RALEIGH, N.C. – Deceased voter rolls in North Carolina were revealed Monday as state election leaders announced that roughly 34,000 people listed as deceased by federal records are still showing up as active voters in the Tar Heel State. The discovery comes from the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE).
On April 17, 2026, the State Board ran 7,397,734 voter records through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. About 34,000 matches with individuals the feds had already flagged as deceased.
“While we expected to find some cases, this is higher than we anticipated,” said Sam Hayes, Executive Director of the NCSBE, in a statement released Monday.
“Deceased Voter Rolls”
Officials stress that most of these phantom registrations likely belong to former North Carolinians who moved out of state, passed away somewhere else, and never had their death records updated back home.
No one is being removed from the rolls yet. The Board says it is carefully reviewing every single case individually before taking any action. That means these 34,000 names are still technically active while verification continues.
This latest purge is part of a much larger, ongoing effort to keep North Carolina’s voter list accurate and up-to-date. Just weeks ago, on April 16, the Board approved using the same SAVE system to help identify and remove any non-U.S. citizens who might be registered. The deceased-voter sweep is another piece of that same push for cleaner rolls.
