The North Carolina State Board of Elections has approved a move to strengthen the integrity of the state’s voter rolls. In a meeting held Tuesday, board members authorized Executive Director Sam Hayes to enter into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This memorandum will enable the board to compare North Carolina’s voter registration records with citizenship data from USCIS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.
The purpose of this comparison is to confirm that individuals registered to vote in North Carolina are U.S. citizens, as required by state law. The process of finalizing the memorandum is expected to take several weeks.
“This is one of the few tools available to us to check for noncitizens on our voter rolls,” said Hayes. “We are pleased to follow the letter of the law outlined in North Carolina’s Constitution and to make clear that elections are reserved for U.S. citizens.”
The SAVE program provides an online service used by various government agencies at different levels, as well as other authorized entities, allowing them to verify citizenship or immigration status when needed for benefits, licenses, or other lawful purposes.
Hayes referenced recent actions taken by Texas officials: “The Texas secretary of state’s office recently entered into a similar agreement,” he said. “After running its entire voter list — more than 18 million records — through the SAVE database, the office identified 2,724 potential noncitizens registered to vote in Texas.”
Contact information for the North Carolina State Board of Elections was provided for further inquiries.
