North Carolina residents who received vague letter questioning eligibility can still vote, officials confirm

North Carolina election officials confirmed Thursday that eligible voters who received vaguely worded letters questioning their ability to vote can still cast ballots even if they don’t respond to verify their citizenship.

The letters, which were sent this week, informed 1,392 registered voters that the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement (SAVE) database flagged them as potential non-citizens. In the letter, the board of elections explicitly tells voters that their registration was not canceled, but the vague wording made it unclear if they could cast ballots before they proved their citizenship.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly made unfounded allegations that noncitizens voting is widespread, pushing states to take additional steps to remove noncitizens from voter rolls. In reality, noncitizens voting rarely happens and never occurs at a scale capable of affecting the outcome of an election.

While North Carolina officials said compliance is voluntary, Sam Hayes, executive director of the state board of elections, said the letters are the “beginning of a lengthy investigatory process.”

If a voter does not respond, Hayes said, they may still vote as long as they are a U.S. citizen.

“I imagine there will be further attempts to contact the voter following the election, but just want to emphasize in that case of someone who is a duly registered citizen of the United States, then they are perfectly entitled to go ahead and vote, and we would encourage that,” Hayes said at a press conference.

Hayes continued to frame the letters as a “service” to help ensure non-citizens do not “inadvertently commit a crime.”

The SAVE database is used to verify the immigration status of people applying for government benefits. The Trump administration has tried to use it to also purge alleged noncitizens from voter rolls, but it frequently returns inaccurate data, particularly with naturalized U.S. citizens.

When Texas used the SAVE database to identify 2,724 potential noncitizen voters last year, over 20% were later confirmed to be citizens. 

In a separate press conference Thursday morning, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) said “regular errors” make the SAVE database a dangerous tool to screen voters.

“What you don’t want to do is to use a database to screen out people who are actually American and have every right to vote,” Stein said.

Hayes did not answer reporters’ questions about how it identified 1,392 people suspected of being illegally registered to vote, but he said the board of elections values voters’ due process.

“We presume that they are citizens if they are duly registered to vote and they’re on our voter rolls,” Hayes said. We have just received some recent information that suggests otherwise, and we need to sort that out. It’s going to take time to do it.”

“We presume folks are innocent until proven guilty, but we take election integrity very seriously here under my administration,” he added.