The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) is in the process of fixing the registrations of “registered voters who do not have an N.C. driver’s license/DMV ID number or social security number in the state’s voter registration database.” Officials have identified over 100,000 such registrations since July 17 and have already corrected over 20,000 of those, although they are also looking for more deficient registrations to repair.
The federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) requires registrations to include at least one of those numbers (often called “HAVA numbers”) except in the very rare case that a voter has neither. State law also requires voter registrations to include at least one HAVA number. HAVA numbers help officials cross-check the voter registration list with other databases, which helps make registration lists more accurate.
County election officials already had some of those numbers in other files and were able to match those HAVA numbers with the appropriate registrations. The SBE has begun the second phase of the repair process by mailing notices to over 80,000 registrants asking them to provide their HAVA numbers.
An additional benefit of this process is that it will help update voter rolls beyond just HAVA numbers. Registrants on the inactive list (and potentially eligible to be removed from the voter roll during the next round of list maintenance) will be moved back to the active voter list if they reply to the notice. Officials will also be able to identify those who no longer live at the address where they are registered.
Who are those with missing HAVA numbers?
Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, analyzed the registrations on the Registration Repair Project (RRP) list. The analysis revealed that registrants who failed to provide HAVA numbers were also less likely to provide other information, including age, and were more likely to register as unaffiliated. Here is a simplified version of what he found:
| Category | Not RRP Registrants | RRP Registrants |
| Unaffiliated with any party | 37.05% | 62.95% |
| Unidentified gender | 7.93% | 50.80% |
| Unidentified age | 29.4% | 73.3% |
| Unidentified race | 8.73% | 57.42% |
Many people do not like to give out any more information about themselves than they absolutely have to; RRP registrants even more so. The same instinct to not share information about race or gender, along with the mistaken impression left by the old registration form that providing HAVA numbers was optional, caused those registrants not to give those numbers.
The high proportion of both non-RRP and RRP registrants with unidentified age is curious. State law (G.S. 163-82.4) makes it clear which items on the voter registration form are optional:
The county board shall make a diligent effort to complete for the registration records any information requested on the form that the applicant does not complete, but no application shall be denied because an applicant does not state race, ethnicity, gender, or telephone number.
Date of birth, which would provide age, is not optional; it is required. It is possible that most registrants have provided that information, but it has not made its way to public records. Registrant’s birthdates are kept private but are used to state their ages, which are public information. Age is updated for each registration record at the end of the year.
What happens next?
The county boards and the SBE will continue to reach out to affected registrants in the coming months. Those on the registration repair list will have to vote provisionally and provide their HAVA numbers to have their votes counted:
If you are on the list of voters whose records lack required identification information, the next time you vote, you will have to cast a provisional ballot and fill out a form with your N.C. driver’s license/DMV ID number, or last four digits of your social security number. The county board of elections will meet after Election Day to determine whether you provided the required identification information for your provisional ballot to be counted.
North Carolina requires voter ID, so most voters will have their driver’s license with them when they vote. The minority who do not bring their license can provide the last four digits of their Social Security numbers at the polls.
While it may take a while, the registration repair process will help make our voter rolls more secure without jeopardizing anyone’s right to vote.
