NC registration repair project has resolved 36,000 voter registrations

North Carolina election officials have resolved more than 36,000 incomplete voter registration records since launching  a registration repair project last summer. That’s according to a document filed Thursday in federal court.

The project was designed to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act and resolve a lawsuit filed by the US Justice Department against the State Board of Elections. The project involves collecting a driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number from voters whose registration records lack that information.

The issue of incomplete voter registration records played a major role in the months-long dispute over North Carolina’s 2024 state Supreme Court election. Trailing candidate Jefferson Griffin challenged more than 60,000 ballots cast in the election by voters with incomplete registration records. Courts eventually rejected Griffin’s complaint and declared Allison Riggs the winner of the Supreme Court contest.

The total number of North Carolina voters with incomplete registration records dropped from 103,329 on July 17, 2025, to 66,658 on April 29, according to Thursday’s court filing. That means 35% of the incomplete registration records have been resolved.

The State Board of Elections labeled the document an annual report to Chief US District Judge Richard Myers. The judge mandated reporting in a September 2025 court order that endorsed a deal ending the Justice Department’s lawsuit.

The repair project has featured two mailings to date to affected voters. The first targeted 82,741 voters in August 2025. The second headed to 74,333 voters in November 2025.

Elections officials updated 4,093 records from Jan. 31 through April 28. Some 886 voter records were removed from the repair project list “due to the voters’ own cancellation of their registration or other regular list maintenance processes,” according to the court document. “None of these voters were removed from the voter registration list (the ‘HAVA List’) due to being in the Registration Repair Project.”

The state elections board “determined that there were a relatively small number of instances when certain requirements of the Order were not followed” during the March 3 primary, according to the report.

Three voters in three counties were forced to vote with a provisional ballot despite having provided the necessary registration information before voting in person. Sixteen voters in 10 counties had provisional ballot applications initially rejected because they didn’t provide identification information when they voted in person. The state board ordered that those voters’ ballots would count in federal elections.

The board promised to “reissue guidance and direction to the county boards of elections before the November 3, 2026, general election” to avoid similar issues this fall.

The state board also identified 207 voters statewide to add to the registration repair list. Some had been removed from the list by mistake when they cast a 2025 municipal election vote or March primary election ballot. County elections officials had “failed to require a voter to vote a provisional ballot and collect the missing identification information.” State officials are taking steps “to prevent this from occurring in the future and will be notifying these voters once they are added back to the Registration Repair List.”

Another group of voters had been removed from the list after returning an address confirmation mailing to elections officials. While the document confirmed the voter’s address, it did not provide the missing HAVA-mandated information.

A “small number of voters” had their registration restored during a legally required list maintenance process but did not appear on  the registration repair list. “The voters in this category will be added to the Registration Repair List and notified that they must provide the identification information when voting in the next election after being added to the Registration Repair List, if they do not provide the information beforehand,” according to the report.

“NC registration repair project has resolved 36,000 voter registrations” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.