The following information is from the Voter Integrity Project Website:

The Voter Integrity Project of NC was founded in 2011 by Jay DeLancy and John Pizzo.  Their mission was to ensure free and fair elections to all lawfully registered voters. Mr. Pizzo has more than 30 years private industry experience in the discipline of of quality engineering and holds a Six Sigma Black Belt. Mr. DeLancy is a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, with military experience in both conventional and nuclear operations with advanced degree work in journalism, business and political communication. His past teaching assignments include numerous community colleges, Park University, Bluefield College, Liberty University, NC State University and a temporary position at Duke.

The VIP plan was simple: Mine public data, analyze that data and let the evidence speak for itself. They fashioned themselves as a “non-partisan” organization, because election laws (like the Constitution itself) should transcend political and cultural boundaries. Open and honest elections are in our nation’s best interest.

Starting with a “voter density” study of North Carolina’s 100 counties, they began publishing their research results on-line and sharing it with media, lawmakers and with peers from other states.

Their second project copied the ground-breaking work of the Miami Herald, who obtained the names and addresses of persons disqualified from jury duty because of their non-US citizen status. This VIP effort led to the discovery of 130 people who had voted before they were disqualified from jury duty, 11 of whom became targets of criminal referrals. This research has led to legislative attempts in 2013, 2015 and 2017 to require Clerks of Court to share their data with elections officials.

Their third project, garnering national exposure, led to the discovery of almost 30,000 deceased persons who were still registered to vote, some of whom had voting records beyond their date of death. This research identified numerous “data leakage” points in the deceased-voter removal process. It also triggered consultations with election officials that resulted in process improvements for identification and removal of deceased-voters’ records.

The fourth major project involved detecting persons who voted in more than one state during the same Federal election. By matching 11 million Florida voters with the 77 million NC voters, VIP ultimately reported more than 150 voters who were highly likely to have committed this felony. Investigations are ongoing, but the work triggered five initial criminal referrals. As of January 2018, this project has spawned three felony convictions (for details, please click here and here) and numerous consultations with senior election officials in other states. This project (called “FLANC,” as in Florida and NC) also resulted in the first VIP publication that is being sold to the public through Amazon’s marketplace.

Other major research projects are currently underway that all point to identifying areas of election law that need process improvement and prevention strategies for abuses and illegal voting activities such as voter impersonation and intimidation.

A website called Secure the Vote NC has been set up to shed light on voting irregularities in North Carolina in past elections (and hopefully prevent voting irregularities in future elections).

Some basic facts about voting in North Carolina:

1. Thirty-four states have voter ID laws. North Carolina is not one of them.

2. Of the twelve Southeastern states, North Carolina is the only one that does not have voter ID laws.

3. In 2012, the Voter Integrity Project reported close to 30,000 deceased North Carolina voters to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

4. In 2016, 498 North Carolina voters showed up to vote and were told, “You already voted.”

An illegal vote cancels out the vote of a legal voter. If you want your vote to count, you need to support voter ID laws that ensure that you are who you say you are. We also need to support laws that allow a comparison between the voter rolls and those who refused jury duty by claiming not to be American citizens. It is time to clean up our voting system.