A federal judge on Monday approved a consent agreement settling a Justice Department lawsuit that accused North Carolina election officials of failing to collect required numerical identifiers on the registration records of more than 100,000 voters.
U.S. District Judge Richard Myers signed the proposed agreement filed by attorneys from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the North Carolina State Board of Elections, saying the plan will help ensure the state’s compliance with federal law and avoid an expensive trial. The lawsuit, filed May 27, alleged the board violated the Help America Vote Act by not maintaining accurate registration records for federal elections.
The agreement follows a Registration Repair Project the board began in mid-July asking roughly 103,000 registered voters to provide a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number — the numerical identifiers federal and state law have directed election officials to request since 2004. The state has about 7.6 million registered voters.
State officials and the Justice Department said the omission stemmed in part from a registration form used for about a decade that did not clearly indicate registrants should provide a number when they had one. A previous board majority, controlled by Democrats, revised the form but did not undertake a statewide outreach in time for the 2024 elections, according to filings and board statements.
The issue drew legal challenges this year from Republicans and surfaced in post-election litigation over a state Supreme Court race. The state board flipped to a Republican majority in early May, and the Justice Department filed suit soon after. The lawsuit referenced President Donald Trump’s March executive order on elections, saying it was aimed at measures to “guard against illegal voting, unlawful discrimination, and other forms of fraud, error, or suspicion.”
Through public requests and mailings, the pool of registrants who had not provided numerical identifiers has dropped to below 80,900 as voters returned information, the board said. Under the consent agreement, the board must send another round of letters to registrants who have not responded by mid-December and provide updates on its plan to the Justice Department through 2027.
Sam Hayes, the board’s executive director, said after a Monday meeting that the consent agreement did not demand steps beyond what the board was already preparing to do. “The complaint was asking for nothing more than what we were already preparing to do, which was to look internally for this information at the same time that we were reaching out to the voters themselves to provide the information,” Hayes said.
The agreement also addresses how ballots will be handled. Voters who remain on the list without a numerical identifier must cast provisional ballots the next time they vote and will be asked to provide an ID number at the polls. The board and the Justice Department emphasized that federal ballots must be counted for otherwise eligible voters even if a numerical identifier is missing; the next federal elections in North Carolina are scheduled for March.
Local and municipal elections with typically lower turnout are scheduled for the fall, with the first of three rounds beginning Tuesday. Election officials warned that in some state and local contests a failure to provide an ID number or an alternate acceptable form of identification could result in a ballot not being counted for those races.
The Democratic National Committee had threatened to sue the state board, arguing that any plan could improperly remove people from the rolls for federal elections. DNC attorney Dan Freeman called the agreement a “huge victory for the DNC and, more importantly, our democracy.”
Separately, about 98,000 registered voters supplied a numerical identifier that has not been validated against a government database. That discrepancy can arise when a registrant changes their name, for example through marriage, or when a number was entered incorrectly into the state’s registration system. The state elections board had previously voted along party lines to require those voters to cast provisional ballots until validation. On Monday the board agreed unanimously that those voters may cast regular ballots if they present an ID at the polls, consistent with state law.
The consent agreement resolves the immediate litigation but requires continued oversight and reporting, extending the dispute into 2027 as the board completes outreach and internal reviews to reconcile tens of thousands of registration records.