The North Carolina State Board of Elections has declined to release the names of thousands of dead people reportedly found on voter rolls, in part because there might be “subsequent investigations or prosecutions” over “fraudulent votes.”
The lack of transparency means North Carolina voters at present have no way to verify if they have been inaccurately flagged as deceased and are subject to removal from voter rolls.
"We are checking the list against databases and information available to the State Board and county boards of elections," board spokesperson Jason Tyson said in an email Monday when asked what double-checking the government had done on the list of names. "We plan to work with state and federal partners to confirm the information we received and determine dates of death. It is just the beginning of the process, not the end."
In April, the board announced that it had conducted a "comprehensive data comparison" with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to identify about 34,000 dead voters. NC Local then filed a public records request for the names.
Initially, the board said it was "not in possession of the names at this time." Then a spokesperson said they would not release the names, citing an exception in North Carolina law that allows them to withhold records of criminal investigations by law enforcement agencies.
“State Board staff is working to get the dates of death for the individuals on the list of deceased voters,” another board spokesperson, Patrick Gannon, said via email Wednesday. “Once we have that, our Investigations Division can determine whether votes were credited to any of those individuals after their deaths. At that point, we could refer any possible criminal cases to prosecutors.”
The board declined to name any specific law enforcement agencies working on the investigation — a legal requirement for the public records exception.
Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s office declined to answer whether staff had spoken with the board about the list.
“Conversations between DOJ attorneys who represent the board and the State Board of Elections are privileged, and we’re unable to provide comment,” Jackson’s spokesperson, Nazneen Ahmed, wrote in an email.
Legal expert questions board's reasoning
Raleigh attorney Mike Tadych, who regularly represents journalists trying to get public records, doubted the board’s argument against releasing the names.
Tadych pointed to another part of the same statute that says the “use of a public record in connection with a criminal investigation or the gathering of criminal intelligence shall not affect its status as a public record.”
When the board first compiled the names, Tadych noted, it was using them to conduct administrative maintenance of the voter rolls.
The board’s press release called the list maintenance “a routine and necessary function” and admitted that finding deceased individuals “does not necessarily indicate that illegal votes were cast in their names.”
Because the board initially did not intend to use the names for a criminal investigation, Tadych contended, those records should be considered public.
“You can’t just suddenly make public records not public records,” he said.
Board cites other reasons for withholding records
Gannon, the state board spokesperson, said that a signed agreement with the federal government also prohibits disclosure of the names.
That March memorandum of agreement between the board and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services lays out that the federal agency will “verify the U.S. citizenship and immigration status information of registrants and registered voters” for North Carolina. It requires the board to “only release certain information under certain circumstances provided for” in the agreement, Gannon said.
In that search, SAVE identified 1,599 "potential non-U.S. citizens on North Carolina’s voter rolls," Sam Hayes, the board's executive director, said in a statement on Friday. Some voting rights groups have called the system unreliable.
The board, Gannon said, is also “analyzing a recent federal court order” to determine whether it blocks the release of personal data related to a voter’s citizenship or death when that information came from the federal database.
Last month, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., found that the USCIS program violated a prohibition in the Social Security Act “against the disclosure of Social Security numbers and other related SSA records,” as well as protections in the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
What the data shows
Although the board refused NC Local’s requests for the names, it provided aggregate data on July 8.
The government found 34,641 people who were dead but still on the voter rolls, according to that data. In total:
- About 64% of those people were white, about 20% were Black, and roughly 10% were listed as “undesignated.” The rest were listed under another race or two or more races.
- Democrats made up about 38% of those found on the rolls and Republicans 32%. Unaffiliated voters comprised about 28%. The rest were Libertarians, Greens and one person whose affiliation was “blank.”
- The list contained slightly more men than women, about 45% to 44%. The remaining people on the list were listed as “undesignated.”
- Approximately 66% of the voters identified as “not Hispanic” or “not Latino,” while about 2% were Hispanic or Latino. The rest were “undesignated.”
Gannon said 3,203 of the names had already been removed from the rolls. Another 22,216 are registered but “slated for removal soon due to inactivity,” such as a lack of contact with their local elections board. That leaves 9,222 “active” names on the voter rolls.
Counties bordering other states had higher percentages of dead people’s names on their voter rolls. That is likely, Gannon explained, because “if a registrant dies in a neighboring state, it is unlikely that information will get back to the county board of elections in North Carolina, and therefore, that person will remain on the rolls until they are removed for inactivity.”
Sam Hayes, the board’s executive director, said the numbers show North Carolina’s systems for checking voter rolls working.
“North Carolinians should continue to have confidence in our elections,” Hayes said in a statement. “Our county and State Board staffs endeavor year-round to maintain accurate voter rolls, and those efforts are working. At the same time, election security requires constant vigilance. When we identify a shortfall in the process, it is our responsibility to address it.”
Editor's Note: Tadych has previously provided legal assistance to the author of this article. He does not represent the author or NC Local at present.
This article first appeared on NCLocal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
