The North Carolina State Board of Elections said Monday it has identified roughly 34,000 deceased people on the state's voter rolls after running more than 7.3 million voter records through a federal immigration-status database, a finding the board's executive director called higher than expected and that has reopened debate over how aggressively states must scrub registration lists.
The matches surfaced as a byproduct of a citizenship-verification effort, not a dedicated audit of dead registrants.
On April 17, the board submitted 7,397,734 voter records to the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database, run by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The check uses each voter's name, date of birth and the last four digits of their Social Security number, with USCIS cross-referencing the Social Security Administration.
"This number of cases is higher than expected," said Sam Hayes, the board's executive director.
He added that the cross-state and federal database checks let the agency uncover issues like this and pledged to use every available legal tool to keep the rolls accurate.
However, the 34,000 figure does not establish that any fraudulent ballots were cast.
The board said the result instead points to the limits of its existing list-maintenance pipeline, which receives weekly death notifications from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services at the county level.
That state-only feed misses people who registered in North Carolina, moved away and died in another state.
The new federal cross-check is designed to catch that gap.
Removal will not be automatic.
The board said it will verify each record and work with county boards to remove deceased voters from the rolls under state and federal law, a process that includes additional database checks and due process steps before any name is removed.
The development arrives in an altered governance landscape.
Under a recent statutory change, State Auditor Dave Boliek now appoints members of the State Board of Elections and chairs of county boards of elections.
Boliek, in his own statement Monday, called the announcement "another positive step" toward secure elections.
The findings also feed a broader federal fight.
President Donald Trump and House Republicans, including Rep. Mark Harris, R-N.C., have pressed the Senate to pass the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
The House passed the bill earlier this year along largely party lines; it remains stalled in the Senate.
What happens next is procedural.
The board must work, record by record, with county boards of elections to confirm matches, notify affected registrations as required by law and remove confirmed deceased voters before the next election cycle.
Officials said the SAVE comparison is also expected to flag duplicate registrations and name mismatches as the review continues.
Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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