Judge OKs settlement in North Carolina voter registration lawsuit by Justice Department

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge on Monday approved a plan to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department that demanded North Carolina election officials accumulate identification numbers lacking on the records of more than 100,000 registered voters.

U.S. District Judge Richard Myers signed the proposed consent agreement filed a few days ago by lawyers for the department's Civil Rights Division and the State Board of Elections. They said would it ensure the state's compliance with federal law and avoid an expensive trial.

The May 27 lawsuit accused the state board of violating the Help America Vote Act by failing to ensure registration records were accurate for federal elections. The state board already initiated a “Registration Repair Project” in mid-July, asking that 103,000 registered voters supply missing numerical identifiers or state that they don't have one. There are close to 7.6 million registered voters in North Carolina, where statewide elections are often closely contested.

Federal and North Carolina laws have directed that since 2004 election officials request registrants provide a voter’s driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. For about a decade, however, the state’s registration form failed to make clear voters were supposed to provide a number if they had one, resulting in records that indicate numerical IDs have never been provided.

A previous edition of the state board, in which Democrats held a majority, updated the form but declined to contact people statewide to request numbers in time for the 2024 elections. The lack of numerical IDs surfaced in litigation filed by the Republican Party in 2024 and in challenges to results in a state Supreme Court race.

The board flipped to a Republican majority in early May and the lawsuit was filed soon after. It cited, in part, Trump’s broad executive order on elections in March that it said was designed to “guard against illegal voting, unlawful discrimination, and other forms of fraud, error, or suspicion.”

Through public requests and mailings, the registrants in the pool already have fallen below 80,900 as voters provide information. The agreement requires another round of letters be sent by mid-December to registrants who have not responded, and for the board to provide plan updates to DOJ into 2027.

“The complaint was asking for nothing more than what we were already preparing to do, which was to look internally for this information at the same time that we were reaching out to the voters themselves to provide the information,” new board Executive Director Sam Hayes told reporters Monday after a board meeting. "So we’re on a path to do that now."

People who remain on the list must vote provisionally the next time they cast a ballot and are being asked to provide an ID number at the polls. Low-turnout elections for municipal and local races are held this fall, with the first of three rounds happening Tuesday.

While some ballots may not count in state and local races if one of these voters fails to provide an ID number or has never shown an alternate form of ID, the agreement makes clear ballot choices for federal offices must be counted so long as the person is otherwise eligible to vote. The next federal elections are in March.

The Democratic National Committee earlier threatened to sue the state elections board, worried that any plan would remove people from lists of eligible voters in federal elections. Party attorney Dan Freeman last week called the agreement details a “huge victory for the DNC and, more importantly, our democracy.”

Separate from the consent agreement are an additional 98,000 registered voters who generally have provided a required ID number but it’s not been validated by a government database. That could happen because a person changed their name when they got married, or because the number was entered wrongly into the state’s registration system.

The state elections board voted along party lines last month to require this group to cast provisional ballots until their ID numbers were validated. The board, meeting again Monday, instead agreed unanimously these voters can keep casting regular ballots as long as they have shown an ID at the polls, in keeping with state law.