RNC suing North Carolina State Board of Elections

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Based on claims that it failed to clean up voter rolls, the NC State Board of Elections is facing a lawsuit from the Republican National Committee and the NCGOP.

In a release issued Thursday, the RNC said the NCSBE has “deliberately declined” to enforce a law that requires it to check jury questionnaire responses to identify and remove non-citizens from the voter rolls.

The NCSBE has since responded to the legal action, calling these claims “categorically false.”

“We ask that the NCGOP and RNC immediately rescind their press releases on this topic, as they will undermine voter confidence on an entirely false premise,” a statement from the Board said.

The RNC and NCGOP cited Senate Bill 747 in the lawsuit, an election integrity law passed in 2023. A spokesperson for the Board told CBS 17 its state staff “have worked diligently with the clerks of superior court across North Carolina since that provision became law last month.”

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement, “The RNC and NCGOP defended this law in court and now we will make sure the NCSBE follows and enforces these critical safeguards in The Old North State.”

“Only Americans should vote in American elections,” he continued in his statement. “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.

Within the lawsuit filing , the NCGOP and RNC claim that “zero effort” has been made by the Board of Elections to implement the law which went into effect on July 1.

“We have filed this lawsuit to force the NCSBE to immediately clean the voter rolls and prevent non-citizens from voting in November,” the statement from the RNC said.

Providing more context and response to the lawsuit, the NC State Board of Elections also shared the following as a statement:

“This month, the superior court clerks provided the State Board with lists of voters excused from jury duty because they claimed they were not U.S. citizens. The State Board compared those lists with the North Carolina voter rolls, and nine (9) individuals matched, across the state. If a check of state and federal databases shows any of those 9 individuals have not obtained citizenship, the State Board will send them letters informing the registrants of the agency’s findings and invite them, if not U.S. citizens, to cancel their registrations to comply with the law.

This is the method of compliance that the State Board must undertake this year, because federal law forbids the state from outright removing registrants from the rolls based on statewide processes if the process cannot be completed within 90 days before a federal election, which was August 7. In 2025, the State Board will provide similar data it receives from the clerks of court to the county boards of elections, as part of the State Board’s list maintenance policy, like we already do for voters convicted of felons and deceased voters. See the North Carolina Voter Registration List Maintenance guide, which was updated this week to include information about the new list maintenance program for excusals for non-citizenship.

The State Board has been transparent about this process from the very beginning. Agency staff briefed Republican legislative leadership staff of its compliance plans as early as last November. The State Board informed all election officials, Republican and Democratic, of this program at its publicly open statewide elections conference at the beginning of this month. And agency staff have been traveling the state over the past month, informing clerks of court at their regional conferences of how this program must be carried out this year to comply with federal law. These clerks are both Republicans and Democrats.

Additionally, the request for agency records here was not denied. The State Board receives numerous public records requests and letters from interested parties on a daily basis. The agency responds to these numerous requests as it is able to do so. Plaintiffs are required to follow up and attempt to resolve their request for records before they sue a state agency. To our knowledge, there was no attempt to follow up on this request.”

See the full lawsuit below.

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