Absentee ballots are prepared to be mailed at the Wake County Board of Elections. More than 2.8 million North Carolinians have already voted in the 2024 election, but lawyers for the Republican National Committee told a federal appeals court on Monday that 225,000 voters should be purged from the rolls or required to cast provisional ballots. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
The Republican National Committee and the state Board of Elections were back in court Monday for a hearing on the GOP attempt to purge 225,000 voters from the rolls.
Republicans are suing over what they say are improper voter registration forms.
A federal judge in Wilmington threw out one of the Republicans’ claims earlier this month. He decided to send a second claim alleging a state constitutional violation back to state court.
Republicans claim 225,000 people are not properly registered because their forms did not require a driver’s license or partial Social Security number. Republicans claimed that failure to remove those voters interfered with the right to vote by potentially diluting legitimate votes.
There is no allegation that there’s a single person in the pool of 225,000 who is ineligible to vote, said Seth Waxman, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee.
The state Board of Elections and the Democratic National Committee are appealing the part of the district court order sending the second claim back to state court. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing in the case Monday.
Republicans cloaked a federal claim over the Help America Vote Act in a state claim, Deputy Attorney General Sarah Boyce, representing the state Board of Elections, told the judges. The claim should remain in federal court because the key question is whether federal law has been violated, she said.
Federal law prohibits removing voters from the rolls so close to Election Day, and voting is well underway in North Carolina. More than 2.8 million people had voted as of Monday morning.
Phil Strach, the lawyer representing the RNC, at first denied that they had asked for a voter purge until Judge Nicole Berner read part of the complaint aloud.
The RNC originally asked the court to order the state Board to have a plan by Sept. 6 to remove the voters. Alternatively, they wanted the court to require those voters to submit provisional ballots.
Strach told the judges that removing people from the voter rolls now would not violate the National Voter Registration Act because they were not properly registered to begin with.
If it’s not feasible to remove voters, they should be required to cast provisional ballots, then present their IDs at their local elections offices before their ballots are counted, Strach said.
Waxman told the judges that the law anticipates some people may register without the identifying numbers and already requires they show required documents before they vote. Additionally, the state now requires photo voter ID, he said.
“The notion that you can be required to make a provisional ballot is utterly wrong as a matter for federal law, state law, and common sense,” Waxman said.
The lawyers spent considerable time debating whether the Republican National Committee had standing to have the case in federal court.
With Election Day a week away and people already voting, what Republicans are asking for is not feasible and is illegal under federal law, said Hilary Klein, senior counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, which filed an amicus brief in case on behalf of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and two individual voters.
“This is all posturing to cast doubt on an election that is occurring right now,” Klein said.