The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) said on 13 October that checks through SAVE, the citizenship-verification system run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), had flagged 1,392 registered voters as potential non-citizens1. That is about 0.02% of the state's 7.9m registrations. DHS had first put the number at "nearly 1,600" before later reviews cut it. Letters went out that week inviting recipients to cancel their registration or send proof of citizenship, and the board says no voter will be removed automatically.
Two weeks earlier the same system found more than 35,000 dead registrants in North Carolina, about 25 times the non-citizen count. Naturalised citizens whose records were never updated can appear in SAVE as non-citizens, and the board says a letter does not cancel a registration or stop an eligible voter voting on 3 November. The release does not say whether any flagged voter has voted.
It is the first state count Lowdown has found from bulk checks since the Supreme Court restored them on 25 September, and it sits far below DHS's national claim of 250,000. Executive director Sam Hayes said "one ineligible registrant is still one too many."
In-person early voting opened on 15 October at 370 sites and runs to 3pm on Saturday 31 October, with same-day registration, in the state that posted the cycle's first mail ballots2. Cook Political Report moved the Senate race from Lean to Likely Democrat on 6 October; Democrat Roy Cooper ended September with $12.48m to Republican Michael Whatley's $0.92m34.
