The North Carolina Elections Commission reached an agreement with Republicans and Democrats on Monday to give 73,000 voters more time to update their voter registrations before they are removed from the rolls.
The settlement ends a long-running legal battle after the Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party sued state election officials in 2024, claiming that about 250,000 voters were improperly registered. The voters involved did not provide their Social Security number, the last four digits of their driver’s license number, or proof that their registration information contained neither.
Republicans are calling for these voters to be removed from the rolls and their ballots in the 2024 elections to be discarded. The Democratic National Committee on Monday hailed the settlement as a victory and accused Republicans of voter suppression.
“This latest victory is a victory for the American people and another blow to the Republican Party’s plan to disenfranchise voters ahead of the midterm elections,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement after the settlement.
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Election supplies are loaded into a voting tent set up on the day before the presidential election on November 4, 2024 in Burnsville, North Carolina.
(Getty Images)
The North Carolina Elections Commission acknowledged that as of last summer, about 100,000 voters lacked proper identification. As of December, that number had shrunk to about 73,000.
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Monday’s agreement allows these voters to remain on the electoral roll and their information will be updated at the polls. North Carolina law requires voters to show identification when voting.
The settlement comes amid a federal battle over voter ID requirements, pushed by Republicans Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) United States The bill passed the House last week and is expected to go up for a vote in the Senate. The bill would comprehensively require voters to provide proof of citizenship before voting.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed Sunday that Senate Democrats would block the effort.
“We’re not going to let it pass the Senate,” Schumer told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We’re fighting it tooth and nail. It’s an outrageous proposal and, you know, it shows the political bias of the MAGA right. They don’t want poor people to vote. They don’t want people of color to vote because they typically don’t vote for them.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on February 12, 2026.
Schumer’s comments came after Tapper pressed him on his opposition, pointing to polls showing some 83% of Americans support some form of voter identification. This number comes from Pew Research Center poll A survey released last year showed that 71% of Democratic voters surveyed supported showing ID to vote.
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In addition to the ID requirements, the Republican-backed bill would create a system for state election officials to share information with federal authorities to verify voter rolls. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will also be able to pursue immigration cases if a non-citizen is found to be listed as an eligible voter.
Senator Mike Lee speaks with a guest at the Citizen Only Bus Tour rally in Upper Senate Park urging Congress to pass the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on September 10, 2025.
Democrats have tried to paint the bill as racist.
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“What they’re proposing in this so-called SAVE bill is like apartheid 2.0,” Schumer said. “They’re making it very difficult for us to get any kind of Voter ID More than 20 million legal people, mostly poor and people of color, would not be able to vote under this law. “
Fox News’ Alex Miller contributed to this report.
Original source of the article: Democrats celebrate 73,000 North Carolina voters who continued to register without proper ID
