North Carolina scrubs over 700,000 ineligible voters from rolls in face of another GOP lawsuit

Numerous states, including Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Virginia, have taken steps in recent months to scrub the dead, foreign nationals, and duplicates off voter rolls ahead of the 2024 election.

North Carolina's State Board of Elections revealed Thursday that it too has purged a significant number of ineligible voters from its rolls.

According to a release obtained by the North State Journal, North Carolina election officials removed 747,274 ineligible registration records from the state's voter rolls between the start of 2023 and last month.

"That's an average of more than 1,200 voter records removed from the voter list every single day during those 20 months," said the board. "The county boards follow careful policies to ensure that only ineligible records are removed, not those of eligible voters."

Registrants were removed for a number reasons, including their citizenship status; their inactive status in two federal general elections and failure to respond to mailings from the board to confirm eligibility; their indefinite lack of a pulse; felony convictions; or their request to be removed.

Of the over 747,000 registrants removed, 130,688 were dead; 31,242 moved out of state; 246,311 were inactive; and nearly 300,000 were duplicates.

'Call me crazy, but I think American elections should be decided by American citizens.'

The board's announcement comes one month after it was slapped with a lawsuit by the Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party, accused of allowing "over 225,000 people to register to vote with registration forms that failed to collect certain required identification information before the registration forms were processed."

According to the complaint, these errors potentially loaded the rolls with ineligible voters, including noncitizens.

While it's unclear what impact this cleanup will have on the election, the prevention of voter fraud could go a long way in the state. After all, the Marist North Carolina poll released Thursday indicates that Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump are presently tied in North Carolina.

According to Marist, Trump has the advantage against Harris among those who plan to vote in person — 61% for Trump to 38% for Harris. Meanwhile, Harris leads Trump 62% to 35% among those who said they intend to vote by absentee ballot or mail.

Virginia similarly cleared a significant number of foreign nationals from its rolls.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) issued an executive order in early August removing over 6,000 noncitizens who had "accidentally or maliciously attempted to register" to vote.

"Call me crazy, but I think American elections should be decided by American citizens and Virginia elections should be decided by Virginians," Youngkin said in an interview. "That's why this executive order is so important because it does make sure that we have clean voter rolls.

Trump celebrated the move, noting in a Truth Social post that the Virginia governor is "TAKING A STRONG LEAD IN SECURING THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER — PROTECTING EVERY LEGAL VOTE AND KEEPING ILLEGAL ALIENS THAT HAVE BEEN LET INTO OUR COUNTRY FROM VOTING."

"EVERY STATE SHOULD FOLLOW VIRGINIA'S LEAD," added Trump.

Last month, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott announced that Texas had removed over 1 million ineligible voters from the voter rolls.

Abbott indicated that among the millions of ineligible voters cleared from the rolls were over 6,500 noncitizens, over 6,000 felons, over 457,000 dead people, and over 463,000 voters on the suspense list.

The governor's office indicated that of the 6,500 potential noncitizens removed from the rolls, approximately 1,930 had a voter history.

"Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans' sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting," said Abbott.

Leftists were of course upset by this effort to bolster election integrity.

The ACLU, ACLU of Texas, Protect Democracy, and other progressive groups complained in a late August letter that "eligible Texas voters have likely been erroneously identified as potential noncitizens and purged from the rolls," and that the cleanup likely violated the National Voter Registration Act.

Oklahoma is another state that has taken action to ensure that only eligible voters are casting ballots.

On Sept. 18, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) announced the removal of over 453,500 voter registrations since Jan. 1, 2021.

KFOR-TV reported that among those removed were 97,065 dead people; 143,682 voters who moved out of state; 5,607 felons; 14,993 duplicate registrations; and 194,962 inactive voters canceled during the verification process.

Clark County, Nevada, moved over 102,000 voters to inactive status in early August. Republicans claimed responsibility for the purge.

"The Nevada Republican Party is proud to announce the successful cleanup of voter rolls in Clark County. This achievement is the result of dedicated efforts by the NVGOP, the Republican National Committee, Trump Campaign, and numerous grassroots organizations, in collaboration with the Nevada Secretary of State and Clark Registrar of Voters," the Nevada GOP said in a statement.

The executive board of the Nevada GOP indicated they looked forward "to seeing the results of the voter roll cleanups in the other 16 counties."

Earlier this month, the Trump campaign, the RNC, and the Nevada GOP sued Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar (D) for allegedly failing to properly maintain the state's voter rolls, suggesting that they might be laden with noncitizens.

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