Vice President Kamala Harris is in a tight race. She’s looking for every leg up.
But Harris was put on notice by this one critical swing state’s board of elections.
Most Americans agree with more frequent cleaning of voter rolls so that errant mail ballots aren’t sent to the wrong address as often as they are and so that the state has a clean database of valid registered voters. This is just common sense to the vast majority of American citizens.
Plenty of Democrats, though, lose their minds when they hear about states taking action to clean their voter rolls. They call it a form of “voter suppression,” arguing that people being removed are actually valid voters. There’s no proof of that though, so they must be removed.
Texas recently announced over the Summer that they had removed over a million individuals from their voter rolls who did not have a valid registration anymore. Now North Carolina is following suit with an announcement of a giant purge just weeks before Election Day arrives.
North Carolina has recently undertaken a major update to its voter registration rolls, removing over 700,000 individuals due to ineligibility. According to a statement by the State Board of Elections, 747,000 people were taken off the voter list over the past 20 months. These removals were largely attributed to voters moving without notifying election officials, either within the state or out of state.
The State Board emphasized that the process ensures only ineligible voters are removed, stating, “The county boards follow careful policies to ensure that only ineligible records are removed, not those of eligible voters.” Despite the removals, the state’s voter base continues to grow, with nearly 7.7 million registered voters currently on the rolls. “Meanwhile, newly eligible voters are constantly being added to the registration rolls in our growing state,” the board added.
Other reasons for removal included not participating in the last two federal elections and failing to respond to follow-up notifications, as well as death, felony convictions, requests to be removed, or lack of U.S. citizenship.
In the political landscape, a recent Marist Poll finds that North Carolina remains highly competitive in the 2024 presidential race. The poll shows a tie between Vice President Harris and former President Trump at 49% among likely voters in the state. Additionally, 91% of respondents who had already decided on a candidate said they were strongly committed to their choice.
Historically, North Carolina has swung between parties in presidential elections. The state last supported a Democrat in 2008 when then – Sen. Barack Obama narrowly won by 0.3 points. Trump secured a 3.7-point victory in 2016, though that margin tightened to 1.3 points in the 2020 election against President Biden.
As election season heats up, North Carolina has already begun absentee voting for registered voters. The state began sending out absentee ballots to military and overseas voters last Friday, and all other absentee ballots started going out Tuesday.
Notably, voters do not need to provide an excuse to request an absentee ballot, making the process more accessible. However, the state’s Board of Elections reminds voters that absentee ballot applications must be received by Oct. 29, with completed ballots due to county officials by Nov. 5.
Election Integrity A High Priority For Red States, Democrats Lament
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has said that removing invalid voter registrations is important to help prevent any wrongdoing on the side of the state as well as any wrongdoing for any individual trying to commit nefarious election activity.
“Identifying these individuals that are ineligible doesn’t just make for a strong voter registration list, it also prevents individuals from potentially making mistakes that could impact them negatively, too,” Christina Adkins, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice elections division director, has recently shared with reporters at the Texas Tribune.
Primarily, it creates accountability for all involved in creating a safe and integrous election, which is ultimately what all Americans want from every political background. Democrats, though, have been apprehensive to the idea of more regular voter roll cleaning and tighter registration requirements.
In the Democrat Party platform, you will find the Democrats outright admit they do not want voter ID laws and want same-day registration as well as automatic registration, meaning citizens who do not request to sign up as a voter have no choice to. They also call these purges of voter rolls as “excessive,” though the federal government just recently approved the Texas and North Carolina states as in accordance with federal law on voter roll cleaning.
The Democrat Party also includes in their party platform a call for “universal vote-from-home and vote-by-mail options.” That reads as if their election utopian idea (some would say dystopian) is a scenario in which all Americans are casting their vote from home either on a computer or with a piece of mail.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
