Months before voters went to the polls in November, a group of election skeptics based in North Carolina gathered on a call and discussed what actions to take if they doubted any of the results.
One of the ideas they floated: try to get the courts or state election board to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by voters whose registrations are missing a driver’s license number and the last four digits of a Social Security number.
But that idea was resisted by two activists on the call, including the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network. The data was missing not because voters had done something wrong but largely as a result of an administrative error by the state. The leader said the idea was “voter suppression” and “100%” certain to fail in the courts, according to a recording of the July call obtained by ProPublica.
This novel theory is now at the center of a legal challenge by North Carolina appeals court Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican who lost a race for a state Supreme Court seat to the Democratic incumbent, Allison Riggs, by just 734 votes and is seeking to have the result overturned.
The state election board dismissed a previous version of the challenge, which is now being considered in federal court. Before the election, a Trump-appointed judge denied an attempt by the Republican National Committee to remove 225,000 voters from the rolls based on the same theory.
The latest case is getting attention statewide and across the country. But it has not yet been reported that members of the group that had helped publicize the idea had cast doubt on its legality….
he theory Griffin is citing originated with a right-wing activist, Carol Snow, who described herself to ProPublica in an email as “a Bona Fide Grade-A Election Denier.” Snow promoted it with the help of the state chapter of the Election Integrity Network, a national group whose leader worked with President Donald Trump in his failed effort to overturn the 2020 election. The network also was behind extensive efforts to prepare to contest a Trump loss this year in other states, as ProPublica has reported, as well as in North Carolina, according to previously unreported recordings and transcripts of meetings of the state chapter.
State election officials have found that missing information on a voter’s registration is not disqualifying because there are numerous valid reasons for the state’s database to lack that those details.
Those reasons include voters registering before state paperwork was updated about a year ago to require that information or using alternate approved documents, such as a utility bill, to verify their identities. What’s more, voters must still prove their identity when casting a ballot — most often with a driver’s license. “There is virtually no chance of voter fraud resulting from a voter not providing her driver’s license or social security number on her voter registration,” attorneys for the state election board wrote in response to the RNC lawsuit….