WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) - The State Board of Elections is sending letters to more than 241,000 voters who, when they registered to vote, provided identification numbers that did not validate against other government databases.
The board encouraged voters to update their records by providing their driver's license or Social Security numbers, or by ensuring the name on their registration matches other official government records.
The federal Help America Vote Act and state law require voters to present an ID or, if they lack one, the last four digits of their Social Security number. If they lack both, they must indicate that they do not have these numbers.
Election officials attempt to validate the numbers by matching their name, date of birth, and ID numbers of records in the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration databases.
Anyone who wants to update the name on their voter registration should contact their county board of elections.
"This is part of ongoing efforts by the State Board to maintain accurate and current voter rolls. It will also make it easier for election officials to find these voters' records in the future if they update their name, address, or other information," the state board wrote in a press release.
Election officials said the new effort will not affect any voter's registration status, and that during elections, affected voters will be asked if they want to update their information.
Affected voters will still cast regular ballots even if they do not update their information, unless there is another reason they must cast a provisional ballot.
"This is just another way we are working to have the most accurate voter rolls in North Carolina history," said Sam Hayes, executive director of the State Board of Elections. "This effort does not affect the eligibility of any of these voters to cast ballots in our elections."
Voters who receive these letters indicate the process did not result in a match.
Mismatches can be caused by a difference in spelling from record to record, such as one record using a hyphen, apostrophe or space, while another does not, or the use of a prior legal name, such as a maiden name, in one record.
The letters include voters' names as they are spelled in the state's voter registration database, so voters can check spellings against other official records.
Mismatches can also result from entering a date of birth, driver's license, or Social Security number into the wrong database fields, or from transposed numbers or typos in the records.
Voters can submit their information to update their records by the following:
Mailings will be sent starting this summer and in January and August of each year to voters with unvalidated identification information as part of a routine process.