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The North Carolina NAACP has joined the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the League of Women Voters of North Carolina (LWVNC) in intervening in a U.S. Justice Dept. lawsuit against the NC Board of Elections.
The Trump Justice Dept. alleged in a May 27th filing that the state Elections Board maintains corrupted voter rolls in violation of federal law.
“Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in North Carolina are conducted fairly, accurately, and without fraud,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a press release. “The Department of Justice will not hesitate to file suit against jurisdictions that maintain inaccurate voter registration rolls in violation of federal voting laws.”
But the DNC, N.C. NAACP and LWVNC see the case differently.
“Hundreds of thousands of North Carolina voters are once again facing the threat of losing their right to vote because of voter registration database issues that stem from the state’s efforts to comply with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA),” the N.C. NAACP and LWVNC court filing explained. “Over the last 18 months, these voters have experienced a seemingly endless loop of scrutiny, despite doing everything they can to confirm that they were (or currently are) properly registered.”
“This case rests on the threadbare allegation that the State’s voter list maintenance practices were defective because the State accepted voter registration forms from voters who had driver’s license numbers or social security numbers but failed to list them on the form,” attorneys for the DNC added.
That allegation was also the crux of Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s case in trying to get over 60,000 votes thrown out of his contest to unseat current Democratic N.C. Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs in their November 2024 contest. After six months of litigation, a Trump-appointed federal judge finally put an end to the case by ruling that Griffin, a state appellate court judge, could not succeed in his lawsuit.
The state and national Republican parties supported Griffin in his efforts, however. And now, the Trump Justice Dept. has filed suit making a similar allegation, stating that the North Carolina Board of Elections has violated the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).
“But even assuming arguendo that the federal government’s speculative allegations are well-founded, HAVA specifies what a state must do if a voter does not provide their driver’s license number or social security number when they register: (1) the voter must be assigned a unique identifying number, and (2) the voter must provide photo identification or a document establishing residency when they vote in their first federal election,” notes DNC legal filing. “The federal government has not alleged any well-pleaded facts which show North Carolina failed to follow these two steps.”
“More importantly, the federal government’s prayer for relief — seeking to compel the State to collect driver’s license numbers or social security numbers from some unspecified number of voters — finds no statutory support from HAVA,” they continue.
Now that the state Elections Board is in Republican majority hands, it is more likely to work with the Justice Dept. than fighting the lawsuit as it did when Judge Griffin sued the board to get votes thrown out.
“We are still reviewing the complaint,” new state elections director Sam Hayes said in a prepared statement, “but the failure to collect the information required by HAVA has been well documented. Rest assured that I am committed to bringing North Carolina into compliance with federal law.”
