Old North News

The North Carolina State Board of Elections has agreed to disclose voting records indicating the number of foreign citizens who have registered and voted in the state’s elections.

The agreement stems from a case brought by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), an election watchdog group, in June 2019 where they argued that election officials are required to allow the inspection of records relating to voter roll maintenance under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

The Foundation is a conservative legal group based in Indianapolis.

J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. | PILF

The elections board agreed to settle the case after a federal appellate court ruled that the NVRA requires disclosure of all noncitizens who register and vote.

“This is a huge win for transparency in North Carolina’s elections,” PILF President J. Christian Adams said in a statement. “The public has a right to know about election vulnerabilities.”

“These records conclusively show that foreigners have been registering to vote and voting in North Carolina elections,” he added. “It is a shame our efforts to disclose these records were met with such resistance by election officials. Real foreign interference in American elections happens when foreigners cast ballots. This victory demonstrates that changes to national voter registration policies are needed to prevent this from happening.”

Foundation spokeswoman Lauren Bowman said that they won’t know the exact number of foreigners who voted in past elections in North Carolina until they review the records provided by the elections board.

In 2018, 19 foreigners were charged with unlawfully voting in North Carolina after an investigation by the Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force. In the case, a U.S. citizen was also charged “with aiding and abetting an alien to falsely claim U.S. citizenship to register to vote.” Nineteen more were charged with the same crime in September 2020.

Foreigners have voted in elections in jurisdictions outside North Carolina as well. The violations are concentrated in sanctuary cities that protect illegal immigrants from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a 2018 PILF report, Safe Spaces.

"Noncitizens were often invited and given access to ballots in 13 sanctuary jurisdictions across seven states over the past decade,” PILF said in a 2018 news release announcing the report. “The ineligible registrations were typically discovered only after noncitizens self-reported their statuses to officials. Worse, sanctuary policies have resulted in aliens who do illegally vote never being prosecuted.”

Fairfax County, Virginia, for instance, had 1,334 self-reported or canceled alien registrations.