Voter List Maintenance

Next Tuesday afternoon at 3:00 the County Board of Elections will conduct a formal hearing on challenges to four voters on the Pamlico County rolls. They are four remaining challenges out of six originally submitted, all on the County's list of inactive voters, for whom the BOE determined probable cause existed to remove them from the rolls.

Headlines of related news articles convey a misleading idea of how voter lists are maintained. "Pamlico begins clearing voter list of dead, relocated residents," the Sun Journal reported. "Dead people haunt county's voter rolls," County Compass declared. Similar headlines in Pamlico Today and Pamlico News seem to suggest that the County is just now beginning to remove voters.

Not so.

The truth is, that State and Federal law require the state of North Carolina to maintain a statewide voter registration database. Local boards of elections in the 100 counties perform routine data entry and other tasks as prescribed by these laws. They perform regular maintenance of voter lists using certain approved methods designed to carefully protect the rights of voters. Among the methods:

1. Daily activities: Voters moving into the county or moving within the county can register during working hours any day of the week. The voter registration office is open all day long. Voters moving from the county can request removal from the registration list at any time by signing a form. Close family relatives of a deceased person can request that person's removal at any time.

2. Daily: if a voter when registering in the county indicates a previous voting registry, the Board provides that information to the appropriate agency for removal at the previous address.

3. Monthly: The NC Department of Health and Human Services and Clerks of Courts provide information to county boards to remove persons who have died or been convicted of a felony. In addition, since in many cases, death certificates for Pamlico County registered voters may be issued in other counties, the Board of Elections searches this information in counties where medical centers create the possibility that deaths might be recorded. The County Board does not have sufficient staff to search all 100 counties in NC.

4. The NC State Board of Elections participates in the National Change of Address Program sponsored by the US Postal Service. Notification of a change of address prompts a mailing to the voter asking them to confirm the change for voting purposes.

5. Every odd year, county boards of elections perform list maintenance using a computer program to identify voters who have had no contact with the Board of Elections for two federal elections. The Board mails these voters information about their registration. If the card is returned undeliverable, the voter is declared inactive. A subsequent second phase identifies inactive voters who have had no contact for two additional federal elections. These voters are removed from the voting list.

In addition, any registered voter in the county may challenge the right of any other registered voter to register, remain registered and vote. In hearing such challenges, the Board of Elections sits as a Quasi-Judicial body and must provide the challenged voter all the protections of due process. Witnesses are sworn, testimony is taken, evidence presented, and if necessary, records subpoenaed. It is a solemn process.

Removing additional voters from the rolls will make the lists more useful to political candidates wanting to target voters for their campaigns.

That is what we will be doing Tuesday.