North Carolina elections board faces another lawsuit, as RNC sues swing state over noncitizen voting concerns

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Trump plane flies over North Carolina rally site

Former President Donald Trump's plane flew low over Asheboro, North Carolina, where he and Sen. JD Vance held a rally Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024. 

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) is facing another lawsuit, as the Republican National Committee (RNC) is suing the battleground state for allegedly opening the door for non-citizens to vote.

The lawsuit brought by the RNC and the North Carolina Republican Party in Wake County last week accuses the NCSBE and members, Alan Hirsch, Jeff Carmon, Siobhan Millen, Stacy Eggers IV and Kevin Lewis of failing to require identification to prove citizenship. 

The lawsuit alleges that by violating the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and not checking the identification of approximately 225,000 voters, the agency "is opening the door for non-citizens to vote."

North Carolina is the first state in the nation to start voting. The battleground state starts mailing out ballots for eligible voters on Sept. 6.  

"The NCSBE has once again failed in its mandate to keep non-citizens off the voter rolls, fueling distrust and jeopardizing our elections," RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement. "We are committed to the basic principle – and commonsense law – that only Americans decide American elections. Deliberately failing to follow the law, right before our country’s most important election, is inexcusable. We will fight every day to ensure that NCSBE follows the law, cleans the voter rolls, and protects the vote for North Carolinians."

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"I Voted" stickers at a polling station at the Wayne County Public Library in Goldsboro, North Carolina, on Tuesday, March 5, 2024.  (Allison Joyce/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"This State Board continually has problems ensuring voter rolls only have verified citizens," NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons added. "This lawsuit will remedy their ongoing refusal to collect the required information from those who want to take part in North Carolina elections. Accountability and fidelity to following the rule of law is long overdue for the most partisan Elections Board in state history."

The state board formerly used a voter registration form that failed to require HAVA-required identification information, such as a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. Election officials admitted the form was non-compliant with HAVA and eventually fixed it, but in the meantime, approximately 225,000 people registered without supplying the HAVA-required information, the complaint says.

Election officials allegedly refused to take remedial action and did not reach out to these voters to collect the required information. Instead, what the defendants "offer as a solution is a half-hearted promise that those who were ineligible to register but were allowed to anyway will naturally filter themselves out from the state’s voter rolls when they conduct other election-related activities," the complaint says.

"This inaction misses the mark," the lawsuit says. "Not only does this 'solution' fail to remedy the ongoing violations of state and federal law or account for Defendants’ responsibilities under the same, but it leaves North Carolinians to wonder how they can trust in the security of their elections, especially when those tasked with protecting their rights cannot be bothered to do what is required by law." 

Donald Trump during a campaign rally at the North Carolina Aviation Museum & Hall of Fame in Asheboro, North Carolina, on Aug. 21, 2024.  (PETER ZAY/AFP via Getty Images)

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"Even worse, this 'solution' sends the message to the millions of duly qualified and registered voters in North Carolina that their chief elections officials will shirk their responsibilities and refuse to verify whether those who vote in the state’s elections are entitled to do so in the first place," it adds. 

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the NCSBE told Fox News Digital, "This lawsuit asks for an impossible solution." 

"Despite being aware of their alleged claims months ago, the plaintiffs have waited until two weeks before the start of voting to seek a court-ordered program to remove thousands of existing registered voters. Federal law itself prevents such removal programs if they take place after the 90th day before a federal election, which was August 7. So, the lawsuit is asking for a rapid-fire voter removal program that violates federal law," the spokesperson said. "The lawsuit also misunderstands the data and vastly overstates any alleged problems with voter registrations. If a voter does not have a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number populated in the voter registration database, that does not necessarily mean that they were allowed to register improperly."

The statement went on to say that federal law "allows voters who lack one of these numbers to nonetheless be registered" and "state law also allows a registrant whose information fails to exactly match with the DMV or Social Security databases to be verified by showing another type of ID before voting."

"And in any event, all these voters will be asked to show photo ID again when they vote this year," the NCSBE spokesperson said. 

This is the second lawsuit filed by the RNC and the NCGOP against the North Carolina Board of Elections in a matter of weeks. 

Last month, Republicans sued the board for allegedly failing to check jury questionnaire responses to identify and remove non-citizens from the voter rolls, as required by law. 

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris campaigns at the Hendrick Center For Automotive Excellence on Aug. 16, 2024, in Raleigh, North Carolina.  (Grant Baldwin/Getty Images)

Last year, the state legislature passed SB747, a major election integrity law that requires state elections officials to cross-check when an individual claims to be a non-citizen on a jury questionnaire, to make sure that same person is not on the voter rolls. The RNC and the NCGOP allege that despite the law going into effect July 1, election officials have not begun to enforce it.  

In February, North Carolina’s Office of State Budget and Management reported that approximately 325,000 "unauthorized" immigrants were residing in the state. 

That was out of the total of 501,000 foreign-born non-citizens in North Carolina, according to the complaint in that case.

In a statement reacting to that suit, the NCSBE spokesperson asked that the NCGOP and RNC "immediately rescind their press releases on this topic, as they will undermine voter confidence on an entirely false premise."

"State Board staff have worked diligently with the clerks of superior court across North Carolina since that provision became law in July. In August, 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 spokesperson said in part. "The State Board compared those lists with the North Carolina voter rolls, and nine individuals matched, across the state. If a check of state and federal databases shows any of those nine 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." 

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Last week, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. also sued the North Carolina State Board for denying his request to be removed from the state's ballot before the November election. Despite the candidate dropping out of the race and endorsing former President Trump, the board decided in a 3-2 vote to keep Kennedy's name because nearly 2 million ballots had already been printed. 

Kennedy also was unable to remove himself from the ballot in the fellow battlegrounds of Michigan and Wisconsin.