North Carolina Elections Chief Demands Voters’ Full Social Security Numbers From DMV

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is pressing the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles for unprecedented access to voters’ full Social Security numbers — a move that could erode voter privacy protections and lay the groundwork for mass voter purges.

In a letter sent to DMV Commissioner Paul Tine last month, State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes initially framed his request as an effort to strengthen both access and integrity in the state’s election system.

“The State Board of Elections (‘State Board’) appreciates the ongoing partnership with the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles (‘NCDMV’) to register eligible North Carolinians to vote in person at NCDMV offices and electronically through the online service,” Hayes wrote. “This partnership makes registering to vote easy and efficient and helps ensure that our state’s voters have access to the ballot box.”

After opening with praise for the agencies’ collaboration, Hayes pivoted to a sweeping request that the DMV provide the elections board with the full Social Security numbers of registered voters who are also DMV customers.

“Specifically, I ask that the NCDMV engage in a more robust data-sharing and matching program with election officials, to include providing full Social Security numbers for registered voters who are also NCDMV customers,” he added. “I believe we all agree that voting accessibility and voting integrity are equally important as we work toward the most accessible, fair, and accurate elections for North Carolina’s 7.6 million registered voters.”

The State Board currently receives only the last four digits of a voter’s Social Security number, or their driver’s license number, for verification — as required under federal law. Hayes argued that obtaining complete SSNs would allow state officials to better cross-check voter rolls for deceased individuals, people with felony convictions and alleged noncitizens.

“As you know, Russ Ferguson, the United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, shared concerns and evidence that NCDMV examiners had mistakenly processed voter registrations for non-citizens as recently as 2024,” Hayes insisted. “Having full Social Security numbers would allow us to identify non-U.S. citizens who may be unlawfully registered to vote.”

Hayes further asserted that full SSNs would ensure “non-U.S. citizens registered to vote can be identified and removed from the voter list.”

The proposal fits into a broader national narrative by Republican officials to justify sweeping “list maintenance” efforts using unproven claims of noncitizen voting. Such efforts have repeatedly resulted in eligible voters — particularly naturalized citizens and voters of color — being wrongfully flagged or purged from the rolls.

Granting the elections board access to full SSNs would vastly expand the amount of sensitive personal data in state election systems. North Carolina’s voter file already includes names, birth dates and addresses. Adding full SSNs could severely heighten the risk of data breaches and misuse.

The letter also arrives as the State Board faces pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice to “correct” missing voter identification data and “improve” its list maintenance procedures. At the end of August, the Board effectively declined an offer from the Department of Homeland Security to bulk-upload voter rolls for citizenship verification through its SAVE database — an initiative that would have relied on the last four digits of SSNs, not full numbers.

As of mid-October, the DMV had not publicly responded to Hayes’ request.