The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) earlier this week finally decided to approve a plan to collect missing voter identification data that had allowed thousands of voters in the state to cast ballots without having properly registered to vote.

Missing data includes no driver’s license number or, alternatively, the last four digits of a Social Security Number (SSN4), which were not provided by approximately 195,000 voters on the voter rolls upon registration.

That information has been required by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) since it took effect in 2004, but the NCSBE had sent misleading registration documents that made it appear as though that information was optional. The NCSBE has known about the incomplete registrations at least since 2023, but refused to do anything to fix the issue leading up to the 2024 election because, at the time, it was Democrat-run and not interested in election integrity.

While the registration application was corrected in 2024, the voter rolls were not fixed.

Now that the NCSBE has recently been switched to a Republican majority, plans are moving forward to rectify their mistake, which has been highlighted numerous times in lawsuits attempting to challenge the registrations.

“I’ve said from day one that I am committed to bringing North Carolina into compliance with the law. I believe this three-part plan is the best way to ensure this happens,” the NCSBE’s new executive director, Sam Hayes, said. “We are making this process as simple and straightforward as possible for the affected voters.”

The move also comes as the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the NCSBE on the same topic.

The first phase of the three-part plan will see the NCSBE send mailers in July to about 98,000 registered voters who registered after HAVA went into effect in 2004, and whose records appear to lack the driver’s license number or a SSN4. Those voters can cast provisional ballots until they provide the registration data.

A second summer mailer will be sent to another roughly 97,000 who have complied with HAVA, but whose current registration records do not have the license number or SSN4. These voters may have initially provided the identification and was not initially validated, and then provided an acceptable alternative form of identification in compliance with HAVA. These voters will be able to continue to cast normal ballots.

Another reminder will be sent out to those who do not respond to the initial mailers.

The second phase will see the 100 county elections boards review their voter registration databases through August to find voters deemed “active,” but who are missing the identification numbers. Numbers provided by the voters will be entered to correct their records.

The NCSBE just appointed new members to the 100 county boards Wednesday.

The boards will then correct the records of voters who registered before HAVA went into effect in 2004 but whose records show the wrong registration date. According to the NCSBE, this happened to some voters during a process to digitize voter registrations. During theprocess, county staff in the early 2000s typed in the date of entry into the digital system, as opposed to the date of registration.

County boards will also provide data on “inactive” voters to the NCSBE, and the state board will correct them.

Phase three implements a process where any future voter who lacks the information will be required to vote provisionally until their identification is provided. The NCSBE is creating a way for these voter records to be flagged on the electronic and paper poll books used at polling locations. That will allow poll workers to see that the voter must vote provisionally, and that the voter must provide the missing information for their vote to be counted.

The NCSBE says poll workers will be trained on the system.

Getting to the point where the NCSBE is willing to correct its mistakes has been a fairly long process, and one that saw roadblocks put up by the previous Democrat majority on the board.

The previous NCSBE was willing to allow voters who were not properly registered, or had never even resided in North Carolina, to vote in its elections. And it did not really care about allowing them because they simply said it probably did not affect the outcome, so ensuring secure elections is more of an afterthought, as The Federalist reported.

There were several lawsuits, including from the Republican National Committee, the state Republican Party, and a state Supreme Court candidate to challenge the rolls, none of which were successful except to the extent that the state Supreme Court recognized in a ruling that the NCSBE was entirely to blame for the issues, despite many months of the board fighting efforts to fix the voter rolls.

“The State Board of Elections is acting to correct numerous errors which have been identified for years as issues,” NCGOP Chairman Jason Simmons said in a press release. “This is an encouraging step towards restoring trust in state elections.”