Raleigh, NC (AP) – The Trump Administration accused North Carolina’s Electoral Board on Tuesday with violating the Federal Law, failing to provide registration of voters to some candidates containing identification numbers.
The Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit to the federal court, asking a judge to force the council employees to create a quick method of obtaining such numbers.
The department claims that the state and the Council do not comply with the 2002 voting Act after the staff of the Board provided a voter registration form throughout the country, who did not clarify that the applicant should either provide a driver’s license or the last four digits to a social security number. If there is none of the candidate, the state must assign the person another unique number.
A previous edition of the State Council, in which Democrats held a majority, admitted the problem at the end of 2023 after the voter complained. The Council updated the form, but refused to contact people who have registered to vote since 2004 for the 2024 election so that they can fill in the missing numbers.
According to the case, the Council pointed out that such information would be accumulated on AD HOC as voters appear in electoral places. It is not clear how exactly the voter files still do not have identification numbers.
The lawyers of the Civil Rights Division of the department claim that the Council should act more aggressively. They want a judge to give the state 30 days to develop a plan for connecting voters to records that do not comply with the federal law, to receive an identification number for everyone, and to add this to the e -list.
The court dispute follows similar efforts by the Republican Party and a State Candidate for GOP to deal with the 2024 election registration records.
The trial also referred to the broad executive order of President Donald Trump in the March elections to “prevent illegal voting, illegal discrimination and other forms of fraud, mistakes or suspicion.”
“The exact voter registration rollers are crucial to ensure that the North Carolina elections are being held fairly, precisely and without fraud,” said Prosecutor General Harmeet Dhillon in a press release. “The Ministry of Justice will not hesitate to file a case against jurisdictions that maintain inaccurate registrations of voters in violation of federal voting laws.”
This month, the composition of the Council has changed to reflect the 2024 Act approved by the GOP -dominated general meeting, which has displaced the powers of the appointment of the Council by the already democratic governor of the Republican State Auditor Dave Bolik. Previous 3-2 democratic majority is already a 3-2 Republican majority.
The new iteration of the council sounds open to embrace the wishes of the Ministry of Justice.
The Executive Director Sam Hayes said that at the end of Tuesday, the case was examined: “But the failure to comply with the information required by Hava is well documented. Rest assured that I am committed to bringing North Carolina to the federal law.”
The local elections begin in September.
Last year, the state and the national GOP filed a lawsuit against the lack of identifying numbers, which they considered could influence 225,000 registrants. But federal judges refused to make the changes so close to the general election.
The issue was also controversial after election day as part of the official protests filed by the Republican candidate for a place in the Supreme Court of the State, which challenged about 60,000 ballots, which they claim to have been thrown by registrants whose records did not contain one of the two identifying numbers.
The Election Board said that at least half of these voters actually provided an identification number this year.
The state appellate courts criticized the processing of the registration records, but ultimately ruled that the disputed ballots should remain in the final elections. Justice democratic assistant, Alison Riggs, defeated Republican contender Jefferson Griffin with 734 votes from over 5.5 million chapters.
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This story has been updated to adjust that the AMERICA Vote Act has been passed in 2002, not since 2003.