Voter registration forms can be acquired directly from the Board of Elections office, at Early Voting sites, at Election Day polling places, at the DMV, at libraries, at High Schools, and more.
Forms filled out on paper can be turned in at the Board of Elections office. The DMV can initiate registrations and send them directly to us, and registrations can be completed through the DMV online as well!
If you are looking for voter registration forms for distribution as a political or nonprofit effort, you will need to get these forms directly from our office in person.
You can change your address or other information on your registration by filling out the requisite section on your voter registration card and returning it to our office, coming to do so in person at our office, or at the DMV on any number of forms.
You may also make changes at Election Day polling places and Early Voting sites under specific circumstances, but it is always better to make changes to your registration record by the voter registration deadline 25 days prior to an election.
The key element to a registration change is the voter’s signature. Regardless of what change is being initiated and the format in which it was initiated, the change must be accompanied by a signature.
Mistaken removals and other more complicated problems with registrations should be handled directly with the Board of Elections office. If you are unable to denote a change on any forms available at the places listed above, come to our office directly.
You may look yourself up using your first and last name/birth date as well as your registration status on the NCSBE’s Voter Search Tool in order to check many of your registration details. If you cannot find yourself, or have other questions about your registration, please call our office at the number listed in our contact information.
In North Carolina, the voter registration deadline for an Election is always 25 calendar days prior to Election Day for that particular Election.
If you miss the voter registration deadline for an Election, you may register at Early Voting if you bring along a HAVA ID and Photo ID. If the addresses do not match on these two forms of identification, the ballot will be voted provisionally.
Also note that if you register at Early Voting, you must vote in that election immediately at that Early Voting site. You cannot register at Early Voting then leave and vote in that election on Election Day, or vote through Absentee by Mail.
This depends on where you moved. If you have moved within a county, you should notify your county Board of Elections office using your voter registration card, by visiting the office in person, or by filling out a new registration form with any updated information and sending it to the applicable county Board of Elections office.
If you have moved out of a county, you may notify the county you moved from using your voter registration card, or use the other two listed methods to attempt to register in a new county and specify that you were previously registered in your new county. County offices will get your registration placed in the correct county.
If you have moved out of the state, you should notify the county Board of Elections where you moved from. There is a chance that the State Board of Elections office will get information that you have moved out of state, but there is no guarantee this will happen in a reasonable timeframe. As such, you should always notify the county you have moved out of state.
The two terms are often used interchangeably at a local level to refer to voters, candidates, or elected officials. However, the correct term for a voter who is not registered as a member of a particular party is ‘Unaffiliated’ in North Carolina.
The term ‘Independent’, in the context of United States elections, is most commonly used to refer to an already elected legislator affiliated with a party, but who is known for often voting across party lines (i.e. instead of their votes being dependent on what their party as a whole decides to vote as a bloc for, they make their own decision on each individual issue). Some states do officially list candidates as ‘Independent’, meaning the same thing as ‘Unaffiliated’ but not North Carolina.
We send out mailings to registered voters according to the following situations (aside from Absentee by Mail voting correspondence, which is always by request):
- We send out regular list maintenance cards after every even year congressional Election according to conditions described in the section on List Maintenance questions. If you receive one of these cards, mail it back to us denoting that you do in fact reside (or still reside) at the address to which it was sent. For more information on this, see the section on List Maintenance.
- We also send out National Change of Address mailings twice a year, in January and July. These mailings are sent to a list of voters whose names and form of identification on file match a list from the Postal Service of those who have applied for a mailing address change in the prior six months. If you receive one of these cards, mail it back to us confirming that you now live at the address you applied to change your mailing address to, or stating that you were just changing your mailing address, and would like your residential address to remain the same.
- The third type of mailing we send is mailings directly related to registration action taken. These either are a verification of the address given when a person originally registers, or a confirmation sent after a change of address. If you receive one of these cards, mail it back to us confirming that you do live at the address with which you registered. If you do not, you will have to verify your address when you go to vote.
- The fourth type of mailing we send is voter registration cards themselves. Once we confirm that someone does in fact live at their address, we send them their registration card. While it is not required to bring them to vote, these cards are a convenient and official way to make registration changes by filling them out and mailing them back to us when a change needs to be made.
- The last type of mailing we send out is notices. These will always be on Alamance County Board of Elections official letterhead, and can be notice of many different situations. Most commonly, these are notices regarding missing or invalid registration information. If you receive a notice printed on Alamance County Board of Elections letterhead, read the notice and act accordingly.
Note, if you receive any mailing that was not intended for you (i.e. it has someone else’s name on it), follow the instructions on our website page regarding mailings. That page also contains information for explaining what we do and do not send voters in the mail, so it is also the page to visit for information if you received something you believe came from us that is not listed above.
You may get a replacement voter registration card by calling and requesting one be mailed to your address currently on file with us or coming in person to the office. If you choose to come into the office you will need to provide a HAVA document with your current address or a photo ID in order to receive the replacement card in person.
If you have moved, you will need to fill out a form to update your address and the card will be sent to you in the mail.
When Elections Administrators refer to the ‘voter registration database’ or ‘registration system’, they are referring to the statewide electronic database that contains registration records and all associated data.
In the early 2000s, North Carolina established their Statewide Election Information Management System (SEIMS). SEIMS evolved gradually, and today is the core of how North Carolina elections administrators execute elections, house and maintain registration data, and perform other legally defined duties.
SEIMS is the combination of our statewide voter registration data and the applications necessary to work with it. The database contains the registration records and all associated data (such as voter history) for the entire state. Each individual county has access to their own little corner of the database, corresponding to the registered voters in their county, and is responsible for maintaining the accuracy of the data within that corner at an administrative (not technical) level.
This centralization of voter registration records is a Federal requirement, and similar systems exist in all 50 states. The process towards more centralization in United States voting began to be encouraged by the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in 1993, but the system as it is in each state today was not Federally defined and required until the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002.
Systems still vary significantly by state in regards to some details, but HAVA made it such that the core structure of registration systems follows the same core principles nationwide, and all states have complied with core provisions as well as reflected Federal changes in their own law.
The term ‘removed’ does not mean that a voter and all their information is simply deleted from the registration database. ‘Removed’ in the context of voter registration means that their status in the database is changed to ‘Removed’.
This moves their information to a separate grouping of ‘removed’ voters (retained for ten years), purging some information permanently but retaining detailed information regarding reasoning and circumstances for removal.
Voters in this separate grouping cannot vote without fully registering again. An Absentee by Mail ballot request cannot be processed for a removed voter, a removed voter showing up at Early Voting can only vote by fully reregistering and voting right then with proper identification information (and matching addresses on both photo and HAVA ID, or the vote will be provisional), and a removed voter presenting to vote on Election Day would not be on their precinct’s registration list at all.
Yes, you may request your own removal from the registration database by filling out a Registration Cancellation Form, which can be accessed at the attached link, on the NCSBE’s website, or filled out in person at your county Board of Elections office. This form, once filled out, must be returned to your county Board of Elections office by the voter who it corresponds to in person, and the form must always be accompanied by a signature.
Keep in mind, if you proceed with this process you cannot vote normally unless you re-register. This may seem obvious, but there is no way to scrub oneself from the registration database and still vote normally.
Deceased registrants can be removed from the voter registration database only if it has been confirmed through legal means that the voter is deceased. This is to ensure that no one acts to remove someone from active or inactive registration, by design or by accident, who is actually still alive. From a legal perspective it is considered a graver error for a voter to be accidentally disenfranchised because it was believed they were dead than it is to leave them registered and risk someone voting under their registration (a scenario that is unlikely and has rarely occurred in North Carolina).
The primary legally defined way in which a deceased voter can be removed is by their name appearing on a list of everyone who died in the state of North Carolina sent weekly from the State DHHS (Department of Health and Human Services) to the State Board of Elections. When the State Board of Elections receives this list, they run it against the statewide voter registration database and send each individual county matches of registrants who have died. Each individual county confirms that the names sent are in fact those of the people in their individual databases then removes them themselves. There is also* a county level version of this list sent directly from DHHS to each county* which is compared against the state one to improve matching at a state level, as well as a ‘DHHS search’ which allows counties to search death records going back years to continually verify as few as possible are missed.
The DHHS list is the most definitive means of confirming a voter is in fact dead, but sometimes the names that show up on those lists only show up months after they died, depending on the exact circumstances and location of death (for example, someone who died outside the state or during travel abroad unbeknownst to family/friends).
Faster removals are permitted for individual counties using lists of deceased people in the county from the local Register of Deeds. This is not required by law, but most counties do leverage this, including Alamance County. It is also worth noting that this method only covers county residents who died within their home county. As a result, county offices communicate between themselves to notify each other early of deaths of residents outside of their home county when time permits.
The final official way of receiving death notice is when a near relative or primary estate representative (for definition of ‘near relative’ see question “What are my explicitly defined legal rights as a voter?” in our page on general voting questions) fills out and returns a Notification of Deceased Voter Form. Any near relative or primary estate representative can also accomplish the same purpose by filling out ‘voter is deceased’ information on a NCOA mailing (for more information on official mailings, see question “I received a card from my county Board of Elections, what is it and why was it sent to me?” in the general registration questions section above).
Some counties also look through local obituaries for registered voters, but that method cannot be legally used alone for removing someone from the voter registration database. Obituaries are not subject to any official, statewide, and consistent form of accuracy verification and contain limited information on the deceased, therefore they cannot serve as official notice of death. Obituaries only serve as a starting point to provide a list of people who could be dead prior to receiving official confirmation.
Federal legislation, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), required states to implement their own policy, following certain general guidelines, for the removal of voters who do not vote for a certain period of time and do not respond to any attempts at contact from a County Board of Elections office.
In answer to this requirement North Carolina enacted the following, pursuant to N.C.G.S 163-82.14: Twice per year, a voter who has not made or responded to any contact with a County Board of Elections office or voted in two federal election cycles (four years) will be sent a mailed document intended for return asking them to confirm that they still live at the location they are listed as living in state registration records. This document is mailed to the address listed under their name in the state registration system, and if no response is received in 30 days, they are moved to a status of ‘inactive’.
Inactive voters are still registered voters. If they present to vote in an election while they are still inactive, they must verbally verify that they still live at the address on file or update their address at the polling place, then they are allowed to vote. However, if another four years from the first mailing passes (counted once again by federal election cycles) without any contact or voting on the part of the voter, a total of eight years since last contact or vote, the person is removed from the voter rolls, and* they must re-register in order to vote*.
Also, for registrants who have never responded to any confirmation mailing and have never voted, the above process is initiated after two years rather than four (based on one Federal Election cycle).
In North Carolina, those convicted of a felony are explicitly forbidden suffrage in the constitution until ‘restoration of citizenship’, despite citizenship not currently being an explicit (constitutional) requirement to vote itself (see NC Const. Art. VI, § 2(3)).
The NC State Board of Elections receives a list of felony convictions and passes it to the county Boards of Elections weekly, as with death notices. Unlike with death notices, but similar to removal due to inactivity (pursuant to G.S. 163-82.14(c)(3)), county Boards of Elections offices must send a notice 30 days prior to removal of a person from the registration database due to a felony conviction. This notice serves to allow a person to contest the removal if they were not in fact convicted of a felony, through a hearing process.
When precisely citizenship is restored for a felon In North Carolina has changed multiple times recently due to court cases, and is still subject to change in the future. Currently, those convicted of a felony may be registered to vote once they have fully completed their sentence, along with any accompanying parole, supervised release, or probation. Alternatively, they may receive this restoration through a pardon or conditional pardon (G.S. Chpt. 13).
Removal and registration restoration processes for noncitizens has not yet been fully implemented.
All election results in North Carolina from 9/10/2002 onwards are housed on the NCSBE’s Results Lookup Site. Results from the 11/2000 election are also on the NCSBE’s website in compressed raw text form, and other results back to 1991 are retrievable by the state or at each respective county office if you are looking for results from a specific county.
Results prior to 1991 have not been universally electronically compiled, therefore any results older than that will have to be requested from individual county offices to be examined in paper form. For more on conditions surrounding in-person examination of records, see question “If I cannot find the data I need, how can I request something directly?”.
Our website houses voter registration statistics and various other statistics by legal requirement in our raw statistics directory. The NC State Board of Elections also offers an unbelievably broad amount of data for the entire state as well as individual counties at its website.
The data offered at a state level is both in the form of graphs and highlights for your average curious citizen and in compressed raw text form for research purposes. We highly recommend visiting their results and data page if you are looking for comprehensive general elections data, or large volume data.
Much of the records housed by an elections office are public record (see question “What information will the Board of Elections office NOT provide me”). Information that is public record may be requested from an elections office with the following legal conditions:
- Board of Elections offices are under no legal obligation to create or compile any records that do not already exist in complete form (N.C.G.S. 132-6.2(e)). Depending on the timing of a request, personnel availability, and what is being asked for, some offices may perform complex queries to get exactly what a public requester is looking for from a database. However, it is entirely up to the office whether or not they take any action to clean or narrow down raw data for a requester.
- Board of Elections offices are required to allow examination in-person of public records “at reasonable times” or provide requested data that is public record “as promptly as possible”
- Any in-person inspection of public record documents will likely be supervised by Board of Elections personnel, who have a right to “reasonable” supervision of document inspection
- Board of Elections offices are not required to respond to public records requests outside of regular business hours
For legal references on items other than the first listed, consult Numbered Memo 2022-01.
No Board of Elections office will ever provide any of the following information except directly to their corresponding Board of Elections, to the State Board of Elections, or to a court by court order:
- Any protected elements of voter registration records (see question “What part of my voter registration is public record?”)
- Originals/copies of voted ballots or electronic/paper record of individual ballots (such as absentee ballot ID numbers)
- Records of absentee ballot requests received (only prior to Election Day, after Election Day these become public record, but must still have portions redacted in order to be copied)
- Any record displaying or revealing protected security features or access controls of voting systems, ancillary devices such as electronic pollbooks/Ballot On Demand printers, or state electronic resources such as the Statewide Elections Information Management System (SEIMS)
- Any completed or ongoing physical or cybersecurity vulnerability assessments
- Any file paths to network resources, system or computer names, or network information such as temporary/permanent IP Addresses, network port information, etc
- Any employee records aside from position/title, age at year end, and party affiliation
- Any records covered by attorney-client privilege or related to ongoing litigation
- Any information explicitly declared to be trade secret by vendors
For legal references on these items, please consult Numbered Memo 2022-01.
Every part of a voter’s registration information (herein, ‘voter’ refers to ‘registered person’, not necessarily ‘person who voted’) is public record except for the following:
- A voter’s date of birth (generally interpreted as covering birth dates to month or day specificity; birth year is not provided directly but age at year end may be)
- A voter’s social security number (full or in part)
- A voter’s drivers’ license number
- A voter’s email address, when provided as part of registration information
- The location a voter originally registered, or the means by which they registered (i.e. online or in-person, DMV or library, etc)
- Copies of any other identification documents provided during registration or voting, including photocopies of provided photo identification for Absentee by Mail voting
- Retrievable ballot ID numbers for Early Voting and Absentee by Mail ballots corresponding to voters
- The addresses of ‘confidential’ voters (a protection extended only by court order)
- A voter’s signature provided for any registration or voting process other than petitions
Legal references: N.C.G.S. 163-82.10, N.C.G.S. 163-165.1, 18 USC 2721
There is no way for a registrant to arbitrarily declare themselves exempt from public records laws. Only individuals who have been given a court order mandating that their address be protected information* are given ‘confidential’ voter status (N.C.G.S. 163-82.10(e); derived from N.C.G.S. Chpt. 15C). If one is under court-ordered protection in regards to their location, they may follow procedures outlined in the linked law to provide proof of this to us.
Note that registration record confidentiality already covers the items mentioned in question ‘What part of my voter registration is public record?’ for everyone. Protecting any further information requires a court order or cancellation of ones’ registration.
