Raleigh, NC – On Thursday, April 16, the North Carolina State Board of Elections approved a new set of rules that will let state officials run the voter rolls through federal citizenship databases maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, then challenge registrations of people flagged as possible noncitizens. Supporters on the board’s Republican majority described the move as a necessary safeguard for election integrity. Opponents warned that the state is embracing a tool its own past audit called unreliable, creating a system that could force eligible citizens to prove themselves to stay registered.
The vote was 3-2 along party lines, according to multiple reports from the meeting, and it came during a session whose official agenda listed “Adoption of permanent rules for noncitizen list maintenance” as one of the board’s major action items. The rules formalize North Carolina’s new memorandum of agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS component that runs the federal SAVE system. They also establish the process county boards must follow before removing anyone from the rolls.
A sweeping new data partnership
Under the board’s own public explanation, beginning in 2026 the state will run the statewide list of registered voters through SAVE at least once a year. The information sent to USCIS will include each voter’s name, date of birth and the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number. The state board says that data will be used to identify “potential noncitizens” on the rolls, after which state and county officials will conduct further review before any removal occurs.
That means this is not a narrow review tied to a small class of already-suspect records. It is, by the board’s own description, a statewide sweep. The state could begin uploading voter data to DHS as early as today, one day after the vote, and that the arrangement allows potentially millions of voter records to be run through federal citizenship databases at a time. North Carolina recently said it serves more than 7.5 million registered voters, underscoring the scale of the data-sharing arrangement.
The board’s “Maintaining Accurate Voter Rolls” page says North Carolina has already been using SAVE in a narrower way since 2024, chiefly in cases involving people who asked to be excused from jury duty because they were not U.S. citizens. In those cases, clerks send lists to the state board, which then checks state and federal databases and notifies counties if citizenship cannot be confirmed. Thursday’s vote expands that limited use into a routine, statewide list-maintenance program.
How the challenge process is supposed to work
The state board says a SAVE flag will not, by itself, trigger immediate removal. According to the board’s official explanation, if SAVE identifies a registrant as a possible noncitizen, the state must first ask SAVE to confirm there are no other records showing the person is a citizen. Election officials must then review voter-registration files and other state records to see whether the voter has already supplied proof of citizenship elsewhere, such as with a passport used for voting identification or documents shown at the DMV. Only if those checks fail would the voter be notified and given a chance to correct the record.
The memorandum of agreement with USCIS adds another layer. It says the user agency must seek “additional verification” whenever an initial SAVE response does not verify a person as a U.S. citizen, and it says the agency must not deny the underlying “benefit” without first giving the person notice and a “meaningful opportunity to respond” and provide proof of citizenship if needed. In other words, even the federal agreement anticipates that an initial noncitizen response may not be the end of the matter.
The board majority’s argument
Supporters of the rules say those caveats are exactly why the state is building a hearing process rather than relying on automated removals. Executive Director Sam Hayes, in the board’s official statement, said the goal is to “improve the accuracy of our voter rolls” while taking “necessary precautions” to ensure that no eligible voter is affected. For Republicans on the board, the principle is straightforward: citizenship is a legal requirement, and officials have a duty to check it.
The board also points to law. Its public FAQ cites Article VI, Section 1 of the North Carolina Constitution, which limits voting to U.S. citizens, and state statutes authorizing list maintenance and permitting the use of “other methods” to remove ineligible voters. The MOA itself cites the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act and multiple North Carolina statutes as legal authority for the data-sharing arrangement. Whatever the policy wisdom of the move, the board is not presenting it as a freestanding political experiment; it is presenting it as an enforcement program grounded in existing constitutional and statutory duties.
Supporters also note that the state says it does not use third-party lists for official list maintenance and instead relies on government records. The board’s voter-roll page emphasizes that its broader maintenance program is supposed to be “continuous, nondiscriminatory, uniform, and systematic.” To Republicans, the SAVE arrangement fits within that philosophy: use official government sources, apply the process statewide and give people a formal avenue to contest errors. That is the board majority’s best case for the policy.
The Democratic dissent
Democrats on the board saw the same structure and reached the opposite conclusion. The concern is not just that some records will be wrong. It is that ordinary voters, especially naturalized citizens and citizens with complicated documentation histories, may now bear the burden of correcting the government’s database mismatch.
Part of a broader national push
North Carolina’s action did not happen in isolation. Reuters reported this week that 17 states already use or plan to use DHS’s verification system to screen voter rolls for noncitizens as Republican-led states adopt parts of the broader proof-of-citizenship agenda championed by President Donald Trump and congressional allies. The White House also issued a March 31 executive order focused on citizenship verification and election integrity, while North Carolina has already been under pressure in other election-administration disputes involving voter-registration records and federal compliance.
In that sense, Thursday’s vote is both a North Carolina story and a national one. It is about one state board, one meeting and one rules package. But it is also about a larger movement to shift election administration toward more aggressive citizenship checks, more federal-state data sharing and more documentary burdens on voters whose status is questioned. North Carolina, a state where election disputes routinely carry national implications, is now one of the clearest laboratories for that approach.
What happens next
The permanent rules do not take effect immediately. The state board’s official announcement says they now go to the Rules Review Commission for final review before becoming effective. Even so, the state’s underlying agreement with USCIS is already in place. That leaves North Carolina on the edge of a strange interim moment: the data partnership is moving forward, while the full permanent procedures governing removals are still awaiting another layer of approval.
State Board to Check Voter Rolls to Identify, Remove Non-U.S. Citizens (press release)
Raleigh, NC – The State Board of Elections will soon check the citizenship of all registered voters in North Carolina against federal databases to identify and remove any non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls. The board approved new rules at its meeting today for a process that must be followed before a voter is removed.
Voters’ names, dates of birth, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers will be run through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, which will provide information on any possible noncitizens. The State Board recently entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for this purpose.
“This is another way that we will continue to improve the accuracy of our voter rolls and make sure only eligible voters can cast ballots in this state,” said Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “As noncitizens are removed from the voter list, necessary precautions will be taken to ensure that no eligible voters are affected.”
When any voters are identified by SAVE as potential noncitizens, elections officials will take several steps designed to ensure that only non-U.S. citizens are removed from the voter rolls. These include:
- Working with SAVE to confirm that no other records available to SAVE show the registrant is a U.S. citizen.
- Checking the voter’s registration records and other state records and databases to determine whether that voter has ever provided proof of U.S. citizenship to a government official.
- If no records available to the State Board show the voter has provided proof of U.S. citizenship, the voter will be notified and given the opportunity to correct or update their citizenship information before they can be removed from the voter rolls. The State Board administrative rules adopted today establish procedures to guide county boards of elections in carrying out this process. The proposed rules require that the voter receive notice and an opportunity to be heard, including the opportunity to obtain and provide documentation of their citizenship, before being removed. The rules approved by the State Board on Thursday, now go to the Rules Review Commission for review and final approval before they become effective.
Why is this effort important?
Under Article VI, Section 1 of the North Carolina Constitution, only U.S. citizens may vote in N.C. elections. Registering and voting as a non-U.S. citizen are state and federal felony offenses. Ballots cast by ineligible voters cancel out ballots cast by eligible voters.
It is the mission of the State Board of Elections to ensure that the votes of every eligible voter count, and that means not counting ballots cast by ineligible persons. North Carolina often has close contests, where outcomes can be decided by very few votes.
Also, it is possible that noncitizens are on the voter rolls without their knowledge or that they have been misled to believe that registering and voting by noncitizens is lawful.
This list maintenance program will also give election officials and the public important data on noncitizen registering and voting, which can inform future policy decisions and public discussion of the issue.
Election officials do not have evidence to suggest noncitizen registering and voting is a widespread problem. However, there are documented cases of noncitizens making their way onto the voter rolls, often by mistake.
An audit conducted by the State Board after the 2016 general election showed 41 ineligible noncitizens with legal status (green card, etc.) voted in that election, in which nearly 4.8 million voters cast ballots. According to that audit report, interviews and evidence showed that some noncitizens were misinformed about the law by individuals conducting voter registration drives or, in at least one documented case, by a local precinct official. One registrant in her 70s had lived in the United States for more than 50 years and believed that she was a citizen because she had been married to a U.S. citizen. Additionally, a Canadian citizen recently pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of making false claims certifying that he was a U.S. citizen on North Carolina voter registration applications in 2022 and 2024 in order to vote in elections.
More information
For more information, see “Q&A: Use of the Federal SAVE Database for Verification of U.S. Citizenship for Voters” at Maintaining Accurate Voter Rolls, a new webpage with information about voter list maintenance efforts in North Carolina.