain disenfranchisement of some legal US citizens.
In theory, Democratic board member Siobhan Millen said, she would approve a citizenship check system, but SAVE is not a reliable enough tool.
Every system run by humans is going to produce errors, said North Carolina State University political science professor Steven Greene.
It comes down to whether the cost of fixing those errors is worth it. If elected officials want to make sure no noncitizen can vote, they will probably be able to accomplish that, but they might end up spending a million or more dollars per identified noncitizen, he said.
“The idea that we should expend valuable political time and resources stopping a problem that is infinitesimal in magnitude, is, on its face, ridiculous,” he said. “How many coyotes a year drown in neighborhood ponds? I have no idea. But if they did, it’s not something we should be spending public resources on.”
If the state enacts higher barriers to vote in order to root out noncitizens, they will also block other, eligible voters who might not have the motivation or ability to jump over the hurdles, Greene said.
“It seems quite likely that the people play up this issue to fearmonger, to suggest that there is a problem when there isn’t one, to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment and for further political gain,” he said.
Bringing a different SAVE to NC
The acronyms may be identical, but key differences exist between the federal SAVE Act and the SAVE system run by the Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The SAVE system was originally meant to verify whether people applying for certain government benefits that require citizenship qualified. It includes information from databases including the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
North Carolina election officials began using it on a limited basis in January 2025 as part of a new law requiring court officials to provide state election officials with lists of people who asked to be excused from jury duty because they weren’t US citizens.
When the state elections board received those names, they checked them against the SAVE system to determine whether they were actually noncitizens. If they were identified as confirmed noncitizens, the state would send names to county election boards for further review and potential removal from the voter rolls.
A few months after the law passed, only three noncitizens were identified through the process, according to State Board of Elections spokesperson Pat Gannon.
Womack thinks the jury duty system isn’t working as well as it should. Noncitizens looking to get out of jury duty might select a different excuse, like not understanding English, for example, he said.
A special offer
In August 2025, the State Board got a special offer from US CIS. After major upgrades, the SAVE system could now use the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers to verify their citizenship.
And it didn’t have to be on an individual basis anymore; election boards could upload up to a million voter records at a time. The federal agency gave the State Board a week to take advantage of the offer.
The board passed on it. Chair Francis De Luca said they decided to postpone the decision for another day after hearing legal advice in closed session. They needed more information to move forward, he said.
In November, the idea reemerged. This time, the board voted along party lines to participate in the SAVE system. Executive Director Sam Hayes said he was satisfied that the system would protect voters’ privacy.
“We have very few tools at our disposal,” he said. “This is a good one.”
Then-Republican board member Robert Rucho brought up issues with the DMV improperly registering noncitizens to vote. This process could “go a long way to guaranteeing the absolute correctness of the voter rolls,” he said.
One of the two board Democrats, Siobhan Millen, was more hesitant. She cited the 2017 audit, which found that when the SAVE system identified someone as a potential noncitizen, it was often wrong.
The SAVE databases often don’t have the latest information on naturalization and miss out on birthright citizens who haven’t paid for a certificate of citizenship, for example.
While county election boards will investigate potential noncitizens and provide an opportunity for challenged voters to prove their citizenship before removing them from the rolls, Millen wasn’t convinced.
“I’m not sure I trust that the process in all 100 counties is going to be good enough due process, given the seriousness of this,” she said.
Cox is also wary of the SAVE system. He said in an expansive federal government, data can be stale and incorrect.
“In a perfect world where we have perfect and updated data and information about citizenship status, it’s theoretically a great idea to match it against the voter registration rolls to flag noncitizens,” he said. “The problem is, we can’t be guaranteed that it is perfect data. Far from it. We know that there are errors.”
Womack, however, is a fan. It’s just another tool in the tool bag, and there’s enough of a process on the back end to make sure eligible voters don’t get taken off the rolls because of a database issue, he said.
Initially, he said he thinks the election board will find quite a few noncitizens on the rolls, but he can’t predict how many.
Really, Womack thinks North Carolina needs a SAVE Act of its own — a requirement that all registrants provide documentary proof of citizenship.
So far, the legislature hasn’t bit.
Using SAVE to stop noncitizens from voting
Thursday, the State Board approved the process for challenging potential noncitizens identified through the SAVE system. Board Democrats Siobhan Millen and Jeff Carmon voted against the rules process.
“You’ve done an awesome job of putting a tuxedo on a pig but I stand by what I said earlier,” Carmon told election staff. “This is still a pig.”
Millen added that requiring eligible voters to spend time and money to prove their citizenship in order to keep their right to vote “is pretty much the definition of a poll tax.”
After issuing four proposed rules, the board got thousands of public comments. So many, in fact, that they had to postpone the final vote to review them all. Some of the early comments were helpful and taken to heart, State Board Chief of Staff Brian LiVecchi said in a March interview.
The updated rules include several changes. One gives challenged voters more time to prepare documentation and evidence before election board hearings. Another clarifies that the name on challenged voters’ documentary proof of citizenship doesn’t have to match their name on the voter rolls exactly, if they are “substantially equivalent.”
When the SAVE system identifies a potential noncitizen, the State Board will notify county election boards. If county boards can’t find evidence of citizenship in their own records, they will set a date for a preliminary hearing to challenge the voter’s registration.
Between 10 and 20 days after voters are sent notice of the challenge via mail and any email address on file, the preliminary hearing will be held. However, if the board cannot confirm that the voter received the notice, they will postpone the hearing until they can reach them. Notices are sent via certified mail, so voters will have to sign for them.
At the preliminary hearing, county election officials will determine whether there is probable cause that the challenged voter is a noncitizen. Before or during the hearing, the challenged voter can provide documentation supporting their case.
Thursday, the board discussed potentially streamlining the process in the future by allowing a county board to cancel a preliminary hearing if a challenged voter came in with their US passport or other documentation before a hearing. However, under the current rules, there would be a preliminary hearing regardless of whether the voter provided documentation before the hearing date.
If the county board determines that there is no probable cause, the challenge is dismissed. If they determine that there is probable cause, there will be another challenge hearing later, where the challenged voter can provide sworn testimony and ask for people to be subpoenaed on their behalf.
Putting the onus on challenged voters to prove their citizenship risks creating a bigger mess for eligible voters who get caught up in the process, Cox said.
“With any sort of restriction you put on voting, you really have to do that balancing and determine, okay, how big is the problem we’re trying to fix, and by fixing it the way we’re choosing to fix it, is it going to create a bigger problem for eligible voters?” he said.
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