The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) announced Monday that it has identified approximately 34,000 deceased individuals still listed on the state’s voter rolls. The discovery was made through a comprehensive data cross-check against the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, the same system used to verify the U.S. citizenship of registered voters. Officials submitted 7,397,734 voter records to the SAVE system in April as part of an ongoing effort to clean up the rolls and ensure only eligible citizens can vote. NCSBE Executive Director Sam Hayes admitted the massive number of deceased people on the state’s voter rolls caught them off guard.
“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” Hayes said in a press release. Hayes continued, “The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this. Our goal is to use every available and legal tool at our disposal to achieve the most accurate voter rolls possible. Now, we must roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work to act of verifying that every person registered to vote in North Carolina is eligible. Our team, along with our state and federal will do what’s necessary to meet this responsibility.” The press release stressed that North Carolina already receives weekly updates on in-state deaths from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, which are handled at the county level.
