NC to ask 82,000 voters to update registration records by next election
About 82,000 North Carolina voters will soon see a letter in their mailbox from the State Board of Elections requesting additional registration information.
The mailing campaign is part of the board's multi-step 'Registration Repair' project, which aims to complete over 100,000 voter registration records that currently lack a driver's license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number.
'It's quick. It's easy. It's free,' Sam Hayes, the board's executive director, said in a statement. 'We strongly encourage all voters on the Registration Repair list to take action now and avoid any issues the next time they show up to vote.
Voters on the list who don't update their registration by the next election will have to cast a provisional ballot, which can be thrown out if identifying information is not eventually provided.
Voters can see if they are on the list using the board's Registration Repair search tool.
Affected voters can provide the information by mail, online or in person at their local county board of elections office.
The missing information formed the basis for Jefferson Griffin's main challenge of the 2024 Supreme Court election results, in which he tried to overturn his 734-vote loss to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs.
Griffin provided no evidence of fraud, but argued that over 60,000 voters who didn't have a DLN or SSN in their registration records should have their votes thrown out — even though many of them had participated in North Carolina elections for decades without issue.
A federal court ultimately threw out Griffin's challenge, but rulings from state courts (and a lawsuit from President Donald Trump's Department of Justice) prompted the state elections board to devise a plan to collect the missing information.
Since the launch of the Registration Repair project, roughly 20,000 of the affected voters have updated their registration records, accounting for about 20% of the original list of 103,000.
Speaking of the Supreme Court race…
We recently published a look into the $2 million in donations that funded Riggs and Griffin's six-month legal fight over the results of the Supreme Court election.
Donations from California megadonors, attorneys, concerned citizens and, in one case, a sitting judge, helped pay the legal fees for the complicated case that ping-ponged between state and federal courts.
We know about these contributions due to publicly available finance reports that each candidate made about their legal expense funds. But a new law could create an opportunity to make that money secret in the future.
Senate Bill 416, the Personal Privacy Protection Act, prohibits state agencies from disclosing donors to nonprofit organizations.
Critics say this includes legal expense funds, like the ones Griffin and Riggs set up to fund their courtroom battle, and warn it could open the door to 'dark money in our politics,' according to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who vetoed the bill last month.
Read more about who donated to their funds and how SB 416 could affect future disclosures here.
What else we're working on
Could Raleigh-Durham International Airport eventually have a mass transit option for travelers looking to avoid the busy drive? Our Richard Stradling reports on a potential plan for a bus rapid transit station over Interstate 40.
This newsletter was compiled by Kyle Ingram. Check your inbox tomorrow for more #ncpol.
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