North Carolina sends vague letter to voters flagged by citizenship database

More than 1,000 North Carolina voters will begin receiving letters this week from the state election board requesting they verify their citizenship status — although the board claims compliance is voluntary.   

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) is sending the vaguely worded letter to 1,392 registered voters identified as potential non-citizens through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement (SAVE) database. 

North Carolina voters have already begun sending in mail ballots for this year’s midterm election. Early in-person voting begins Thursday.

The letter provides flagged voters “with instructions on how to voluntarily request removal from the voter rolls if they were registered in error or provide information verifying their U.S. citizenship,” the board said in a press release Tuesday. 

“Receiving a letter does not cancel an individual’s voter registration or automatically prevent an otherwise eligible voter from participating in the November 3 general election,” the board added. “Any voter challenge or determination of ineligibility must follow the procedures established under North Carolina and federal law.”

It was not immediately clear from the letter whether a voter who does not provide the requested information would be able to cast a ballot in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

However, the letter states: “If you are a U.S. citizen and meet all other qualifications to vote, then you can remain registered and vote.”

The board asked the people flagged by SAVE to prove their citizenship even though North Carolina law has never required prospective voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register or remain registered.

Further, the board claimed it needed their citizenship documents “so we can update our records.” It did not specify exactly which records it needed to revise, but the state’s registration records do not inherently contain citizenship data.

The database initially flagged nearly 1,600 voters as potential non-citizens. But the board said Tuesday that around 200 of those voters were wrongly flagged and would not receive the letter.

Last April, Republicans on the NCSBE voted to feed the state’s registration data into SAVE over the objections of the board’s Democrats, who objected over privacy concerns and the risk of voters being disenfranchised through inaccuracies.

For years, the SAVE database existed as a tool for states to verify the immigration status of people applying for government benefits. The Trump administration, however, has overhauled the system into an expansive and flawed database to verify the citizenship status of people on state voter rolls.

The modified SAVE system routinely flags eligible voters as noncitizens, setting off increased state scrutiny on their voter registration, and therefore their ability to cast a ballot.

When Texas became the first state to use it last year, its Secretary of State’s Office said the system identified “2,724 potential noncitizens” on its voter registration list.

However, in subsequent investigations, county officials confirmed that at least 578 of those people were citizens, an error rate of at least 21%.

The Trump administration and Republican-led states attempted to justify the transformation of SAVE through unsubstantiated claims of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens. While such crimes do occur, countless reviews, studies and state audits have shown they are exceedingly rare and likely have not influenced the outcome of any election in modern history.