One way election officials are supposed to make our elections more secure is by ensuring that every voter registration is unique. There must be one registration for each voter and one voter for each registration. Identifiers such as name, age, or address are not entirely reliable for that purpose because more than one voter can share them.
Every voter registration is supposed to be unique
North Carolina election officials address that problem in several ways. First, every voter registration is supposed to be accompanied by the registrant’s driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number. The federal Help American Vote Act (HAVA) and state law require election officials to collect those numbers. In addition to helping identify voters, they are helpful in cross-checking voter rolls against other databases to help keep the rolls clean.
A few citizens do not have a driver’s license or a social security number. In addition, the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) has been negligent in enforcing the requirement to collect those “HAVA numbers.”
There is a backup that should make sure that every voter in the state only has one registration. Every voter is provided an NCID number when they register:
An NCID is a unique number for each voter is currently or previously registered in North Carolina. A voter’s NCID will follow him from one county to another county when a voter moves within the State. A voter’s registration date is the date of the voter initially registered to vote in the county.”
At least, that is how it is supposed to work.
Allison Riggs’ three registrations
David “Major Dave” Goetze has collected and analyzed North Carolina voter registration and election return data for almost a decade, most recently with the Electoral Education Foundation. Goetze regularly combs through the “ncvoter_Statewide.zip” file (which is updated weekly) and has found instances of individuals with more than one registration, each with a different NCID.
That is not supposed to happen.
Goetze provided an example to illustrate the problem: Allison Jean Riggs* (Yes, that Allison Riggs), born in 1981, who has three voter registrations listed in the voter rolls (see figure below)
Riggs has registered in three different counties over the past decade. Contrary to state policy, each of those registrations has a different NCID:
- Wake NCID: EH845987
- Durham NCID: BL534291
- Chatham NCID: AX85140
Goetze emphasized via email that Riggs’ multiple registrations are due to administrative errors by election officials, not any wrongdoing by her:
My findings do not imply Justice Riggs has done anything wrong. If it can happen to a sitting Justice, it could happen to anyone. This is far more common than most like to think but it happens because the counties are not doing the Duplicate Record check before assigning a new NCID#, OR, all those records missing the essential personal data the Dup check depends on.
Unfortunately, election officials sometimes fail to transfer the NCID when someone moves to a new county. In Rigg’s case, her old registrations were removed, indicating that the old counties were informed of her moves. However, this demonstrates a vulnerability in the system. A person could be registered in multiple counties, and officials may not know due to different NCIDs or missing data.
The State Board of Elections take on Riggs’ NCID problem
I contacted Pat Gannon, the SBE public information director, to see if he could provide insight into Riggs’ multiple NCIDs. He, in turn, reached out to the counties involved. I am reprinting his reply in full to illustrate where the system works, where it broke down in Riggs’ case, and that a recent update to the SBE’s Statewide Elections Information Management System (SEIMS) should prevent similar problems from arising again:
Allison Riggs’ first NCID was assigned when she registered in Wake County in August 2009. She was removed from the Wake County rolls on August 2, 2020, when she attempted to register in Durham County and was given the NCID of EH845987, which was the same NCID from Wake County.
Her registration failed mail verification at the Durham County address (we don’t know why her voter cards were returned undeliverable, other than that they were returned undeliverable), so this first Durham County registration attempt was denied.
On October 19, 2020, Riggs used same-day registration during the early voting period in Durham County and was assigned a new NCID, BL534291.
Her initial Wake County NCID did not follow this registration because the early voting worker did not enter her driver’s license number or SSN4 into the SEIMS system, meaning her former registration could not be matched to the new one in the SEIMS system. The worker recorded the type of HAVA ID provided, which was the driver’s license. At the time of this same-day registration, the SEIMS system did not require early voting workers to enter DL# or SSN4 for SDRs. A SEIMS enhancement in 2024 now requires poll workers to enter that data for SDRs. That said, Riggs did provide a driver’s license, which affirmed proof of residency for SDR.
Riggs submitted a voter registration application in Chatham County on September 30, 2021 (and was assigned NCID AX85140). She was given a new NCID because her SSN4 and DL# were not on her Durham County record, which again meant there was not an initial match of her prior and new registration records. Shortly thereafter, her Durham registration was identified by the SEIMS system as a duplicate registration, using matching criteria that does not include the DL# or SSN4 to flag possible duplicates, and was removed once the duplicate registration was confirmed.
Put simply, the fact that the SDR in Durham did not record her SSN4 or DL# in the SEIMS system means that it couldn’t be matched to her previous registration in Wake County, nor her new/current registration in Chatham County. SEIMS duplicate checks did result in her quick removal from Durham County, however. A 2024 enhancement to the SEIMS system should prevent this exact situation from happening again.
So, the problem that led to Riggs’ multiple registrations should theoretically not happen again.
We do not know how many duplicate registrations are on voter rolls, but officials and citizens should remain vigilant to ensure the number is as small as possible.
