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Top 10 Issues with North Carolina’s Election System

Updated: Jul 28

North Carolina's election system faces serious challenges that undermine voter trust and integrity. Through citizen-led research, our WTP Newsletters have uncovered critical flaws in the Statewide Election Information Management System (SEIMS) and other processes, from faulty voter rolls to systemic oversights. Below are the Top 10 Issues, with summaries and links to dive deeper.

Issue #1: Treating Required Voter Identification Numbers as Optional From 2009 to 2024, NC election officials treated required voter identification (NC Driver License Number or SSN-4 for those without a Driver License), as optional, violating federal law (HAVA), prompting a DOJ lawsuit, deleting identifiers, and risking ineligible voting.

  • Part 1: Inaccurate Data and SEIMS Flaws

    NC's SEIMS allows invalid voter data, like birth dates absurdly listing voters as 125-272 years old, blocking SSA verification. SEIMS deletes key identifiers (DL# or SSN-4) when validation fails, violating HAVA and risking duplicate registrations. Read more: [WTP: Cleaning Up NC's Voter Rolls, Part 1, June 25, 2025].

  • Part 2: No Citizenship Verification and Misleading Claims

    NC does not verify citizenship status during voter registrations, risking ineligible voting, while a board member's claim that all voters are "citizens" and NCSBE's deletion of identifiers block future citizenship checks. Read more: [WTP: Cleaning Up NC's Voter Rolls, Part 2, June 28, 2025].

  • Part 3: Incomplete Plan to Fix SEIMS

The NCSBE's plan to collect Personal Identifying Information (PII) for roughly 200,000 voters records is a start, but it fails to fix SEIMS' deletion of identifiers or implement duplicate detection reports, risking ongoing HAVA violations. Read more: [WTP: Cleaning Up NC's Voter Rolls, Part 3, June 30, 2025].

*Necessary steps but omitted from original plan.
*Necessary steps but omitted from original plan.

Issue #2: Overlooked Citizenship Question in NC Voter Registration Application

From 2009 to 2024, NC election boards processed voter registrations without answers to the mandatory citizenship question, violating HAVA and risking non-citizen voting by assuming citizenship based on birthplace. Read more: [WTP: Overlooked Citizenship Question, July 5, 2025].

  • Part 1: Uncovering the HAVA Violation

A 2009 NCSBE memo instructed counties to assume citizenship for unchecked boxes, contradicting HAVA's requirement to collect citizenship answers, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of registrations. Read more: [WTP: Intel for NCGOP and RNC, Part 1, August 30, 2024].

  • Part 2 - Confirming the Issue

A January 2024 NCSBE email confirmed the HAVA violation, but the issue has not been resolved. Read more: [WTP: Intel for the NCGOP and RNC, Part 2, September 2, 2024].


Issue #3: NC's Voter Preregistration Disaster

Since 2009, NC's preregistration system for 16- and 17-year-olds has created duplicate and triplicate voter IDs and misassigned ballots, violating HAVA by altering registration forms, undermining voter roll accuracy.

  • Part 1: Unlawful Form Changes and Errors

NC's registration application ignores HAVA's age requirement, causing duplicate ID and ballot errors (e.g. one voter assigned three ballots in 2020). Read more: [WTP: NC's Voter Preregistration Disaster, Part 1, July 8, 2025].

  • Part 2: Systemic Failures and Legal Violations

SEIMS' flawed preregistration process assigns duplicate IDs and 20,251 incorrect registration dates to teens, violating HAVA and NVRA, with errors persisting due to unaddressed 2009 form changes. Read more: [WTP: NC's Voter Preregistration Disaster, Part 2, July 11, 2025].


Issue #4: SEIMS Fails to Prevent Intra-County Double Voting

NC's SEIMS allows voters to cast multiple ballots within a county undetected, as in a 2024 Brunswick County case where both ballots cast by one person were counted, violating federal law and voters' constitutional rights.

  • Undetected Double Voting and Record Deletion

SEIMS failed to flag a voter's absentee and in-person ballots in 2024, with officials DELETING a voter history record, violating federal recordkeeping laws and diluting legal votes. Read more: [WTP: Double Voting in NC, July 14, 2025].


Issue #5: Lack of Real-Time Statewide Voter List Access

For 20 years, NC's SEIMS has failed to provide a centralized, real-time statewide voter list as required by HAVA, enabling duplicate registrations across counties, as in a 2024 Durham/Pitt County double voting case.

  • Fragmented System Enables Double Voting

SEIMS' county-based lists prevent local officials from accessing statewide voter data, allowing duplicate registrations and undetected double voting, violating HAVA and risking election integrity. Read more: [WTP: Another HAVA Failure, July 16, 2025].


Issue #6: Ineffective Use of Voter Identifiers

The NCSBE fails to retain and use voter PII (DL# or SSN-4) to detect duplicate registrations, with SEIMS deleting PII for ~96,000 records and flawed queries missing duplicates, violating HAVA.

  • Failure to Retain and Query PII

SEIMS deletes PII when unmatched to DMV/SSA, and NCSBE's inadequate duplicate queries fail to identify multiple registrations, risking vote dilution and violating federal data retention requirements. Read more: [WTP: NCSBE Briefing Omits Steps, July 20, 2025]


Issue #7: NCSBE’s Culture of Complacency Undermines Election Integrity

The NCSBE's culture of complacency - marked by dismissing voter fraud and weak safeguards - threatens North Carolina's elections, a critical infrastructure. (DHS, 2017).

  • Part 1: Dismissing Fraud and Weak Voter ID Laws

    NCSBE and legislative leaders downplay double ballots and ineffective voter photo ID, ignoring documented vulnerabilities that invite fraud. Read more: [WTP: No Vote Unguarded, Part 1, July 24, 2025]

  • Part 2: Systemic Neglect Persists

    Ongoing NCSBE inaction, including failure to address absentee ballot portal flaws and unverified registrations, perpetuates risk of ineligible ballots infecting fair elections. Read more: [WTP: No Vote Unguarded, Part 2, July 28, 2025]

 
 
 

Step by Step Guide to Auditing Registration Dates

Updated: Jul 22

WTP Blog Article

By: Carol L. Snow | July 12, 2025


What You’ll Need  

  • Moderate Excel proficiency (ability to add columns, filter, and sort).

  • Access to your county’s voter roll data, updated weekly.

  • A commitment to accurate registration lists.


1. Access the Voter Registration Data

North Carolina’s voter registration data is publicly available and updated every Sunday evening at https://www.ncsbe.gov/results-data/voter-registration-data. Find your county's file under the "Current Voter Registration Files" section.


2. Download and Unzip the File  

  • Locate your county’s voter data file (e.g., a .zip file) and download it.

  • Right-click the downloaded file and select “Extract All” to unzip it, revealing a CSV file with voter records.


3. Import the Data into Excel  

  • Open a blank Excel spreadsheet.

  • Click Data > From Text/CSV.

  • Select the unzipped CSV file, click Import, then Transform Data to load it into Excel.


4. Select the Data You Need  

  • Focus on active and inactive voters: In the “status_cd” column, filter for “A” (Active) and “I” (Inactive) statuses to exclude removed and denied records.  

  • Using "Remove Columns", remove unnecessary columns (e.g., every column to the right of precinct_desc) to simplify the spreadsheet for analysis.  

  • Click Close & Load to save the selected data into an Excel spreadsheet.


5. Calculate Age at Registration

To spot errors like teens "registered" before age 17, add two columns to estimate voters’ ages when registered:

  • Year of Registration (e.g., new Column AE): Next to the “birth_year” column, Insert a column named “Year of Registration.” In the first row (e.g., AE2), enter =YEAR(Z2), assuming “registr_dt” (registration date) is in your Column Z. This extracts the year from the registration date.

  • Age at Registration (e.g., new Column AF): Insert a column named “Age at Registration.” In the first row (e.g., AF2), enter =AE2-AG2, assuming “birth_year” is in Column AG. This subtracts the birth year from the registration year to estimate the voter’s age at registration.


6. Identify Suspiciously Young Registrants

  • Sort the “Age at Registration” column from Smallest to Highest.

  • Filter for ages “less than 17” to find voters who appear registered before they were eligible.

  • Common issues: Missing registration dates or preregistrations incorrectly recording the application date (e.g., age 16) instead of the eligibility date (age 18). These errors violate HAVA and NVRA’s mandate for accurate voter rolls.


7. Check for Unlikely Older Registrants.

  • Clear the “less than 17” filter.

  • Filter “Age at Registration” for ages “greater than 90” to review voters recently registered at 90+ years old. These may be valid—your county certainly could have active seniors—but they’re worth checking for data entry errors, a common SEIMS issue.


Why It Matters

Voter registration is critical infrastructure, per the Department of Homeland Security. Errors like the 20,251 registrants with impossible registration dates undermine trust in our elections. By auditing your county’s voter registration list, you’re fighting for fair elections. Every County Board of Elections, Democratic, and Republican Party member should have someone with basic Excel skills to hold elections officials accountable. We the People can make a difference—start today!

 
 
 
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