OUTER BANKS, N.C. — Around 1,000 Outer Banks residents may have opened their mailboxes in the past few weeks to find a letter from the State Board of Elections about updating voter registration information. Those letters are real, but it's important to know they won't impact your ability to vote in this year's elections.
About 241,000 North Carolinians received the letter this month. When registering to vote in North Carolina, you usually provide your driver's license number, the last four digits of your Social Security number or indicate that you don't have those numbers.
Those numbers are then run through the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles and Social Security Administration databases alongside your name and date of birth. But officials have found that there aren't matches in the system for 241,000 voters in the state, and election officials have reached out asking voters to update their information.
Dare County Board of Elections Director Kelly McPherson tells News 3 that around 1,000 residents in the county have received the letter and around 100 have resolved it, but her office has been receiving many calls and visits about the letters.
"Three to five days before early voting started, we began to get a high volume of calls and walk ins because that was about the time they were receiving the letters and they, you know, we're just concerned that it could affect their ability to vote," said McPherson.
McPherson tells News 3 that it won't impact your ability to vote in this year's elections. You might be asked to update the information when you go to vote, but you can also decline and still cast your ballot.
Each person affected has the ability to update this information by mail, online or in person at their County Board of Elections. McPherson encourages anyone who has questions to reach out or come in person to discuss it. You can find the Dare County Board of Elections website here.
You can find the full press release from the State Board of Elections below:
The State Board of Elections is sending letters to more than 241,000 North Carolina voters who provided identification numbers when they registered to vote that did not validate against other government databases.
The letters encourage these voters to update their voter records by providing their driver’s license or social security numbers or by ensuring the name on their voter registration matches other official government records. Voters who wish to update their name on their voter registration should contact their county board of elections.
This is part of ongoing efforts by the State Board to maintain accurate and current voter rolls. It will also make it easier for election officials to find these voters’ records in the future if they update their name, address, or other information. More accurate data in voters’ records, in turn, will help election officials with future voter roll maintenance, which often relies on database matching.
Importantly, this new effort in no way will affect any voter’s registration status. During elections, affected voters will be asked if they want to update their information at their voting site. They will still vote regular ballots even if they do not update their information, unless there is another reason they must vote a provisional ballot.
“This is just another way we are working to have the most accurate voter rolls in North Carolina history,” said Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections. “This effort does not affect the eligibility of any of these voters to cast ballots in our elections.”
This effort is separate from the Registration Repair Project, launched by the State Board last year. That project aims to collect ID numbers from voters who lack them altogether in the voter database.
