‘Categorically false.’ NC elections board rejects noncitizen voting argument in GOP lawsuit
The North Carolina State Board of Elections strongly rejected allegations in a lawsuit filed by state and national Republicans about the board’s process for removing noncitizens from the voting rolls.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday by the NC GOP and the Republican National Committee, accuses the board of failing to comply with a new state law requiring the use of jury questionnaire responses in removing noncitizens from the rolls. The responses show who claimed to be noncitizens to be excused from jury duty.
Pat Gannon, a spokesperson for the board, said this accusation was “categorically false” and that the agency has already worked with superior courts across the state to implement the new law. The elections board asked the NC GOP and the RNC to rescind their press releases on the lawsuit “as they will undermine voter confidence on an entirely false premise.”
In the RNC’s press release Thursday afternoon, Chair Michael Whatley said “Only Americans should vote in American elections. If someone claims non-citizenship, they must be taken off the voter rolls – that’s the law. The NCSBE has chosen to blatantly ignore the law, undermine basic election safeguards, and neglect a fundamental principle of our election integrity.”
Gannon said the board has already identified nine individuals who appear on the state’s voter rolls and were excused from jury duty for claiming to be noncitizens. If the board confirms they are not citizens, they will be sent letters asking them to cancel their voter registration.
The board is prohibited by federal law from outright removing the registrants from the rolls if the process cannot be completed within 90 days of the election — a deadline which already passed earlier this month.
But if they are found to not be citizens, they could face prosecution. It is already a federal crime for noncitizens to vote, and state law requires residents to be citizens to register to vote. North Carolina voters also have to present a photo ID to vote.
In their lawsuit, Republicans note that the jury selection law went into effect on July 1. Matt Mercer, communications director for the NC GOP, said that if the board had begun implementing the law earlier, the 90-day deadline would not have been an issue.
Republican legislative leaders were briefed on the board’s plans to comply with the new law as early as last November, Gannon said. All of the state’s election officials, both Republican and Democrat, were also informed of this process at a statewide elections conference at the beginning of the month.
North Carolina Republicans passed the law in question, Senate Bill 747, last year, overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto to do so. The provision dealing with removing noncitizens from the voting rolls is just one of many sweeping changes to election law included in the legislation.
The law has been challenged in federal court as part of several lawsuits, one of which led to a judge blocking a portion of the law that dealt with same-day registration.
Noncitizen voting has became a major talking point for Republicans nationally and in North Carolina, though the actual crime is rare. A 2016 national study conducted by the Brennan Center found that in 42 jurisdictions accounting for 23.5 million votes, there were only 30 estimated incidents of suspected noncitizen voting.
Earlier this year, state Republicans passed a proposed constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would explicitly state that only citizens can vote in North Carolina — although this is already the law.
