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Tuesday, 12 August 2025
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Written by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press
North Carolina State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes is setting off on a mission to correct 103,000 North Carolinians’ voting records from which some information is missing.
He maintains that the process, dubbed the Registration Repair Project, will not remove any eligible voters from the state’s voter rolls.
According to the state elections board, 103,270 North Carolina registered voters have records that lack either their driver’s license number, the last four digits of their Social Security number or an indication that they have neither.
Last year, this missing information became the stuff of headlines, lawsuits and the high-profile election protest of Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, who lost his bid for state Supreme Court to the incumbent justice, Democrat Allison Riggs, by 734 votes.
In April, the North Carolina Supreme Court declined to remove ballots from the count based on missing identification numbers; they said the state elections board, not voters, was responsible for a faulty voter registration form that didn’t make it abundantly clear that this information was required.
While Griffin lost, the issue he raised remains salient for a newly Republican elections board and the U.S. Department of Justice, which promptly sued the state board over alleged violations of the federal Help America Vote Act’s voter registration provisions.
Thursday, Hayes told reporters that a process he unveiled in late June to gather these missing identification numbers had begun in earnest.
“We must put this issue behind us so we can focus our attention squarely on preparations for accurate and secure municipal elections this fall,” he said.
The plan to collect missing information
There are two groups of voters under Hayes’ plan.
The first group includes registered voters who have never provided a driver’s license, the last four digits of their Social Security number or an affirmation that they lack both. The state elections board has asked county election boards to check their records for these numbers, in case they were provided but not correctly entered into the voting system.
In early August, the state elections board will send letters to the remaining voters in this group requesting the missing information. If affected voters do not comply, they will vote provisionally in future elections. The elections board will create a flag on these voters’ records for poll workers.
The second group includes registered voters whose records do not show that they’ve provided an identification number, but have shown additional documentation at the polls proving their identity and eligibility under HAVA. These voters may vote a regular ballot.
However, the elections board will still send them a letter in a second mailing asking for the missing identification number to bolster the state’s voter records. Even so, if they do not oblige, they still will not be at risk of being disenfranchised, NCSBE General Counsel Paul Cox said.
County election boards have already made progress, and their work will continue as the mailings go out, Hayes said.
Voters can check to see whether they’re on the list of those with missing information by using the Registration Repair Search Tool. If voters don’t want to wait for the August mailing, they can submit an updated voter registration form using their driver’s license through the online DMV portal or visit their county elections board in person with their driver’s license or Social Security card.
“We anticipate the number of voters on the list will decrease quickly as word spreads about this important effort,” Hayes said.
The State Board of Elections unanimously approved the plan last month, despite some concerns from Democrat Jeff Carmon about putting up an extra obstacle for voters because of a problem with missing information that the voters didn’t cause.
“It’s hard to understand starvation if you’ve never felt the pangs of hunger,” Carmon said. “It’s the same situation with voting obstacles. Your perspective of an obstacle may not be the same as someone who’s consistently had their identity and their validity questioned.”
Nonetheless, Carmon and fellow Democrat board member Siobhan Millen ultimately voted in support of the plan.
Same ballot, different rules
Normally, when a voter casts a provisional ballot, the county elections board determines whether their ballot counts by the post-election canvass, held nine days after an election.
Voters may have to provide documentation or information to prove their eligibility to vote in order to be accepted.
The same process applies to the 103,000 affected voters, with a catch. Their vote may be accepted for federal contests, but not state contests, due to a difference in law.
According to the DOJ’s interpretation, the National Voter Registration Act requires all provisional votes of “duly registered voters” to count, Cox said.
But the state elections board has interpreted the state Supreme Court and North Carolina Court of Appeals’ decisions in the Griffin case as requiring a driver’s license, the last four digits of a Social Security number or an affirmation that a voter has neither before accepting their votes in state and local contests.
Under a recent election law change, county election boards have three days to validate and count or reject provisional ballots.
But sometimes, mismatches happen during validation due to database trouble with reading hyphenated names or connecting maiden and married names, for example, Cox said. The board has designed a “fail safe” in case this comes up.
When there’s a mismatch during the validation process, state law allows voters to provide additional documentation — like a driver’s license, bank statement or government document with a voter’s name and address — to prove their eligibility.
“A big chunk of these voters will have already shown HAVA ID, and that’s because in the past, when this information was not supplied, the county boards would still require these voters to show that alternative form of HAVA ID when they voted for the first time,” Cox said.
Poll workers will ask provisional voters to provide this additional documentation so that they can mark it down for later, if validation doesn’t work, he added.
Democrats threaten countersuit
Last week, the Democratic National Committee threatened the state board with litigation if they went ahead with their plan regarding those with missing information.
The letter claimed that the plan would remove eligible voters from the rolls illegally.
Hayes disagrees. In his view, he’s just following the law.
“It’s not the fault of the voters,” he said. “But at the same time, we’re required by the law to go back and collect this information, which should have been done at the time, and it certainly should have been done in the intervening time.”
He also clarified that North Carolina’s photo voter ID requirement won’t suffice for the impacted voters. They still have to vote provisionally so that their identification numbers can go through the validation process, he said.
As for whether his fully fleshed out plan will appease the DNC?
“We hope so,” Hayes said.
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Tuesday, 12 August 2025
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Written by Lia Tremblaya
Wes Jones, MD, remembers the day in 1983 when he decided where his medical career would unfold. As he was finishing a gastroenterology fellowship at Duke University and considering a number of places where he might begin his practice, a colleague told him he might want to check out Fayetteville. He added it to his list of cities to explore and set out for a drive with his wife, Lucy.
“We saw a sign for Fayetteville to the right, but I missed the exit,” he said. “And then a short while later, I saw another sign for Fayetteville, and this one pointed to the left.”
With all signs literally pointing to Fayetteville, they had a look around and soon felt right at home.
“And we just knew that's where God wants us to be,” he said. “So I've been here since ‘83.”
After nearly four decades of practice at Cape Fear Valley, Dr. Jones retired in 2020. And late last year, despite a very active lifestyle, the doctor became a patient.
“It began with some numbness on the top of my foot,” he said. “I thought my shoe wasn’t on correctly, so I adjusted that and did fine the rest of the day.”
But the next day, the numbness was back. Over the next few days, it spread to his ankle and up to his mid-calf. This was not a good sign.
“The MRI showed lumbar stenosis with severe compression in the lower spinal canal,” Jones said. “Given my symptom progression, I was concerned about becoming paraplegic.”
Soon, Jones was evaluated by Charles Haworth, MD, at Cape Fear Valley Neurosurgery. The two were already well acquainted.
“He’s a good guy,” Dr. Haworth said. “He’s a go-getter and just a real optimist. He’s not a complainer. I was alarmed that he was in this condition and still trying to carry on.”
Three days later, Dr. Jones was in surgery. Dr. Haworth spent hours carefully clearing the overgrowth that had compressed the nerves, fusing the affected vertebrae to return sensation and function to Dr. Jones’ legs.
“That was the Monday before Thanksgiving,” Dr. Jones said. “And I was out of the hospital on Wednesday, which is pretty remarkable for a five-hour procedure. The next day, I was outside with a walker. I used that for a week, and a month later I was walking four or five miles.”
This was his usual routine before the surgery, and he was glad to be back at it. But as the weeks went by, Dr. Haworth worried he might be overdoing it.
“We always tell patients we want them to do some walking,” Dr. Haworth said. “And I knew he was doing a mile or two at the beginning, but then another friend told me he was doing three miles a day, and then he’s up to five or six or seven. And it’s like, how many people his age do anything near that?”
Dr. Jones felt fine but agreed to scale back to three or four miles a day, at least until they could confirm at a three-month follow-up that all was well.
“And the X-rays were completely unchanged from the ones right after surgery,” he said. “Dr. Haworth was very pleased with that, so I could keep walking as far as I liked.”
As his remarkable recovery continued, Dr. Jones was surprised by how many people assumed he’d gone out of town for his surgery.
“People have this mindset that you have to go to Duke or UNC for the best,” he said. “But as a doctor and now a patient, I can tell you I don’t think I would have gotten better care there than what I got at Cape Fear Valley. There’s just not a lot of reason to go so far away.”
Dr. Haworth agreed and said Dr. Jones has been a large part of Cape Fear Valley’s evolution into a robust, thriving health system.
“He's given so much back to the hospital and now to the medical school,” Dr. Haworth said. “He's just a very special, unique person in the community.”
Dr. Jones said he wants people to know that symptoms like his are not to be ignored. He had powered through many years of back trouble, keeping the discomfort at bay with plenty of walking, swimming and yoga.
“It’s one thing to have back discomfort that comes and goes,” he said. “But once you have a neurological symptom like numbness, and it’s spreading, that is a big red flag, and you need to get it checked out.”
(Dr. Wes Jones had a remarkable surgery and recovery at Cape Fear Valley Health. Learn more at capefearvalley.com Photo courtesy of Cape Fear Valley Health)
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