Dead Could be a Sizable Voting Bloc in This Battleground State

About 34,000 dead people were on the voter rolls in North Carolina, a key battleground state in most election years, the North Carolina State Board of Elections reported.

The board used data from the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database, known as SAVE, made available to states last year by the Department of Homeland Security.

“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a public statement Monday.

“The benefit of entering into cross-state and federal database checks is that it allows us to uncover issues like this,” Hayes added. “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.”

The board did not announce evidence that anyone cast a vote under the name of someone who had died.

On April 17, the board submitted 7.3 million voter records to the SAVE system, according to a press release.

The goal of comparing voter registration records with the SAVE database has been to identify whether any non-U.S. citizens were on the voter rolls. It was also intended to determine whether there were duplicate registrations or deceased voters.

The comparison criteria for a SAVE database search use voters’ names, dates of birth, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers sent to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The system performs a cross-check with the Social Security Administration.

For deceased individuals on the voter registration rolls in North Carolina, the State Board receives information from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services through a weekly process handled at the county level.