Beyond the Save Act : How NC Election Boards are being weaponized
Beyond the SAVE America Act: How NC Election Boards are Being Weaponized
Jessica Barry
Many of you may have heard about the SAVE America Act currently in the works in Washington, DC, a bill that could strip millions of their right to vote through the imposition of new burdensome requirements if it passes into law. Most notably, this act would require voters to present proof of citizenship– only in the form of a passport or birth certificate– when registering to vote or updating their registration. It goes without saying that such a measure would disenfranchise millions of people. In North Carolina alone, 2.3 million people lack access to a valid birth certificate, and 84 percent of married women have changed their last name, making them unable to use that document to prove their citizenship. What’s more, 5.7 million North Carolinians (an estimated 50-60 percent of adults) do not have a passport, and the lengthy and costly process to obtain one may be a challenging hurdle to overcome before Election Day.
Today, we want to shed light on how Auditor Dave Boliek and Republicans in the NC General Assembly are bringing additional elements of the SAVE America Act down to the state level, right here in North Carolina. North Carolinians by and large oppose the new voting restrictions in the SAVE America Act, but that hasn’t stopped our state leaders from implementing similar voter suppression tactics. Instead of sticking to his job of ensuring that public tax dollars are being spent correctly, Boliek has weaponized the Auditor’s office to push through partisan attacks on voting rights. In 2025, the General Assembly ceded power over the Board of Elections to him, making him the only state auditor in the United States with this power. Since then, Boliek has already placed election deniers on the State Board and handpicked Republicans to chair the elections boards in all one hundred North Carolina counties. Under pressure from Boliek, these county boards have shortened early voting hours, eliminated entire early voting days, and gotten rid of some early voting sites, targeting areas popular with Black and student voters; it is clear they are coordinating efforts to reduce the power of Democratic strongholds in our state.
Furthermore, the State Board of Elections advanced new rules that would only require a simple majority vote (3-2) of the county board to throw out eligible ballots cast with a legal voter ID exception form. As the GOP has a majority on all county election boards, your vote, no matter what party, will not count if they do not believe your reasoning for being unable to present a photo ID. This move is another tactic intended to cast doubt on our fair elections. If Boliek gets his way and these rules are finalized before Election Day, close election results could be decided on the whims of county election boards under his watch.
Also aiming to stoke suspicion surrounding our fair elections, the State Board of Elections has opted in to using the federal government’s SAVE tool to screen its voter rolls for noncitizens. SAVE was originally intended to determine legal noncitizens’ eligibility for federal benefits using identifiers from the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) database, not Social Security numbers. The current administration has pivoted the workings of the SAVE tool to combine USCIS data with Social Security data for the purpose of inspecting voter rolls, but this new hybridization frequently cannot draw a conclusion on a person’s citizenship status. Using a system so prone to errors could purge many citizens from North Carolina’s voter rolls who should be eligible to vote. Across North Carolina’s 7.8 million registered voters, errors with the SAVE tool are likely to happen– in fact, thousands of actual citizens have had their voter registrations deactivated in states already using the SAVE tool, like Alabama and Texas. North Carolina’s plan to use the SAVE tool attempts to solve a problem that we don’t have; noncitizen voting is extremely rare and has never affected an election result. Our state has effectively run elections for generations and maintained accurate voter rolls with the processes already in place. The true danger lies in the narrative that the SAVE tool’s inaccuracies can perpetuate about the extensiveness of noncitizen voter fraud with no basis in truth.
North Carolina must remain vigilant against these hyper-partisan attacks on voting rights that have traveled from the federal level down to our backyards. It is our turn as voters to take a stand and get loud, for our state cannot give in to Boliek’s demands. Let’s protect fair elections and strengthen our democracy at home.
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