17OCT

North Carolina's rolls held 35,000 dead

2 min read

17:30UTC

North Carolina published a new figure from DHS's expanded SAVE system: over 35,000 deceased registrants, and no count of non-citizens.

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PoliticsDeveloping

Key takeaway

North Carolina's first SAVE result found dead registrants, not non-citizens.

Sam Hayes, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said on 25 September that a recent search of SAVE (a federal citizenship-verification database) had found "over 35,000 deceased registrants" on the state's voter list⁠¹. North Carolina published the figure on the day the Supreme Court allowed DHS (the federal Homeland Security agency) to bring back the expanded version. The State Board had already reported about 34,000 deceased registrants from a SAVE check in April.

Hayes's release gives no count of non-citizens, and does not say when the search ran. It does not say any of the deceased registrants voted. The expanded SAVE draws on Social Security records, which include death data, so the result found dead registrants rather than non-citizens. "No voters will be automatically removed," Hayes said.

North Carolina counties began posting general-election ballots at the start of September, and the state now sits inside the federal window that limits systematic removals before 3 November. Any cleanup of the 35,000 names before polling day would therefore proceed record by record.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Every state keeps a list of registered voters, and people stay on it after they die until officials take them off. That is common and does not mean anyone voted in a dead person's name. SAVE is a Department of Homeland Security system that now links to Social Security records, which include deaths. North Carolina's top election official, Sam Hayes, said running the state's list through SAVE found over 35,000 dead registrants. Hayes did not say whether the 2026 search found any non-citizens. He said no voter would be taken off the list automatically.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Dead registrants pile up because death reporting and voter rolls run on separate systems. Counties remove a voter after a death notice reaches them, and notices from other states or from federal records can arrive late or not at all.

The federal law on voter rolls also sets the pace. The National Voter Registration Act lets states remove the dead at any time, but bars systematic programmes in the 90 days before a federal election. Removals for death are exempt from that bar, so Hayes's pledge of no automatic removal goes further than federal law requires for these 35,000. It does match the limit on citizenship checks that both sides of the Supreme Court's SAVE ruling described.

What could happen next?

Meaning
The first published SAVE result from a state concerns deaths, not citizenship.
Risk
If other states publish raw match counts without saying how many names were already known, the figures may be read as evidence of fraud they do not show.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: In February 2012 the Pew Center on the States estimated that about 1.8 million dead people were still registered across the United States. The finding drove the creation of ERIC, a data-sharing group states use to find voters who have died or moved.

Counter-parallel: In November 2016 a federal judge ordered North Carolina counties to restore between 3,500 and 4,000 voters in three counties removed after mass challenges inside the 90-day window. The case showed that how a state acts on a list matters as much as the list.

Consensus view: Hayes called SAVE 'one of the few tools we can access' to keep non-citizens off the rolls, yet the only number he published concerned deaths. That points to the Social Security link doing most of the work, since Social Security keeps death records that state health departments may report late.

Counter-view: Justice Jackson, dissenting in the Supreme Court's SAVE ruling the same day, warned that wrongly burdening 'even a few lawful voters' outweighs any harm to the government. A death match is the least contested use of the data; a citizenship match on a naturalised voter is the most.

Key tension: Whether the 35,000 were already known to North Carolina through its own death records. The release does not say when the search ran or how many names were new.

Sources:Supreme Court of the United States·North Carolina State Board of Elections

Mentions:United States →Supreme Court of the United States →DHS →North Carolina State Board of Elections →North Carolina →Sam Hayes →SAVE System →National Voter Registration Act →Electronic Registration Information Center →Pew Center on the States →

First Reported In

Update #19 · Bulk voter citizenship checks are back

Supreme Court of the United States· 1 Oct 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Supreme Court revives DHS's SAVE checks

North Carolina published its SAVE result on the day the Supreme Court restored the modified system.

Occurred 25 Sept 2026

Read story →

This Event

North Carolina's rolls held 35,000 dead

North Carolina's latest result from the citizenship-check system counted dead registrants and gave no figure for non-citizens.

Led to

North Carolina's SAVE check flags 1,392

The same SAVE checks earlier found more than 35,000 dead registrants in North Carolina.

Occurred 13 Oct 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

James Talarico's campaign

Talarico's campaign reported raising $56.34m in the quarter to Ken Paxton's $10.17m, and says he has been off the trail since 30 September with flu. Texas PAC, whose only donor is SLF, has spent $131.5m in the race, more than twice what the campaign spent.

Senate Majority PAC, spokesperson Lauren French

French said on 8 October that the Democratic super PAC was watching Kansas closely, but its booked airtime covers nine states and Kansas is not one. Whether SMP spends there decides if Adam Hamilton's 13-to-1 fundraising edge meets outside Republican money alone.

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State

Raffensperger's office reported 188,667 in-person votes on the first day of early voting, a midterm record. He expects turnout to challenge 2022's near 4m.

Sam Hayes, North Carolina State Board of Elections

Hayes's board reported 1,392 SAVE flags, about 0.02% of the roll, and says no voter will be removed automatically. The board is asking flagged voters to cancel or prove citizenship by letter, while eligible voters keep the right to vote on 3 November.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune

Thune, the Senate's Republican leader, said the government-paid ads should not be funded by taxpayers. His objection puts the party's own Senate leadership against the administration on the DHS spending.

The White House and Donald Trump

The White House calls the five DHS ads public-service announcements with no call to action; Trump called them "rather standard", then said his political fundraising would pay. A White House official said there are no immediate plans to repay.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.