The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will now have access to the data of all 7.6 million registered NC voters, following a 3-2 vote by the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE).
The move comes just one week after ICE ended its two-week-long incursion in the state, dubbed operation “Charlotte’s Web.” The mission resulted in the arrest of 370 individuals. While ICE’s street-level crackdown may have officially ended, state election administrators are continuing the work in the state’s voter database.
The agreement will allow NCSBE to compare North Carolina’s voter registration records with citizenship data in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database.
“This is one of the few tools available to us to check for noncitizens on our voter rolls,” said Executive Director Sam Hayes. “We are pleased to follow the letter of the law outlined in North Carolina’s Constitution and to make clear that elections are reserved for U.S. citizens.”
It is unclear what, if anything, the NCSBE will find. According to the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, only 38 non-citizens have voted in North Carolina since 1982.
Under North Carolina and federal law, non-citizens cannot vote in state or local elections. Republicans doubled down during the 2024 election, sending a ballot referendum to the voters that would exclude non-citizens from voting — even though the law was already settled on the matter.
The SAVE system has faced criticism for being unreliable and outdated. In fact, North Carolina has already used SAVE in the past with middling results. The NCSBE’s audit of the 2016 election, which utilized SAVE, questioned the database.
“The SAVE database is not a reliable indicator that a person is not a U.S. citizen because the database is not always updated in a timely manner and individuals who derived citizenship from their parents through naturalization or adoption may show up as non-citizens in SAVE,” the Board said.
They continued: “In fact, voters who appear to be non-citizens based on DMV data were confirmed to be U.S. citizens in the SAVE database 97.6 percent of the time.”
Advocates also worry about the integrity of the data used in SAVE. A report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that one of the datasets SAVE uses includes mistaken identities and is biased against certain religious, racial and ethnic minorities.
“These faulty sources increase the likelihood of errors and lack adequate safeguards for privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties,” the Brennan Center said.
The SAVE vote marks the latest battle in an agency that has become heavily politicized over the past year. Following the 2024 election, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a series of reforms diluting the incoming administration’s power.
One such measure involved giving appointment power for the board to State Auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican, instead of Governor Josh Stein. Since then, Boliek has reshaped the partisan makeup of the board.
