Settlement with RNC requires NC elections board to publish names of noncitizens
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- Settlement forces NC elections board to publish names of self‑identified noncitizens.
- Settlement requires compliance with 2023 law that uses jury questionnaires.
- Advocates say publishing the list could expose sensitive information and deter voting.
A new settlement agreement between national Republicans and the North Carolina State Board of Elections is raising concerns among activists, who object to a provision that requires the board to publish the names of some self-identified noncitizens online.
Felicia Arriaga, board chair of El Pueblo — one of the advocacy organizations involved in the lawsuit — said the settlement puts North Carolina’s Latino community at risk.
“Instead of making these public records available through legal channels, the board will expose the list of people identified as potential non-citizens to anyone with internet access, without any request, registration, process or legal basis that obliges it to do so, which is dangerous, especially in the current anti-immigrant climate,” Arriaga said.
The settlement, which was approved in Wake County court on Wednesday, requires the State Board of Elections to comply with a 2023 law that sets out a process for finding noncitizens on the voter rolls by using jury questionnaire responses.
When residents are contacted for jury duty, they can self-identify as noncitizens to show their ineligibility. The law requires courts to share those responses with election officials, who will then check to see if the identified individuals are on the voter rolls.
The agreement stems from a 2024 lawsuit, in which the Republican National Committee and the NC GOP sued the elections board, arguing that it was not acting fast enough to enforce the law and produce records about noncitizens it found on the rolls.
At the time, the board said the allegations were “categorically false” and noted that it had already identified nine individuals on the state’s voter rolls who were excused from jury duty for claiming to be noncitizens.
Wednesday’s settlement largely reinforces the existing law and sets out a schedule for compliance. However, it also includes a new provision that would require the elections board to publish the list of self-identified noncitizens publicly on its website “with appropriate redactions to comply with state and federal law.”
A spokesperson for the State Board of Elections did not respond to a request for comment about what exact information would be included on its site.
The RNC and the elections board reached their agreement last month, but two advocacy groups which had intervened in the case objected to the settlement due to this provision.
Those groups, North Carolina Asian Americans Together and El Pueblo, argued that the list could “expose sensitive personal information” and may include individuals who were incorrectly flagged as noncitizens or who have since become eligible voters.
“Individuals whose names appear on publicly accessible government list of purported non-citizens may reasonably fear that exercising their right to vote will expose them or their family members to immigration scrutiny, regardless of their own citizenship status,” the groups wrote in a legal brief.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Narendra Ghosh, a lawyer for the intervenors, also noted that the law itself does not require this publication. He said if an individual wished to find that information, they could file a public records request instead.
John Branch, a lawyer for the RNC, said the requirement for publication was necessary because the elections board had responded too slowly to his client’s public records requests about the self-identified noncitizens in the past.
“From my client’s perspective, it took the lawsuit to get it out in 2024,” he said. “That provision in the consent judgment is important to us to make sure that that does not happen again.”
Numerous studies — both nationally and in North Carolina — have found noncitizen voting to be exceedingly rare, even as Republicans make claims of widespread election fraud.
