Trump DOJ sues NC over voter rolls, echoing Jefferson Griffin’s arguments
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections on Tuesday in a complaint whose arguments closely mirror those used by Jefferson Griffin in his failed attempt to throw out over 65,000 ballots in the 2024 state Supreme Court election.
While the DOJ’s lawsuit doesn’t seek to change any election results, it could endanger the registration status of nearly a quarter-million voters.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges that the board violated the federal law known as the Help America Vote Act by registering some voters who did not provide a driver’s license or the last four digits of a Social Security number.
“Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in North Carolina are conducted fairly, accurately, and without fraud,” Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement. “The Department of Justice will not hesitate to file suit against jurisdictions that maintain inaccurate voter registration rolls in violation of federal voting laws.”
The board — newly controlled by Republicans — has already indicated it is working on a plan to coordinate with county election boards to obtain any necessary voter information that is lacking, but the DOJ’s lawsuit seeks to expedite the process. It asks a judge to give the elections board 30 days to either contact the affected voters and get the information or remove them from the rolls.
“We are still reviewing the complaint, but the failure to collect the information required by HAVA has been well documented,” Sam Hayes, executive director of the board, said in a statement. “Rest assured that I am committed to bringing North Carolina into compliance with federal law.”
At an unrelated event on Wednesday, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein defended the challenged voters.
“We know those are legitimate North Carolina voters,” he told reporters. “I don’t have any problem with (them) going back and submitting the numbers according to the law. But what I worry about is the new State Board of Elections using this as an opportunity to just erase these people from the rolls when they did absolutely nothing wrong.”
While the DOJ’s complaint doesn’t state a specific number of voters it believes lack the information, an earlier case alleged that as many as 225,000 voters should be purged from the state’s rolls because they lacked the required identifying information.
Griffin, a Republican judge on the state Court of Appeals, argued that the missing identification numbers should disqualify over 60,000 ballots cast in 2024, potentially flipping the Supreme Court election in his favor after he lost by 734 votes.
Griffin eventually lost his legal battle to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs, who was certified as the victor of the election earlier this month.
The DOJ’s case is forward-looking and will not affect the results of the 2024 election.
Tuesday’s lawsuit comes just weeks after Republicans took control of the State Board of Elections for the first time since 2016.
In its first action, the board ousted longtime Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell, replacing her with Hayes, a lawyer who has worked for the state’s top Republican lawmakers.
The General Assembly forced the partisan shift by passing a law stripping Stein of his power to appoint the board’s members and giving it to the Republican state auditor instead.
North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall, a Republican, said Wednesday he was confident the new board would work with the DOJ to address its complaint.
“If we don’t have clean voter rolls, we don’t have fair elections,” Hall wrote on social media. “North Carolina must lead on election integrity. No excuses.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 11:08 AM with the headline "Trump DOJ sues NC over voter rolls, echoing Jefferson Griffin’s arguments."
