North Carolina elections officials must do more to keep noncitizens off the state’s voter rolls, according to an agreement state and national Republicans signed last week with the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
The Republican National Committee and the North Carolina GOP are heralding the consent judgment as a major election integrity victory — prompted by the RNC’s lawsuit over the NCSBE’s failure to remove foreign nationals from the voter registration database in advance of the 2024 presidential election.
Wake County Superior Court Judge Jennifer Bedford signed off on the deal over the objections of the leftist lawfare firm led by Russia collusion hoaxer Marc Elias.
The agreement requires the elections board to actually follow North Carolina law. Elections officials will be required to use jury duty records to identify and remove from the voter rolls individuals who stated they could not serve on juries because they are not U.S. citizens.
“This agreement is a major win for election integrity in North Carolina,” said RNC Chairman Joe Gruters in a statement. “It’s straightforward: if someone admits they’re not a U.S. citizen during jury duty, that information should be used to check the voter rolls and remove anyone who doesn’t belong.”
Elias Law Group attorneys represented North Carolina Asians Together, a voter ID opposition group, and El Pueblo. The latter is a Raleigh-based liberal get-out-the-vote organization that issues non-governmental identification to noncitizens unable to obtain official ID, according to nonprofit tracker InfluenceWatch. The activists sought to intervene in the lawsuit because they oppose a provision in the law that requires the posting of juror disqualification information about noncitizens on the Board of Elections’ website.
“We understand the law requires certain information be public record, but it did not specifically require that this information be publicized on the internet in this manner,” attorney Narendra Ghosh argued during the brief court session last week, according to The Carolina Journal. She claimed that the law raises privacy concerns that could have a “chilling effect.”
The North Carolina General Assembly passed the law in 2023. In 2024, the RNC filed a public-records request to determine whether the State Elections Board was complying with the new law. The board did not respond, according to party. After the RNC filed the lawsuit, the board relented and agreed to use the jury information from county clerks to remove noncitizens from North Carolina’s voter rolls.
Seventeen states have laws or policies in place that require the use of jury lists for voter roll maintenance, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
A bill stalled in Congress — the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act — would require federal courts to “notify the chief state election official and attorney general when non-citizens are excused from jury duty so that States may update their voter rolls.” The bill also requires election officials to coordinate their voter rolls with federal court jury lists.
The RNC’s Gruters recently announced a multimillion-dollar election integrity campaign in advance of the November midterms. He told Fox News Digital that the Election Integrity unit will hire directors in 17 states to recruit an army of poll workers, poll watchers and election observers.
“President Trump made it clear in 2024: secure our elections — and we haven’t let up since,” Gruters said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “We’re building a ground game across the country with poll workers, poll watchers and lawyers to protect every legal ballot.”
That ground game, always important, will be absolutely essential now that the feckless Republican-controlled Senate apparently has given up on passing the SAVE America Act. The extremely popular election integrity bill requires documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and photo identification to cast a ballot in federal elections.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
