The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) approved rules for removing non-citizens from voter rolls on a 3-2 party-line vote in April. Part of that process involves matching voter rolls with the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. While the SBE has long used the SAVE database, the new rules represent a significant expansion in what election officials can do with it. I spoke largely in favor of the proposed rules in a public comment hearing on March 9.
34,000 dead to be removed from voter rolls
While those rules are still working their way through the rule-making process, the SBE’s expanded use of SAVE has already borne fruit in the form of identifying 34,000 deceased people on the state’s voter rolls:
The North Carolina State Board of Elections has identified approximately 34,000 deceased individuals on the state’s voter rolls following a comprehensive data comparison with the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.
Election officials will not automatically remove those registrations. County officials will follow procedures to verify the data and provide due process to anyone mistakenly listed as dead before removing any of them.
List maintenance protects elections
To be sure, the SBE already has a program for systematically removing dead people from the voter rolls. County election boards receive death data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services weekly and update their voter rolls accordingly. However, that does not cover people who registered to vote in North Carolina, moved out of the state, and then died.
Those registrations would eventually be removed through another process called biennial list maintenance. Election officials removed almost half a million registrations through the process in 2025. However, that process will not remove those registrations until 8-10 years after the voter has died.
List maintenance is a critical part of election security:
The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) notes that regular voter roll list maintenance is important “because it ensures ineligible voters are not included on poll books, reduces the possibility for poll worker error and decreases opportunities for fraud.”
The National Conference of State Legislatures also stresses how list maintenance improves voting by:
-Protecting against fraud by ensuring only eligible electors can cast a ballot.
-Informing Election Day planning by helping accurately budget for ballots, voting machines, polling places and poll workers.
-Minimizing wait times at the polls.
-Simplifying postelection procedures by reducing the number of provisional ballots cast.
Working with the SAVE database has already helped improve that crucial system.
