6JUN

North Carolina's rolls held 35,000 dead

2 min read

12:16UTC

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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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

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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

Judge Adolf Zeman, Alaska Superior Court

Zeman refused to dismiss the League of Women Voters, Alaska Black Caucus and ACLU of Alaska suit over the state giving DOJ its unredacted voter list. The privacy claims now go to evidence-gathering under the Alaska Constitution.

Judge Thomas Schroeder, US District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina

Schroeder refused on 19 October to block the State Board of Elections rule that rejects mail ballots with an unsealed or missing inner envelope. He found the challengers had delayed and that relief was infeasible with voting under way, and pointed to notice-and-cure provisions as a safeguard.

Stephen Richer, Republican former Maricopa County recorder

Richer submitted a brief on 20 October supporting the voting groups on documentary proof of citizenship at registration. He takes no position on the separate 90-day voter-removal question.

Senate Leadership Fund

The Senate Leadership Fund began spending for interim Senator Darline Graham Nordone on 19 October, taking its South Carolina total to $4.06m, including $2.25m against Democrat Annie Andrews. Republicans are now paying to defend a seat in a state Donald Trump carried in 2024.

WinSenate, the ad-buying affiliate of Senate Majority PAC

WinSenate began buying Kansas airtime against Roger Marshall on 10 October and had reported $8.14m there by 20 October. Marshall held $922,088 in cash on 30 September and the NRSC gave him no party money in September, so the Democratic side is spending where the Republican committee has not.

County Board of Arlington County

Arlington says federal Polling Place Policies allowing armed agents at polling sites breach 18 USC 592, the 1865 ban on troops or armed men at an election. It reads Markwayne Mullin's 1 September remarks as confirming such a policy, and asks Judge Brinkema to keep armed federal staff from its polls and drop boxes.

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