9 potential non-citizens have been identified as registered voters in North Carolina, state election officials say

Due to a new law passed by the Republican-led state legislature ahead of the 2024 elections, state election officials have identified nine possible non-citizens registered to vote in North Carolina – out of a total of more than 7.7 million voters.

A prominent conservative activist who has met privately with Republican lawmakers ahead of the Legislature's work to pass several new, politically contentious changes to election laws in 2023 tells WRAL that finding nine possible non-citizens registered as voters are, could be an undercount because the new ones could be an undercount The laws are not as strict as they could have been. He said more changes need to be made to state law to ensure immigrants don't vote.

“The best way to ensure that there are no non-citizens is to actually require proof of citizenship when you register to vote,” Jim Womack, who leads the North Carolina Election Integrity Network, said in a Thursday Interview. “Arizona does. But North Carolina is one of the many states that doesn’t do that.”

In North Carolina, all voters must be U.S. citizens, but no proof is required to register. Instead, voters must swear on voter registration forms that they are citizens and otherwise eligible to vote, otherwise they will be charged with perjury.

But a spokesman for the State Board of Elections warned Thursday that there was no evidence yet that the nine people they reported were actually immigrants. Investigations are currently underway to confirm her legal status.

The announcement came Thursday as the Board of Elections also announced that it has removed nearly 750,000 people from the voter rolls in North Carolina since 2023.

The Board regularly conducts voter roll maintenance to ensure that those registered to vote in North Carolina remain eligible to vote.

• About half of the 747,274 people removed from voter rolls are people who recently moved or died.
• Most of the others were removed from office because they hadn't voted in years, and state law says they are therefore ineligible to remain registered.
• A small percentage were removed for a variety of other reasons, including people who were recently convicted of a felony or those who simply asked not to vote anymore.

However, the nine potential non-citizens were not among the 750,000 voters whose registration was revoked. There are several reasons for that, said Pat Gannon, spokesman for the Board of Elections – namely, that by the time the new law went into effect, it was already too late to remove voters from the rolls, since federal law prevents such actions within 90 days of an election.

The mandatory jury forms were used to find them

This new law is part of a sweeping series of changes to election rules that Republicans say will promote voter integrity but critics say could lead to legitimate voters being harassed or barred from voting altogether.

One section requires courts to exclude people from jury service if they are not U.S. citizens, and also requires the state election board to work with court officials to match voters' names with lists of people excluded from jury service became mandatory because they checked the box that they were not a U.S. citizen.

The law came into force in July. Gannon said that by August, officials from 98 of the state's 100 counties had submitted their lists, leading to the discovery of the nine names on both lists. But at that point, he said, the deadline for removing voters from the rolls had passed.

In the meantime, the authority is examining whether criminal charges are justified. If it turns out that they are not eligible to vote, the state board could also contact these nine people and ask them not to vote and to remove their registrations. But Gannon pointed out that there are still unanswered questions and it could be that some or even all of them will still be found on eligible voters: “First of all, they could have lied on that jury form,” he said. “Secondly, they could have obtained citizenship since then.”

However, Womack said courts excuse people from jury duty even if they claim they don't speak English well, and he believes most non-citizens would probably check that box instead of the non-citizen box . And the new law does not require state election officials to compare voter rolls with that data.

Legal disputes are looming over the voter lists

The news comes as state election officials face multiple lawsuits from the Republican Party for allegedly not doing enough to ensure all voters are legitimate. The State Board of Elections says the GOP's claims are false and “will undermine voter confidence on an entirely false premise.”

But Womack attributes the legal challenges to forcing the election board to act more quickly and make the announcement on the Thursday before the election. “They were pressured by a lawsuit to stop their slow walk,” he said.

What happens if it turns out that the nine people are actually non-citizens who registered to vote under the false claim that they were citizens, they could face criminal charges.

The electoral board itself cannot file criminal charges. However, their job is to conduct investigations into allegations of voter fraud or other election law violations and then refer the cases to local prosecutors if evidence is available.

After the 2022 and 2023 elections, in which millions of ballots were cast, the election board referred a total of 22 cases for prosecution. It is unclear how many, if any, of these were taken up by prosecutors or what the results were. The allegations included:

• 13 people try to vote twice.
• 6 for voting while on probation or parole for a felony.
• 1 for voter fraud.
• 1 for lying on a form.
• 1 for taking a photo of a completed ballot paper.