RALEIGH – North Carolina’s top election official said Friday the state plans to use a federal citizenship-verification database for voter-list maintenance after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted restrictions that had blocked the expanded system.
State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes welcomed the ruling in a Sept. 25 statement. He said the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database is one of the tools available to check whether noncitizens appear on North Carolina’s voter rolls. Hayes also said the state would not automatically remove voters based on database results.
The federal system, commonly called SAVE, was originally used to verify immigration status for government benefits. Federal agencies expanded it to let state and local election officials compare voter records with citizenship, immigration and Social Security data, according to independent reporting published by WRAL.
The Supreme Court’s emergency ruling was unsigned and did not disclose a vote count. The three liberal justices joined a dissent. The majority said a lower-court order improperly interfered with federal efforts to assist state and local agencies in administering the 2026 midterm elections.
The ruling permits states to use the system but does not require them to do so. A federal 90-day quiet period generally restricts systematic voter-roll removals close to an election. The court said that limit reduces the potential immediate effect of its order while allowing case-by-case inquiries.
Hayes said a recent SAVE search helped North Carolina identify more than 35,000 deceased registrants. That figure is an assertion by the elections office about list maintenance; it is not evidence that those people voted or that noncitizens cast ballots.
The immediate North Carolina consequence is that the State Board says it intends to use the restored federal tool while applying state and federal law. The agency’s assurance against automatic removals leaves individual eligibility decisions subject to the procedures governing voter-list maintenance.
Sources
- North Carolina State Board of Elections statement
- WRAL / New York Times report on the Supreme Court ruling
- Associated Press report carried by WHYY
Photo Credit: Marielam1/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped to fit; official NCPN logo and footer preserved without alteration. Card licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Editor’s Note: This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence and was reviewed and fact-checked by a member of the NC Political News editorial team before publication.