State elections officials have identified nine possible non-citizens registered to vote in North Carolina — out of more than 7.7 million total voters — due to a new law passed by the Republican-led state legislature ahead of the 2024 elections.

A prominent conservative activist, who met privately with GOP lawmakers ahead of the legislature's work to pass multiple new, politically contentious changes to election laws in 2023, tells WRAL the finding of nine possible non-citizens registered to vote could be an undercount because those new laws aren't as strict as they could've been. He said additional changes still need to be made to state law to ensure no immigrants are voting.

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"The best way to make sure there's no non-citizens is to actually require proof of citizenship when you sign up to vote," Jim Womack, who leads the North Carolina Election Integrity Network, said in an interview Thursday. "Arizona does it. But North Carolina is one of the many states that do not."

North Carolina requires all voters to be U.S. citizens, although proof isn't required to register. Instead, voter registration forms require people to swear they're a citizen and otherwise eligible to vote, or else face felony charges for perjury.

A spokesman for the State Board of Elections, however, cautioned on Thursday that there's no proof yet the nine people they flagged actually are immigrants. Investigations are underway now to confirm their legal status.

The announcement came Thursday as the elections board also announced it has removed nearly 750,000 people from the list of voters in North Carolina since 2023.

The board conducts what it calls "list maintenance" of the voter rolls regularly, to ensure that the people registered to vote in North Carolina are still eligible voters.

  • About half of the 747,274 people removed from the voter lists are people who have recently moved or died.
    • Most of the rest were removed because they haven't voted in years, and state law says that makes them ineligible to remain registered.
      • A small percentage were removed for various other reasons, including people recently convicted of a felony, or those who simply asked to not be a voter anymore.

        The nine potential non-citizens weren't among the 750,000 voters who had their registrations revoked, however. That's due to several reasons, said elections board spokesman Pat Gannon — namely that by the time the new law was in effect, it was already too late to remove any voters from the lists due to a federal law that prevents such actions within 90 days of an election.

        Jury duty forms used to find them

        That new law is part of a wide-ranging set of changes to elections rules, which Republicans say will help voter integrity but which critics say could lead to legitimate voters being harassed or being stopped from voting entirely.

        One section requires courts to allow people out of jury service if they're not a U.S. citizen, and it also requires the State Board of Elections to work with court officials to cross-reference voters' names with lists of people who were excused from jury duty because they checked the box saying they weren't a U.S. citizen.

        The law went into effect in July. Gannon said that by August the clerks of 98 of the state's 100 counties submitted their lists, which led to the discovery of the nine names on both lists. But by that time, he said, the deadline to remove voters from the lists had passed.

        In the meantime, the board is investigating to see if criminal charges are warranted. The state board could also reach out to those nine people, if they are found to be ineligible, to tell them not to vote and to remove their registrations. But Gannon noted that there are lingering questions, and it could be that some or even all of them are found to eligible voters after all: "One, they could have lied on that jury form," he said. "Two, they could have gained citizenship since then."

        Womack, however, said the courts also let people get out of jury duty by claiming they don't speak English well, and he thinks most non-citizens would likely check that box instead of the non-citizen box. And the new law doesn't require state elections officials to cross-reference voter lists with that data.

        Legal fights brewing over voter rolls

        The news comes as state elections officials are facing multiple lawsuits from the Republican Party, over allegations they're not doing enough to ensure that all voters are legitimate. The State Board of Elections says the GOP claims are bogus and "will undermine voter confidence on an entirely false premise."

        But Womack credits the legal challenges with forcing the elections board to act faster and make Thursday's announcement before the election. "They got pressured by a lawsuit to stop the slow-walk they were doing," he said.

        As for what happens if the nine people are found to actually by non-citizens who registered to vote by falsely claiming they were citizens, they could face criminal charges.

        The elections board can't bring criminal charges itself. But it is tasked with conducting investigations into allegations of voter fraud or other violations of election law, and then referring cases to local prosecutors if there's evidence.

        Following the 2022 and 2023 elections, which saw millions of ballots cast, the elections board referred a combined 22 cases for prosecution. It's unclear how many, if any, of those were taken up by prosecutors or what the outcomes have been. The accusations included:

        • 13 people trying to vote twice.
          • 6 for voting while on probation or parole for a felony.
            • 1 for voter impersonation.
              • 1 for lying on a form.
                • 1 for photographing a completed ballot.