But Did They Vote?

On Monday, ABC11 posted an article about the voter rolls in North Carolina.

The article reports:

The North Carolina State Board of Elections has identified approximately 34,000 dead people on the state’s voter rolls following a comprehensive data comparison with the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, also known as the SAVE database.

The discovery happened during the state board’s ongoing effort to verify the citizenship status of registered voters.

“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” said Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this. Our goal is to use every available and legal tool at our disposal to achieve the most accurate voter rolls possible. Now, we must roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work to act of verifying that every person registered to vote in North Carolina is eligible. Our team, along with our state and federal will do what’s necessary to meet this responsibility.”

Election officials say the identification of deceased people on the voter rolls does not necessarily indicate that illegal votes were cast in their names.

There is an important fact left out of this article.

In August 2025, The Carolina Journal reported:

  • State Auditor Dave Boliek and Republican state legislative leaders defended in new court briefs the state law that shifted North Carolina elections board appointments to Boliek’s office.
  • Democratic Gov. Josh Stein challenges the shift spelled out in 2024’s Senate Bill 382. The dispute sits now with the state Court of Appeals.
  • An Appeals Court order in April allowed Boliek to take over elections board appointments. Appellate judges overruled a three-judge trial court panel that ruled in Stein’s favor.

Why wasn’t an audit done when the Democrats had control of the election process and voter rolls?

Voter Registration and Election Data Irregularities in the 2024 General Election in North Carolina

Major Dave Goetze is Vice-President for Research at the Electoral Education Foundation. He has prepared a report given to the North Carolina General Assembly about the 2024 general election in North Carolina.

This is the recap of the report:

1. Same-Day Registrants (SDRs): 8,401 SDRs have been belatedly added to the Absentee Ballot Data File since Election Day.

2. Vote totals were switched back and forth in many contests between the two major party candidates after the counties involved had made their last upload to the NCSBE, indicating manual manipulation of data.

3. Of the more than 525,000 voters added to the rolls YTD, over 150,000 are reported as not having an NC Drivers License.

4. There are more than 2,000 Temporary Overseas Civilian registrants who did not provide an overseas mailing address for their ballot despite it being required on the Federal Postcard Application Form, so their location and eligibility to register and vote as such cannot be verified.

At the time I write this, the report referenced above has not been posted at the organization’s website. I am sure that it will be posted there in the future. There are other reports posted at the website that provide insight into some of the recurring problems with North Carolina elections.