Trump admin sues for NC elections officials to update voter rolls

Before and after the 2024 election, Republicans failed to remove tens of thousands of North Carolinians from the voter rolls. With the election over, the Trump administration is reviving such efforts.

FILE PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump greets supporters at a rally in Selma, North Carolina, on April 9, 2022.

The Trump administration on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the North Carolina State Board of Elections, asking a federal court to give elections officials 30 days to address and correct missing information within its voter registration database.

Republicans, who now control the state elections in North Carolina and are on track control all county elections boards starting June 25, were already mulling such action. The lawsuit now stands to give state officials extra cover to do what they had already intended. Democrats, meanwhile, will almost assuredly object to the lawsuit.

Issues over incomplete registration information came to light in 2023 when conservative activist Carol Snow brought attention to a state voter registration form that appeared to make filling out a voter’s Social Security number or driver’s license number optional.

While the NCSBE corrected that form going forward, it declined to honor Snow’s request to proactively verify the identity of the estimated 225,000 voters registered that had used unclear form. At the time, Democrats controlled the elections board.

In response, the Republican National Committee sued to remove 225,000 voters from the rolls months before the 2024 election. But U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers, a Trump appointee, rejected that lawsuit, in part, because the complaint was filed too close to the election.

After the November election, Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin sought to overturn a 734-vote defeat to Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. In his monthslong lawsuit, Griffin argued 60,273 voters should’ve had their ballots removed from the count due to missing registration information.

In January, the NCSBE wrote in an affidavit that it identified 62,027 voters (60,666 early voters and 1,361 absentee voters) lacking a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. Through its review, the board concluded that at least 31,167 of them were properly registered to vote, with a more thorough review needed by counties to account for the remainder.

Last month, Republican Court of Appeals Judges Fred Gore and John Tyson sided with Griffin and ordered the State Board of Elections to give impacted voters 15 business days to correct missing registration information. But the Republican-controlled Supreme Court stepped in, unanimously rejecting this protest from Griffin, albeit for different reasons.