​​Republicans ask North Carolina court to approve settlement that could expose voters to wrongful purges, investigations

Republican groups are asking a North Carolina court to approve a settlement that would expand how the state flags and removes suspected noncitizens from voter rolls — creating a new system that could send flagged voters to law enforcement and make sensitive data publicly available. 

If approved, the deal would lock in a process that could lead to wrongful voter purges and expose eligible voters to legal investigations.

The filing submitted Monday asks the court to sign off on a proposed consent judgment — a legal agreement that would end the case without a ruling — between the North Carolina Republican Party, the Republican National Committee and the North Carolina State Board of Elections. 

Voting rights groups that intervened* in the case did not agree to the settlement, signaling ongoing concern about how the system could impact voters. 

At the center of the agreement is a new, formalized pipeline connecting jury duty records to voter roll maintenance. When someone is summoned for jury duty in North Carolina, they can request to be excused by stating they are not a U.S. citizen. 

Under the settlement, those responses would be regularly sent to election officials, who must then review whether those individuals are registered to vote.

Within 30 days of receiving that data, the state board would be required to “review the voter-registration and citizenship status of each person identified.” 

Then the board would have to investigate each person’s voter registration and citizenship status and share the results with county election officials. 

Voting rights advocates have long emphasized that jury records are simply not designed to determine voting eligibility. People may misunderstand the question, check the wrong box or later become citizens — but still end up flagged by this type of system.

And the settlement goes further, creating a pathway from those records to potential criminal investigation by requiring the state board to “furnish to the State Bureau of Investigation and the district attorney a copy of its investigation for prosecution if the prospective juror voted prior to becoming a U.S. citizen.”

That provision raises the stakes dramatically. 

Instead of simply correcting voter rolls, the process could expose individuals to criminal scrutiny based on administrative data that may be incomplete or outdated.

The agreement also requires the state to treat these jury-based noncitizen lists as public records and to publish them online. That means outside groups — including political organizations — would be able to access and analyze the data, potentially using it to challenge voters’ eligibility.

While the state board maintains it is already complying with existing law, the agreement cements a detailed schedule and process for handling these cases through at least 2028. 

In effect, the settlement transforms a legal dispute over voter roll maintenance into a long-term enforcement system — one that voting rights groups have warned could increase the risk of eligible voters being swept up in investigations or wrongly targeted for removal.

The court must ultimately decide whether to approve all the terms of the settlement.

*The intervenors-defendants in this case are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.