State Records Indicate 33 North Carolina Voters Potentially Cast Two Ballots Each In 2024 Election
North Carolina’s voting system is supposed to catch when voters cast two ballots, but voter records indicate multiple individuals in whose name at least two “valid” ballots have been cast and “accepted” in two different counties.
While President-Elect Donald Trump achieved a decisive victory in the state, data from the Democrat-run North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) shows numerous individuals having voted twice in this year’s election (or potentially having a fraudulent ballot cast in their name).
Using the NCSBE voter search tool, The Federalist independently verified 33 voters in whose name at least two ballots were cast, sometimes in a different county, sometimes in the same county. While it is unclear whether these voters were actively attempting to vote twice or other issues were occurring, a data analyst who spoke with The Federalist on the basis of anonymity says that number may just scratch the surface of the problem, given how poorly the NCSBE maintains its voter rolls.
Jim Womack, president of the North Carolina Election Integrity Team (NCEIT), told The Federalist that “the NCEIT team and our network of affiliated analysts are closely monitoring the North Carolina ‘Voted’ list for a wide range of anomalies. Double-voting is just one of the malfeasances we track.” Womack added, “We stand ready to challenge all instances of double voting to help ensure election integrity. Where appropriate, we will turn over evidence of fraudulent voting to law enforcement authorities for prosecution.”
In one example, three ballots were cast in one voter’s name: two in-person ballots, in Gaston County and Lincoln County through early voting, and another by mail in Gaston County. While the final mail-in ballot was ultimately rejected, the early votes in the two different counties show up on the NCSBE website with a “valid return” ballot status and an indication that the ballot has been “accepted.”
Gaston County Elections Director Adam Ragan explained to The Federalist that, despite the voter having the same state identification number (NCID), counties are unable to see if a person has already voted in another county.
That, Ragan said, is supposed to be caught during the post-election canvass period, when states report their votes to the NCSBE, which holds the statewide voter database that will theoretically flag what are called “conflict” votes from the same voter in different areas.
“It’s a voter history audit that we do. After elections, we enter in all the voter history from all the counties, and then it goes to a centralized database at the State Board of Elections, and then it produces any discrepancies, any ‘conflicts,’ as we call them,” Ragan said. “So, Lincoln and Gaston would see that conflict, and whichever county had this second vote, they would be able to reject that ballot.”
That is how the system is supposed to work, but the data analyst (who has 35 years of experience and asked to remain anonymous in order to maintain her ability to audit election data) told The Federalist that she has tracked this issue for several years.
Even if the post-election audit worked to flag double-voting in two different counties, the question that remains unanswered is how it is possible that many of the voters reviewed by The Federalist were able to cast two ballots in the same county. Ostensibly, those should have been caught immediately.
“The state board is not doing the job that they need to do, and that is having data integrity,” the analyst said. “There is no data integrity there, and every time that they’re queried about it, they say it’s ‘safe and secure,’ and it’s garbage. It’s absolutely garbage. It’s the worst system I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve been working as a data analyst for about 35 years. This is an extraordinarily bad — I mean, it wouldn’t pass any kind of muster, any kind of audit, anywhere.”
The analyst said that with a simple computer programming fix, it would be extremely easy to track these double votes, but the NCSBE inexplicably refuses to adopt such a solution. The NCSBE did not respond to a request for comment from The Federalist.
Many of the voter records reviewed by The Federalist are bizarre. Some appear to show a voter casting a ballot in mid-October and an individual registering to vote under that voter’s name in early November, likely through a same-day registration process at an in-person early voting site. “When they do that same-day registration, they don’t check,” Ragan said. “There’s no duplicate check at the polling place for a duplicate registration.”
But at least the state has maintained the same NCID for those voters, as it is supposed to do in order to track registrations. Others, however, appear to have been given two NCIDs, creating two active voter profiles, despite having the same name, address, age, and other identifying characteristics.
The data analyst said the issue is partly due to North Carolina refusing to track the identities of voters, adding, “We cannot be sure that our voter rolls are accurate or being maintained. There appears to be no effort to verify or ascertain citizenship of anyone on our voter rolls given that these registrations have no identification.”
Despite an RNC lawsuit asserting that there are at least 225,000 voters who registered to vote in North Carolina without providing either a driver’s license or the last four digits of a Social Security Number, as required by federal law, the NCSBE has thus far refused to remedy the situation.
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
