Myers to oversee US Justice Department lawsuit over NC voter rolls

US Chief District Judge Richard Myers will oversee the federal Justice Department’s lawsuit against North Carolina’s State Board of Elections. The suit argues that state election officials violated federal law by failing to maintain accurate voter lists.

A court order Friday transferred the case to Myers from US District Judge Louise Wood Flanagan. Myers addressed similar issues when dealing with the six-month legal battle between Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin over a seat on North Carolina’s Supreme Court.

The Democratic National Committee, North Carolina NAACP, League of Women Voters, and clients of Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm all have filed paperwork seeking to intervene in the case as defendants.

“This is the latest in a series of cases that have baselessly alleged that North Carolina’s voter list maintenance practices violated the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (‘HAVA’),” DNC lawyers argued in a June 17 court filing. “Like the others, this case rests on the threadbare allegation that the State’s voter list maintenance practices were defective because the State accepted voter-registration forms from voters who had driver’s license numbers or social security numbers but failed to list them on the form.”

“But even assuming arguendo that the federal government’s speculative allegations are well-founded, HAVA specifies what a state must do if a voter does not provide their driver’s license number or social security number when they register: (1) the voter must be assigned a unique identifying number, and (2) the voter must provide photo identification or a document establishing residency when they vote in their first federal election,” Democrats’ court filing continued. “The federal government has not alleged any well-pleaded facts which show North Carolina failed to follow these two steps.”

“More importantly, the federal government’s prayer for relief — seeking to compel the State to collect driver’s license numbers or social security numbers from some unspecified number of voters — finds no statutory support from HAVA,” DNC lawyers wrote.

“The DNC, on behalf of itself and its members in North Carolina, thus moves to intervene in this matter to protect its unique interest in preventing inconsistent adjudications in this case and other cases in which it has already intervened to defend North Carolina voters against the same baseless allegations that the federal government makes here,” the court filing continued.

The NAACP’s state conference and the League of Women Voters of North Carolina filed a separate document on June 17 along with eight people labeled “impacted voters.”

“Hundreds of thousands of North Carolina voters are once again facing the threat of losing their right to vote because of voter registration database issues that stem from the state’s efforts to comply with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA),” the court filing explained. “Over the last 18 months, these voters have experienced a seemingly endless loop of scrutiny, despite doing everything they can to confirm that they were (or currently are) properly registered.”

“Each action targeted eligible voters — including the Impacted Voters — who followed all the rules for registration, but for whom the registration database does not have a record of a driver’s license or socialsecurity number. Yet the voices of these voters are critically absent from this case,” lawyers for the NAACP and LWVNC wrote.

The Justice Department “has wholly failed to concretely identify any specific voter who was registered contrary to HAVA, and instead simply assumes as much based on imperfect statewide records,” according to a June 2 court filing from the North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans. The alliance is working with the Elias Law Group.

“Despite its paltry allegations, the federal government asks this Court to force North Carolina to engage in a herculean data-collection process, contacting every single voter in the state whose registration file appears to be missing information and then collecting that information,” the alliance argued. “The inevitable consequence of the federal government’s lawsuit is clear: voters who cannot be contacted stand to be kicked off the rolls, even if they complied with HAVA when they registered or never had to comply with HAVA at all. The federal government’s paper-thin allegations do not warrant the heavy-handed relief it seeks, which will invariably lead to thousands of eligible North Carolinians losing their registration status.”

The Justice Department filed suit against the state and its elections board on May 27.

“Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in North Carolina are conducted fairly, accurately, and without fraud,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a news release. “The Department of Justice will not hesitate to file suit against jurisdictions that maintain inaccurate voter registration rolls in violation of federal voting laws.”

“We are still reviewing the complaint,” state elections director Sam Hayes said in a prepared statement to Carolina Journal on May 27, “but the failure to collect the information required by HAVA has been well documented.  Rest assured that I am committed to bringing North Carolina into compliance with federal law.”

The suit referenced President Donald Trump’s March 25 executive order on “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” The order aimed “to ensure that elections are being held in compliance with federal laws that guard against illegal voting, unlawful discrimination, and other forms of fraud, error, or suspicion,” according to the lawsuit.

“The cornerstone of public trust in government lies in free and fair elections. The core of the compact between a state and its citizens rests in ensuring that only eligible citizens can vote in elections,” the complaint continued.

“Defendants have failed to maintain accurate lists in North Carolina’s computerized statewide voter registration in violation of Section 303(a)(5) of HAVA and the sacred trust that the people of the State of North Carolina have put in them to ensure the fairness and integrity of elections for Federal office in the state, necessitating this litigation,” according to the lawsuit.

The suit names the state, the elections board, all five individual members, and Hayes. Hayes took office on May 15, eight days after a newly constituted State Board of Elections ousted former director Karen Brinson Bell.

With new Republican members Francis De Luca and Robert Rucho, the board also flipped from a 3-2 Democratic majority to a 3-2 Republican majority. State Auditor Dave Boliek, also a Republican, made the appointments under authority granted to him in 2024’s Senate Bill 382.

Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, is challenging the law shifting elections appointments from his office to the auditor. The state Supreme Court issued a May 23 order allowing Boliek to maintain his appointment power while the case proceeds through the state Court of Appeals.

The Republican National Committee and North Carolina Republican Party filed suit in August 2024 challenging the former Democrat-majority elections board’s handling of the voter registrations discussed in the new federal suit.

The GOP complaint challenged 225,000 voter registrations linked to the disputed form. Republican groups asked for the affected voters to be dropped from the voting rolls or required to cast a provisional ballot in the 2024 general election.

Courts refused to force the elections board to take that step.

Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin later raised the same issue in ballot challenges after the election. Trailing Democrat Allison Riggs by 734 votes, Griffin challenged more than 65,000 votes cast in the contest. More than 60,000 of those ballots involved voters whose registration records appeared to lack the required HAVA information.

The state Supreme Court ultimately decided that those votes would count in the final election tally. Griffin conceded the election after a federal judge declined to support a “cure” process that would have affected ballots Griffin challenged for other reasons.

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