After missing a January deadline to turn in voter records requested in two subpoenas by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), North Carolina officials have turned over a smaller list of voter records.
Upon missing the deadline, state lawmakers sent a letter to Attorney General Josh Stein urging his office’s compliance with the subpoenas.
According to a letter sent by the Kim Strach, the Executive Director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), voting records for just 789 individuals will be turned over.
“Now, the Attorney General’s office has directed the State Board to acquire the records associated with 289 individuals who were previously registered in counties within the Eastern District,” Strach’s letter reads. “These records will be transmitted to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in response to the Subpoenas. It is our understanding that this limited production is all that is required at this time.”
The letter goes on to detail that the NCSBE will be pulling records from multiple counties in order to comply with the subpoenas.
According to Strach’s letter, “two-thirds of the prior registrants were already inactive in 2017.”
In addition to the 289 individuals, the letter also says that approximately 500 individuals statewide who resided outside the Eastern District of North Carolina” will be included in the information to be turned over to ICE.
The original amount of information requested was far more than Strach’s letter indicates will be turned over.
The two federal grand jury subpoenas requested five years worth of voter and ballot data from 44 counties. In addition, the subpoenas also requested eight years of data for voters statewide and eight years of data from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
The DMV criteria are lengthy but include anyone registering to vote who indicated that they were born outside of the United States, dealt with immigration services, used foreign documents to try to register, or had their applications rejected. The subpoenas can be accessed below:
In a letter to the North Carolina State Board of Elections Attorney Joshua Lawson dated September 6, 2018, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sebastian Kielmanovich agreed to postpone fulfillment of the subpoenas until January 2019 due to the upcoming election.
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A.P. Dillon is the North Carolina Bureau Chief for The Tennesee Star and a reporter at Battleground State News. Follow A.P. Dillon on Twitter. Email Tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “North Carolina Capitol” by Ron Cogswell. CC BYÂ 2.0.
