Sam Hayes said the problem has been identified and that it's his agency's obligation to fix it. The problem is that for more than two decades, North Carolina had been out of compliance with a mandate established by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002.
Under HAVA, voters are required to provide either a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security Number when registering. The law also provides for voters who neither have a driver's license nor a Social Security Number by requiring them to provide a so-called HAVA document, like a utility bill, when appearing to vote for the first time.
Hayes took over in May as executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. Soon after assuming his role, the bipartisan board, made up of three Republicans and two Democrats, unanimously approved his remediation plan to alert the roughly 103,000 North Carolina voters whose records appeared to be missing the requisite data.
"What I'm trying to do is, honestly, fix a problem that has existed for many years," Hayes said.
Until a correction last year, North Carolina's registration form had been out of compliance with HAVA because it didn't make it clear that a driver's license number or last four digits of a Social Security Number was required.
Ahead of the 2024 elections, the Republican National Committee sued to have more than 200,000 North Carolina voters removed from the rolls due to the issue, even though it didn't disqualify those voters from casting ballots.
Then, more infamously, Republican judicial candidate Jefferson Griffin sought to have more than 60,000 ballots tossed out over the registration issue in his effort to reverse his electoral loss to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs in a tight race for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Griffin argued the ballots should be discarded because the voters were not properly registered.
A federal judge ultimately dismissed Griffin's claim and ordered the state elections board to certify Riggs' victory by a margin of a little more than 700 votes.
In an interview with WUNC, Hayes said the issue behind the elections board's Registration Repair Project was simply getting North Carolina aligned with federal law.
"No one has been prevented from voting, no one is going to be prevented from voting, and no one is going go to be removed from our voter rolls," Hayes said.
Since launching its Registration Repair Project, the state elections board has gotten more than 14,000 voters whose records were missing a driver's license number or last four digits of their Social Security Number to submit the required data.
"That shows that our efforts are working," Hayes said. "That's more than 10% of the total already, and we haven't even sent out the first letters yet to the voters."
In the next phase of the project, Hayes said the elections board will issue mailings to the voters remaining on the list with instructions on how to correct their registration records.
"When you get that form, fill it out and send it, postage is prepaid, very easy," Hayes said. "We understand this is not the voter's fault and it's not the county's fault; it's the state board's fault for not collecting this information when we were required to under the law."
Hayes added that voters also have an online option for providing the requisite registration data by using a portal on the DMV website.
"No one has been prevented from voting, no one is going to be prevented from voting, and no one is going go to be removed from our voter rolls." — Sam Hayes, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections
Clearly, the elections board will not reach everyone on the list whose registration records are incomplete. More than 40,000 of them are listed as an inactive, meaning they've gone two consecutive federal election cycles without casting a ballot.
Hayes said the Registration Repair Project could help lead to a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, which sued North Carolina over its failure to comply with HAVA. The justice department filed the suit after the state elections board had already begun its effort to correct the registration records.
