Over 747,000 ineligible voters have been removed from North Carolina’s voter rolls after the State Board of Elections conducted a purge of ineligible registration records over the past 20 months.
On Thursday, North Carolina’s State Board of Elections released a press release, saying, “From the start of 2023 through August 2024, county boards of elections in North Carolina removed more than 747,000 ineligible registration records from the state’s voter rolls.”
North Carolina’s State Board of Elections noted that the total number reflected an average of over 1,200 ineligible voter records removed from the swing state’s voter list “every single day during those 20 months.” Officials also noted that the State Board of Elections followed “careful policies” to ensure that no eligible voters were improperly removed from the state’s voter records.
According to Thursday’s press release, 289,902 voter registration records were removed due to the voter moving to a different location in North Carolina, while 246,311 were removed due to voters remaining inactive for two federal general elections and failing to respond to notices from their county board of elections to confirm their voter eligibility.
An additional 130,688 deceased voter registration records were removed, 31,242 voters were removed after moving out of North Carolina, 19,939 duplicate or merged voter registrations were removed, 18,883 voters were removed over felony convictions, 2,329 voter registration records were removed at the request of the voter, and 980 voter registration records were removed for additional reasons.
The 747,274 total voter registration records removed over the past 20 months represent roughly 10 percent of the 7.7 million registered voters in North Carolina.
According to The Hill, the voter registration purge comes just weeks after Republicans in North Carolina filed a lawsuit, claiming that the state had failed to take action after reports were filed of ineligible voters remaining on the state’s voter registration rolls. The lawsuit referenced a resident of Wake County, who claimed that voter registration forms in his county did not include driver’s license or Social Security numbers.
The lawsuit claimed, “By failing to collect certain statutorily required information prior to registering these applicants to vote, Defendants placed the integrity of the state’s elections into jeopardy.”
