RALEIGH, N.C. – The Bipartisan State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement (State Board) responded Wednesday to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity’s request for information from North Carolina.
The Commission requested publicly available information about the state’s voters and asked additional questions about election integrity, voter fraud and voter suppression.
In a letter to Commission Vice Chair Kris Kobach, the State Board provided a link to public voter information that has long been available at ncsbe.gov.
North Carolina’s response mirrored that of many other states that have provided publicly available voter information to the federal Commission.
State law makes certain voter information public, including a voter’s name, address, age, gender, party affiliation, and the list of elections in which a voter has participated. The State Board is prohibited from releasing confidential information, including voters’ dates of birth, Social Security numbers and signatures.
The letter from State Board Executive Director Kim Westbrook Strach stresses that the agency conducts extensive post-election data audits to identify irregularities in elections, such as voting by non-U.S. citizens and current felons. Violations and irregularities are investigated by the State Board’s in-house investigations team before criminal referrals are made and before voters are removed from registration rolls.
The letter to the Commission encloses the State Board’s Post-Election Audit Report: General Election 2016, which provides an extensive analysis of the findings of audits conducted after the 2016 presidential election. Audits identified approximately 500 cases of ineligible voters – mostly active felons – casting ballots in 2016. The evidence, according to the report, suggests that “participation by ineligible voters is neither rampant nor non-existent in North Carolina.”
The letter also expresses the need to replace aging voting systems across our state and the importance of state and federal collaboration to address emerging cybersecurity issues.
“As North Carolina’s chief elections official, I am committed to safeguarding our elections from interference and to guaranteeing election results accurately reflect ballots cast by eligible voters,” said Kim Westbrook Strach, Executive Director of the Bipartisan State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement.