More than 73,000 North Carolinians will be given more time to show identifying documentation to election officials to remain on the state’s voter rolls following a settlement between the national parties and the state’s election board.
The settlement, which lays out the ways in which the state will collect the required proof of identity for the voter list, was signed by the Democratic and Republican parties Monday and sent federal court for approval.
The Republican National Committee and North Carolina GOP sued state election officials in 2024, alleging a quarter million voters had been improperly registered because their registrations did not include the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers or an attestation that they had neither.
Republicans asked to have the voters’ registrations removed and the ballots they had cast tossed out in a pair of lawsuits. The Democratic National Committee intervened in the suit on behalf of state election officials.
“This latest victory is a win for Americans and yet another blow to the Republicans’ scheme to disenfranchise voters ahead of the midterm elections,” DNC chair Ken Martin said in a statement after the settlement.
The North Carolina State Board of Elections, which said that only around 100,000 voters lacked an identifier like a driver’s license number as of last summer, began updating voter registrations last year. The board also sent letters to more than 82,000 voters asking them to update their registrations.
As of December 2025, around 73,000 voters do not yet have that information on file.
Under the terms of the settlement, those voters will stay on the voter rolls and their registrations will be updated when they vote. Under North Carolina law, voters must show identification when casting a ballot, at which point election officials will update their registrations with the IDs they use.
Any voters who do not show the requested identifier, typically a driver’s license number, when they vote will be asked to cast a provisional ballot and to show election officials other identifying documents to prove their identities.
North Carolina has been a closely divided battleground state in recent elections. President Donald Trump won the state by about 183,000 votes in 2024 and by less than 75,000 votes in 2020.
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